Kitabı oku: «The Crow's Nest», sayfa 5

In His Baby Blue Ship

There are some people who can't enjoy fairy-stories, and don't like imagining. They are a bit too hard-headed. I don't blame such people; they are all right enough in their way. Only they ought not to go around saying fairy-stories are silly. They ought simply to let them alone and live nice hard-headed lives.

It is the same way with soft-headed people who cannot enjoy the real world. Not having much taste for it, and not getting on too well in it, they are apt to call it pretty bad names and to wish it were different. I think them too hasty. Before they abuse or advise it they should first understand it. If they can't, they should let it alone more, and live in their dreams.

Or in those of such dreamers as Maeterlinck, Dunsany, or Poe.

The Maeterlinck books constitute quite a beautiful country. They have long been a favorite home for our soft-headed friends. And those of us who are of a compound between hard and soft enjoy visiting the Maeterlinck coast as we might a resort. It is pleasantly unreal; it is varied. Gentle breezes of sweetness; blue seas, massive rocks; and storms too. Here and there a crag, or dark castle of terrible grandeur. Is it not picturesque? Don't poke at the castles with your umbrella; you might go through the tin; but take it all in the right spirit as you would Coney Island.

Human nature being what it is, there is certainly a need for this place.

There is one little difficulty about the situation however. Monsieur Maeterlinck, the proprietor, although he makes his home in this region, likes sometimes to visit the real world, if but for a change. Well, this would be nothing to object to, though for him injudicious, but he is such a stranger there that he does not at all know his place. He takes himself seriously at his home; it is natural, I'm sure; but it leads him to speak in the real world with a voice of authority. He is not in the least offensive about it, no one could be more gentle, but he doesn't at all realize that his rank here permits no such tone. On the Maeterlinck coast, in the realms of romance, he is king. In the real world his judgments are not above those of a child.

It would give me more pleasure (or at any rate it ought to, I know) to dwell on his many abilities than on this one fault. But this excellent man has the misfortune to resemble wood-alcohol. Wood-alcohol is a respectable liquid; it is useful in varnish; when poured in a lamp it heats tea; yes, it has its good side. Yet how little we dwell on its uses, how much on its defect; its one small defect that it's fatal when taken internally.

Maeterlinck has for years made a business of beautiful thoughts. With some of them he built romantic tales that are or were a refreshment. But others he embodied in sermons addressed to reality. He told us none needed to go to his coast for romance, or for purity and beauty and goodness, for we really were full of them. We were made in fact of just these ingredients, at least in our hearts; and it followed, he said, that our actions should be chosen accordingly. Without ever having learned anything much of mankind, he described just the way that he felt all mankind should behave. He put on the robes of a sage, and he sweetened his looks, and his voice became tender and thrilling and rather impressive; and he wrote about the Treasure of the Humble, and Wisdom and Destiny.

The real world is not easy to live in. It is rough; it is slippery. Without the most clear-eyed adjustments we fall and get crushed. A man must stay sober: not always, but most of the time. Those of us who drink from the flasks of the sages of dreamland become so intoxicated with guff we are a peril to everyone.

We trust in Hague tribunals for instance, on the eve of great wars.

The flask that Wood-Alcohol Maurice, if I may so call him, held so long to our lips in the years before 1914, produced the usual effects of joy first, and then blindness and coma. I speak from experience. I took some myself and was poisoned, and I knew other cases. But it poisoned poor Maeterlinck more – I may say, most of all – for he had taken his own medicine honorably as fast as he mixed it. Owing to this imprudence, he found himself, in 1914, in such a deep coma it almost killed him to come out of it. His anger at having to wake up and face things was loud. He found himself compelled to live for a while in the midst of hard facts, and his comments upon them were scathing; as all dreamers' are.

Since then he has gone part-way back to the land of romance, and if he will stay there I shall not prefer charges against him. He is one of the masters of fancy. He can mine fairy gold. But any time he comes to this world we're now learning to live in, or offers us any more mail-order lessons in sweetness, I think we should urge him to go and stay where he belongs.

There is a poem by Joaquin Miller about Columbus that describes his long voyage. It consists, as I remember, entirely of groans by the sailors, who keep asking Columbus whether he will please let them turn back. But Columbus never has but one answer, and that is "Sail on." He says "Sail on, sail on," over and over again, at the end of each stanza. I grant you it must have been monotonous enough to the crew, who after the first week or two probably knew it by heart; but never mind, it sounds well to us. It's especially good when declaimed. I don't suppose Columbus himself climbed the poop and declaimed it; he merely stopped shaving, stuck his head out of the chart-room and screeched it, – suitably mixed with whatever profanities his day could command. But Time, which softens all homely history, has beautified this. All the boy Columbuses I ever heard recite it, when I was at school, had as noble a way as one could ask of telling their crews to sail on.

I did not mean to make so long a digression. To get back to Maeterlinck. We ought to provide him with a beautiful baby-blue ship. Odd, charming allegorical figures should sit on the decks, and fenders should hang from the sides to ward off bumps of truth. Astern he might tow a small wife-boat, as a mariner should, with its passenger capacity carefully stamped on the bottom. And instead of Columbus, a honey-fed spirit of dream should stand in his prow and adjure him to sail on, to dreamland. "Dream on, dream on, dream on," she should patter, each time he grew restless. I could not take a turn in the prow myself, it would be too much honor; but I should be glad to take my stand in the gentleman's rear, and do all I could to accelerate his progress from thence.

Problems
The Man Who Knew Gods

His case illustrated the risks explorers run. Not the physical risks, which are overestimated, but the psychological dangers. For years he had lived among savages, observing their ways, and owing to this he had fallen into a completely detached mental habit. When he returned to civilization, he had become a confirmed looker-on. He couldn't get back into touch with us. He remained an outsider.

I met him but once myself. I was in the publishing business at the time, and, hearing that this man was in New York, I thought I might as well see him about his next book. Telephoning him, therefore, at his hotel, I asked him to dine with me on the following Friday.

"Fri-day?" he replied. "What is 'Friday'?" (He spoke English perfectly.)

"It is the twenty-sixth," I answered.

He said: "The twenty-sixth what? Oh, I know," he continued; "Friday is a day of the week. Thank you very much, but I do not keep track of my dinners so carefully as that."

This rather odd answer I passed over, at the moment, thinking I had misunderstood him; and we arranged that he would come some day to my office instead, after lunch.

The next that I heard, he had called there at a quarter to five, the hour at which I always leave. My secretary explained to him that I had gone.

He looked at my desk, on which lay some unfinished business, and said to my secretary, "Why?"

The man courteously responded, "Because it is a quarter to five."

The explorer thereat laughed weirdly and went off.

I now perceived I had to deal with a most eccentric character; but that being a necessary evil in the publishing business, I went to his hotel at nine o'clock that evening. I found him down in the restaurant eating oatmeal and succotash, and we then and there had the following extravagant interview, – which I give without comment.

"The book I mean to write," he said, staring at me, "is a study of actual religions. Other writers have told the world what men of all countries suppose their religions to be. I shall tell what they really are."

I said that our house would prefer an account of his travels; but he paid no attention.

"Men's real religions," he announced, "are unknown to themselves. You may have heard of the Waam Islanders," he leisurely continued. "They, for instance, would tell you that their deity was an idol called Bashwa, a large crumbling stone thing which stands in a copperwood forest. They worship this idol most faithfully, on the first of each lunar month. No Waam Islander would ever acknowledge he had any other God but Bashwa.

"But a stranger soon notices that in every hut and cave in that country, hanging beside the water-jar, is a long sleeping mat, and on that mat a rough pattern is drawn, like a face. 'What is that?' I asked them. That? oh, that's G'il,' they answered in an off-hand careless way, without any of the reverence they would have used if they had thought G'il a god. But nevertheless I noted that everywhere, throughout that whole island, submissive remarks about G'il, were far more numerous than those about Bashwa. That made me begin collecting those references; and presently I found that most things of which that tribe approved were spoken of as being g'il, or very g'il, and things they didn't like were damned as na-g'il.

"It was a little difficult to understand their exact conception of G'il, but apparently it typified the hut, or the hut point of view. Marriage was g'il, and good manners and building materials, because they all made for hut-life. Inhospitality was na-g'il, and the infidelity of women, and earthquakes, and leaks.

"They sometimes personified G'il and talked of him as he. 'G'il loves not Wheesha' (the wind); 'G'il comforts the weary'; 'G'il says, "Get more children."' But all this was only in their fanciful moments. At other times G'il was merely the mat that they slept on. When I said to them, 'G'il is your real God,' they laughed at my stupidity – good humoredly, as though there were something, perhaps, in my idea, yet with a complacent assurance that I was preposterous. I did not argue with them. One couldn't, you know. I simply continued my observations, corroborating my theory at every turn. To give you an instance: Bashwa is supposed to think highly of hunters and sailors, and the Waam-folk always profess to think highly of them too. That attitude, however, is only official, not real. Very few of them actually become sailors. The life is na-g'il."

He came to a pause.

"I wonder whether we, too, have a G'il," I said, to humor him. "We shall have to ask some of your Waam-folk to come here and tell us."

The explorer looked me over as though he were "continuing his observations" of my manners and customs. "Yes," he said, "there's a white man's G'il."

I regretted having mentioned it.

"Can't you guess what he is?" he inquired. "I say 'he' because, like the Waam G'il, he is sometimes personified. Come now! Apply the test. He doesn't typify the Waam Islander point of view: he isn't a mat. But examine your huts and your conversation, and you'll easily spot him. No, I'm not talking of money, or power, or success: you may bow down to these, – but not blindly. You at least know what you are doing. The worship of a G'il is unconscious, and hence more insidious. Even when an explorer points it out, you won't see its importance. It will seem insignificant to you. And yet, while the Bashwa to whom you build temples is only occasionally deferred to, this G'il of yours sways you in all things. He is the first whom you think of when you rise, and the last when you go to bed. You speak of your G'il hourly or oftener, all day long. Those of you who heed him too little are disapproved of by everybody, while the American who succeeds in life is the man who is most careful of G'il.

"I have habits," he morosely continued, "of doing certain things, – eating my meals for instance, – at quite different hours from those that are prevalent here. I find that every one who hears of this is surprised at my ways. Their attitude, while not openly intolerant, is distinctly disapproving. When I ask them why, I get no answer – no rational answer. They say simply, 'It's the wrong time.' Following up this clue I have noticed that not only is the time for performing an act supposed to be sometimes 'wrong' and sometimes 'right,' but that the idea of time governs all of you, like an absolute tyrant. Even your so-called free-thinkers, who lead a life without God, never dream of daring to live without a clock and a calendar. And just as the Waam-folk are unconsciously obsessed by their hut-thought, and see everything from that angle, so you have drifted into an exaggerated pre-occupation with time. No matter what you may want to do, you first look at the clock, to see if it is the right time for doing it: if it isn't, you wait. You feel that you 'ought' to… And each caste among you has its own hours. A difference of thirty minutes in the hour at which a family has dinner, marks a difference in their social scale. 'There isn't time,' you sigh, submissively, when you give up something you'd like to do. 'Time is money,' is one of your phrases. 'Give me time,' is your prayer. Your big books of maxims are full of the respect you feel toward him. 'The greatest crime is loss of time.' 'Time flies.' 'Time waits for no man.' These are only small instances, but their total effect is not small, for it is life itself that you sacrifice to this fetish. Your G'il actually won't let you take good full draughts of existence – he keeps you so busy dividing it into months, days, and minutes. You imagine that it is because you lead crowded lives that you do it. But it is because you're always thinking of time that you lead crowded lives.

"You are smiling at me good humoredly, my friend. I see that, like the Waam Islanders, you think I am preposterous. It is the old story. You cannot view yourself from without. You will admit that considerations of time enter into all your acts, and yet – this seems trivial? And it is inconceivable to you that you are its slaves?"

"My dear sir," I interposed, "a strict observance of the laws of time enables a man to live a much fuller life."

"It is what all devotees say of all gods," he murmured.

"We are not its slaves," I continued. "That's absurd. We have only a sensible regard for it, as every one must."

"Ah! ah!" he cried. "But you do not say 'one must' when your Bashwa speaks.

"Your Bashwa thinks highly of those who do good works without ceasing. You profess to think highly of them too; that is your official attitude. In reality, how very few of you lead that life. It happens to be na-g'il, you see. You haven't the time.

"Look about you if you would convince yourself. The concrete evidence alone is enough. On the breasts or the wrists of your women, and in every man's pocket you see a G'il amulet, a watch, to remind them of time every hour. What other god was ever so faithfully worshipped? In every hut in the land you will find his altar, and in your large huts you will find one in every principal room. No matter how free and unconventional their owners may be, no matter how those rooms may vary in their arrangement or furnishings, there stands always in the most prominent place the thing called the mantel; on it, ceremonially flanked by two candlesticks, or vases, sits G'il, the timepiece; and his is the face of all others you most frequently consult. Blind and idolatrous tribesman! time is your deity!"

Well, that's all there was to our interview, for at this point he came to a pause and I rose to leave, explaining to him, soothingly (though I must confess it had a strangely opposite effect) that I had to go because it was getting so late.

Annual Report of the League for Improving the Lives of the Rich

To begin with, there is one objection that is constantly made to the work of this League. Our critics do not understand why we do so much for the rich. They grant that many rich people are unhappy and lead miserable lives; but they argue that if they suffer from riches, it must be their own fault. Nobody would have to stay rich, they say, if he would just make an effort: and if he has too much money and yet won't give it away, he must be a bad lot.

We believe these assertions are mistaken in every particular. The rich are not really a bad lot. We must not judge by appearances. If it weren't for their money they would be indistinguishable from the rest of us. But money brings out their weaknesses, naturally. Would it not bring out ours? A moderate addiction to money may not always be hurtful; but when taken in excess it is nearly always bad for the health, it limits one's chance of indulging in nice simple pleasures, and in many cases it lowers the whole moral tone. The rich admit this – of each other; but what can they do? Once a man has begun to accumulate money, it is unnatural to stop. He actually gets in a state where he wants more and more.

This may seem incomprehensible to those who have never suffered from affluence, and yet they would feel the same way, in a millionaire's place. A man begins by thinking that he can have money without being its victim. He will admit that other men addicted to wealth find it hard to be moderate, but he always is convinced that he is different and has more self-control. But the growth of an appetite is determined by nature, not men, and this is as true of getting money as of anything else. As soon as a man is used to a certain amount, no matter how large, his ideas of what is suitable expand. That is the way men are made.

Meanwhile the mere having of money has the effect on most men of insidiously making them more and more dependent on having it. Of course a man will hate to believe that this is true of himself, but sooner or later money affects him as drugs do a dope-fiend. It is not really much joy to him, but it scares him to think of giving it up. When you urge a rich man to pull himself together, to summon his manhood and try, only try, for a while to depend on himself, he tells you he'd like to, perhaps, but he hasn't the strength. He can't take life that way. He can't face the world even a month without money in the bank.

Even so, why should the rest of us feel it's our duty to help? Why not wait until the rich come to ask our advice, if they're troubled? Ah, but they wouldn't. They couldn't. The rich have their pride. Their unfortunate weakness for money may blacken their lives, but they suffer in silence. They try to conceal it all from us. Their feverish attempts to find some sunshine in life every evening, the desperate and futile migrations they make each few months, and the pathetic mental deadness of their gatherings, they try to keep private. We might never know to what straits many rich folk have come, were it not for the newspapers and their kindly society columns. Bless their noble insistence on showing us the lives of the rich, their portraying with such faithful care each detail of their ways!

It is no easy matter to reform these rich people offhand. Just to call at their houses and advise them, when you aren't too busy – that would be a kindness, of course, but quite far from a cure. Besides, they might even resent your little calls as intrusions. A good-hearted reformer would certainly endanger his comfort, and he might risk his life, trying to get in past rich people's butlers. Don't go in those districts at all, that is this League's advice. The drinking, bad language, the quarrels and shooting affrays, armed watchmen, fast motors – all these make those streets quite unsuited for decent folks' use.

What, then, shall we do? We can't just walk selfishly off and go mind our own business. The rich are our brothers. How can the rest of us let ourselves be truly happy when our brothers are suffering?

That's where this League steps forward. This League will provide ways in which any reformer can help.

(1) It plans to establish neighborhood houses in all the rich centers, where those who can stand it can go and live just like the rich. It will thus enable a few of us to mingle with them, day by day, and gradually brighten their outlook and better their standards.

(2) It will send trained welfare workers to inspect the most desperate cases and gently reform one by one their conditions of living.

(3) It will instruct volunteers in the best methods of rich relief work, especially methods of relieving the rich of their wealth.

The most common type we treat is the man who is making great efforts to keep other people from getting his money away from him. Such a man is always in a nervous, excitable state. In fact our statistics show that many died from this strain. The typical case gets a temperature daily, from what he sees in the papers, about the attacks which radical persons are constantly making on property. Inflammation sets in, and his outbursts grow more noisy and violent. He practically racks himself to pieces. It is a most painful end.

Other men try to invest money securely. This is a strain too. It leads to constant worries and losses, no matter what they invest in. Again, every man of means is exposed to innumerable skillful appeals to devote all he has to some new educational uses, or to lend it to friends in great need, or give aid to the sick. These appeals are so pressing that it wears out a man's strength to refuse them; and yet, since they are endless, he must. He can't give to them all. He must practice ways of dodging the determined askers who hunt him and trail him. Rich women, alone with their mail on a bright sunny morning, must learn to throw even the most pathetic circulars in the waste-paper-basket. In other words they must harden their hearts. But that hardens their arteries. It also gives them a disagreeable disposition; and that's quite a load.

It means much to the rich when our League takes these weights off their minds.

But the best way to give an idea of the good we are doing, will be to cite just a few special cases we have helped in the past:

CASE 102

Case 102 was a wealthy and ignorant girl who was found one cold morning exhibiting toy dogs at a show. The dogs had been fed heartily, but the poor girl had had nothing to eat but raw carrots, which she had been told she must live on, to help her complexion. She had a hardened disposition, dull outlook, and deficient physique. Her home was like a furniture warehouse, especially her bedroom, a huge, over-decorated chamber, where she slept all alone. After a friendly study had been made of her case, her money was quietly taken away by degrees, this being accomplished with the aid of an old family lawyer, who was genuinely interested in helping his clients all he could in this way; and when this girl had thus reached a healthfully destitute state, a husband was found for her in the janitor of a Hoboken flat. This man is often kind to her when she does well in her work. She is not yet happy, but she is interested intensely in life. When we last saw this case, she was occupying a dark but cozy sub-basement, where she was sleeping three in a bed and had six children, though only four are now living with her, the others having run off; and her days were filled to the brim with wholesome toil.

CASE 176

Case 176 was an elderly clubman who had for many years terrorized his small family, his outbreaks being attributed by him to the coffee. He said and believed that if his coffee were carefully made, he would be content. Investigation showed that it wasn't this but his money which was the root of the trouble. By nature a fighter, what he needed was plenty of personal conflicts, but his money had led to his living a sheltered life which gave him no scope. He had so much wealth that it took two nerve specialists over six months, in fact it took them nearly a year, before the amount of their bills had eaten up all his property. When this was done, however, employment was secured for the old gentleman on the police force, where his peculiar gift of ferocity could find more room for use. The coffee in the station-house, fortunately, was execrable, and this stirred him to a pitch which soon made him the ablest patrolman in his ward. He was then sent to clean up the three toughest districts in town, which he did with the utmost rigor in less than four days, completely overawing, single-handed, their turbulent gangs. At the police parade, recently, he was given a medal, the gift of a citizens' committee which admired his work. At the head of this committee, it may be added, was his former pastor, who had often reproached him in the old days for his profanity and violence. It is these very qualities that are now enabling him to do such good work, and thus winning him a warm place in the community's heart. Meantime a letter of gratitude has been received by the League from his family, who have been removed to a quiet industrial farm in Connecticut, and whose thankfulness is touching for the peace that has come into their lives.

CASE 190

Case 190 was a baffling one in some ways. It was that of a dyspeptic society woman who spent her evenings at functions. She suffered greatly from colds, yet felt obliged to wear large, chilly collars of diamonds, and to sit in an open opera box unprotected from drafts. Although fretful and unhappy, she nevertheless objected most strongly to trying a life without money; so our district visitors had to devise other methods.

They began by removing several disease-breeding pets from the home. They then had the French chef deported, and taught the woman to live on a few simple dishes. These alleviatory arrangements resulted in some slight improvement. Like all half-way measures, however, they left her cure incomplete.

Then, almost by accident, a dealer in investment securities lost most of her fortune. The balance was taken by some cheery university presidents, who made her build infirmaries for them in spite of rebuffs. Soon after she thus had been thrown on her own resources at last, a place was found for her to do ironing in a nice warm steam laundry, one of the high-grade ones where all the corrosives are put in by hand. The light exercise this work gives her has cured her dyspepsia. She now gets through at nine-thirty evenings, instead of sitting up till past midnight; and as she can wear a red-flannel undersuit, she has no more colds.

Other cases must be summarized instead of presented in detail. Anæmic young belles who used to be kept in ill-ventilated rooms every night, are sent for and taken to those open piers on the river, where they can dance with strong, manly grocers, or aldermen even, and where the river breezes soon bring back a glow to their cheeks. Gentlemen suffering from obesity have been carried to an old-fashioned woodyard to work, or, if entirely unskilled, they are given jobs helping plumbers. Hundreds of desperate children have been rescued from nurse girls, who were punishing them for romping and shouting, and shackling them in starched clothing. These children we try to turn loose on the lively East Side, where they can join in the vigorous games of the slums. Most rewarding of all, perhaps, are the young men of means who have been saved from lives of indescribable folly, and who, through the simple abolition of inherited wealth, have been made into self-supporting, responsible citizens.

I cannot say more of the League's work in this brief report. But I must end by admitting that though we have done all we could, the hidden distress that still exists in rich homes is widespread. Families continue to engage in poisonous quarrels, idleness and chronic unemployment remain unabated, and discontent is gradually darkening the minds of its victims, depriving them of true mental vigor and even of sleep.

On the good side we have the fact that the nation appears to be roused. It is not roused very much, but it takes more interest than it once did, at least. To leave the rich to wrestle with their fortunes, alone and unaided, as was done in our grandfathers' times, seems unnatural in ours.

On the other hand, frankly, there is as yet no cure in sight. The difficulty is to devise legislation which will absorb excess wealth. At first sight this seems easy, and many new laws have been passed which the rich themselves have predicted would immediately reduce them to indigence. But somehow no law has yet done this. So we must just struggle on.