Kitabı oku: «The Crow's Nest», sayfa 6

From Noah to Now

 
In the days of Father Noah life was sweet – life was sweet.
He played the soft majubal every day.
And for centuries and centuries he never crossed the street,
Much less supposed he'd ever move away.
But times grew bad and men grew bad, all up and down the land,
And the soft majubal got all out of key;
And when the weather changed, besides, 'twas more than he could stand.
So Father Noah he packed and put to sea.
 
 
And "Yo-ho-ho," with a mournful howl, said the poor old boy to Ham;
And "Yo-ho-ho," sang Japhet, and a pink but tuneful clam;
And "Yo-ho-ho," cried the sheep, and Shem, and a pair of protozoa:
"We're a-going to roam till we find a home that will suit old Father Noah."
 

There used to be rumors of a country that men called Atlantis. It was said to lie far out at sea. A magnificent country. The people there were happier and freer than anywhere else. It was also a land where it was no trouble at all to be rich, and where strangers were treated as equals and welcomed as friends. Until it disappeared so mysteriously it was like an America, a land to which the people of those ancient times longed to go.

I dreamed once that it had not disappeared, after all, but that it was still to be found if you took a long voyage, and that it was happier and freer and finer than ever. And I wanted to go there. I dreamed that America had got itself in such trouble that thousands of people were leaving to live in Atlantis. This part of my dream was a nightmare, and not at all clear, but my recollection is that we'd elected Amy Lowell as President. And she said her understanding was that she'd been elected for life; and when any one disagreed with her, she sent a porter around to cut off his head. And decade after decade passed by, and she danced with the Senate, and made us sing to her at sunrise on the steps of the White House. And she wrote all the hymns. So we wanted to move to Atlantis.

But it wasn't at all easy to emigrate and give up America. In spite of the way that Amy beheaded us, we were fond of our country. And we knew if we went to another we mightn't come back. You can imagine how it would feel, perhaps, if you yourself were leaving America, and looking for the last time at all the little things in your room, and walking for the last time in the streets or the fields you knew best. And the day before sailing you would go around seeing your friends, and saying good-by to them, knowing you wouldn't see them again. And then on the last day you'd sit for a while with your mother, and she would talk of your plans and your comforts, and you'd both be quite calm. And the hour to go would come; and you'd kiss her. And she'd suddenly cling to you…

Then the ship, and the steam-whistles calling, and the gray, endless sea. And you up on deck, day by day, staring out at the waters; and seeing not them but your loved ones, or bits of your home: wondering if you'd been courageous to leave it, or cold, and a fool.

But the sunsets and dawns, and the winds – strong and clean – would bring peace. You would think of the new world you were sailing to, and of how good it would be there, and of how you would prosper, and the long, happy life you would lead… And the voyage would come to an end, and you'd sail up the harbor.

Then at the dock, men in strange clothing would shout orders at you; "Peely wush, okka Hoogs! Peely wush! Okkabab!" and you would discover that peely wush meant hurry up, and that okka was a swear word and that when they said Hoog they meant you. It would be a comic nickname, you know: as we say Chinks for Chinamen. And they'd hustle you Hoogs off the ship, and shove you around on the pier, and examine your eyes and your pocket-books, and at last set you free.

And there you would be, in Atlantis, where people were happy.

But you'd find at the start that Atlantis was busy and rough; and parts of the city would be dirty and have a bad smell. And then you would find that the Hoogs mostly lived in those parts, and had to work at pretty nearly anything to pay for their lodging. You'd see Americans that you knew; Senator Smoot, perhaps, sewing shirts; and the Rev. Samuel Drury would be standing in the street peddling shoestrings. The reason for this would be that until they knew what okkabab meant, and could read and write the language of Atlantis, and spell its odd spellings, and pronounce it without too much of an American accent, they couldn't get any but unskilled and underpaid jobs. Meantime they would look to a native like cheap, outlandish peddlers. Even their own fellow-immigrants would try to exploit them. And instead of their finding it easy to get rich, as they'd hoped, they would be so hard up that they'd have to fight like wolves for each nickel.

Your American clothes would be another difficulty, because they'd be laughed at. You'd have to buy and learn to wear the kind of things they wore in Atlantis. And your most polite ways would seem rude in Atlantis, or silly; so you'd have to learn their rules of politeness, which would strike you as silly. And you'd have to learn habits of living which would often amaze you; and if you were slow to adopt them, they'd class you as queer. Their ideas of joking would also be different from yours; and you'd slowly and awkwardly discover what was fun in Atlantis.

You'd have to change yourself in so many ways, your old friends wouldn't know you. Pretty soon you wouldn't be an American at all any longer. And yet you would never feel wholly an Atlantisan either. Your children would look down on you as a greenhorn, and laugh at your slips. They would seem unsympathetic, or different, – not quite your own children.

The natives of Atlantis would help you along, once in a while, by giving you lectures and telling you not to read your home paper. But you, who had felt so adventurous and bold, when you started, would have to get used to their regarding you as a comic inferior. Not even your children would know what you had had to contend with. Not one of the natives would try to put himself in your place.

Yet how could they? How could any one who hadn't gone through the experience? It is a complicated matter to learn to belong to a strange country, when the process includes making yourself over to fit other men's notions.

It was easy for Noah: all he had to get used to was Ararat.

Sic Semper Dissenters

Written during the war-time censorship of our late Postmaster-General.

 
In the town of Hottentottenville an aged Hottentot,
Whose name was Hottentotten-tillypoo,
Was slowly hottentottering around a vacant lot,
With a vacant look upon his higaboo.
Now higaboo is Hottentot, as you may know, for face,
And to wear a vacant look upon your face is a disgrace.
But poor old Mr. Tillypoo, he had no other place —
Though I understand it grieved him through and thru.
 
 
He was grubbing up potatoes in an aimless sort of way,
Which really was the only way he had,
And an officer was watching him to see what he would say,
And arrest him if the things he said were bad.
For it seems this wretched Tillypoo had gone and had the thought
That his neighbors didn't always do exactly as they ought;
And as this was rank sedition, why, they hoped to see him caught,
For it naturally made them pretty mad.
 
 
So the men of Hottentottenville, they passed a little law,
Which they called the Hotta-Shotta-Shootum Act,
Which fixed it so the postman was a sort of Grand Bashaw,
Who determined what was false and what was fact.
And the postman sentenced Tillypoo, and wouldn't hear his wails,
But gave him twenty years apiece in all the local jails,
And said he couldn't vote no more, and barred him from the mails,
And expressed the hope that this would teach him tact.
 
 
Well, the last I heard of Tilly he was planning not to think,
And he'd tied a piece of string around his tongue,
And he never went within a mile of either pen or ink,
And he always stood when any song was sung.
And maybe you are thinking that his fate was rather tough,
But what I say is, not a bit, they didn't do enough.
When anybody differs with you, dammit, treat 'em rough,
Why, they ought to be bub-boiled alive and hung!
 

Humpty-Dumpty and Adam

It is not only every country that has its own language. It is each generation. The books and family letters of our grandfathers are not quite in our dialect. And so of the books of their grandfathers, and the letters they wrote. These dialects are not so different from ours that we can't make them out: they sound a little queer, that is all. Just as our own way of talking and writing (and thinking) will seem so quaint to our descendants that they'll put us away on the shelves.

A few books are written in a tongue that all times understand.

A few of us are linguists and have learned to enjoy the books of all ages.

For the rest, agèd books need translation into the speech of the day.

The poets of each generation seldom sing a new song. They turn to themes men always have loved, and sing them in the mode of their times. Each new tribe of artists perpetually repaints the same pictures. The story-men tell the same stories. They remain fresh and young.

The disguise is new sometimes, but never the story behind it. A few generations ago, when some one wrote Humpty-Dumpty, he was merely retelling an old story for the men of his era, one of the oldest of stories, the first part of Genesis.

It is a condensed account – it leaves out the serpent and Eve and the apple. Some editor blue-penciled these parts, perhaps, as fanciful little digressions. "Stick to the main theme," said the editor, "don't go wandering off into frills. Your story is about the fall of Adam. Get on. Make him fall."

"I had intended to introduce a love-interest," the author of Humpty-Dumpty explained.

"A love interest!" sneered the editor. "You should have waited to be born in the twentieth century. These are manlier times. Give us men and adventure and fate."

"And what about the garden," the author sighed. "Must that be cut too?"

"By all means. Change the garden. It's a pretty enough idea in romance. But a realist who has worked in one, knows that a garden's no paradise. Genesis got it just wrong. Adam should have been exiled from town as a punishment, and put to slave in a garden."

"But town isn't paradise either. We've got to start him in paradise."

"Dear me," said the editor. "There's only one place left to put the fellow, and that's on the wall. 'Adam sat on a wall.' Begin that way."

"I'm calling him Humpty-Dumpty," the author said. "It makes it less tragic. It suggests that the fall didn't hurt Man so much after all."

"Which is true," said the editor.

I wish I had known that author. He had a kind heart. He has changed even the unforgiving cherubim in the Genesis story to those King's men who try in such a friendly way to restore Humpty-Dumpty. But the story can't let them. That would leave the hero back on his wall again – like some Greek philosopher. This other way, we think of him as starting out to conquer the world.

Humpty-Dumpty is a story for boys. Cinderella for girls. In Cinderella five able females, two old and three young, contend most resourcefully to capture one stupid young man. It is a terrible story. The beautiful surface barely masks the hungry wiles underneath. But it's true. It depicts the exact situation a marrying girl has to face; and, even while she's a tot in the nursery, it reminds her to plan.

But these are examples of stories that live, and last for more than one age. The mortality is heavier in other fields. For instance, philosophy. Great philosophical works of past eras are still alive in a sense, but they dwell among us as foreigners do, while Mother Goose has been naturalized.

Modern philosophies are so different. Not many centuries ago, in those eras when few changes took place, men thought of the world as something to study, instead of to mold. It was something to appropriate and possess, to be sure, but not to transform.

Humpty-Dumpty sat on the wall, then. He hadn't begun his new life.

There were few inventors in those old times, and few of those few were honored. Edison among the Greeks would have been as lonely as Plato with us.

Civilization was Thought. It was measured by what men knew and felt of eternal things. It was wisdom.

Civilization to-day is invention: it is measured by our control over nature. If you remind a modern that nature is not wholly ductile, he is profoundly discouraged! "We expect to make over and control our world." We not only assume it is possible, we assume it is best.

What is democracy but a form of this impulse, says Professor George Plimpton Adams, "bidding man not to content himself with any political order thrust upon him, but actively to construct that order so that it does respond to his own nature"?

"Not contemplation … but creative activity," that is our modern attitude.

Well, it's all very interesting.

Will and Wisdom are both mighty leaders. Our times worship Will.

How It Looks to a Fish

The most ordinary steamship agent, talking to peasants in Europe, can describe America in such a way that those peasants will start there at once. But the most gifted preacher can't get men to hurry to heaven.

All sorts of prophets have dreamed of a heaven, and they have imagined all kinds; they have put houris in the Mahometan's paradise, and swords in Valhalla. But in spite of having carte blanche they have never invented a good one.

A man sits in his pew, hearing about harps and halos and hymns, and when it's all over he goes home and puts on his old wrapper. "I suppose I can stand it," he thinks. "I've stood corns and neuritis. But I just hate the idea of floating around any such region."

Some persons may want to go to heaven so as to keep out of hell, or to get away from misery here – if they are in great enough misery. Others think of it as a place to meet friends in, or as a suitable destination for relatives. But the general idea is it's like being cast away in the tropics: the surroundings are gorgeous, and it's pleasant and warm – but not home.

It seems too bad that heaven should always be somehow repugnant, and unfit as it were for human habitation. Isn't there something we can do about it?

I fear there is not.

Assuming that we are immortal, what happens to a man when he dies? It is said by some that at first the surroundings in his new life seem shadowy, but after a bit they grow solid; and then it is the world left behind that seems vague. You lose touch with it and with those whom you knew there – except when they think of you. When they think of you, although you can see them, and feel what they're thinking, it isn't like hearing the words that they say, or their voices; it's not like looking over their shoulders to see what they write; it's more like sensing what is in their thoughts.

But at first you are too bewildered to do this. You are in a new world, and you find yourself surrounded by spirits, telling you that you're dead. The spiritualists say that many new arrivals refuse to believe they are dead, and look around skeptically at heaven, and think they are dreaming. It often takes a long time to convince them. This must be rather awkward. It's as though no one who arrived in Chicago would believe he was there, but went stumbling around, treating citizens as though they weren't real, and saying that he doubted whether there was any such place as Chicago.

But if there is any truth in this picture, it explains a great deal. If the spirits themselves cannot clearly take in their new life at first, how can we on this side of the barrier ever understand what it's like? And, not understanding, what wonder we don't find it attractive?

You can't describe one kind of existence to those in another.

Suppose, for example, we were describing dry land to a fish.

"We have steam-heat and sun-sets," I might tell him – just for a beginning.

And the fish would think: "Heat? Phew! that's murderous! And oh, that sizzling old sun!"

"We have legs," I might add.

"What are legs?"

"Things to walk on. They're like sticks, that grow right on our bodies. We do not use fins."

"What, no fins! Why, with fins, just a flicker will shoot me in any direction. Legs are clumsy and slow: think of tottering around on such stumps! And you can only go on the level with them; you can't rise and dip."

"Yes, we can. We build stairs."

"But how primitive!"

Perhaps he would ask me what drawbacks there were to earthly existence; and how he would moan when I told him about bills and battles.

"And is it true," he might say, "that there really are beings called dentists? Weird creatures, who pull your poor teeth out, and hammer your mouths? Bless my gills! It sounds dreadful! Don't ask me to leave my nice ocean!"

Then, to be fair, he might ask, "What's the other side of the picture, old man? What pleasures have you that would tempt me? What do you do to amuse yourselves?" And I would tell him about Charlie Chaplin, and Geraldine Farrar, and business, and poetry – but how could I describe Charlie Chaplin from the fish point of view? And poetry? – getting ecstasy from little black dots on a page? "You get soulful over that kind of doings?" he would ask, with a smile. "Well, all right, but it sounds pretty crazy to a sensible fish."

"Business is the main thing here, anyhow," I'd answer.

"And what's 'business'?"

"Well, it's – er – it's like this: Suppose you, for instance, were to go and catch a great many flies – "

The fish would look pleased and smile dreamily.

"But then not eat them, mind you."

"Not eat them?"

"No, but put them all out on a bit of flat rock, for a counter, and 'sell' them to other fish: exchange them, I mean – for shells, let us say, if you used shells as money."

The fish would look puzzled. "But what for, my dear sir?" he'd inquire. "What would I do with shells?"

"Exchange them for flies again, see?"

"O my soul! what a life!"

A Hopeful Old Bigamist

There are any number of difficulties and bumps along the roads of this world, and yet there are plenty of easy-going people who never prepare for them. They take all such things as they come. Some are buoyant, some fearless.

But within the last hundred years, large companies have been organized to go after these people, and catch them alone somewhere and give them a good thorough fright. These companies hire men who are experts at that sort of thing; men who make it their life-work to find fearless persons and scare them.

But no matter how ambitious and active these experts may be, they cannot catch every one personally. It would take too much time. So they write gloomy advertisements which are designed to scare people in general.

These advertisements are a characteristic feature of our civilization.

Man goes down-town, whistling, sunny morning. Happens to pick up a magazine. Immediately he gets hit in the eye with a harrowing picture. Sometimes it is one that reminds him he may die any minute, and depicts his widow and children limping around in the streets, hunting crusts. Or it may be a picture of his house burning up, or his motor upsetting. Or an illness, and there he is lying flat and weak on his bed.

After he has seen a good many of such pictures, he grows quiet. Stops whistling. He learns how to worry, and he worries off and on till it hurts. Then, to get some relief, he makes a contract with one of those companies, which provides him with what we call insurance, for an annual tribute.

I hope no one will think I am disparaging insurance, which is a useful arrangement. It enables many of us to pool our risks and be protected from hardship. And the best companies nowadays handle the thing very well. They scare a person as little as possible. They just gently depress him. They inflict just enough mental torture to get him to put in his money. It is only when he is stubborn about it that they give him the cold chills.

Every century has some such institution. The Inquisition was worse.

Like insurance, it had high ideals, but peculiar methods.

Insurance men, however, are steadily improving their methods. Instead of always reminding you how awful it is not to insure, they sometimes print brighter pictures, which show how happy you will feel if you do. For instance, a picture of a postman bringing a check to your widow. Your widow is thanking the postman, her face full of joy. Sometimes the old president of the company is shown in the upper left corner, writing out the check personally, as soon as he hears of your death. Or maybe they leave out the president and put in your infant son, for good measure. He is playing in his innocent way with his dead father's cane, and the widow, with a speculative eye on him, is thoughtfully murmuring, "As soon as he is old enough I must insure my little boy too."

In the days before it was possible to insure, there was even more gloom. Light-hearted people may have worried less, but the rest worried more. They could save enough money for the future if it was sufficiently distant, but not for a serious disaster that might come too soon. This darkened their outlook. They had no one to trust in but God.

There has always been a great deal of talk about trusting in God, but human beings incline to be moderate and cautious in trying it. As a rule no one does it unless he has to.

Not even the clergymen.

A few years ago a fund was formed, in the Episcopal Church, to pay agèd ministers pensions, so they would never be destitute. This brought the greatest happiness to many of them who were approaching decrepitude. Letters came in from ministers who had worried in silence for years, with no one to trust but the Deity, whose plans might be strange. They described how they had wept with relief, when this fund was established. Printed copies of these letters were mailed to all the good Christians who had contributed, to show them how much true joy and happiness their money had brought, and how thankful the clergy were to have something solid to trust, like a pension.

When a pastor with a pension is in the pulpit, looking around at his flock, suppose he sees that some of them are needy and have no pensions coming? If imaginative enough, he will sympathize with their poor fearful hearts, and advise them as wisely as possible. But there's not much to say. The only course for such folk is to try to trust God, who is mighty, and meantime be frugal and save every cent that they can.

Some day, he prays, we all shall have pensions.

And suppose a man isn't religious, what had he better trust? His money, or his own native mettle?

I should like to trust both.

But they tell me that that is impracticable. Won't work at all. I can have some of both, of course. Certainly. But I cannot trust both.

Like all other men I have my own inner fountain of strength, and it's been a faithful old thing; it has done a lot for me. It has vigor in it yet – but it isn't big and fiery, or strong. I could only have made it work abundantly if I had relied wholly on it. If I had done that, it would have probably called out my full powers. But instead I have relied partly on money, for fear my strength might desert me; and that fear has naturally had an effect on my strength. I work hard, but with less fire. Less eagerness. Progressively less. Any man who doesn't trust his spirit will find it will ebb.

And the same's true of money. Unless you are in love with your wealth, it will slip through your fingers. If you want to get a whole lot of money, worship gold all your days.

This isn't a sure recipe, I must add, to get a whole lot of money. I should be sorry to have my readers spring out of their chairs at these words, and rush happily off to make money their god, so as to be millionaires. It doesn't work so quickly or surely as that, I admit. But this much is true, anyhow: if you do not care enough about money you will hardly grow rich. You must be pretty devoted to win a jealous mistress like gold.

They are both jealous mistresses, that's the worst of it.

It is an awkward predicament.

I don't like to face this problem squarely. I don't get it settled. I keep on, like a hopeful old bigamist, in love with both mistresses: my money and my spirit or mettle.

I try to soothe each. I say to my mettle, "I care much more for you than for money: it's true that I keep money, too; but it's you that I love. You and I are one, aren't we? Very well, then. Come on. Let's be happy."

And I say to my money, "Now be faithful: for God's sake be faithful: don't slip off and desert me and leave me alone in the world." She looks jealously at me. "Alone?" she says; "how about that mettle of yours, you're so fond of?" "Ah, my dear," I say sadly, giving her an affectionate squeeze, "my mettle is no better than she should be. I don't like to talk of it. You are the one that I expect to comfort me in my dark moments; and I hope you and I will be here together long after my mettle has gone."

There you have my ménage. It's been difficult. But I cannot complain. As a bigamist I suppose on the whole I've been fairly successful. Yet I know I'd have more money to-day – I think a great deal more money – if I had been more faithful to Mammon, as they call the poor creature. And similarly I might have led an heroic, ardent life with my mettle, if I had ever trusted it fully.

That's the trouble with bigamy.