JHHtfl 
 
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 COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 
 
The Observations of Professor Maturin 
 
Columbia University Press Sales Agents 
 
 New York : Lemcke iff Buechner 
 30-J2 West 21th Street 
 
 London : Humphrey Milford 
 Amen Corner, E. C. 
 
The Observations of 
 Professor Maturin 
 
 By 
 Clyde Furst 
 
 New York 
 
 Columbia University Press 
 
 1 9 1 6 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
Copyright, ip/6, by Columbia University Press 
 Printed March, 1916 
 
 Reprinted, by permission, from 
 The New York Evening Post 
 
 job <& '»\*> 
 
 D. B. Updike '/The Merrymount Press • Boston 
 
 ike '/The Me rrymo ut, 
 
 MAR 30 1916 
 
 2ci.A428332 
 
Dedicated to 
 Professor Maturin's 
 
 Oldest and Best Friend 
 R. E. M. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2011 with funding from 
 The Library of Congress 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/observationsofprOOfurs 
 
Table of Contents 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 i. The Staff of Life 
 
 PAGE 
 
 3 
 
 ii. 
 
 The Sindbad Society 
 
 *7 
 
 in. 
 
 Foreign Travel at Home 
 
 2 5 
 
 IV. 
 
 Qountry Life 
 
 3S 
 
 v. 
 
 Food for Thought 
 
 44 
 
 VI. 
 
 'Beside the Sea 
 
 54 
 
 VII. 
 
 Qhristmas 
 
 65 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The Sovran Herb 
 
 75 
 
 IX. 
 
 dvlen's Faces 
 
 85 
 
 X. 
 
 {Mental Hygiene 
 
 94 
 
 XI. 
 
 The Mystery of r Dress 
 
 109 
 
 XII. 
 
 Questions at Issue 
 
 117 
 
 XIII. 
 
 The Fountain of Youth 
 
 122 
 
 XIV. 
 
 The Contemporary Fi5lion Company 
 [ vii ] 
 
 130 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 xv. The Old T)o5lor 137 
 
 xvi. 'Breakfasting with Tortia 147 
 
 xvii. Summer Science 157 
 
 xviii. ^Measuring the Mind 168 
 
 xix. The Club of the Bachelor Maids 1 83 
 
 xx. *A Small College 192 
 
 xxi. Old Town Revisited 202 
 
 xxii. The County Fair 215 
 
Introduction 
 
 IT was never my good fortune actually to 
 meet Professor Maturin, or even to see him, 
 although in the latter case I should instantly 
 have recognized him, so familiar have I been 
 through my mind's eye, at least, with his personal 
 appearance — his slender figure somewhat stoop- 
 ing with the bodily inclination of the scholar, 
 the clear-cut features that could only have fitted 
 his clear-cut mind, and the thoughtful eyes that 
 were their necessary concomitant. I had known, 
 of course, of his predilection for the Athenaeum, 
 and his habit of dining at that club of intellectual 
 and gastronomic repute, and I was aware of his 
 membership in the veracious Sindbad Society 
 whose meetings he frequently attended; but here, 
 too, and principally from the fad, no doubt, that 
 I was a member of neither, I had never been 
 able to bring about the much desired personal 
 acquaintance with him. 
 
 Of acquaintance, however, and even of a fairly 
 satisfactory sort, there has nevertheless been no 
 
 [ix] 
 
Introduction 
 
 lack, for I have read much that Professor Maturin 
 has written, and I have remembered, although 
 inadequately enough, many of the things that he 
 has said with such understanding and insight of 
 the real bearing of individual experience, along 
 quite extraordinarily extended lines, upon the 
 wide problems of human existence. 
 
 It is so much the more a pleasure, accordingly, 
 to me, and as it will be to all those who have read 
 Professor Maturin before only sporadically and 
 at intervals, at length to have the opportunity to 
 read him consecutively, and thus to get those 
 side-lights and refle&ions of understanding that 
 can only come with a reasonable contiguity of 
 statement. 
 
 In the present book, moreover, we shall be 
 able to read the sayings of this philosopher of the 
 cheerful mind as they have been remembered 
 and recorded by one who, better than any one 
 else at all, knew Professor Maturin as he thought, 
 and as he spoke, and as he had his being. It is 
 a record, as it will be very easy to discover, of 
 one who has thought much and thought well, for 
 
 [*] 
 
Introduction 
 
 there is a great difference, as we all know, in the 
 quality as well as in the quantity of thinking. In 
 it all there is an intelle&ual optimism that inev- 
 itably follows the thought wherever it roams — 
 and it often roams far afield — which is one of 
 the thrice blessed things of life. If through it all 
 there runs, as again may clearly be seen, the visi- 
 ble thread of the conscious pursuit of happiness, 
 Professor Maturin is no mere eudemonist whose 
 belly is his god and whose goal is pleasure, but 
 rather one who sees in the attainment of personal 
 happiness the rightful accessory of a rounded and 
 rational living. And with it all, and notwithstand- 
 ing his calling, and in spite of the fact that he 
 himself must have been conscious of an unusual 
 knowledge which leads him at times even into 
 the imperilled field of epigram, it is all done, not 
 with a pedantic air of professorial sophistication, 
 but with genuine human sympathy. And in this 
 spirit he is commended to that wider circle of 
 readers who are now to be able to know him. 
 
 William H. Carpenter 
 
 Columbia University 
 February 14, 1 9 1 6 
 
The Observations of Professor Maturin 
 
The Staff of Life 
 
 MY friend Professor Bedelar Maturin exer- 
 cises the right of a bachelor and a man of 
 fifty to a considerable number of eccentricities. 
 All of these are harmless, since he is by nature a 
 gentleman; and, his habit being that of a scholar, 
 some of them are of more than ordinary interest. 
 I very well remember my first learning of that 
 one I am about to describe. My family having 
 left town for the summer, I found him dining 
 at the Athenaeum, as I knew him frequently to 
 do for the sake of detachment from the bachelor 
 menage he maintains — as much for his books as 
 for himself — in a house near the river, not far 
 from the university. 
 
 He beckoned me to take my already ordered 
 dinner at the particular corner table for which his 
 preference is always respe&ed by his fellow Athe- 
 nians, and, after a smile of greeting, he passed 
 over to me the book he had been reading — " The 
 Physiology of Taste," by Brillat-Savarin — with 
 the quiet comment, "The standard and gauge 
 of modern civilization." 
 
 I had never before seen the work of that high- 
 
 [3] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 priest of gastronomy, but before examining it I 
 looked my surprise at the apparent enthusiasm 
 of the scholar whose abstemious habits were well 
 known to his friends, and whose slender figure, 
 thoughtful eyes, and clear-cut features made it 
 impossible to associate him with the pleasures of 
 the table. For reply he merely indicated several 
 of the " Fundamental Truths of the Science," on 
 the open page before me : 
 
 " But for life the universe were nothing; and 
 all that has life requires nourishment." 
 
 " The fate of nations depends upon how they 
 are fed." 
 
 "The man of sense and culture alone under- 
 stands eating." 
 
 I was familiar with Dean Swift's tracing the 
 origin of certain essays to the consumption of par- 
 ticular varieties of cheese, and I had read Ma- 
 turing own whimsical paragraphs explaining the 
 peculiarities of certain national literatures by the 
 characteristics of their national beverages, and 
 paralleling the growth of humanitarianism with 
 the increasing use of tobacco, of which he is spar- 
 ing; but he seemed now to be serious, so that 
 I merely asked what he made of such a state- 
 ment as the following, which I read from his 
 author: " The discovery of a new dish does more 
 
 [4] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 for the happiness of the human race than the dis- 
 covery of a planet." 
 
 Explaining that he would have the author 
 convince me, rather than himself, he indicated 
 yet another paragraph: "What praise can be 
 refused the science which sustains us from the 
 cradle to the grave, which entrances the delights 
 of love and the pleasures of friendship, which dis- 
 arms hatred, makes business easier, and affords 
 us, during the short voyage of our lives, the only 
 enjoyments that both relieve us from fatigue and 
 themselves entail none!" 
 
 "Take it, and read it," he said, as I looked 
 up. " I know it by heart." I gladly accepted the 
 volume, for there was here evidently more than 
 appeared; but I also expressed the wish that he 
 would, himself, first tell me more about it; and 
 this, retaking the book, his own dinner being now 
 finished and mine but about to begin, he pro- 
 ceeded to do. 
 
 " 1 should not need to remind you," he began, 
 "that I am no friend to indulgence, much less 
 to so gross a form as over-feeding, nor to speak 
 of my known antagonism to every form of ig- 
 norance — except to explain that it is for these 
 reasons that I have become an earnest advocate 
 of gastronomy, which endeavors to transform 
 
 [5] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 eating from the ignorant indulgence it usually is 
 to a reasonable science of nutrition and a refined 
 art of enjoyment. Whatever popular disesteem 
 the science and the art still suffer is due either to 
 ignorance of its serious endeavor, or to a Puri- 
 tanic attitude that is both inconsistent and irrev- 
 erent. The fabric of nature is so constituted that 
 all of our essential processes are accompanied by 
 pleasure; a thoroughly consistent ascetic would 
 necessarily cease to exist. 
 
 "Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, although of course 
 not the founder of gastronomy, is its most admir- 
 able modern champion. He lived from the first 
 half of the eighteenth century through the first 
 quarter of the nineteenth, first as mayor of his 
 native town of Belley in France ; then, during the 
 Revolution, an exile in Switzerland and in Amer- 
 ica; and, finally, during the last third of his life, 
 a judge in Paris of the highest national court. 
 The fame of his professional wisdom and justice 
 was great, but that of his personal benevolence 
 and geniality was far greater. The choicest flavor 
 and charm of many years of social life he pre- 
 served in the book he apparently intended to 
 leave, at his death, as a legacy of good cheer to 
 his friends. The record of his love of good living 
 was to serve him, a bachelor, as a posteritv. 
 
 [6] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 44 His fears that so genial a production might 
 seem inconsistent with his judicial dignity were 
 overcome by arguments which are given in a 
 prefatory dialogue, and the volume was published 
 anonymously in 1825, a year before his death. 
 Even in so short a time the book was crowned with 
 extraordinary popularity. Although one would 
 hesitate, perhaps, to call it 'adorable,' as Balzac 
 did, it is certainly one of those rarely spontaneous 
 and charming outpourings of personality that be- 
 long apart with White's 'Seaborne' and Walton's 
 'Angler.' 
 
 "In addition to the Prefatory Dialogue and 
 the Fundamental Truths, already mentioned, the 
 little volume includes a Preface, thirty 'Medi- 
 tations,' or chapters, and, in conclusion, a dozen 
 narrative and descriptive 'Varieties' bearing 
 upon the subject. The whole amounts to less than 
 three hundred small pages. 
 
 "The earlier chapters on the senses of taste, 
 appetite, and thirst are largely physiological or 
 psychological, but even here the author carries 
 out with charm his intention of touching but 
 lightly subje&s likely to be dull. Throughout he 
 practices the preaching of the mad poet Blake, 
 — 'To particularize is the great distinction of 
 merit,' — and everywhere he introduces original 
 
 [ 7 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 anecdotes, witticisms, and similar side-dishes. 
 Although Savarin separates the functions of taste 
 into direct, complete, and reflective, he finds him- 
 self unable to classify its results further than to 
 suggest some such gradation as, — positive, beef; 
 comparative, veal; superlative, pheasant. For 
 its greatest satisfaction one should eat slowly 
 and in minute portions — all that is valuable of 
 'Fletcherism' in a sentence. Anything else would 
 be unworthy of our perfected organism, 'the struc- 
 ture of the tongue of all animals being analogous 
 to the reach of their intelligence.' Under 'Thirst' 
 there is a similar, but even more daringly imagi- 
 native observation: 'The desire for fermented 
 liquors and curiosity about a future state are the 
 two distinctive attributes of man as the master- 
 piece of nature/ 
 
 " Perhaps the most valuable, certainly the most 
 pleasing, of the chapters are those on ' Gastron- 
 omy,' 'The Love of Good Living,' 'People Fond 
 of Good Living,' 'Gastronomic Tests,' and 'The 
 Pleasures of the Table.' 
 
 " Gastronomy is defined as ' the scientific know- 
 ledge of all that relates to man as an eater;' 
 being founded upon natural history, physics, 
 chemistry, economics, and cookery, as well as on 
 the sciences already touched upon; and affecting 
 
 [8] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 physically, mentally, and morally, every individ- 
 ual, of every class of society, every moment of 
 his life. Some knowledge of it is therefore indis- 
 pensable to all, and the more as one ascends the 
 social scale; it being well known that the most 
 momentous decisions of personal and of national 
 life are made at table. 
 
 " 4 The Love of Good Living' is shown to be 
 not merely a physical, but an intellectual and a 
 moral quality as well, 'almost deserving to rank 
 as a virtue ; ' opposing excess, developing discrim- 
 ination, promoting physical health, and aiding 
 moral resignation to the laws of nature. In addi- 
 tion, it is an easily and constantly available source 
 of natural and innocent pleasure in a world of 
 pain. 
 
 "People fond of good living, especially physi- 
 cians, men of letters, churchmen, and people of 
 sense and culture in general, — others being in- 
 capable of the necessary appreciation and judg- 
 ment, — always live longer than ordinary men. 
 Napoleon's worst defeats were due to his inju- 
 dicious diet. The wise in regard to food may 
 usually be known by their mere appearance, but 
 for cases of doubt Brillat-Savarin suggests a series 
 of 4 Gastronomic Tests,' or dishes, of such in- 
 disputable excellence that those who do not in- 
 
 [9] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 stantly respond may immediately be declared un- 
 worthy. Thus: For a small income, filet of veal 
 larded with bacon, or sauerkraut bristling with 
 sausages; for a moderate income, filet of beef 
 with gravy, or boiled turbot; for a generous in- 
 come, truffled turkey, or stuffed pike with cream 
 of prawns. It is important in these tests that gen- 
 erous portions be provided, for quantity as well 
 as quality has its effect. 
 
 "The conclusion of the meditation "On the 
 Pleasures of the Table ' must be quoted entire, 
 so worthy is it of a place in 4 The Golden Book 
 of Hospitality:' 'Let the number of guests be 
 small, that the conversation may be constantly 
 general; of various occupations, but analogous 
 tastes; the men of wit without pretension, the 
 women pleasant, but not coquettish. Let the 
 dishes be few but choice, and the wines of the 
 first quality; the order from the more substantial 
 to the lighter, the simpler to the finer flavors. Let 
 the meal proceed without hurry or bustle ; the cof- 
 fee be hot, the liqueurs chosen with care. Let the 
 room to which the guests retire be large enough 
 for cards, for those who cannot do without them, 
 while leaving ample scope for conversation; the 
 guests animated with the hope of still further 
 pleasure. Then let the tea be not too strong, the 
 
 [ 10] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 toast artistically buttered, the punch skilfully 
 made. Finally, let nobody leave before eleven, 
 and everybody be in bed by twelve.' 
 
 "After reaching such an elevation, Brillat-Sa- 
 varin wisely follows the dramatic principle of 
 relief, by introducing anecdotes of the halts of 
 a hunting party, and chapters on digestion, rest, 
 sleep, and dreams. His observations and illustra- 
 tions are always interesting and picturesque, fre- 
 quently very suggestive, and sometimes strik- 
 ingly modern — as when he says, 'Digestion, of 
 all the bodily functions, has most influence on 
 the morale of the individual;' when he recom- 
 mends for sleeping an airy room, no bed cur- 
 tains, and light but warm coverings; or when 
 he discusses foods that produce sleep, and those 
 that induce pleasant dreams. 
 
 "The theme of the meditation 'On Corpu- 
 lence' — 'The great majority of us eat and drink 
 too much' — is of such general and permanent 
 applicability that it is rediscovered every decade 
 and announced with trumpets. The chapter 'On 
 the Prevention or Cure of Corpulence ' outlines 
 the diet by means of which for thirty years the au- 
 thor kept that tendency in himself 'to the limit 
 of the imposing' — a statement that his portrait 
 well bears out. After a counter meditation on 
 
 [ » ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 leanness, some felicitations over the decline of 
 fasting, and an excursus on 'Exhaustion and 
 Death' — 'Death itself being not unaccompa- 
 nied by pleasure when it is natural' — the au- 
 thor is again ready for a higher flight. 
 
 "This occurs in the longest chapters of the 
 book, in the form of 'A Philosophical History 
 of Cookery, Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern,' 
 with an appendix, 'On Parisian Dining-Houses.' 
 Here, indeed, is richness: the advantages and 
 disadvantages of eating raw meat; the primitive 
 feasting in the 'Iliad;' the advent of boiling in 
 the Old Testament; how Cadmus brought the 
 alphabet and good cooking to Greece; the elab- 
 orate and sometimes strange taste of the Romans, 
 — as for dormice and assafoetida, — and a survey 
 of the ancient literature of the subjed, from the 
 fragmentary poem on gastronomy by Archestra- 
 tus, to the convivial poetry of Horace and Ti- 
 bullus. The whole story is told, although briefly, 
 excepting only the peculiar taste of the Greeks 
 for mingling sea-water and turpentine with their 
 wines. 
 
 "The mediaeval and modern development of 
 the art is sketched, although of necessity more 
 rapidly, from the rescue of cookery from barba- 
 rism by Charlemagne; through the introduction 
 
 [ «] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 of spices from the East, garlic from Palestine, 
 parsley from Italy, coffee from Turkey, and the 
 potato from America; to the ages of pastry and 
 of sugar, and the final culmination of the art in 
 political gastronomy. Every line of this section 
 contains such good things as 'coffee should be 
 crushed, not ground;' and, Tt was Talleyrand 
 who first brought from Italy the custom of tak- 
 ing Parmesan cheese with soup.' But to select 
 would be to quote the whole. 
 
 "Restaurants — unhappily Savarin could not 
 know the modern derivation from res and taurus 
 — appear to have been invented in Paris in 1770. 
 There is a fascinating picture of the best of the 
 author's time, with three hundred dishes and a 
 hundred wines; a height of eloquence over the 
 cosmopolitan sources of a good dinner; and yet 
 higher soaring over the Parisian missionaries of 
 the doctrine throughout the civilized world. 
 
 " Nor does inspiration wane in the chapter on 
 'Gastronomic Principles Put into Practice ' — 4 the 
 treasures of nature were not created to be trodden 
 under foot ... a good dinner is but little dearer 
 than a bad one ... a man may show himself a 
 distinguished connoisseur without going beyond 
 the limits of his actual needs.' 
 
 "The last chapter, 4 Gastronomic Mythology,' 
 
 ['3] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 is pure creation — of Gasterea, the tenth muse, 
 her nature, habit, aspect, and worship; and then 
 — for like Donne, 'when he is done, he is not 
 done, for there is more ' — comes a ' Transition : ' 
 ' In writing I had a double object ... to lay down 
 the fundamental theory of gastronomy, so that 
 she would take her place among the sciences in 
 that rank to which she has an incontestable right. 
 The second, to define with precision what must 
 be understood by the love of good living, so that 
 for all time that social quality may be kept apart 
 from gluttony and intemperance, with which 
 many have absurdly confounded it.' 
 
 "Finally follow the generous dozen of short 
 'varieties' — anecdotes like 'The Cure's Ome- 
 lette;' personal experiences of 'The Gastronome 
 Abroad,' some in America ; original recipes and 
 original verse; and an ' Historical Elegy,' in pity 
 for the gastronomic ignorance of the past, and in 
 prophetic vision of the full gastronomic glories 
 of the year nineteen hundred. 
 
 "But, alas," said Professor Maturin, slowly 
 closing the book, " I cannot wish that he were 
 here. The world is not yet ready for his message; 
 he should have added another hundred years. It 
 was fifty years before his work was well enough 
 known outside of France to be translated; and 
 
 [ '4 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 even to-day, in spite of all its delightful quali- 
 ties, not one in a hundred, even among reading 
 men, know it. And yet, there has never been any- 
 thing quite like it. Such a rare combination of 
 race, time, and personality; of experience, culti- 
 vation, and taste, seldom occurs more than once. 
 But no other is necessary; nothing can be better 
 than the best, and Savarin has handled his theme 
 with unapproachable wisdom and charm, once 
 for all. 
 
 "The science has, of course, progressed im- 
 mensely since his day. You may fill your shelves 
 with portentous tomes on food and dietetics, and 
 with experimental pamphlets from the Depart- 
 ment of Agriculture. Educators have introduced 
 instruction concerning food into the curriculum 
 of the modern school. And I understand that 
 there are magazines of practical cookery for such 
 ladies as look to the affairs of their households. 
 But as for Brillat-Savarin's hope that the science 
 and the art of gastronomy, as he elaborated it, 
 would soon become a part of the faith and prac- 
 tice, the delight as well as the duty, of all culti- 
 vated people, — that is yet far from fulfilment. 
 
 " But, my good friend," and here Professor 
 Maturin rose, shaking his long forefinger, "the 
 truth will undoubtedly prevail, 'though long 
 
 [ '5] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 deferred, though long deferred,' as Lanier says. 
 Take the book, and keep it — I make a practice 
 of distributing copies — read it; you cannot 
 help doing so at a single sitting; talk about it; 
 become, like me, a propagandist, and the bless- 
 ing of Gasterea will go with you. Good-night." 
 And he was gone. 
 
 My friend Professor Maturin spoke the very 
 truth. I finished the book before I left my seat, 
 and then and there became a fellow equestrian 
 to Banbury Cross. Deliberately and with pre- 
 pensive aforethought, I invite the reader to do 
 the same, and thereby to gain not only personal 
 pleasure and profit, but, in addition, the greater 
 satisfaction of contributing a lasting good to 
 others. 
 
 [ .6] 
 
T 
 
 II 
 
 The Sindbad Society 
 
 HE writer recently enjoyed the great privi- 
 lege of being the guest of his friend, Pro- 
 fessor Maturin, at a meeting of the Sindbad 
 Society, an organization for the enjoyment of 
 informal discussion concerning the theory and 
 pra&ice, the graces and the usefulness, of foreign 
 travel. 
 
 Similar in purpose to the Travellers' Club of 
 London, but lacking anything like the equip- 
 ment of that body's sumptuous Pall Mall home, 
 the Sindbad Society endeavors to fulfil its func- 
 tion by means of occasional dinners in the pri- 
 vate rooms of other clubs. Indeed, I was given 
 to understand that the members were unanimous 
 in considering a local habitation, or immovable 
 property of any sort, to be most inappropriate 
 for a club the very essence of which was pere- 
 grination. My neighbor at the large round din- 
 ner table averred that to own even a portrait of 
 Sindbad the Sailor, the mythical founder and 
 patron of the club, would be to embody in a con- 
 crete objed sentiments of value only so long as 
 they animated the mind. 
 
 [ '7 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 As we took our places at table, it became evi- 
 dent, in spite of the recreative chara&er of the 
 club, that here was no body of amateurs, to whom 
 travel meant merely London and Paris, the Rhine 
 and the Riviera. I recognized a former director 
 of the American School in Rome, an artist and 
 a craftsman who had just returned from Japan 
 and India, an importer of things Persian, and 
 a biologist who spent half his time in the South 
 Seas. Professor Maturin described the other 
 members to me as an engineer who had devel- 
 oped oil wells in China, an archaeologist who di- 
 rected excavations in Syria, former secretaries of 
 legation at St. Petersburg and at Constantinople, 
 an army officer from Manila, and an explorer 
 who had climbed everything but the mountains 
 of the moon. 
 
 The dinner, although entirely without pose, 
 was intentionally and interestingly exotic. Rus- 
 sian preserved cucumbers and a soup of chest- 
 nuts from the south of France were followed by 
 an entree of lamb, prepared according to a Con- 
 stantinople recipe, and by boned capon. The 
 colonel mixed a Filipino salad-dressing, and with 
 it the archaeologist supplied cigarettes made of 
 coffee leaves. Finally, the engineer introduced a 
 South American dessert of ripe red bananas, 
 
 [ '»] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 guava jelly, and sharp cheese, and with this was 
 served Carlsbad burnt-fig coffee. The wines, al- 
 though poured sparingly, were as interesting as 
 the food. The cigars were Cuban vegueras. The 
 endeavor, which was surely realized throughout, 
 had evidently been to seek the unusual, not for the 
 sake of mere strangeness, but for an excellence 
 unattainable through the ordinary. 
 
 The same might be said of the talk which ac- 
 companied the meal. It was anything but con- 
 scious or formal, and yet I noticed that leading 
 questions were not only allowed but expe&ed, 
 and that it was the custom of the entire company 
 to listen when any conversation became gener- 
 ally interesting. In this way I enjoyed a whole 
 series of descriptions of forests and mountains, riv- 
 ers and deserts, of barbarous and unfrequented 
 countries, of harbors and fortifications, cities and 
 courts, cathedrals and colleges, libraries and mu- 
 seums; with anecdotes of experience and ad- 
 venture, of state and society, of beautiful women 
 and distinguished men. 
 
 The near distance of Europe was by no means 
 forgotten, but it was discussed in a way that made 
 me feel that I must, in Bacon's phrase, have 
 gone there "hooded," or, at least, as the mythi- 
 cal American who checked off each city in his 
 
 [ '9 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 Baedeker after a hurried glance about him from 
 the top of some tall building. In particular, I was 
 possessed with successive desires to make good 
 my deficiencies by going at once to live at a 
 wonderful small hotel across the river in Paris, vis- 
 iting a certain sculptor's studio in Madrid, dream- 
 ing on the terraces of Lake Maggiore, and hear- 
 ing the opera by telephone at Budapest. When 
 the talk ranged more widely, as it did for the 
 most part, I longed to observe a volcano and ex- 
 perience an earthquake in action, and determined 
 to journey without delay to Damascus for the 
 sake of its baths and cafes, "the most exquisitely 
 luxurious in the world;" that is, if I did not 
 decide, instead, for Shepherd's hotel at Cairo, or, 
 perhaps, the vale of Thingvalla in Iceland. 
 
 With the cigars, the conversation shifted from 
 details of observation and experience, by way of 
 penetrative comment on men and manners, until 
 it reached what seemed, at least to me, profound 
 conclusions concerning national and social char- 
 acteristics. The classical scholar, with a majority 
 of the other members, opposed the craftsman and 
 the engineer, in ascribing a certain monotony and 
 shallowness to Japanese life, in spite of its old 
 aestheticism and its new efficiency. Both of the 
 diplomats endorsed the Persian specialist's state- 
 
 [ *>] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 ment that "the hope of the East is in Western 
 inoculation; it will never regenerate itself." " Nor 
 be regenerated," growled the colonel. " From my 
 point of view," replied the artist, "it has no need 
 to. Nature is the absolute artist, and nowhere else 
 do people ] i ve so close to her. Rare natural beauty, 
 a constant sun, and a mellow atmosphere give 
 existence there such an intensity and richness that 
 mere living becomes an art — 'pure pomegranate, 
 not banana,' as they say in Egypt." "It takes the 
 eyes of love to see angels," concluded the ar- 
 chaeologist. " Natural savages may be noble, but 
 effete races are not, and such most of the Eastern 
 peoples seem to me. However, I may be wrong, 
 or at least narrow; toleration is the great lesson 
 of travel." 
 
 After a number of such discussions, which 
 were listened to by all, the company returned by 
 general consent to more specific topics — plans, 
 principally, for future journeys. These had but a 
 melancholy interest for me, who had not the re- 
 motest hope of realizing any of them, until the 
 conversation became once more general in outlin- 
 ing an ideal rapid journey around the world. This 
 whirled me past Honolulu palm trees and cra- 
 ters, amid Japanese cherry-blossoms and wistaria, 
 along the Great Wall of China, through Canton 
 
 [ 21 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 gardens and bazaars, into Calcutta palaces and 
 Delhi temples, by dahabeah in Egypt and camel 
 in Syria, until I caught my breath once more in 
 the midst of the Mediterranean. 
 
 But the most valuable part of the evening, and 
 to me the most enjoyable, if satisfaction is to be 
 measured by what one remembers longest, was 
 the concluding half-hour, when every member of 
 the group, quite unconsciously I am sure, fell to 
 felicitating every other member on the success of 
 the evening, the value of travel, and the pleasure 
 and profit of thus discussing it. 
 
 I had, myself, experienced vicariously some 
 of the delights of filling in the blank spaces on 
 the map of the world with picturesque scenes and 
 animated figures. I had noted with interest how 
 the habit of observation seemed to lead inevit- 
 ably to comparison, and that to generalization 
 and conclusion. It had been no small satisfaction 
 to learn how adequately the human frame and 
 mind had met and withstood the severer expe- 
 riences of the more daring — how small, after all, 
 were the world's greatest difficulties and dangers 
 to the unconquerable spirit. But it was most grat- 
 ifying of all to realize that the general experi- 
 ence had resulted not in distrust, but in belief in 
 the fundamental kindliness, if not goodness, of 
 
 [ « ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 general human nature; and in a firm convidtion 
 that the world as a whole was visibly advancing 
 in material, mental, and moral well-being. 
 
 I had, naturally, never questioned the charm 
 of travel as a recreation, but this evening gave 
 me a new sense of its superior value as experi- 
 ence and education. I knew, of course, that travel 
 required no ordinary equipment of perception, 
 knowledge, and judgment — of sensitiveness to 
 impressions, with material to compare and abil- 
 ity to value; that indifferent travel would serve 
 only, as Rousseau said of indifferent reading, "to 
 make presumptuous ignoramuses." But, although 
 I had long believed that the observant and 
 thoughtful home-keeping man might attain an 
 understanding of himself and even of his nation, 
 I came now to doubt that there was any means 
 other than foreign travel for developing a realiza- 
 tion of what is really fundamental to the general 
 human spirit. 
 
 In voicing to Professor Maturin my gratitude 
 for the pleasure and profit of the evening, I found 
 that he had observed me growing a trifle stale, 
 and had designedly administered this meeting as 
 a remedy. He expressed his opinion that I was 
 already out of danger, judging from my evident 
 appreciation, with Shakespeare, that "a good 
 
 [ n ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 traveller is something at the latter end of a din- 
 ner." And he beamed on me as mellowly as the 
 moon when, at parting, I expressed my intention 
 of continuing the medicine, homoeopathically, 
 through books of travel, until my wonted tone 
 was entirely restored. The whole prescription 
 worked such wonders as a tonic that I strongly 
 recommend it to others. 
 
 [ *4] 
 
I 
 
 III 
 
 Foreign Travel at Home 
 
 THANK you," said Professor M aturin, lay- 
 ing aside the manuscript he had been read- 
 ing me, in order to test its appeal, — "I thank 
 you. I am only afraid that you are too generous. 
 But, in any case, I am very grateful, and I hope 
 that you will allow me to be at your service 
 during the remainder of the evening. Do I not 
 see you looking somewhat dispirited again? Are 
 you not negle&ing your mental hygiene?" and, 
 leaning forward from his circle of lamplight, 
 he peered at me anxiously. 
 
 I replied with one affirmative for both que- 
 ries, but pleaded misfortune rather than fault. I 
 knew that I was in serious need of variety, but 
 I had found that the specific he had recom- 
 mended — the atmosphere of foreign travel — 
 no longer satisfied the demand. On the contrary, 
 it aggravated my distemper, by adding to an 
 already overpowering sense of monotony an 
 impossible desire to fly to the uttermost parts of 
 the earth. Books of travel and my friends' discus- 
 sions of their coming journeys merely increased 
 my distress. 
 
 [*5 1 
 
The Observations of 
 
 "So-o?" said Professor Maturin. "So-o-o?" 
 leaning back in his huge leather chair, and put- 
 ting his finger and thumb tips together. "Well, 
 I suspected as much, and I fear that I am at least 
 partly to blame for your condition. I prescribed 
 a remedy that you have come to find worse than 
 the disease, and, apparently, you have come at 
 the same time to a new realization of Steven- 
 son's saying that 'books are all very well in their 
 way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute 
 for life' — not that I would be disrespectful to 
 my best friends," and he smiled at the well- 
 filled shelves which extend around his admira- 
 ble library. 
 
 "You will not think me unsympathetic when 
 I say that I have been waiting for this symp- 
 tom," he continued. "It is an important part of 
 your cure. Some day I will explain to you my 
 entire system of mental hygiene, but there is not 
 time for that to-night, nor are you quite ready for 
 it until you act upon my next and final recom- 
 mendation. 
 
 "You will remember that Emerson said, 'Our 
 first journeys discover to us the indifference of 
 places. The truest visions, the best spectacles I 
 have seen, I might have had at home.' He did not 
 himself practice his preachment, but that does 
 
 [ *<> ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 not invalidate it. Kant, however, I believe, never 
 travelled more than forty miles from Konigs- 
 berg; and Sainte-Beuve for fifty years seldom left 
 Paris. What, of course, one wants is not to sub- 
 ject himself to the miscellaneous and often dis- 
 tracting impacts of foreign travel, but to realize 
 what essential elements he needs, where to find, 
 and how to apply them. As one of our poets has 
 put it: 
 
 Who journeys far may lack the seeing eye: 
 
 Stay, thou, and know what wonders round thee lie. 
 
 "At one time in my life I travelled continu- 
 ally. But now that I am older and wiser, I know 
 that I can find practically everything I want here 
 at home. At different times I want an almost 
 infinite variety of things, but they are all here 
 in New York. This city is the true cosmopo- 
 lis: eighty nations are represented in its public 
 schools; four-fifths of the parents of its citizens 
 came from the ends of the earth; there are more 
 than a million Germans; more than a million 
 Irish; more, and vastly more fortunate Hebrews 
 than in all Palestine; and so on — you know the 
 figures. 
 
 "Now, I need not insist that what is most 
 important in foreign travel is not the novel sen- 
 sations to which it gives rise, — the sense of a 
 
 [27 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 different climate, the flavor of new dishes, the 
 fragrance of strange flowers, the sound of unfa- 
 miliar music, even the sight of ancient buildings 
 or famous pictures — pleasurable and profitable 
 as all of these are; and, fortunately, most of them 
 may be enjoyed here, dire&ly or indire&ly. The 
 fundamental value of travel is in the realization 
 that it gives of ways of feeling, thinking, and 
 a&ing, other than our own; and these, along with 
 many of their outward manifestations, our new 
 Americans bring with them. 
 
 "Thus, for example, if you are weary of the 
 physical and mental traits of a land where all 
 things are yet new, you may find the inscruta- 
 ble calm of the immemorial East in Chinatown, 
 where life flows as it did before Confucius. The 
 ceremonial prescribed by Moses is still carried 
 out here in many synagogues, and I can intro- 
 duce you to more than one turbaned swami who 
 will talk like Buddha. Unfortunately, our best 
 illustration of the rigid solidity of the Egyptian 
 spirit vanished when the old Tombs prison was 
 torn down, but there is still the obelisk in the 
 Park; and if you read Rossetti's poem in the 
 midst of the New York Historical Society's As- 
 syrian marbles, you will surely feel yourself in 
 ancient Nineveh. 
 
 [28] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 "If material crudities or social unrest distress 
 you, you have but to reopen your Aeschylus or 
 your Cicero to recall the balanced strength and 
 fineness of Greece, the early law and order of 
 Rome. Our nearest approaches to Greek archi- 
 tecture are perhaps the porticoes of the Sub-Trea- 
 sury and the Columbia Library, or the choragic 
 Soldiers and Sailors Monument on Riverside 
 Drive. But from time to time the local Greeks 
 revive their ancient games and ena6t their classic 
 dramas — for particulars, see their newspaper, At- 
 lantis, if you read modern Greek. As for Rome, 
 High Bridge might fitly stand on the Campagna, 
 or Washington Arch by the Forum; and for both, 
 the Metropolitan Museum is full of casts of 
 sculpture and of actual remains, from the Etrus- 
 can chariot to whole walls from Pompeii. 
 
 " Would you reap anew the fruits of the Teu- 
 tonic invasion, you need only observe how it has 
 brought force and endurance, solidity and crea- 
 ture comfort, family affection and social senti- 
 ment, good humor and good sense, to New York, 
 as it did to Rome. The city would not be itself, 
 without its delicatessen shops or its Christmas 
 trees; much less without German scholarship or 
 German music — Wagner and Beethoven hav- 
 ing become ours even more than Berlin's. 
 
 [ *9] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 "Or, if you prefer oil to butter, — that is, are 
 Latin rather than Teutonic in temper, — you may 
 cultivate your mood by a morning with the tower 
 of Madison Square Garden, which is a copy of 
 the Giralda at Seville, and an afternoon in the 
 new Hispanic Museum in Audubon Park. For 
 mediaeval Italy you need but read your Dante 
 in the Church of the Pauiist Fathers. For the Re- 
 naissance, as for the Gothic, you may study the 
 architecture of any one of a score of our public 
 buildings, or the sculpture and painting in the 
 Metropolitan Museum. Rome itself has now no 
 more Italian citizens than New York, and it hears 
 far less Italian music. While as for French music, 
 French art, French cookery, and French amenity 
 — we have appropriated them as thoroughly as 
 we have the name Lafayette. Our rich men imi- 
 tate French chateaux; the rest of us bless or re- 
 vile the French invention of the apartment house. 
 
 "Or, if you hold rather to the Anglo-Saxon 
 temper: the English satisfaction in the serious, 
 the solid, the useful; the English habit of accu- 
 mulation, experiment, and certain conclusion; 
 and the English ideals of physical and mental 
 health and exercise — these traits and their tan- 
 gible results are happily still so native to us that 
 they can in no sense be considered foreign. 
 
 [3° ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 " But even should your need or desire be for 
 the mere sensations of foreign travel, these also 
 may be had in New York. You may taste strange 
 dishes and hear strange music in more foreign 
 cafes in New York than in any other city in the 
 world. In the local shop of the Bosnian-Herze- 
 govinian tobacco monopoly you may smoke a 
 water-pipe, calling it hookah, chibouque, or nar- 
 gileh, according to the place in which you would 
 like to be. You may eat real spaghetti and see 
 marionettes enact the story of Roland on Mac- 
 dougal Street. You need go no farther east than 
 the East Side to buy Damascus inlaid metals, 
 or Chinese medallion ware, or Japanese flowered 
 playing-cards. It is possible, even, to become an 
 importer in a small way, by buying for five dol- 
 lars, on Allen Street, Russian brasses that cost 
 seven dollars and fifty cents when transported to 
 Twenty-second Street, or ten dollars and sev- 
 enty-five cents when they arrive on Fifth Avenue. 
 You may hear the service of the Greek Catholic 
 Church, celebrated by an archbishop, in a cathe- 
 dral on Ninety-seventh Street. Bohemians, Syr- 
 ians, and even Egyptians have made whole sec- 
 tions of the city practically their own, so far as 
 manners and customs are concerned. Nearly one 
 hundred newspapers and periodicals are pub- 
 
 [ 3' ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 lished in New York in more than a score of for- 
 eign tongues. Perhaps you would care to read a 
 New York daily that is printed in Arabic?" 
 
 Rising, Professor Maturin drew from a drawer 
 and held before me a copy of Kawkab Amerika, 
 a goodly-sized sheet, in strange chara&ers, but 
 with a pictured heading eloquent to all. There 
 I saw the desert, with mosques to the right, and 
 pyramids and Sphinx to the left. Between were 
 hosts of desert-dwellers, on foot, on horseback, 
 on camel, but all gazing and pointing to the cen- 
 tral sky, where appeared a radiant vision of our 
 harbor statue of Liberty Enlightening the World. 
 
 "And it is no mirage to them," said Professor 
 Maturin, after a pause, "and that is the best of 
 it all to me. The strangeness of these newcomers 
 is, indeed, refreshing, but I like better to think 
 of them as most of them really are, or soon will 
 be — the most genuine of Americans. They are 
 so through choice and, often, hard endeavor; 
 you and I, perhaps, only through accident. You 
 know the fundamental loyalty of the typical 
 German-American. The Spanish press of the city 
 was staunchly American during our last war. 
 The Turkish periodicals applauded our demon- 
 strations against the Porte; and Hungarians, Ser- 
 vians, Syrians, and Persians have each formally 
 
 [ 3* ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 organized for the purpose of influencing their 
 fatherlands to become more like the land of their 
 adoption. 
 
 "And so we come to the most valuable of all 
 the ends of travel — the greater realization and 
 appreciation of home. We return from other na- 
 tions with relief — for there are few American 
 emigrants — to a yet new land of fertile soil and 
 mineral wealth; to a people varied, yet homo- 
 geneous, energetic, aggressive, ingenious, and 
 self-reliant. We face, it is true, problems such as 
 the world has never known before, but with un- 
 precedented belief in idealism, morality, order, 
 and education; not apprehensive of danger, but 
 quick in recognizing and decisive in meeting 
 it. Our successes in transportation, in architec- 
 ture, and in material well-being in general; our 
 achievement of the welfare of the whole people 
 over that of se&ion or class, of equality of oppor- 
 tunity for each and of benevolence toward all, 
 have already taught the whole world new lessons 
 of peace, tolerance, and faith in the average man. 
 Nor do I see any reason, as we become more and 
 more a new race, blended of many, why our good 
 fortunes should not continue and increase. Any- 
 thing else would falsify our trust in a wide and 
 a wise humanity — and that is unthinkable. 
 
 [33 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 "But, I beg your pardon," said Professor Ma- 
 turin, as I rose to say good-night, "I did not 
 mean to take the stump; and yet, I believe that 
 it is good sometimes to give utterance to these 
 things which all of us feel. Nothing revives the 
 vigor of one's spirit like the conscious realization 
 of being in harmony with fundamental law." 
 
 [34] 
 
I 
 
 IV 
 
 Country Life 
 
 HAVE never seen my friend Professor Ma- 
 turin in better health or spirits than he was 
 when I met him the other evening at the Athe- 
 naeum. He had just finished dinner, and indi- 
 cated that he was in the mood for talk by ordering 
 two of the Cuban vegueras that he keeps in a pri- 
 vate box at the club, for use on special occasions. 
 
 " I am just back from the best vacation I have 
 ever had," he began. " I have been spending a 
 month with a friend up the river, at a most de- 
 lightful place, built and planted about fifty years 
 ago by his father, from memories of the villas 
 about Florence, where he once lived. The house 
 has window balconies, a tower, a loggia opening 
 west and south, and a red-flagged terrace with a 
 stone balustrade, all complete. Below this slopes 
 a wide lawn, then many flowering shrubs, and 
 finally splendid groupings of trees between and 
 over which you may see the river, here at its 
 widest. The hills beyond and the highlands to the 
 north complete the picture. 
 
 "After breakfasting alone, at any time my 
 fancy chose, according to the happy custom of the 
 
 [ 35 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 house, I spent whole mornings on the terrace, 
 looking through the aisles of ancient oaks at the 
 river, or at the heaped-up summer clouds as they 
 drifted south. I have heard the Hudson called 
 epic, because of its breadth and power. It is no 
 less so in its incidental embellishments of sun- 
 light and shadow. I often watched it from its 
 morning silver, through all shades of refle&ed 
 blue, until at night it looked like a texture of 
 royal purple into which the moonlight and the 
 stars were being woven. The clouds were better 
 than any Alpine mountains. Their mass and light 
 and dark were as definite, and they had other 
 clouds about their peaks and oceans of vapor at 
 their feet. In addition they changed constantly, 
 and turned to gold and opal at evening. 
 
 "At luncheon, or shortly before, I met my host 
 and hostess. If before, we often strolled through 
 a catalpa avenue to a semicircular stone seat 
 overlooking the river, or along a pine walk to a 
 lookout toward the highlands, or past an orchard 
 back of the house to a certain sunset hill, for the 
 widest view of all, where we could see the river 
 for twenty miles. Sometimes the hostess led us 
 to sections which she called 'nature's gardens/ 
 because of the wild flowers, of which she was 
 particularly fond. 
 
 [36] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 "About such flowers I knew so little that I 
 would have been tempted to revive my ancient 
 botany had I not a good while ago learned the 
 necessity of limiting the number of one's avoca- 
 tions and of resisting the temptation to rob them 
 of time, to spend on this new thing and that. I felt 
 the same way about the trees, which, I was told, 
 represented every indigenous variety. I knew by 
 name only oak and elm, beech and maple, and 
 a few others; but I made the most of the com- 
 pensations of my ignorance, by noting, with all 
 the freshness of discovery, the charade ristic angle 
 or curve of the different boughs, the varied form, 
 texture, and characteristic movement of branch 
 and leaf, the innumerable greens of the foliage, 
 and their infinite modulations under light and 
 shade. 
 
 "I am sure that we often know too much to 
 get the full value of our impressions. For a long 
 time painters could not represent trees because 
 they remembered what each leaf was like; 
 Claude painted his landscapes from what he 
 knew, rather than what he saw, Constable from 
 what he loved, Turner from what he imagined. 
 It was not until the Barbizon men lived in the 
 forest that Rousseau caught the a&ual form and 
 Corot the fragrance of nature, and Monet could 
 
 [37] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 paint true light and air. It is said that the most in- 
 teresting writing is done by generally cultivated 
 people concerning subje&s that are new to them. 
 The greatest enjoyment of nature often comes 
 in the same way. It is quite possible to be 'con- 
 noisseured out of one's senses.' 
 
 "At our luncheons the talk was always de- 
 lightful, for my friend's ample fortune gives him 
 both occupation enough to keep him contem- 
 porary, and leisure enough to allow him to be 
 Coleridge's ideal man of letters, reaping only 
 the choicest and most spontaneous growths of a 
 richly cultivated mind. After luncheon we usu- 
 ally sat awhile in the large, although simple, 
 conservatory, which adjoined the dining-room — 
 if the word 'simple ' may properly be applied to 
 a place where orange and lemon trees attained 
 their natural size, roses bloomed by the hun- 
 dred, and where we picked ripe pomegranates 
 and figs for our dessert. This, too, was due to the 
 genius of the founder of the house, whose works 
 my friend delighted to honor and cherish. 
 
 "When we separated again I usually retired 
 to my room for a book and a nap, which lasted 
 I know not how long, one of the charms of the 
 place being that artificial timepieces were ab- 
 sent, or, at least, invisible and inaudible, every- 
 
 [ 38 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 thing, apparently, being regulated by the sun. 
 This source of light and heat usually led me 
 in the late afternoon to the loggia to watch the 
 earliest anticipations of the evening glow, and 
 to listen to an orchestra of mocking-birds in an 
 open-air cage, accompanied by their wild neigh- 
 bors, of whom there seemed to be multitudes. 
 English sparrows were ruthlessly banished, but 
 every other sort of bird was protected, with the 
 reward of the almost familiar companionship 
 of orioles, cardinals, wrens, and humming-birds, 
 and the constant song of warbler, thrush, and 
 meadow-lark. In nothing, I think, is the coun- 
 try more delightfully different from the town 
 than in its sounds. Even the winds and the rains 
 sound different there. 
 
 " My friend has so long lived his life with na- 
 ture that it has become the theme of his chief 
 study. He outlined this to me one evening when 
 the rain caused us to transfer our coffee from the 
 terrace to the conservatory, where his ideas 'be- 
 came permanently associated with the impres- 
 sions of azalea bloom and jasmine fragrance 
 which I acquired at the same time. 
 
 " 4 I am slowly accumulating,' he said, 'fads 
 and ideas for a history of the relations between 
 nature and man in the United States. The con- 
 
 [39] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 ditions have been peculiar, and the results more 
 than ordinarily interesting. Nowhere else, for ex- 
 ample, have people possessing all the arts of 
 civilization made their homes in the midst of 
 absolutely primitive nature. With such a begin- 
 ning, three thousand years of history have here 
 been epitomized in three hundred. Nature as an 
 enemy was soon conquered, and nowhere else 
 has she afterward shown herself more friendly 
 in surface fertility and underground resources. 
 Our vast and relatively undiversified territory 
 has brought men of the coast, the mountains, and 
 the plains; of the rugged North and the languor- 
 ous South, into closer and more constant con- 
 tact than ever before. And to this unparalleled 
 interplay we have welcomed myriads from every 
 other climate and condition on the earth, and 
 have set up for the whole theories of government 
 which allow almost perfect freedom to all racial, 
 local, and individual traits. 
 
 "'I intend to deal but briefly with the physi- 
 cal results of such inhabitation. The wisdom of 
 experience is beginning to check the perhaps nat- 
 ural tendency to spoil ruthlessly the conquered 
 forest; and even the most materially minded are 
 beginning to a6t toward the universal mother no 
 more harshly than they would toward a captive 
 
 [40] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 or slave whose usefulness is increased by consid- 
 erate treatment. 
 
 "'The peculiar relations between nature and 
 the human spirit in the United States, however, 
 seem to me worthy of extended study. Thus, it is 
 undoubtedly because of our unique environment, 
 that so just an observer as Emerson found Ameri- 
 can perceptions keener than any he met with else- 
 where. Our poets have certainly recorded other 
 and more varied aspects of nature than their Eng- 
 lish brethren, who in comparison seem to deal 
 chiefly with the "common or garden variety." 
 Nothing is more mistaken than to consider Bry- 
 ant a kind of inferior Wordsworth. There is more 
 truth in the remark that Wordsworth himself 
 was not primarily a nature poet, since nature was 
 to him chiefly the source of certain stimuli to the 
 mental life, which was his fundamental interest. 
 Bryant not only feels this stimulus, along with 
 nature's suggestive and representative quali- 
 ties, and its physical benefits; but he also appre- 
 hends nature as an independent world of phy- 
 sical life and order, of which man is a citizen 
 so far as he is a creature, and of which he may 
 be a ruler so far as his mind works in harmony 
 with natural law, and partakes of the power 
 behind it. 
 
 [41 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 "'This asped of nature was not, I believe, ap- 
 prehended by Wordsworth at all. He at least gave 
 no utterance to it. Similarly, in the treatment of 
 the water-world, in which English poets have usu- 
 ally excelled, the English critic Henley has shown 
 how Longfellow, through a simple self-forge tful- 
 ness in his impressions, found eternal beauties 
 hitherto unnoticed. Emerson's nature-teaching is 
 fairly well known, but the depth and breadth of 
 Whitman's sympathy for land and sea has yet 
 to be generally appreciated; and these poets are 
 only a few of many examples. 
 
 "'American painting, too, has found itself in 
 landscape ; our sculpture and music have drawn 
 inspiration from aboriginal life; and our natural 
 science is second to none in its careful, accurate, 
 and tireless study. 
 
 "'The special field in which we may learn from 
 the older world is in the employment of nature 
 as the material of art; and for this with our ad- 
 vance in wealth and leisure, we are now ready. 
 Roman, Italian, and English examples have al- 
 ready been followed in making real for us some 
 of Poe's visions of cultivated landscape; and I 
 am daily expe&ing those delightful intellectual 
 and aesthetic results which have always come 
 when men, wearied with the cultivation of cities, 
 
 [42 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 retire to the contrasting peace, simplicity, and 
 beauty of nature.' 
 
 "There were, of course," continued Professor 
 Maturin, " many other general ideas in my friend's 
 system, and he has accumulated a vast hoard of 
 particular facts to illustrate them. The last aspect 
 of the subject, however, continued to interest me 
 most; for I was experiencing hourly the truth of 
 what he said concerning the thaumaturgic, heal- 
 ing power of nature. I never felt such gentle and 
 cumulative refreshment in my life. The varied 
 sensations of travel, which is perhaps the favorite 
 form of recreation, merely whip the jaded spirit 
 into new activity. But these peaceful, natural 
 scenes and sounds allow the senses to relax, and 
 the mind to renew its texture and recover its tone. 
 As Browning puts it, 
 
 my soul 
 Smoothed itself out y a long-cramped scroll. 
 
 I have experienced a real re-creation." 
 
 "Therefore," concluded Professor Maturin, as 
 we finished our cigars, " you must not be surprised 
 if, within the next few weeks, I compose a pas- 
 toral symphony, or become a new Theocritus, 
 or — what is less unlikely — retire to a villa, as 
 Horace did." 
 
 [43] 
 
V 
 
 Food for Thought 
 
 I WAS just ordering dinner at the Athenaeum 
 when Professor Maturin entered the room and 
 peered about over his spectacles in search of a 
 congenial corner. Happily for me, his glance 
 encountered mine, and his smile accepted my 
 invitation. I settled myself for an hour of rare 
 conversation. 
 
 "And what are you planning to have*?" he 
 queried. I passed him the order I was signing, but 
 noticed, as he read it, first surprise, then incre- 
 dulity, and finally sorrow in his expression. 
 
 " My friend, my friend," he said, mournfully 
 shaking his head, "and you a literary man!" 
 
 "Won't you, then, order for me instead?" I 
 responded, cancelling the slip, outwardly meek, 
 but inwardly rejoicing that my friend's energy 
 had created a situation which his kindliness 
 would require him to explain at length. 
 
 "In the cause of the advancement of learning, 
 sir, I will!" he replied. And taking a new blank, 
 he began to write from the bottom upward, re- 
 marking: "In the first place, I always feel, in order 
 that a dinner may have unity and consistency, 
 
 [44] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 it should be planned like a poem, from the end 
 toward the beginning; all the more, since there 
 is no chance for revision. There," he resumed, 
 finishing, "I think that will do, as simple, nour- 
 ishing, and suggestive." 
 
 And he read: "Oysters, with a few Platonic 
 olives, for the sake of Dr. Holmes and criticism; 
 a bit of tenderloin, in memory of Mary Lamb's 
 beefsteak pudding; asparagus, which, according 
 to Charles Lamb, inspires gentle thoughts; cauli- 
 flower, which Dr. Johnson preferred to all other 
 flowers; Vergil's salad; apple pie, according to 
 Henry Ward Beecher's recipe, with a bit of Dean 
 Swift's cheese; and, finally, a little coffee. I have 
 considerably increased my usual ration in order 
 that you may not miss what the French call 'the 
 sensation of satiety.' 
 
 "I find it difficult," sighed Professor Maturin, 
 as he passed the order to an attendant and leaned 
 back in his chair, "to absolve men of letters from 
 what has been called the crime of unintelligent 
 eating. Of all men their need of and their oppor- 
 tunity for wisdom in such matters is the greatest. 
 And yet you have Gray wondering at his ail- 
 ments and his melancholia, when he was eating 
 chiefly marmalade and pastry, taking no exercise, 
 and dosing himself with tar water and sage tea. 
 
 [45] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 " Shelley did scarcely better in a more enlight- 
 ened age. Byron's habitual flesh-reducing mix- 
 ture, potatoes and vinegar, is chemically indiges- 
 tible. And Thoreau literally consumed himself 
 in following and advocating a diet which so pre- 
 pared him for tuberculosis that living half his 
 time in the open air could not prevent it. 
 
 "The opposite extreme, which is yet more 
 common, is even less attractive in men of genius. 
 Who likes to remember that Spenser and Milton 
 had gout, or that Goethe drank in his time fifty 
 thousand bottles of wine 4 ? As for Pepys, what 
 do you think of having one's 'only mayde' dress 
 such a home dinner as this, copied from his 
 'Diary:' 'A fricassee of rabbits and chickens, a 
 leg of mutton, three carps, a side of lamb, a dish 
 of roasted pigeons, four lobsters, three tarts, a 
 lamprey pie, a dish of anchovies, and good wine 
 of several sorts ' *? No wonder that his better quali- 
 ties are obscured in our memories of him. 
 
 "Philosophers, men of a&ion, and, interest- 
 ingly enough, men of the world, have usually set 
 a better example. 'They that sup with Plato,' 
 said Aelianus, 'are not sick or out of temper 
 the next day.' Socrates, Epicurus, and Kant, all 
 preached and practiced judgment and restraint. 
 Horace and Catullus insisted that their pam- 
 
 [46] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 pered guests should bring their luxuries with 
 them. Montaigne highly disapproved of elabo- 
 rate cooking, and Pope refused to dine with Lady 
 Suffolk so late in the day as four. 
 
 "Then there is that admirable story of Cin- 
 cinnatus, whom the venal senators knew they 
 could not bribe after they found him preparing 
 his own dinner of turnips. It is quite in keeping 
 that King Alfred should have burned the cakes, 
 and that Napoleon should have spilled the ome- 
 let; and it is to Lady Cromwell's credit that she 
 would not allow the Prote&or oranges that cost 
 a groat apiece. 
 
 "Even aside from health and morals, a man's 
 relation to food is always significant. Who can 
 think of Tasso without remembering that he 
 loved sweetmeats'? Is there not literary sugges- 
 tion in the fad: that Vergil loved garlic and 
 Horace hated it; that Horace preferred his Fa- 
 lernian and his Sabine farm to the dinners and 
 Persian apparatus of Maecenas, but that Cicero 
 loved to dine with Lucullus and bought himself 
 a seven-thousand-dollar dinner table? 
 
 "Is it not illuminating to know that the fa- 
 vorite food of Burns was oat-cake, that of Byron 
 truffles'? De Quincey's reports that Wordsworth 
 used the same knife for cutting butter and the 
 
 [47 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 pages of books; and that Scott, when Words- 
 worth's guest, repaired secretly to an inn for 
 chops and ale — these are not gossip, but literary 
 criticism. It is as surely interpretative of Dickens 
 to know that he disliked Italian cookery as that 
 he was fond of playing an accordeon. 
 
 " Carlyle's pessimism is usually attributed to 
 indigestion. It ought, I think, to be as usual to 
 explain Emerson's optimism by a digestion that 
 could cope successfully with his favorite pie. We 
 habitually associate tea and coffee with Johnson 
 and Balzac, and their work. Should we not as 
 often remember that Milton produced 'Paradise 
 Lost' on coffee, and 'Paradise Regained' on tea? 
 Of course, such physical criticism of literature 
 must be limited by other judgments. I can well 
 agree with Dr. Gould that many writers show 
 the effects of eye-strain, and it is difficult to 
 upset the diagnosis of anaemia in Hawthorne; 
 but I hesitate to think, with Dr. Conan Doyle, 
 that Shakespeare had locomotor ataxia." 
 
 "Why did you associate oysters with criti- 
 cism*? "I inquired, as Professor Maturin paused. 
 
 "Do you not recall," he replied, "the Auto- 
 crat's remark that literary reputations are largely 
 a matter of administering oysters in the form of 
 suppers, to gentlemen connected with criticism? 
 
 [48 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 Veuillot similarly claimed that men were elected 
 to the French Academy chiefly because they 
 gave good dinners. Sydney Smith applied the 
 principle to religion when he said, 4 The way to 
 deal with fanatics is not to reason with them, but 
 to ask them to dinner.' On the other hand, Swift 
 used deliberately to test men's tempers by offer- 
 ing them bad wine." 
 
 "And did Plato like olives?" I continued. 
 
 " He often made a meal of nothing else," was 
 the reply. 
 
 "And what was Vergil's salad?" It arrived at 
 that moment. 
 
 "It is made of cheese and parsley, with a bit 
 of garlic, rue, and coriander, salt, oil, and vinegar. 
 A little of it is, I think, very pleasing. I much 
 prefer it to Sydney Smith's. I never understood 
 how he could write 4 Fate cannot harm me, I have 
 dined to-day ' about a salad made of potatoes. For 
 the truly esoteric do&rine you must read John 
 Evelyn's ' Discourse of Sallets.' 
 
 " Indeed, I am inclined, on the whole, to think 
 that Sydney Smith was what Carlyle called 'a 
 blethering blellum,' when he wrote about food, 
 as he so often did. It was perfectly proper for him 
 to express a desire to experience American can- 
 vasbacks, and to be glad that he was not born 
 
 [49] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 before tea; but to say that roast pheasant and 
 bread sauce was the source of the most elevated 
 pleasure in life, and that his idea of heaven was 
 eating pate defois gras to the sound of trumpets 
 — that was both posing and trifling with serious 
 subjects. Charles Lamb's comments on roast pig 
 and frogs' legs, and his kindred table talk, are 
 much more genuine, and, of course, charming; 
 but even they scarcely touch the deeper aspe&s 
 of the subject. 
 
 "Thackeray had all of Lamb's appreciation 
 of food and, I think, something more. He en- 
 joyed his own and accepted others' idiosyncrasies 
 of taste, — witness his treating boys to apricot 
 omelet, which he hated, — but his plea for sim- 
 pler and more varied dinners, for more hospital- 
 ity and less ostentation, indicates, I think, that 
 he realized at least something of the profound 
 moral and social significance of food. 
 
 "This, as you know, is one of my hobbies, and 
 I unconsciously add it to my other criteria of 
 judgment in my reading. That Scott invented a 
 venison pasty, Dickens a sandwich, Webster a 
 clam chowder, and Henry Clay a stew is inter- 
 esting; just as it is that Buckle was discriminate 
 and Heine indiscriminate in choosing tea. But 
 it is far more significant that Dr. Johnson con- 
 
 [SO] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 sidered writing a cook-book, and that Dumas' 
 last work adually was such a volume of more 
 than a thousand pages. 
 
 "That is the kind of thing we need: sound 
 do&rine from influential writers, but it is not easy 
 to get. The intemperate use of food, which is al- 
 ways with us, causes many to turn with prejudice 
 from the whole subject. Here, as elsewhere, con- 
 servatism often opposes the good. You know, 
 for example, how long the clergy decried the use 
 of forks; and I never cease to regret that the man 
 who was opened-minded enough to introduce 
 umbrellas into England should have been furi- 
 ously opposed to tea. 
 
 " Many writers, too, treat the subject fancifully, 
 without regard to its inherent truths — witness 
 the conventional praise of the indigestible turtle. 
 Often those who intend well lack knowledge: 
 Pythagoras made it a principle of morality to ab- 
 stain from beans, an almost perfect food; the ideal 
 diet of Plato's republic,barley pudding and bread, 
 does not contain the elements necessary to sus- 
 tain life properly. Democritus inaugurated the 
 still repeated heresy that any food that is pleas- 
 ant is wholesome ; and even Dr. Johnson defended 
 his doubtful practice of eating whenever he was 
 hungry, without regard to regularity. For all these 
 
 [51 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 reasons and many others I hold it, in this enlight- 
 ened age, doubly the responsibility of intelligent 
 men, and particularly of those who influence 
 popular opinion, to acquire a sound knowledge 
 of such matters and to do all that they can to 
 disseminate it." 
 
 "You have previously convinced me of this," 
 I replied, "but I have not found it easy to attain 
 to such knowledge." 
 
 "The important thing," continued my men- 
 tor, "is a conscious attitude of serious attention 
 to contemporary investigations in the field. One 
 should welcome every item of reliable infor- 
 mation, observe much, and, whenever possible, 
 experiment. Of course, our special problem, as 
 persons of sedentary habit, is to obtain a large 
 quantity of blood and brain nutriment without 
 taxing an organism which gets comparatively 
 little physical exercise. The problem is not sim- 
 ple, indeed it is very complex, but it can be so 
 completely handled by knowledge and care that 
 the process of solving it adds another satisfaction 
 to life. 
 
 "Cheerfulness, by the way, is an invaluable 
 agent in the whole business. I know of a physi- 
 cian who cured a persistent dyspeptic by requir- 
 ing him to tell at least one amusing story at each 
 
 [ 52 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 meal. We are apt to forget that the taking of 
 food is not only a necessity, but also one of our 
 most constant sources of pleasure. 
 
 Unless some sweetness at the bottom lie, 
 Who cares for all the crinkling of the pie ? 
 
 Sometimes, even, as Voltaire says, 'the superflu- 
 ous is a very necessary thing/ 
 
 "That high thinking does not require that all 
 our living be plain, is admirably illustrated by 
 this quotation from Mr. Howells's reminiscence 
 of the 'very plain' suppers which followed the 
 meetings of Longfellow's memorable Dante Club. 
 They consisted of 'a cold turkey, or a haunch 
 of venison, or some braces of grouse, or a plate 
 of quails, with a deep bowl of salad, and the sym- 
 pathetic companionship of those elect vintages 
 which Longfellow loved and chose with the in- 
 spiration of affection.' 
 
 " From such pabulum came our most poetic 
 version of the world's most spiritual poet." 
 
 [ S3 ] 
 
VI 
 
 Beside the Sea 
 
 HEAR I NG that Professor Maturin was back 
 again in town, I made an early call, and 
 found him hale and hearty, bleached and bronzed, 
 and even more than usually clear-eyed. 
 
 "Behold me returned from a summer beside 
 the sea," he said in greeting. " I see that you note 
 the visible indications of my sea-change. When- 
 ever you are in the mood for a tide of talk, I 
 believe I can convince you that my experience 
 was as rich as its outward signs are strange." I re- 
 minded him that there was never any time like 
 the present, and added such further solicitation 
 that he began at once. 
 
 "You know the locality of my preference: a 
 place frequented just enough not to be lonely, 
 a region of bays and sounds as well as of open 
 sea; where the waves batter at the cliffs only to re- 
 turn their spoil to the sands — where, in short, the 
 unity of the element appears in endless variety. 
 My favorite station was a dune-guarded beach of 
 sand, which swept on either hand into pebbles 
 and stones, until lost in the rocks heaped below 
 the boulder cliffs that formed the horns of a cres- 
 cent cove. 
 
 [ 54 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 "At first I spent unmeasured hours looking 
 over the expanse toward the terminal haze, and 
 watching, as far out as I could, the great ridges 
 rolling with the motion of wind and tide and 
 open sea. At the farthest, they looked like moun- 
 tain ranges, one behind the other; nearer, they 
 were dark green hills with grayish summits. 
 Nearer yet, one could see them reflect the sky, 
 and sometimes the shore. Nearest of all, there 
 was a visible upgathering before the rush, plunge, 
 and sweep on the beach — all endlessly repeated 
 and infinitely varied. 
 
 "The same perpetual repetition and variety 
 appeared in the surge, as it flooded up the sands 
 in a wide curve of plash, ripple, and foam ; paused, 
 retreated slowly, and then swept out, only to join 
 with the drag of the bottom in opposing an in- 
 coming wave, until it rose high, plunged forward, 
 and broke into the churning shallows, which were 
 quickly covered by the main body of the wave 
 as it flooded in. 
 
 "The outermost margin of almost every surge 
 lingered long enough to make its record in a 
 tiny ridge of sand and to reflect the light and 
 color of the sky; then it sank into the sand, leav- 
 ing a burden of pebbles and shells, stubble and 
 seaweed, and the like. This flotsam and jetsam is 
 
 [ 55 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 so constantly swept up, drawn back, and tossed 
 to and fro that I was not surprised to find the 
 sands, under a microscope, composed entirely 
 of such materials worn to powder. Behind me, 
 the sea and the wind had heaped the sand into 
 hills, that shore grasses burrowed into and held 
 together. To left and right, the cliffs, although 
 high and precipitous, were so scarred and worn 
 by storm and wave that they looked almost pri- 
 meval. Their tops were bared by the winds and 
 corroded by the alternate a&ion of heat and 
 moisture; their granite sides were seamed and 
 stained by the surge; and their feet were en- 
 cumbered with fragments of their own wreckage 
 that must have thundered down like avalanches. 
 These rocks, whether flung forward in reefs like 
 sculptured waves, or heaped like ruins, were nat- 
 urally of a rich old rose, but they were often also 
 gray with barnacles, or green with sea growths, 
 and they showed even deeper in tone when sub- 
 merged beneath the many pools that similarly 
 mellowed and enriched the coloring of pebbles, 
 shells, and weeds. 
 
 " My observation of the almost infinitely va- 
 ried flora and fauna of the sea was, naturally, but 
 superficial. Yet I saw many delightful plant and 
 flower-like forms of dark or light green, yellow, 
 
 [ 56] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 brown, and red, all ceaselessly retinted by the 
 ever-changing sky lights, and the reflection and 
 refra&ion of the water. Sometimes they rioted in 
 thick tangles among the rocks; again they softly 
 swayed, outspread toward the rising and falling 
 surface. 
 
 "The fauna I preferred to look at under water, 
 for, on the whole, I found them grotesque, al- 
 though I was bound to admire their adjustment 
 to their environment, and to resped them as 
 possible images of our remote ancestors. I was 
 especially impressed with the constant warfare 
 beneath the surface, as exemplified in the regular 
 manoeuvring of whole armies of tiny fish, only to 
 have company after company routed by the dash 
 and gulp of some larger enemy. 
 
 "The bottom of the sea I have never seen, save 
 through the glass-bottomed boats of the Bermu- 
 das, but some day I hope for a diver's view of the 
 depths. It is easy to understand why the imagina- 
 tion of the poets should be stimulated by the idea 
 of that cool, dim quietness, disturbed only by the 
 swaying of verdure and the movement of great 
 fish; of the richness of color, and the long, slow 
 passage of time, measured only by the up-build- 
 ing of the coral. 
 
 "The open sea is, of course, familiar to us all, 
 
 [57 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 and yet its apparent boundlessness and immeas- 
 urable depth are ever new as the most immense 
 thing in our knowledge — the sky belonging 
 rather to the realm of the intangible. Mid-ocean 
 always makes me feel the infinite continuity of 
 time, the omnipresence of natural law, and a stim- 
 ulus to greater harmony with its workings. No- 
 where else are my 'cosmic emotions' so stirred. 
 One gets something of the same impression on 
 land wherever one can mark the ceaseless rising, 
 pausing, and falling of the tide, under the myste- 
 rious governance of the moon. I am more than 
 fond of the regular, gentle quality of the tide's 
 behavior, even if it does sometimes seem stealthy 
 in its creeping toward and around the half-oblivi- 
 ous observer. 
 
 " I cannot similarly commend the behavior of 
 the wind, when it opposes the tide in bluster on 
 the sea or pushes it in tumult on the shore. The 
 tide is a serene and responsible world power; the 
 wind almost always performs its indispensable 
 functions with all the eccentricity of genius. A 
 breeze is positively attractive when ruffling the 
 surface or sweeping spray from the wave-crests, 
 and the wind itself is unobjectionable when it 
 consistently urges the waves in one direction. But 
 when it plays havoc with the clouds, or ' ruffians 
 
 [ 5«] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 on the enchafed flood ' until it fastens upon the 
 elu&ant sea a behavior as bad and a reputation 
 worse than its own — then I am by no means 
 for it. 
 
 "It was my fortune this summer to witness sev- 
 eral storms of such intensity that I became im- 
 pressed with the routine of their procedure. The 
 sea — grown dark, heavy, and oily — is first flicked 
 and spotted, and then strangely lighted, all over, 
 with the dash of rain and hail; the sun is made 
 lurid, then shrouded, and then hidden by a me- 
 tallic sky; the clouds grow gloomy and sullen 
 until they are shattered by peals of thunder and 
 riven by livid lightnings. Then the wind rushes, 
 howls, and roars; tearing and hurtling the clouds 
 and tumbling and lashing the waves until they 
 leap and plunge, reel and writhe, flinging up 
 hissing foam and whirling spray 'shrewd with 
 salt.' It is undoubtedly glorious — but I like 
 it best when it is over, leaving the torn waves 
 heavy with foam as a reminder, by contrast, of 
 the quieter beauties of a calmer sea. 
 
 "Even the sky, the most beautiful thing that 
 we know, seems to multiply its beauty by the sea. 
 One day I saw night gradually lapsing into dawn. 
 The sea glimmered as though the stars had come 
 down, and then flashed until, in the language 
 
 [ 59 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 of Swinburne, it blossomed rosily and flowered 
 in the sun, floating all fiery upon the burning 
 water. I saw many long mornings of sapphire 
 sky and lapis-lazuli sea, and many noons when 
 the waves glittered until their spray became dia- 
 monds. Through long afternoons the sea reflected 
 sky and clouds in every shade of silver, blue, and 
 green. The amber fire of the setting sun not only 
 made the heavens splendid, but poured both di- 
 re 6t and reflected rays upon the sea until nothing 
 but the idea of a stupendous opal could suggest 
 its coloring. Later, all would fade until land was 
 lost, the sea grew deep and dark, and the only 
 light was the foam and the reflections of the stars. 
 With the moon, all grew new again. Rising low 
 and large, it threw a broad, undulating pathway 
 as golden as that of the sun was silver. Where 
 it reached the shore its glitter extended along the 
 sur£ gleaming over the sands, and twinkling 
 wherever spray or dew had fallen. Later yet, as 
 the moon quietly sank, the general illumination 
 grew dim, until obscurity covered land and sea 
 alike, and the sea seemed to merge into infinite 
 space. 
 
 " Then, as at no other time, one hears the sound 
 of the sea. I spent many hours listening, endeav- 
 oring to analyze it, and to interpret its efFe6t 
 
 [60] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 Its continuity and variety are perhaps its most 
 striking characteristics. It is so ceaseless that it 
 suggests the everlasting. Within this perpetuity 
 it rises and sinks, leaps and falls, gathers and dis- 
 solves; it sweeps and rolls, sways and trembles; 
 it seems to approach and withdraw, to flow and 
 overflow; it sounds and resounds, repeats and 
 changes. And well it may do all this and more, 
 considering that its source is a countless num- 
 ber and variety of waves, surging, breaking, and 
 seething among themselves; rushing, plashing, 
 lapping on the shore, chafing sand, rattling peb- 
 bles, grating shells, grinding rocks: — all of the 
 resulting sound being constantly varied as well as 
 augmented by breeze, wind, and storm; by the 
 configuration and reverberating qualities of the 
 shore; and by the varying acoustic properties of 
 the atmosphere. 
 
 "Analysis being thus nearly baffled, I turned 
 to analogy, and found the sound like the rumble 
 of thunder, the crash of falling rocks, the rush of 
 catara&s; like the quiver of green branches and 
 the rustle of dry leaves; like the bellow and roar 
 of animals; the clash of arms and armor. It is very 
 much like music in its elements of monotone, 
 chord, cadence, melody, and harmony; its rela- 
 tions of continuity, rhythm, repetition, and vari- 
 
 [ 6' ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 ation; in its sounds as of cymbal, tympani, bell, 
 trumpet, viol, harp, or organ; its suggestions of 
 symphony or chorale. It is, perhaps, most of all 
 like the human voice, half audible in whisper or 
 murmur; inarticulate in sigh or sob; muffled in 
 mutter or moan; hushed in lullaby or croon; 
 blended in a unison of song or supplication; con- 
 fused in the hum and rumor, the call and shout, 
 the clamor or tumult of great crowds. 
 
 " From such prosing of my own I turned to 
 the record and interpretation of sea music by the 
 poets. From them I collected an alphabetical list 
 of characterizations, and by the time that I had 
 accumulated about one hundred I fell so into 
 their spirit that I, myself, produced the follow- 
 ing — as yet unnamed — poetic fragment: 
 
 Always attuned, its anthem billowing, breaking is blown; 
 Ceaseless, its cadenced complaining deepens to dirge or to drone; 
 Ever its eloquent echo falling, again flies free, 
 Till it gathers and grows in grandeur like heaverfs high har- 
 mony. 
 
 "I stopped there, because 'kissing' was the 
 next striking epithet and that seemed rather too 
 fanciful, although the Swinburnian spirit aroused 
 by the composition yearned, so to speak, to go 
 on to 'mightily murmured the main' and 'sono- 
 rously sounded the sibilant sea.' 
 
 [62] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 " Seriously,however,the problem of adequately 
 recording and interpreting the aspects of the 
 sea is as fascinating as it is difficult. The best 
 media are, of course, sculpture for its form and 
 substance, painting for its light and color, music 
 for its movement and sound. Poetry and prose 
 reflect something of all of these, poetry more sug- 
 gestively, prose more accurately. The poets, 
 however, turn so quickly from actual aspects and 
 impressions to their mental and emotional ac- 
 companiments, that they seem devoted rather to 
 exploiting their own poetic gifts than the rich- 
 ness of their subject. Their observation is usually 
 sensitive and keen, but it is quickly checked and 
 often distorted by the action of fancy. Accuracy 
 of expression is frequently disturbed by sponta- 
 neous or deliberate search for the picturesque or 
 figurative utterance, made so easy by the enor- 
 mous vocabulary that the sea has impressed upon 
 our language. Poets who are gifted with rhyth- 
 mical or harmonic power habitually exceed in 
 those directions also. Happily there are some sea 
 poems that are true as well as beautiful, but it 
 seems quite too bad that such masters as Shelley, 
 Arnold, and Emerson should intellectualize, and 
 Coleridge, Rossetti, and Poe should dream, about 
 the sea until they make it appear merely a min- 
 
 [ 63 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 ister to their moods rather than the immense, 
 unspoiled, cosmic thing it really is." 
 
 "Man overboard?" said Professor Maturin 
 suddenly, as he halted abruptly before me in the 
 perambulation he had begun after rising to secure 
 the manuscript of his poetic fragment, and had 
 slowly continued ever since back and forth along 
 the long rug that he calls his "beat" — "I have 
 flowed in good earnest. Your submerged appear- 
 ance indicates that you agree with me that my 
 experience was well-nigh overwhelming." 
 
 Accepting his helping hand, I pulled myself 
 out of the depths of the huge leather chair into 
 which I had sunk, and expressed my genuine 
 appreciation by saying, along with my good- 
 nights, "The next time we meet, I should like 
 just such another dip." 
 
 [64 ] 
 
VII 
 
 Christmas 
 
 IT is always possible to divine something of 
 the state of Professor Maturin's mind from 
 the order or the congestion of his books and pa- 
 pers. When, therefore, the other day, I found him 
 behind a perfect rampart of volumes bristling 
 with paper-markers, I knew that he was loading 
 with some new knowledge or other, and medi- 
 tated how I might draw his fire. But he antici- 
 pated my efforts by sallying from his fortifica- 
 tion, dishevelled but beaming, with the salvo: 
 
 Go d rest you, merry gentleman ; 
 Let nothing you dismay ! — 
 
 What will you give for the Christmas spirit*?" 
 he continued. "I have been seeking it, seasona- 
 bly, and believe that I have found it." 
 
 I capitulated immediately, and we sat down by 
 the fire for a parley, which he began promptly. 
 
 "The Christmas spirit appears to be inherent 
 in human nature, in the climatic change from 
 summer seed-time, through autumn harvest, to 
 hearty winter relaxation and cheer over the gar- 
 nered fruits of husbandry or art. In the South it be- 
 gan as the winter feast of Saturn, celebrated with 
 
 [65 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 masking and gifts. In the North it was Odin's, 
 with log fires and feasting. Then the early Chris- 
 tian fathers chose it for celebrating their Foun- 
 der's new teaching of peace and good-will. 
 
 " Gradually all of this blended into the most 
 interesting mingling of the material and the 
 spiritual that we have in all our manners and 
 customs. The traditions of the shepherds and the 
 star, the nativity, and the wise men of the East 
 became the centre of the celebration. But the me- 
 diaeval popularity of Macrobius's book on the 
 Saturnalia perpetuated its carnival and games, 
 its candles and garlands, and its giving of gifts, 
 especially to children. The descending Teutons 
 brought their wassail and their tree ceremonials. 
 Germany added Saint Nicholas, Santa Claus,and 
 the filling of stockings. France seems to have 
 furnished the carols. England elaborated the sea- 
 son's food and drink, and America contributed 
 the turkey. 
 
 "With the growth of church and state the day 
 became one of pomp and circumstance. West- 
 minster Abbey was consecrated on Christmas in 
 1065, and William was crowned there the next 
 Christmas. Other episcopal and royal functions 
 followed, until more was spent on this season 
 than in all the year beside. There were special 
 
 [ 66 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 buildings, elaborate pageants elaborately set, and 
 feasts of five hundred dishes with sixty oxen for 
 one course and eight-hundred-pound plum pud- 
 dings. There were jousts at which three hun- 
 dred spears were broken, and the presentation 
 of as many as thirty plays. Earlier, the plays 
 were religious; later, Shakespeare provided the 
 court play for Christmas, 1601, and Ben Jonson 
 for 1616. Milton's 'Comus' was presented at 
 Ludlow Castle during the Christmas season of 
 
 "The universities and the inns of court were 
 likewise keen for plays and for 'the boar's head 
 served with minstrelsy.' The aristocracy and gen- 
 try kept open house, for sometimes as many as 
 three hundred persons. Sir Roger de Coverley 
 sent a string of puddings and a pack of cards to 
 every poor family in the parish; and rich dece- 
 dents left Christmas dinners and gifts to the poor. 
 The peasantry entered heartily into seasonable 
 mummery and games, dances and songs, so in- 
 dustriously thumbing the many early printed 
 books of carols that almost none of them re- 
 main. 
 
 "Everywhere indoor leisure and the season- 
 able mood gave rise to all sorts and conditions 
 of legendary lore — of spirits, of trees that flower 
 
 [ 67 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 and animals that speak on Christmas eve, and 
 of weather wisdom, like : 
 
 If Christmasse day on fry day be, 
 The frost of wynter harde shal be. 
 
 " From the beginning, the spirit of the cele- 
 bration had to wage war with the flesh. The fa- 
 thers of the church never ceased to remonstrate 
 that festivity endangered the solemnity of the 
 season. There were constant failures to remem- 
 ber the peaceful character of the feast. The Danes 
 fell on King Alfred while he was celebrating 
 Christmas in 878, and William the Conqueror 
 got into York on Christmas in 1069 by sending 
 in spies with good-will gifts of food. The me- 
 diaeval Lords of Misrule, originally established 
 to control festivity, became themselves uncon- 
 trolled, and had to be abolished." 
 
 "Even though they made some very good 
 laws," I interrupted, "against eating two din- 
 ners in one day, and kissing without leave." 
 
 "The Pilgrim fathers at Plymouth frowned on 
 current excesses by working on Christmas day 
 in 1620 and by later prohibiting its celebration. 
 Cromwell's Parliament sat every Christmas day 
 from 1644 to 1656, and sermonized and legislated 
 against the celebration as a carnal feast, order- 
 ing churches shut, shops open, and decorations 
 
 [68] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 down. But this was too extreme, and the people 
 smashed the shop windows and put up more 
 evergreens than the Lord Mayor's men could 
 burn; and Evelyn delighted in being arrested for 
 going to church on Christmas in 1657. In five 
 years all was so changed that Pepys could for 
 once combine preaching and pra&ice, by hearing 
 a Christmas sermon on joyousness and having 
 plum pudding and mince pie for dinner. 
 
 "From the beginning, too, the spirit of bene- 
 volence has had its difficulties. Watchmen left 
 verses at doors, wanderers sang carols, and chil- 
 dren chanted, * I 've got a little pocket to put a 
 penny in,' until such suggestion to benevolence 
 became a little too definite, and it was legislated 
 against. In 1668 Pepys says tipping 'cost me 
 much money this Christmas already, and will 
 do more.' Half a century later Swift writes: • By 
 the Lord Harry, I shall be done with Christ- 
 mas boxes. The rogues at the coffee house have 
 raised their tax, every one giving a crown, and I 
 gave mine for shame; besides a great many half- 
 crowns, to great men's porters, etc' 
 
 "Of other giving Swift wri tes : ' M aking agree- 
 able presents . . . [is] an affair as delicate as most 
 in the course of life,' and he never fails to cau- 
 tion Stella against a new danger, that of losing 
 
 [69 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 her money in Christmas gaming. Concerning this 
 custom Walpole wrote on twelfth-day in 1752: 
 'His Majesty, according to annual custom, of- 
 fered myrrh, frankincense, and a small bit of 
 gold; and, at night, in commemoration of the 
 three kings or wise men, the King and royal 
 family played at hazard ... his most sacred 
 Majesty won three guineas, and his R. H. the 
 duke, three thousand four hundred pounds.' 
 
 "Concerning gifts, Walpole instances the 
 charming presents devised for a little girl of ten 
 by the Duchess of Suffolk and Lord Chetwynd, 
 aged seventy-six and eighty, respectively; and 
 he prescribes the theory, ' Pray remember not to 
 ruin yourself in presents. A very slight gift of a 
 guinea or two obliges as much, is more fashion- 
 able, and not a moment sooner forgotten than 
 a magnificent one; and then you may cheaply 
 oblige the more persons.'" 
 
 "Such being the earlier history and tradition of 
 the festival, what should be its modern spirit?" 
 I inquired. 
 
 "For that, too," continued Professor Maturin, 
 "there is no lack of leading. Charles Lamb is 
 frankly for 'the good old munching system . . . 
 ingens gloria apple-pa sty-orum' and does not hesi- 
 tate to prescribe for Christmas, 1800, 'snipes ex- 
 
 [ 70 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 actly at nine, punch at ten, with argument; dif- 
 ference of opinion expected about eleven, perfect 
 unanimity, with some haziness and dimness, be- 
 fore twelve.' 
 
 "Thomas Love Peacock makes his Rev. Dr. 
 Opimian say, about i860: 'I think much of 
 Christmas and all its associations. I like the idea 
 of the yule-log. I like the festoons of holly on the 
 walls and windows; the dance under the mistle- 
 toe; the gigantic sausage; the baron of beef; the 
 vast globe of plum pudding; the tapping of the 
 old October; the inexhaustible bowl of punch. 
 ... I like the idea of what has gone, and I can 
 still enjoy the reality of what remains.' 
 
 44 Dr. Opimian further prescribes for the sea- 
 son such merry tales as his contemporary Tn- 
 goldsby Legends' provide in the distinguished 
 career, but inglorious end, of 'The Spectre of 
 Tappington,' which nightly made away with the 
 trousers of the guest who occupied the haunted 
 room at Christmas. All of these same hearty 
 traditions are perpetuated by Fenimore Cooper 
 in his description of Christmas festivity in 'The 
 Pioneers.' " 
 
 "Does not Washington Irving," I asked, "have 
 an important place in the tradition 6 ?" 
 
 " Precisely so," continued Professor Maturin; 
 
 [ 71 1 
 
The Observations of 
 
 "it was reserved for him, from his knowledge of 
 Dutch and English customs, to make a new se- 
 lection and recombination of Christmas ideals so 
 appealing as to have set the standard ever since. 
 His half-dozen Christmas papers dwell, with his 
 characteristic love of the past, on the superior 
 honesty, kindliness, and joy of the old holiday 
 customs. No refinement of elegance can replace, 
 he maintains, the family gatherings, the perfect- 
 ing of sympathies, the realization of mutual de- 
 pendence, and the increase of mutual affe&ion, 
 instinct in the ancient hospitality. To his own 
 question as to the worth of Christmas observ- 
 ances, he gives the most characteristic answer in 
 his philosophy — there is plenty of wisdom in 
 the world, but we need more sound pleasure to 
 beguile care and increase benevolence and good 
 humor. 
 
 "It was this ethical intention to reestablish 
 the old tradition of kindliness that Dickens fol- 
 lowed, with the result of again endearing the 
 season, as Mr. Ho wells has said, 4 to the whole 
 English-speaking world, with a wider and deeper 
 hold than it had ever had before . . . the chief 
 agency in universalizing the great Christmas 
 holiday as we now have it.' 
 
 "There is no need to remind any one how 
 
 [ 72 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 the whole baker's dozen of Dickens's 'Christmas 
 Stories' delightfully champion hard work and 
 good cheer, sympathy and benevolence, affec- 
 tion and self-sacrifice, and even the softening 
 effe&s of suffering and sorrow — sometimes by 
 dire&ly illustrating these blessings, again by pic- 
 turing the misery of their opposites. His satires 
 at pretended benevolence and commercial greed, 
 and his championship of the common man, an- 
 swer in advance all later criticisms concerning 
 the burden and the cost of Christmas and cur- 
 rent complaints over popular ingratitude. 
 
 "'I have great faith in the poor,' Dickens 
 once wrote. 'To the best of my ability I always 
 endeavour to present them in a favourable light 
 to the rich; and I shall never cease, I hope, until 
 I die, to advocate their being made as happy and 
 as wise as the circumstances of their condition, 
 in its utmost improvement, will admit.' 
 
 "Thackeray called Dickens's 'Christmas Sto- 
 ries' a national benefit, and to any man or wo- 
 man who reads them a personal kindness; and 
 Thackeray, too, served the season with Christ- 
 mas pieces of sympathy, humor, and pantomime, 
 and with his famous onslaught on pretentious 
 misanthropy. You recall how the ttmes slated 
 one of his Christmas stories as worthless on the 
 
 [ 73 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 very day that the publishers asked for a sec- 
 ond edition; and how Thackeray, in the preface 
 to the second edition, — 'An Essay on Thunder 
 and Small Beer,' — made such delightful fun 
 of the review's futility, its absurd supercilious- 
 ness, its inflated language, and its false figures 
 of speech, that snarling criticism learned at least 
 a temporary lesson. 
 
 "Thackeray waged his war differently from 
 Dickens, but, on the whole, I have found no- 
 thing more compa&ly adequate on the Christ- 
 mas spirit than Thackeray's 
 
 / wish you healthy and love, and mirth, 
 As Jits the solemn Christmas-tide, 
 
 unless it be the conclusion to old Nicholas Bre- 
 ton's ' Fantasticks,' written in 1626: Tn brief I 
 thus conclude it : I hold it a memory of Heav- 
 en's love and the world's peace, the mirth of the 
 honest and the meeting of the friendly. Fare- 
 well.'" 
 
 [74] 
 
VIII 
 
 The Sovran Herb 
 
 "^VT^OU are come most opportunely," said 
 JL Professor Maturin, as I was shown into his 
 study. "Just in time for coffee and a cigar and 
 some good talk with my friend the Vicar of All 
 Souls." And he presented me to a gentleman 
 whose clerical dress graced a more than ordinarily 
 handsome figure. His chair and Professor Ma- 
 turing being on opposite sides of the fireplace, 
 I drew mine between them, and noted, during 
 the pouring of the coffee, the fine seriousness 
 and serenity of the clergyman's face. He made no 
 remark, however, until he said, "None, I thank 
 you," slightly raising his hand when I proffered 
 the cigars that Professor Maturin had passed. But, 
 after I had made my selection and had returned 
 the box to Professor Maturin, the Vicar recon- 
 sidered and joined us. 
 
 "Smoking rests me greatly when I am tired," 
 he continued, after we had lighted, "but I am 
 thinking of giving it up. I am moved to do so by 
 such statements as this from my afternoon paper " 
 — and extracting a clipping from his pocket 
 and adjusting his eye-glasses, he read: "Medical 
 
 [ 75 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 opinion and statistics unite to prove that smok- 
 ing irritates the respiratory system, decreases lung 
 capacity, prevents the purification of the blood, 
 depresses the nerve centres, checks heart action, 
 impairs digestion, retards growth, reduces weight, 
 strength, and endurance ; restricts the therapeutic 
 effects of medicines, delays the healing of wounds, 
 and impairs, if it does not destroy, mental life — 
 all of which effects, inevitable although perhaps 
 hidden for years, would make tobacco one of the 
 gravest dangers of the century even if it did not 
 harm the eyes, excite thirst, and induce intem- 
 perance." 
 
 " If we believed that," said Professor Maturin, 
 getting out of his chair, " we should not only aban- 
 don tobacco instantly, but organize a crusade for 
 its total prohibition. But my medical friends in- 
 form me that the statistics are still quite too scanty 
 to generalize from, and that there have been no 
 scientific experiments, except a few which have 
 apparently proved that smoking aids digestion. 
 
 "As for personal opinion, it has long been 
 equally violent on both sides of the question. 
 Here," he continued, opening a volume of 
 pamphlets which he had drawn from one of his 
 bookcases, "is a three-century-old illustration," 
 and he read: "There cannot be a more base, and 
 
 [ 76 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 yet hurtful corruption in a country than this bar- 
 barous and beastly habit borrowed from wild 
 Indians, a habit unnatural, urgent, expensive, un- 
 clean — loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, 
 harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs — 
 and in the black, stinking fume thereof nearest 
 resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit 
 that is bottomless." 
 
 "That," resumed Professor Maturin, "is the 
 personal opinion of James the First of England 
 in the 'Counterblaste to Tobacco,' which he fol- 
 lowed up by imposing a duty of six shillings 
 eightpence a pound in addition to the modest 
 tuppence previously demanded. 
 
 " But here also is a counterblast to King James's, 
 by one of the most learned physicians of his time, 
 William Barclay. He proclaims tobacco to be a 
 heavenly panacea of wondrous curative power, 
 the fuel of life divinely sent to a cold, phleg- 
 matic land. He characterizes all other opinions as 
 4 raving lies, forged by scurvy, lewd, unlearned 
 leeches.'" As Professor Maturin put the book up 
 and returned to his chair he concluded: "I can- 
 not feel that personal opinion on the subject to- 
 day has any sounder basis." 
 
 " Possibly not," replied the Vicar, after a short 
 pause, — "possibly not. But can we not conclude 
 
 [ 77] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 something from the standing of the witnesses'? 
 Is there not some significance in the cordial af- 
 filiation between the weed and alcohol? How 
 shall we answer Horace Greeley's offer to give 
 two white blackbirds for one blackguard who 
 did not use tobacco*?" 
 
 "The collocation of Bacchus and tobacco is, 
 of course, historic," responded Professor Matu- 
 rin, " but, on the other hand, as a substitute for 
 alcohol, tobacco is certainly on the side of tem- 
 perance. If, moreover, it is to be judged by the 
 company it has kept, we must reckon with the 
 practical advocacy of many good men and true 
 from Milton to Emerson, as well as of all the 
 smoking roysterers from Ben Jonson to Burns." 
 
 " I must admit that I can recall only Sir Isaac 
 Newton and Horace Walpole, Dr. Holmes and 
 Mr. Swinburne, in specific opposition," said the 
 Vicar, "although I venture to think that the 
 Greeks would have opposed it." 
 
 "And the Romans have approved it," rejoined 
 Professor Maturin. " There is an immense mass 
 of literature on both sides. I agree neither with 
 King James nor with his counterblasters. But I 
 do believe with Cowper that smoking quickens 
 thought, with Lowell that it mellows conversa- 
 tion, with Dr. Johnson that it induces tranquil- 
 
 [78 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 lity, and with Moliere that it prompts benevo- 
 lence." 
 
 "But Dr. Holmes held that it muddled 
 thought," retorted the Vicar, "and it certainly 
 silenced two eloquent talkers on that occasion 
 when Carlyle and Emerson smoked together 
 a whole evening with never a word. I fear that 
 only too often it relaxes divine discontent into 
 ill-timed resignation, turns thought to reverie, 
 and lulls the stir of aciion into dreams." 
 
 "That, surely, is the defecl: of its quality," ad- 
 mitted Professor Maturin; "yet it did not cloud 
 Kant's thought, dim Milton's poetic vision, or 
 relax the will of Frederick the Great or of Bis- 
 marck. It may, perhaps, have somewhat clouded 
 Lowell, dimmed Thackeray, and relaxed Lamb. 
 But who can tell? We cannot determine the ideal 
 combination of the strenuous and the contem- 
 plative life until we solve the personal equation." 
 
 "Very true, very true," acknowledged the 
 Vicar ; " therefore, let us begin again. I s not smok- 
 ing an essentially selfish, or at least an anti-social, 
 habit?" 
 
 "It does, I believe," responded Professor Ma- 
 turin, "incline one to prefer the company of other 
 smokers, and to reduce the number even of those 
 that one desires at a time. However, if that be 
 
 [ 79 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 the case, we must commend it for inciting such 
 conversation as the present, such intimate games 
 as chess, and such profitable solitude as that with 
 books. It was no accidental combination that 
 made Buckle say he never regretted the money 
 spent for books or tobacco. King Alfred and his 
 ancient candle are succeeded by the modern 
 scholar, measuring time by the rings on the ash 
 of his cigar, or by the succession of his pipes. Is 
 not tobacco, therefore, an encourager of domes- 
 ticity? What makes one more content to stay at 
 home?" 
 
 " Or away from home ? " smiled the clergyman, 
 consulting his watch. "As for domesticity, you 
 know the saying that 'tobacco is woman's only 
 successful rival;' and you recall those shocking 
 lines of Kipling's. I think I never knew a woman 
 who was not, secretly, at least, distressed by the 
 odor of tobacco — no matter what the younger 
 ones may say to the contrary. Remember poor 
 Mrs. Carlyle!" 
 
 "There were two Mrs. Carlyles," chuckled 
 Professor Maturin, "and you must restrict your 
 sympathies to Jane, for the dowager and son 
 Thomas used to smoke their pipes together. Of 
 the feminine reaction to tobacco, however, I am 
 no judge, although I do recall George Sand's 
 
 [80 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 pipe, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's snuff, and 
 the cigarettes of contemporary empresses and 
 suffragettes. Have I not heard that women phy- 
 sicians prescribe the latter — cigarettes, I mean 
 — for feminine nervousness?" 
 
 "I have no doubt whatever about cigarettes," 
 replied the Vicar. " I would unhesitatingly ban- 
 ish them as the bane of the young and the fool- 
 ish. Snuff, also, we are done with, and happily, 
 for it was the most slovenly form of an indulgence 
 which is unclean at its best." Here the Vicar 
 flicked some imaginary ashes from his waistcoat. 
 " We can never be too grateful that our contem- 
 porary Sir Joshua Reynoldses are not snuffy. But 
 I must confess that a good Havana now and 
 then" — and the Vicar spoke slower and slower, 
 until his sentence became an eloquent silence as 
 he drew upon his cigar, expelled the smoke, and 
 watched it fade away. 
 
 No one spoke for some moments,and as neither 
 the Vicar nor Professor Maturin seemed inclined 
 to do so, I ventured a brief panegyric upon pipes, 
 preferably briars — their intimate, companiona- 
 ble, cumulative qualities; the preference for them 
 on the part of Spenser and Tennyson, Locke 
 and Fielding, Lamb and Lowell; and the varied 
 range of their offering as illustrated by Cowper's 
 
 [ 81 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 Virginia, Thackeray's Canaster, and Aldrich's 
 Latakia. 
 
 " Nor may we forget Southey's ' Elegy on a 
 Quid,'" added Professor Maturin. "Seriously, 
 however," he continued, "smoke is beautiful to 
 the eye, pleasing in flavor and odor, smooth to 
 the tactile and comforting to the temperature 
 sense, the occasion of a tranquil muscular rhythm 
 — the last not the least important. Thus it grati- 
 fies six senses at once — no wonder its use has 
 become universal, intimately incorporated into 
 national life east and west, south and north." 
 
 "Alas, too intimately," sighed the Vicar. "It 
 costs half a billion a year. It is another artifi- 
 cial habit that the world finds it difficult if not 
 impossible to do without. So few have Newton's 
 fear of adding to the number of their necessities. 
 Think how Thackeray missed his cigar and how 
 Prescott, when but one a day was allowed to 
 him, ranged Paris over for the very largest pro- 
 curable! Did not Stevenson write, 'Most men 
 eat occasionally, but what they really live on is 
 tobacco"? Did not Charles Lamb say he toiled 
 after tobacco as other men toiled after virtue? 
 Was not his struggle to stop smoking as severe 
 as De Quincey's with opium?" 
 
 "I suspect," replied Professor Maturin, "that 
 
 [82 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 both Lamb and De Quincey made the literary 
 most of their sufferings, and as for force of habit, 
 whocan tell ? I am sure that I never smoke merely 
 from habit, but always because of a conscious 
 desire for the kind of satisfaction that smoking 
 gives." 
 
 "Yes, yes," sighed the Vicar, finishing his ci- 
 gar, "but I am truly distressed about the matter. 
 I wish that your scientists would make a com- 
 prehensive and conclusive investigation into the 
 effects of tobacco, as they have recently done into 
 those of alcohol. Is it a stimulant or a sedative? 
 What is its effect on perception, comprehension, 
 association, combination, on general efficiency, 
 on general health*? Is it a poison or a panacea?" 
 
 "It is certainly time that we knew surely," re- 
 plied Professor Maturin gravely, "and it is our 
 obligation to urge our scientific friends to inform 
 us. Until then, however, I must confess that my 
 own experience chiefly corroborates Carlyle's 
 judgment that 'sedative, gently clarifying to- 
 bacco smoke, with the obligation to a minimum 
 of speech, surely gives human intellect and in- 
 sight the best chance they can have.' The gen- 
 eral situation is well summed up by old Burton, 
 when he says: 'Tobacco, divine, rare, superex- 
 cellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all the 
 
 [ 83 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher's stones, 
 . . . but as it is commonly abused by most men, 
 which take it as tinkers do ale, 't is a plague, a 
 mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands, health, 
 hellish, devilish and damned tobacco.' Have an- 
 other cigar, dominie." 
 
 "Until we really know about tobacco," con- 
 cluded the Vicar, firmly closing the box, "we, at 
 least, will practice moderation." 
 
 [84] 
 
IX 
 
 Mens Faces 
 
 "OOME in, come in," said Professor Ma- 
 V^Jl turin, as I was shown to the door of his 
 study. "I am very well, indeed, thank you — 
 'pursuing the even terror of my way,' as the 
 proofreader said. I have just been trying," he 
 continued, taking some papers from his writing- 
 table, "to triangulate Shakespeare's nose accord- 
 ing to Sir Francis Galton's plan for classifying 
 profiles. But it appears that the shape of Shake- 
 speare's nose is as uncertain as the spelling of his 
 name. Here in the Ely House portrait it is long 
 and rounded, in the Droeshout it is rather flat- 
 tened, in the Zoust quite irregular, in the Trinity 
 Church monument a very vile nose indeed. You 
 may observe, moreover, among these plates, a 
 similar disagreement concerning every one of his 
 features, although the general expression is like 
 enough. All of which was renewing in my mind, 
 as you came in, certain observations concerning 
 men's faces. 
 
 " If you were to go over with me my collec- 
 tion of literary portraits here, — I have about two 
 thousand, — you would note immense differences 
 
 [ 85 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 in line and mass, light and shade, depth and del- 
 icacy. The prints are from all sorts and condi- 
 tions of statues, paintings, engravings, and pho- 
 tographs; taken at all sorts of angles from profile 
 to full face, and at various elevations. The a&ual 
 color and texture of the originals, to say nothing 
 of the artists' ideas of them, would make the vari- 
 ation much greater. And yet I believe you will 
 agree that, in spite of all detractions, almost every 
 plate gives a surprisingly expressive and indi- 
 vidual charade rization." 
 
 Professor Maturin waited in silence while I 
 looked over enough of the portraits to convince 
 myself of the justice of his observation. Then 
 he continued: "While possessed of that idea I 
 amused myself by picking out doubles. Here are 
 some surprising similarities in the faces of most dis- 
 similar persons — Tolstoy and Verlaine, Bishop 
 Heber and Byron, Ronsard and Lincoln. All of 
 these portraits of Spenser make him look like 
 Mephistopheles, and Seneca here is the exa6t 
 counterpart of our friend the sporting editor. In 
 general, however, a resemblance in appearance 
 — like that, for example, between Shakespeare 
 and Calderon — represents a considerable corre- 
 spondence in nature. Sometimes this may be at- 
 tributed to identity of race and nationality, as in 
 
 [ 86] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 the cases of Renan and Sainte-Beuve, Taine and 
 Zola. But most often the resemblance shows true 
 to temperament and character in spite of race, 
 time, and circumstance. Notice, for example, 
 these prints of Horace and Herrick, Burger and 
 Burns, Heine and Chopin, Maurice Jokai and 
 George W. Cable. Such resemblances hold even 
 between very unusual faces, such as those of Uh- 
 land and Goldsmith, and there are sometimes 
 triplets like Fouque, Hoffmann, and Poe. It ap- 
 pears, decidedly, that appearances are not decep- 
 tive. 
 
 "Personality cannot, of course, entirely tran- 
 scend all rules: Dumas pere shows unequivocally 
 his negroid blood; you can generalize concern- 
 ing the bent Russian head, the arched Spanish 
 brows, the full German nose, the common irregu- 
 larity of English features. Accident broke Thack- 
 eray's nose, cost Camoens an eye, and at least 
 threatened De Foe's ears. Distress left its mark 
 on Cervantes and on Poe. Lamb said, you remem- 
 ber, that Coleridge looked like an archangel, a 
 little damaged. Pope and De Ouincey show their 
 imperfed health. The posture and the pose of 
 occupation leave traces, like the knitted brows 
 of philosophers and men of action, the narrowed 
 eyes of historians and explorers, the open nostril 
 
 [87 j 
 
The Observations of 
 
 of the naturalist, the worn mouth of the orator. 
 But these are minor matters — the general ex- 
 pression remains. 
 
 "The character of this general expression is 
 perhaps most determined by the size and shape 
 of the head. These vary enormously — as one 
 may see in the Hutton collection of masks at 
 Princeton — all the way from the greatness of 
 Thackeray's to the smallness of Byron's, from the 
 shortness and breadth of Luther's to the narrow- 
 ness and length of Lope de Vega's, from Dar- 
 win's deep sloping dome to Scott's 'Peveril of 
 the Peak.' 
 
 "A single feature frequently dominates, like 
 Sir Philip Sidney's 'imperial head with fair, large 
 front,' or Jean Paul Richter's strangely bulging 
 forehead. The eye is often the most striking fea- 
 ture. Scott said, literally, that the eyes of Burns 
 glowed; the same thing was said about Keats and 
 Hawthorne. Scientists are notable for eager eyes, 
 mystics for dreamy ones. I have noticed that styl- 
 ists, like Flaubert, Catulle Mendes, d'Annunzio, 
 John La Farge, and Charles Eliot Norton, are 
 heavy-lidded. Large noses connote power, if we 
 may judge from the Hebrews, the Greeks, and 
 the Romans; from Dante and Savonarola, Words- 
 worth and Newman. We have the testimony of 
 
 [ 88] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 Lowell that Emerson's nose was so large that it 
 cast a shadow. Socrates and Plato, Herbert Spen- 
 cer and Dr. Holmes, however, were but illy fa- 
 vored in this respect. Satirists' noses are long, and, 
 as we might expect, often pointed, — witness 
 Erasmus, Swift, and Voltaire. 
 
 "Mouths are only less expressive than eyes. 
 Sterne's mouth shows him a satyr, De Quincey's 
 marks him an imp. In general the mouths of au- 
 thors, and of clergymen, too often show self-im- 
 portance or complacency. Julius Caesar's square 
 jaw and Bismarck's thick neck are also full of 
 meaning, although such features and the always 
 significant poise of the head are often obscured 
 by the countless forms of ruff, band, stock, or col- 
 lar that men have affected from time to time. 
 
 "The hair and beard are even greater trans- 
 formers. Personally, I like somewhat wayward 
 hair such as Scott's, Hazlitt's, and Tennyson's. All 
 red-haired writers from Ben Jonson to Bulwer- 
 Lytton attract me, while I am repelled by By- 
 ron's glossy and Shelley's silky hair. Many heads 
 are improved by the thinning of their thatch, al- 
 though Emerson's was not; some, like Irving's, 
 are enhanced by a wig. But in general wigs are 
 great levellers, — imagine Dr. Johnson in Addi- 
 son's! Alexander Hamilton's queue makes a fine 
 
 [ 89 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 balance for his profile, and a tonsure is not al- 
 ways unbecoming. One may say the same for 
 beards: Fitzgerald always objected to Tennyson's, 
 but Bryant and Longfellow and Ruskin were all 
 bettered by theirs, the last immensely so. Free- 
 man, however, rather overdid it, and Flaubert's 
 walrus moustache was a monstrous thing in such 
 a stylist. Baudelaire's beard and Swinburne's are 
 to me much more shocking than anything in 
 their verses. But the doctrine of beards is really 
 very subtle. Mr. Henry James's removal of his 
 apparently reacted upon his style. 
 
 "After conspicuous single features, arrange- 
 ment most influences expression, and it is sur- 
 prising to note how irregular this is. Such corre- 
 lation and symmetry as that of George Meredith 
 is quite exceptional. There are disagreements in 
 color even between eyes — one of Lamb's was 
 hazel, the other gray. The eyes and brows of 
 Chatterton, Balzac, and Douglas Jerrold are on 
 a different plane, back of the rest of their fea- 
 tures. The right side of Thoreau's face and of 
 Whitman's is lower than the other, while the 
 left side of Poe's face is smaller. Disproportion 
 in mass is most frequent, the lower half of the 
 face being often too large for the remainder. 
 Alexander von Humboldt and Matthew Arnold 
 
 [9°] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 are the only examples I have noted of dispro- 
 portionally large brows and eyes. The chins of 
 Hegel, Gray, and Pater, on the other hand, are 
 at least one size too large; the nose and mouth 
 of Tyndall and Emerson are certainly two sizes 
 too large; Hans Christian Andersen displays an 
 even greater lack of harmony. Dr. Johnson com- 
 bined a fine head and eyes with a coarse nose and 
 mouth; Landor's mouth was as weak as his head 
 was powerful. Goldsmith presented the extraor- 
 dinary combination of a low, bulging forehead, 
 with almost no head behind the ears, handsome 
 eyes and nose, a swollen upper lip, and a reced- 
 ing chin — all much pitted with smallpox. Gold- 
 smith is a striking example, for in spite of his 
 singularly unfortunate appearance, his intrinsic 
 charm is yet obvious. 
 
 "Thus, while the details of men's faces are a 
 source of curious interest, their greatest signifi- 
 cance is the way in which a general expression 
 transpires through them. We are not in the least 
 repelled by the ugliness of Aesop and Socrates, 
 the ■ dumb-ox ' look of Thomas Aquinas, or what 
 Edward Lear called 'Wordsworth's desire for 
 milk appearance.' When Petrarch appears cheer- 
 ful and Montaigne sad, Smollett mournful and 
 Spinoza merry, we yet feel that there is more 
 
 [91 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 than meets the eye. I believe, Tennyson to the 
 contrary notwithstanding, that a man's character 
 is usually clear in his countenance ; here I take 
 up at random Confucius and Calvin, Cicero and 
 Franklin, Rabelais and Chaucer — who could 
 misjudge them? It is as Hazlitt said — you get 
 from a great number of details a general impres- 
 sion which is true and well founded, although 
 you may not be able to analyze or explain it." 
 
 "It is certainly most interesting," I said, as Pro- 
 fessor Maturin put his portraits into their cabinet. 
 "I wonder why the subject has not been investi- 
 gated more fully and scientifically." 
 
 "It has been thought about a good deal," re- 
 plied Professor Maturin, "ever since the Greeks. 
 Renaissance rulers thought it of use in selecting 
 their courtiers. Goethe kept a painter busy record- 
 ing faces that interested him. About a century ago 
 Lavater devoted a score of handsome folios, with 
 splendid plates, to the study of faces, but his treat- 
 ment was very desultory — discussions of 'deep, 
 designing, envious villains as represented by Ra- 
 phael/ and so on. Some of his successors went to 
 the opposite extreme of deflniteness, concluding 
 that long noses denote courage, high cheek-bones 
 honesty, large lips sociability, and the like. There 
 have been, however, various scientific studies, 
 
 [92 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 such as Darwin's on the expression of the emo- 
 tions, Galton's composite photography, and Ber- 
 tillon's accurate system of measurement and clas- 
 sification. Yet for some reason the subject still re- 
 mains one of those that bibliographers catalogue 
 as merely 'curious.' I like to dip into it now and 
 then because of its general human interest, and 
 always find it a stimulus to freshness and direct- 
 ness of observation; a caution, as Sir Joshua Rey- 
 nolds said, against distrusting imagination and 
 feeling in favor of 'narrow, partial, confined, ar- 
 gumentative theories.'" 
 
 I remained silent while Professor Maturin 
 looked over his cases for a book, and then stood 
 leafing through it, until he found his place, and 
 said: "Hazlitt sums the matter up in his essay 'On 
 the Knowledge of Charade r' with these words: 
 'There are various ways of getting at a know- 
 ledge of character — by looks, words, actions. The 
 first of these, which seems the most superficial, is 
 perhaps the safest, and least liable to deceive : . . . 
 A man's look is the work of years; it is stamped 
 on his countenance by the events of his whole 
 life, nay more, by the hand of nature. . . . This 
 sort of prima facie evidence shows what a man is, 
 better than what he says or does.'" 
 
 [93 ] 
 
A s 
 
 X 
 
 Mental Hygiene 
 S the Vicar, the Physician, and I entered Pro- 
 
 fessor Maturin's study, after dinner, the 
 Vicar sank into his chair with a deep sigh. " Is 
 it so bad as that?" queried Professor Maturin, as 
 he passed the cigars. " I beg a general pardon," 
 replied the Vicar. " To-day has quite tired me out, 
 although I am just back from a vacation." The 
 Physician gazed at him professionally for a mo- 
 ment, and then said: "A clear case for the Book 
 of Mental Hygiene." As we turned, expe&ant, 
 Professor Maturin, after some hesitation, took a 
 portfolio from his desk, saying: "The Physician 
 refers to a colle&ion of memoranda, drawn from 
 my experience and reading, during a series of 
 years, but recently put into something like order. 
 They are semi-personal in substance, and quite 
 staccato in form, but I am very willing to read 
 them if you will agree to stop me when you have 
 had enough." Accepting our assent, he began: 
 
 " Now that science can cause the Ethiopian to 
 change his skin and the leopard his spots, — that 
 is, can modify the color of rabbits and multiply 
 the toes of guinea-pigs, or graft new chara&er- 
 
 [94] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 istics on cattle or on grain, — it is high time to 
 take thought for the efficient and economic work- 
 ing of that intelle&ual machinery which is not 
 only the means to all such progress, but the fun- 
 damental condition of our mental being. Even 
 if we do not accept Professor Lankester's view 
 that man has produced such a special state for 
 himself that he must either acquire firmer hold 
 of the conditions, or perish, we must agree with 
 Professor James that the problem of access to 
 different kinds of power is a practical issue of 
 supreme importance. 
 
 " Physical conditions, of course, are the basis of 
 all mental hygiene. Whatever may be the rela- 
 tion between body and mind, no one can doubt 
 its intimacy. Many persons, like Wordsworth and 
 Lowell, suffer physical prostration after mental 
 exertion; nor does Dr. Johnson need to tell us 
 that 'ill-health makes every one a scoundrel.' 
 Habits of confinement or exercise mean so much 
 that we might almost know from their work that 
 Balzac and Poe wrote in closed rooms; but that 
 Wordsworth and Browning composed in the open 
 air, Burns and Scott on horseback, Swinburne 
 while swimming. It is true that, as Roger Ascham 
 said, 'walking alone into the field hath no token 
 of courage in it,' and that the horsemanship com- 
 
 [95 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 mended by Erasmus is expensive ; but there are 
 countless forms of physical exercise, some suit- 
 able to each. George Sand set a standard of wis- 
 dom in increasing her exercise when under espe- 
 cial strain. Food and sleep also influence mental 
 life tremendously. Whether we eat one simple 
 meal a day with Kant, or many varied ones with 
 Goethe, we must remember the laws of nutrition 
 and Carlyle's warning that indigestion comprises 
 all of the ills of life. 
 
 "The criteria for sleep likewise are wholly 
 individual so long as we do not drowse on other 
 people's hearth-rugs like De Quincey; or, like 
 Rossetti, entertain our callers by taking naps. 
 Some think it impossible to get too much sleep. 
 Kant limited his for the sake of soundness; he, 
 moreover, carefully tranquillized his mind before 
 going to bed, not by a total exclusion of ideas but 
 by a selection. Some forms of analysis and com- 
 bination appear to continue during sleep. Gray 
 had a friend who made verses in his dreams, and 
 Bancroft's bedtime problems were often solved 
 when he awoke. The time to sleep and the time 
 to wake must be left to individual instinct and 
 social sanction. The doctrine of deliberate ris- 
 ing — dear to Lamb and Hazlitt, Thackeray 
 and Lowell — has recently been reinforced by 
 
 [96] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 a French savant's declaration that getting up 
 quickly leads to madness. 
 
 "Again, mental life is so conditioned by sen- 
 sations that every man should ask himself Profes- 
 sor Dowden's list of questions concerning them. 
 What did not Tennyson owe to his hearing, Keats 
 to his taste and smell? Has anything ever arTe&ed 
 human character more than the present eye- 
 mindedness due to printing and artificial light- 
 ing? We have recently been shown the relation 
 between thought and the jerks of the eye in read- 
 ing, and even between pessimism and eye-strain. 
 What might not be explained by nervous tension 
 or arterial pressure, in Dr. Holmes's 'bulbous- 
 headed men' or Donizetti's creative headaches. 
 The very posture of the body is important in 
 mental labor — many books are cramped from 
 being bent over. Writers in bed have scientific 
 endorsement for their approach to the horizon- 
 tal. Yet, as this is hard on the eyes, a reclining- 
 chair like Milton's seems better. But no habit 
 should be too rigid. It is unwise to risk Kant's 
 distress at the loss of the weather-vane he gazed 
 at while pondering; and one doubts whether 
 Schiller's odor of rotten apples, or Gautier's cat 
 in his lap, or Marryat's lion-skin table were worth 
 the trouble. 
 
 [ 97 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 "Accommodation must be practiced also with 
 regard to youth and age. Whether through cellu- 
 lar differentiation or bacteria, age so profoundly 
 affects the mind that books might almost be clas- 
 sified according to the productive ages of their 
 authors. 
 
 "The influence of climate on mental life is 
 beyond control, except as we may choose our 
 place of residence and vary our occupation ac- 
 cording to the season or the weather. Days vary 
 according to the ebb and flow of the vitality 
 stored at week-ends — Monday often wasting en- 
 ergy that is much missed by Friday. Delibera- 
 tion and determination can do much to increase 
 efficiency and well-being by employing one's best 
 times appropriately: prizing the cumulative 
 value of unbroken hours, — of morning concen- 
 tration, afternoon acquisition, and evening medi- 
 tation. Those who cannot control the dav must 
 use the night — a French scientist even advocates 
 a watch in the middle of the night. There are no 
 rules of universal applicability, but study of the 
 characteristics and circumstances of our best mo- 
 ments may make possible their easy and frequent 
 duplication. That was Pater's recipe for success- 
 ful living. 
 
 " In the matter of environment, congenial sur- 
 
 [9» ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 roundings means spontaneous action. Yet lack of 
 harmony may stimulate: pastoral poetry and 
 landscape painting are the work of men weary 
 of towns. Both town stimulus and country com- 
 posure have corresponding values. Many realistic 
 and introspective writers agree with Poe that cir- 
 cumscription of space aids concentration of atten- 
 tion : Pope worked best in his grotto, Montaigne 
 in his tower, and many great books have been 
 written in prisons. Many romanticists and phi- 
 losophers, on the other hand, prefer wide views 
 from hills or mountains, or to be beside or upon 
 the sea. There are similar differences with regard 
 to tidiness or disorder among scholarly parapher- 
 nalia and personal belongings. Both efficiency 
 and happiness depend upon a nice individual 
 balance of habit and variety, freedom and re- 
 straint. Flaubert used the same study for forty 
 years, and Lecky could think only when per- 
 fectly tranquil; but William Morris and Anthony 
 Trollope liked to write on railway trains. 
 
 "As for mental society or solitude, there has 
 been, as Edmund Gosse puts it, 'a strong senti- 
 ment of intellectual comradeship in every age of 
 real intellectual vitality.' Philip Gilbert Hamer- 
 ton was probably right in saying that intellect- 
 ual traditions persist more through coteries than 
 
 [ 99 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 through books. Some general society is necessary 
 to cultivate tolerance and sympathy. One must 
 also come to some adjustment with democracy 
 — its freedom and unrest, its ideal foundation and 
 materialistic structure, its lack of prejudice and 
 its inexperience — we cannot rest in Socrates' 
 opinion that the majority is merely a heap of bad 
 pennies. After the demands of social service are 
 arranged for, however, the intellect must look 
 through and beyond popular standards, and pur- 
 chase independence at whatever cost. Much se- 
 clusion is essential for knowledge, some solitude 
 for wisdom. Both independence and sympathy 
 are attained through an inner circle of select com- 
 panions, kept in what Dr. Johnson called repair, 
 by Emerson's plan of allowing the less interested 
 to fall away and be replaced by choice additions. 
 " Mental health, moreover, demands some con- 
 scious agreement with one's income, and some 
 mastery of expenditure. Too much money is as 
 bad as too little. A generous amount insures free 
 activity and rich material, but it relaxes deter- 
 mination and demands discrimination. Wealth 
 is essential for works of great accumulation in 
 history, or of fine appreciation in the arts. But 
 humanists appear to be none the worse for pov- 
 erty — Cervantes was a public letter-writer, and 
 
 [ I0 ° ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 his family took in washing. It is well, in any case, 
 to learn with Socrates how many things one does 
 not need, and to remember that there are uses 
 even for adversity. 
 
 " From physical foundation and social setting 
 we approach personality: — that something pe- 
 culiarly our own which, in the words of Petrarch, 
 4 it is both easier and wiser to cultivate and to 
 correct than to alter;' that something within us 
 which, in the words of Emerson, 'accepts and 
 disposes of impressions after a native, individ- 
 ual law.' We grow in wisdom as we grow in the 
 knowledge of such inner laws. They are funda- 
 mental and inevitable. They control mental life 
 and are not to be controlled save through much 
 self-realization. Is a man instinctively active, or 
 does he love contemplation and the forsaking of 
 works? Is he single-minded, identified with his 
 occupation, or does he work merely for bread and 
 live, for himself alone, in some dear avocation? 
 The single-minded may look forward to the per- 
 fection that comes from practice — and toward 
 becoming subdued to what he works in. Hence 
 Charles Lamb on the melancholy of tailors and 
 Dr. Robertson Nicoll on Matthew Arnold as ever 
 the inspector of schools. Other men show their 
 spontaneity and genuineness in their avocations 
 
 [ ">i ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 — witness Michael Angelo's sonnets and Victor 
 Hugo's sketches. Little intentional literature has 
 charmed the world like the amateur quatrains of 
 Omar the astronomer, translated by Fitzgerald 
 the dilettante. 
 
 "Is a man an idealist or a realist? Let him 
 ponder Don Quixote's impra&icality and Sancho 
 Panza's aimlessness, following inner impulse or 
 outward stimulus, denying the world or losing 
 his own soul. Let him ponder, moreover, Rem- 
 brandt's struggle to serve both at the same time. 
 The pitfalls of the realist are proverbial, but 
 ideals, also, may be dangerous, through mistaken 
 selection, partial generalization, or imperfect ad- 
 justment to the fads in hand. 
 
 "What, again, are our innate or acquired inter- 
 ests and desires'? Does their vision of the future 
 help or hinder our realization of the present"? Do 
 we aspire after the impossible, expecting preci- 
 sion or clarity, brevity or completeness, where 
 they cannot or should not be ? Do we apprehend 
 the unlikely? 'If anything external vexes you,' 
 says Marcus Aurelius, 'take notice that it is not 
 the thing which disturbs you, but your notion 
 about it, which notion you may dismiss at once 
 if you please.' Disappointment, says Dr. John- 
 son, 'you may easily compensate by enjoining 
 
 [ I02 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 yourself some particular study, or opening some 
 new avenue to information.' If we cannot attain, 
 like Lamb, to hissing our failures, let us, like La 
 Motte, retire to a Trappist monastery, and drown 
 consciousness in study. Let us not expect ideal 
 conditions — Spencer and Huxley could work 
 but three hours a day. Let us look, if necessary, to 
 our compensations. Napoleon had satisfactions 
 in spite of his standing forty-second at military 
 school. Darwin's inability to master languages 
 and his loss of pleasure in poetry, painting, music, 
 and natural scenery were more than made up for. 
 Let us hope for no 'simple, plausible, easy solu- 
 tion of life that will free us from all responsibil- 
 ity; ' but endeavor to apprehend and ennoble our 
 practical religion, that scale of values according 
 to which we spend our hoard of life. 
 
 " Mental action varies with individuals, yet 
 Emerson's general statement is true — 'thought 
 is a kind of reception uncontrolled by will; we 
 can only open our senses and clear away obstruc- 
 tions; suddenly thought engages us; afterward we 
 remember the process and its results.' Attention, 
 however, may be led, if not driven; sensibility 
 may become dirigible ; it is possible to learn how 
 to keep a fresh eye. Observation of our reactions 
 will make possible a wise selection among stimuli; 
 
 [ I0 3 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 so Gray learned to seek music, Darwin to avoid 
 it, and many have come to some conscious rela- 
 tion between reading and writing. Experience 
 will teach us how to free the mind from haunting 
 suggestions by fixing and holding their values; 
 how to recoiled: emotion in tranquillity; how to 
 begin work slowly, and steadily, and then accel- 
 erate; how to value the process as well as the pro- 
 duct of acquisition. We may learn, through the 
 slowness of accumulation, that we retain only 
 what we use, that a bad memory may be the best, 
 because selective, that even leisure may be well 
 employed. 'Whatever I do or do not do,' said 
 Sainte-Beuve, s I cease not to learn from the book 
 of life.' Lope de Vega, sailing with the Armada, 
 sacrificed all his manuscripts for gun-wads, but 
 landed with eleven thousand new verses. 
 
 "With such realization of ends and calcula- 
 tion of means, production reduces itself largely 
 to a matter of method. 'The difference between 
 persons,' said Emerson, 'is not in wisdom, but 
 in the art of classifying and using facts.' Each 
 mind has some ways in which it works most easily 
 and efficiently; let us discover and arrange for 
 these, and reap the rewards. Then it is time to re- 
 member Dante's saying that 'sitting upon down 
 one cometh not to fame,' and Whistler's that 
 
 [ I0 4 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 'drudgery leads to felicity,' and Emerson's that 
 'inspiration is the sister of daily labor.' Newton 
 made his discoveries 'simply by always thinking 
 about them.' Darwin's method was as elaborate 
 as it was successful — with portfolios of abstracts, 
 memoranda, and references; detailed, general, 
 and classified indexes for books; brief, then full, 
 then minute outlines before beginning to write. 
 Concentration and intensity of thought come al- 
 most of themselves through such a system. Dar- 
 win's practice, too, of writing rapidly and later 
 correcting deliberately, reaped the reward of both 
 states of mind without suffering the loss involved 
 in continually changing from one adjustment to 
 another, — that drain of energy which makes in- 
 terruptions so wasteful, even to minds that focus 
 quickly. Wisely controlled change combines the 
 benefits of continuity and variety. The scientist, 
 whose study requires muscular as well as mental 
 activity, tires less easily than the scholar busied 
 wholly with books. Varying the adjustment of 
 the same part, or successively occupying differ- 
 ent parts of the mechanism, is more refreshing 
 than total relaxation. 
 
 "While thus adapted to the mental mechan- 
 ism, a successful system must also be adjustable 
 to the material in hand. Observation must be re- 
 
 [ '05 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 ceptive, reading selective. Poets may harvest their 
 dreams ; historians must winnow their documents. 
 Goethe's ' vast abundance of objects that must 
 be before us ere we can think upon them,' and 
 Hawthorne's 'immense amount of history that 
 it takes to make a little literature,' must be pro- 
 vided for, along with Pater's selection and rejec- 
 tion — 'all art does but consist in the removal of 
 surplusage.' Every system ought to provide, at 
 any time and in any place, some form of record, 
 careful enough to be permanent, yet so simple 
 as not to be wasteful if never used — an envelope 
 that can contain data or be written upon itself 
 meets these needs. A system for preservation and 
 arrangement must be comprehensive enough to 
 include everything, accurate enough to make 
 everything available, flexible enough to vary 
 with any need, yet so simple as not to become 
 a tax. Few devices are better than Darwin's la- 
 belled portfolios, or smaller envelopes arranged 
 alphabetically or logically. Note-books are use- 
 ful only when abstracted or indexed. There are 
 clergymen whose sermons write themselves as 
 particular texts accumulate references in the in- 
 terleaved Bibles in which they note what inter- 
 ests them. For coordination and organization few 
 things equal a tabular abstract on a single sheet 
 
 [ ">6 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 of paper large enough to show at a glance the 
 nature of all the material. Such implements in- 
 fluence intelle&ual efficiency more than we sup- 
 pose. Much crabbed writing is due to bad pens, 
 much journalistic ease to soft pencils. Self-reali- 
 zation and the sense of life depend upon some 
 form of diary; style varies with dictation and the 
 typewriter. 
 
 "The chief criteria of mental efficiency, then," 
 read Professor Maturin, with a glance at the 
 clock, "lie between Matthew Arnold's definitions 
 of genius — 'mainly an affair of energy' and 'an 
 infinite capacity for taking pains.' Professor 
 James, holding that the average man uses only 
 a small part of his energy, would have us persist 
 through fatigue and ' second wind,' perhaps to a 
 third and a fourth. Even if experiment, however, 
 did not show that working beyond the fatigue 
 point yields a rapidly decreasing product at a 
 rapidly increasing cost, it would be uneconomic 
 to attempt to increase our flow of energy so long 
 as we waste so much of what we have in ineffi- 
 cient and unhygienic methods of work. Let us 
 rather study the conditions of our best moments, 
 clear away hindrances, and provide helps. Let 
 us prize the spontaneous activity of each state, 
 using fortunate moments for concentration, less 
 
 [ I0 7 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 efficient periods for accumulation and selection, 
 looking to future coordination. Let us follow nat- 
 ural rhythms of activity, relaxing primary activ- 
 ities by secondary functions useful also in them- 
 selves. Thus regularity and routine will develop 
 speed; accumulation and economy end in ripe- 
 ness. Quantity condenses into quality; selection 
 and arrangement grow into judgment and intui- 
 tion that may bear inspiration and vision. 'A 
 man's vision,' says Professor James, 'is the great 
 thing about him.' The natural history of such 
 vision, however, indicates that it is scarcely 
 more than the synthetic apex of long and careful 
 accumulation. The moment of the apercu is 
 so memorable that the conditions precedent are 
 usually forgotten, but the precious brilliance of 
 the diamond is merely the result of a happy crys- 
 tallization of common elements. 
 
 " For all of which," concluded Professor Ma- 
 turin with a smile, as he closed his portfolio, " I 
 bespeak your most esteemed consideration." 
 
 [ '08] 
 
p 
 
 XI 
 
 The Mystery of Dress 
 
 ROFESSOR Maturin was leaning side- 
 wise on his cane, gazing at the river. I stood 
 by his side several moments before he came out 
 of his reverie, greeted me warmly, and proposed 
 a walk along the Drive. 
 
 " I was thinking," said he, " of Fitzgerald's fall- 
 ing overboard and coming up serenely, still wear- 
 ing his top hat. This morning, while reading Scar- 
 ron's sonnet on the decay of the pyramids and 
 his black doublet, I noticed that I too needed 
 a new coat. Later, I lunched with one colleague 
 who is as dressy as Disraeli, and another who 
 goes almost as much out at elbows as Napoleon 
 when he entered Moscow. I have just left a third, 
 who is devoted to Lowell's favorite combination 
 of short coat and top hat. That brought me, by 
 way of Old Fitz, to a general contemplation of 
 the custom of wearing clothes. Hast any such 
 philosophy in thee, shepherd?" 
 
 " But little, I fear," replied I, "unless Carlyle's 
 will do." 
 
 "Scarcely, if you mean 'Sartor Resartus,'" was 
 his answer. " Do you believe that man, by nature 
 
 [ I0 9 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 a naked animal, is demoralized by clothes, and 
 that a return to nudity would dissolve society? 
 On the contrary, when Humphrey Howarth, the 
 surgeon, went to a duel naked for fear of the in- 
 fection of cloth in a gunshot wound, his antag- 
 onist came to his senses and withdrew his chal- 
 lenge. Of course, I agree that whatever represents 
 spirit is a kind of clothing, and that wisdom looks 
 through vestures to realities. But clothes in 'Sar- 
 tor' are merely the beginning of a philosophy of 
 things in general. Carlyle's irritation when Brown- 
 ing called on him in a green riding-coat, and his 
 own refusal to carry an umbrella are more to my 
 point. It is obviously appropriate that George 
 Borrow should always have carried an umbrella, 
 I understand how Goethe could ignore waist- 
 coats and Coleridge forget his shirt, but why did 
 Dickens dress like a dandy and Swinburne like 
 a farmer? What do clothes mean?" 
 
 "They sometimes represent the state of their 
 owners' finances," said I. " Lack of suitable cloth- 
 ing made Poe decline dinners and Johnson dine 
 behind the screen — if he really did." 
 
 "And Lovelace vary between cloth of gold 
 and rags," continued Professor Maturin medita- 
 tively, "much as Rembrandt varies his dress in 
 his portraits of himself. But that was when one 
 
 [ "O] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 man would wear the worth of a thousand oaks 
 and a hundred oxen, when mantles were con- 
 ferred by royal patent, and orders grew rich out 
 of hat monopolies. To-day, however, in spite of 
 adulterations that I am told call for a pure tex- 
 tile law, few of us are in need either of Pepys' 
 prayers to be able to pay his tailor, or of Lord 
 Westminster's thrifty making over his servants' 
 liveries for himself. 
 
 "Habit influences us more than cost, but what 
 influences habit? Why did Milton always wear 
 black, Pope gray, and Lamb snuff color? Why 
 did distributing his cast clothes 'disconsolate and 
 intender' Montaigne? Why did Tennyson send 
 his old clothes to be measured for new ones ? Why 
 do I find myself repeating an outfit I once chose 
 because it suggested what naturalists call protec- 
 tive coloration — when an animal, like a squirrel 
 on a tree-trunk, is scarcely distinguishable from 
 its background? Do I make a good principle 
 gloss a dull habit?" 
 
 "Such a habit," I replied, "like George Fox's 
 suit of leather, does deprive you of the interest 
 that accompanies even unsuccessful effort for va- 
 riety. The fairer sex is never wearied in its quest 
 of beautiful garb, nor sated with the rapture of 
 attainment." 
 
 [ «» ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 " How curiously we have changed all that," 
 replied Professor Maturin, "in the three centu- 
 ries since James Howell said that a letter should 
 be attired simply, like a woman; an oration richly, 
 like a man. I would not, like him, have putting 
 on a clean shirt an occasion for special prayer ; but 
 perhaps we have gone too far in our neglect of 
 finery. Dr. Holmes's counsel, 'always err upon the 
 safe side,' may be too cautious. Allingham says 
 that Leigh Hunt was old in street costume, but 
 young in his dressing-gown. Perhaps Goldsmith's 
 satin, or Jefferson's plush, or Mark Twain's white 
 flannels would renew my youth." 
 
 " Are you elated by your scarlet gown on Com- 
 mencement Day?" said I. 
 
 " By no means so much as the boys are," he 
 replied with a chuckle. "But that suggests an- 
 other aspect of the matter. Outward and visible 
 signs move those who are blind to inward graces. 
 Since Protestantism is retrieving some of its ban- 
 ished ceremonial, it might advance learning to 
 clothe it with more circumstance. Yet, we seem 
 to hesitate at symbolic clothing. Police and mili- 
 tary uniforms help law and order, but we toler- 
 ate ecclesiastical, judicial, and academic costume 
 only during the performance of specific functions. 
 We are so far from intellectual blue-stockings 
 
 [ »*] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 and political sans-culottcs, that we smile at musi- 
 cians' hair and painters' cloaks, and banish yacht- 
 ing and golf clothes from every-day wear. 
 
 "Simplicity seems the only unwritten law that 
 has succeeded so many written ones concern- 
 ing clothes. Tradition itself is weak. We wear the 
 Roman orator's neck-cloth, the wrist-bands that 
 marked the gentleman's freedom from manual 
 labor, the nobleman's black evening clothes, the 
 courtier's sword-belt and gauntlet buttons, and 
 a sailor king's long trousers — but all because 
 we wish to, or, at least, do not mind. Names are 
 naught, whether of mackintoshes or cravenettes 
 or bluchers or tam-o'-shanters. We ignore even 
 fashion, with its ever varying promise of equality 
 to the uncomely and its powerful economic urge. 
 We are emancipated by a common-sense in 
 clothes that would have jailed a man in Addison's 
 day. 
 
 "We may dress as we like, so long as we are 
 inconspicuous, but we must be that. We will no 
 longer tolerate clothes-advertising like the Ad- 
 mirable Crichton's. The man who lost his lawsuit 
 for damages because his horse ran away when he 
 saw the first top hat in England, would recover at 
 least costs to-day. Gautier deserved the mobbing 
 his pink doublet cost him. Tennyson was right 
 
 [ »3] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 to charge a young woman with creaking stays, 
 and to apologize when he found that the sound 
 came from his own braces." 
 
 "What other principles would you adduce?" 
 said I. 
 
 "A modicum of care," he continued, "in 
 agreement with Plato and Ruskin, that 'clothes 
 carefully cared for and rightly worn, show a bal- 
 anced mind.' I would have clothes appropriate, 
 too, to climate, use, and the individuality of the 
 wearer. I was once advised, most profitably, by 
 a friendly portrait painter as to what was appro- 
 priate to my' figure, features, and coloring. He 
 objected especially to my hats. 
 
 "It is curious how difficult hats are," contin- 
 ued Professor Maturin, after a pause that I for- 
 bore to break. " I doubt if any one, except For- 
 tunatus, ever had a perfect one. The Greeks were 
 wise in having little to do with them — suppose 
 all Greek statues had their straw bonnets tied 
 under the chin! Indeed, hats are chiefly develop- 
 ments of the last five centuries, and, it is said, 
 baldness with them. Yet, Synesius wrote 'In 
 Praise of Baldness;' Caesar prized the privilege 
 of continually wearing a laurel crown because it 
 hid his, and I do not know why else the academic 
 mortar-board comes down so far behind. I will not 
 
 [ »4] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 wear a ventilating hat like Rossetti's, although I 
 long for summer and the straws that America 
 has done so much to popularize. 
 
 "I am too thin for the comfortable Tenny- 
 sonian sombrero. I enjoy, as a dressing-gown, a 
 cowled Capuchin robe that I once had made 
 on Lake Orta, because of my theory that the 
 flowering of the monastic mind in the Middle 
 Ages was due to the germinating heat of hoods. 
 But, generally, I would emulate an acquaintance 
 who usually carries his hat in his hand, or another 
 who actually owns none, were that not too con- 
 spicuous. Even Leigh Hunt's charming essay 
 on • Hats, Ancient and Modern' has no help for 
 me — although I believe I might like a cocked 
 hat or a chapeau. 
 
 " I can take comfort in a coat," he continued, 
 "if it is loose; and in overcoats, if they resemble 
 Socrates' cloak, or the cloak that Petrarch be- 
 queathed to Boccaccio. Indeed, I should welcome 
 a return to shawls. I am uncomfortable in any 
 neckwear but black, or in any but reindeer gray 
 gloves. I should disesteem trousers had I not 
 once inadvertently worn a striped pair with even- 
 ing clothes — since then I have respected their 
 power. In shoes I emulate Wellington's care, for, 
 like William Morris, I need rather large ones. 
 
 [ "5 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 And I enjoy canes as much as Wellington did 
 umbrellas." 
 
 "All of which," said I, as we reached Pro- 
 fessor Maturin's door, "even if unvaried, is suf- 
 ficiently sober, appropriate, and individual." 
 
 "And simple enough," concluded he, "for 
 Frederick the Great or Newton. But, most of 
 all, I wish that the Germans would extend their 
 investigations in the hygiene of clothing. If we 
 knew more about that, we might trust its archi- 
 tecture and ornamentation to any discriminating 
 tailor." 
 
 [ "^ ] 
 
T 
 
 XII 
 
 Questions at Issue 
 HE Sindbad Society at its last meeting 
 
 on the night of the full moon, according to 
 custom — met within the hospitable doors of the 
 Ollapod Club. There, in the room with the roses 
 on the ceiling, we had for dinner caviare with 
 limes, a thin mushroom soup, duck roasted over 
 spice-wood, Turinese pepperoni of chilies and 
 preserved grapes, Leghorn coffee, and Turkish 
 sweetmeats. 
 
 The archaeologist was hot against such mod- 
 ern abuses as motor boats in Venice, and motor 
 cars on what he called the finest roads in the 
 world — those from Nice to Genoa, Amalfi to 
 Sorrento, and Ragusa to Gravosa. But when the 
 diplomat begged him also to ban the ancient 
 and dishonorable dogs from Constantinople, he 
 became resigned to life's little ironies, and, in re- 
 sponse to a general request, described quite won- 
 derfully how, after years of fruitless digging, he 
 had found a royal tomb in Egypt, and entered its 
 hot silence, to find its stately presences, its fur- 
 niture and linen, its sacrificial bread and incense 
 and flowers, all with their sense of yesterday 
 enduring through the ages. 
 
 [ "7 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 This prompted the musician, who was reared 
 in Turkey, to tell how an Arab sheik he used to 
 visit in the desert always bore with him the same 
 atmosphere of untold centuries. The colonel fol- 
 lowed, queerly enough, by saying that in his aero- 
 plane tests he always had the same impression 
 of the endless duration of time. Then some one 
 broke the happy spell, as people will, with some- 
 thing clever and distracting, although the joke 
 was good enough — James Howell's on people 
 who "travel much but see little, like Jonah in 
 the whale." 
 
 At that the talk scattered, the colonel describ- 
 ing Coromandel and Malabar, the biologist a 
 boat he was building; the mountain-climber plan- 
 ning for Alaska, and the painter for Japan, until 
 the psychologist asked the last why he was going 
 there. 
 
 The painter bent his head sidewise for a mo- 
 ment, as he does when he is thoughtful, and then 
 said: "Partly for the natural beauty, but chiefly 
 to study an art that does not disturb the truth 
 of its impressions by conscious theories like our 
 perspective; that honors color and emotion as 
 well as line and thought." 
 
 " Your psychology is sound," commented the 
 other. "Color vision is very organic, which is 
 
 [ "8 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 to say, emotional; being apparently caused by 
 minute chemical changes in the eye, under the 
 action of light. The appreciation of line, on the 
 other hand, seems to be due to mental associa- 
 tion with touching and feeling, and therefore is 
 rather a matter of attention and judgment." 
 
 "Will you kindly explain me also? "asked the 
 musician, who had been telling how no one knows 
 his own voice in a phonograph, because every 
 one hears his own speech reverberate through 
 his inner, as well as his outer ear. 
 
 "Music is the most emotional and the most 
 rhythmical of the arts," continued the psychol- 
 ogist, "because the auditory nerve keeps close 
 company in the brain with nerves from the heart 
 and lungs. Melody is merely a series of answers 
 to the body's expe&ation of its usual rhythm. As 
 one of your own critics has said, when music 
 seems to be yearning for the unutterable it is 
 only yearning for the next note." 
 
 The musician quelled the psychologist with an 
 imaginary baton, which he then pointed at the 
 biologist, saying, "Pray prove to the psychol- 
 ogist that he is nothing but pulp." 
 
 " He is surely little else," smiled the biologist, 
 "built by evolution and run by a chemical en- 
 gine." 
 
 [ "9 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 "Out on you scientists and your evolution!" 
 broke in the archaeologist. "Can your mechan- 
 ism make a Raphael, a Shakespeare, a Beetho- 
 ven? Can your evolution show any architecture, 
 sculpture, statecraft, drama, or philosophy equal 
 to those of the age of Pericles? The world will 
 produce nothing fine or permanent so long as you 
 fellows tinker with its machinery. Your heresy 
 of universal progress is merely a contemporary 
 mythology that is falser than — " 
 
 " Softly, softly," said Professor Maturin, shak- 
 ing his long forefinger at the disputants. "The 
 true philosopher, with Dante, loves every part of 
 wisdom. Why can we not all enjoy knowing that 
 cats hear better than dogs, and, at the same time, 
 appreciate Blake's saying that the sun is not a 
 round ball of fire, but the glory of the universe *?" 
 
 Everybody prepared to be mollified until Pro- 
 fessor Maturin undid his peacemaking by ask- 
 ing the astronomer to tell us all what a comet 
 looked like. When the astronomer replied that he 
 had not looked through a telescope for years, but 
 spent his time entirely in making calculations, 
 the archaeologist threw up his hands and moved 
 over to the painter and the musician, growling 
 that he was going to spend the rest of the even- 
 ing talking to somebody he understood. 
 
 [ I2 ° ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 I heard the two eagerly agree with him that 
 the Nile was the finest river in the world, if you 
 were there in November, but that you ought 
 never go to Japan except in summer, and then 
 I moved to other groups, where the mountain- 
 eer was comparing the view of the eternal snows 
 from Darjeeling with that of valley, river, and 
 sea from Mount Wellington, in Tasmania; or 
 the diplomat was telling about Bulgaria; or the 
 importer describing the Taj Mahal by moon- 
 light; or the psychologist quoting, with a twin- 
 kle toward the archaeologist, Sir Francis Galton's 
 saying, that men who are too bad for Europe go 
 to Constantinople, those who are too bad for Con- 
 stantinople go to Cairo, and those who are too bad 
 for Cairo go to Khartoum. 
 
 Everybody talked for a long while, since this 
 was the last meeting for the year, and in spite 
 of the earlier disagreement, which was, perhaps, 
 more apparent than real, I remember the even- 
 ing as one of especial illumination. 
 
 [ '21 ] 
 
XIII 
 
 The Fountain of Youth 
 
 PROFESSOR Maturin's study lamps were 
 dimmed to the mellow glow that makes 
 good talk. But his coffee and cigars were so wor- 
 thy of the dinner we had just ended that we con- 
 tinued to smoke in silent content, until our host 
 asked about the Vicar's vacation. 
 
 " My plans are about as usual," answered that 
 worthy, naming his sea-shore place without en- 
 thusiasm. 
 
 "Mine, too, are about the same," added Pro- 
 fessor Maturin, naming his similar place, with a 
 similar lack of interest 
 
 The Physician hemmed severely and shifted 
 in his chair. " Let us have it," smiled Professor 
 Maturin. 
 
 " Why will you act as though you were a hun- 
 dred years old?" said he. 
 
 "Perhaps we feel so, sometimes," replied Pro- 
 fessor Maturin, while the Vicar nodded. " I fancy 
 we would not ignore the fountain of youth, if we 
 knew where it was." 
 
 "It isn't far," retorted the Physician; "it's 
 merely open air and exercise." 
 
 [ 122 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 " I love open air," said Professor Maturin, " but 
 I hate what is usually called exercise." 
 
 "Naturally," replied the Physician, "being 
 a man of mind. The cult of muscle is ridicu- 
 lous in intellectual people. Muscle and vitality 
 are by no means the same, and you cannot do 
 much for either through unnatural gymnastics. 
 But I 'mean by exercise the maintenance of har- 
 mony between one's specialized functions and 
 what may be called fundamental adivity, so that 
 the whole works together happily and spontane- 
 ously. Such a balance is as easy to preserve as 
 it is important. We evolved as we are through a 
 series of large general movements, and we need 
 to continue enough of those to preserve a coor- 
 dination that complements and supplements the 
 particular functions that we most pradice. Thus, 
 we walk upright, instead of on all fours, proba- 
 bly as the result of long reaching and climbing. 
 Climbing is not always convenient, but one may 
 pradice setting up exercises anywhere until he 
 feels as upright and as sprightly as a primate. I 
 grant you it may not seem dignified," admitted 
 the Physician, as the Vicar smiled at the pidure, 
 "but it means health and happiness, and perhaps 
 life itself." 
 
 "Your suasion is sedudive," said Professor 
 
 [ I2 3 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 Maturin, "but how is one to know precisely 
 what he needs, and when?" 
 
 "Take, for illustration," resumed the Physi- 
 cian, "those moments when you feel the need of 
 exercise. A little analysis of the sensation will 
 make you aware of a kind of hunger for activity 
 in some particular muscle. A little ingenuity will 
 devise some appropriate exercise, and its moder- 
 ate practice will both meet the particular need 
 that was felt and diffuse a general tone of well- 
 being. 
 
 "Conversely, a general or a local sense of well- 
 being will seem to demand expression in action. 
 A little abandon at such moments will suggest 
 exercises that are both pleasant and profitable 
 to the body and interesting and enjoyable to the 
 mind. Similarly, mental and emotional states will 
 often suggest free and exuberant bodily expres- 
 sion. 
 
 "Any thoughtful man, moreover, may deduce 
 from the nature of his ordinary occupations what 
 larger vital activities he should have. Thus, trunk 
 and chest exercises would complement your spe- 
 cial functions as professional speakers, and your 
 sedentary study calls for supplemental arm and 
 leg exercises in the open air. Professional sing- 
 ers illustrate the successful development and 
 
 [ "4] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 maintenance of special functions through related 
 and supplemental activities. 
 
 "In short, if exercise is spontaneous and ra- 
 tional, qualitative rather than quantitative, for 
 the nerves rather than for the muscles, it will im- 
 prove the efficiency and facility of one's habitual 
 occupation, will establish a general vigor and sta- 
 bility of body, and maintain mental balance and 
 alertness; and, I repeat, such varied and recre- 
 ative activities will suggest themselves to any 
 thoughtful person, although it is wise, occasion- 
 ally, to secure professional approval or amend- 
 ment of them. In general, any moderate exercise 
 that interests or stirs enthusiasm is good. Games, 
 especially, correct nervousness and banish self- 
 consciousness through their impersonal aim or 
 cooperative effort, and they improve bodily struc- 
 ture and function by the way. Bowling, boxing, 
 fencing, and billiards are good. Tennis and golf 
 are better, because they are out of doors. Golf is 
 almost the best, because it is interesting, moder- 
 ate, and available throughout life." 
 
 "I could never become interested in any 
 game," said Professor Maturin; "their artificial 
 rules are irksome to me, and to acquire the skill 
 necessary to make them enjoyable oppresses me 
 as a waste of time." 
 
 [ "5 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 "Even so," rejoined the Physician, "there are 
 plenty of health-giving pursuits that have also 
 some utility in themselves. Among such are the 
 handicrafts and gardening; walking, riding, and 
 all sorts of excursions; swimming, rowing, and 
 sailing. Swimming, especially, is natural and in- 
 teresting; it employs many members harmoni- 
 ously, it quiets and invigorates nerve a&ion, and 
 gives strength and grace, self-control and confi- 
 dence. I should prescribe for you both this sum- 
 mer a daily swim, with plenty of floating on a 
 quiet shore, and then, if you become as refreshed 
 as you should, something more, like learning 
 to sail. What, by the way, is your avoirdupois?" 
 Neither Professor Maturin nor the Vicar had 
 been weighed in years. 
 
 "Weight is an important indication of health," 
 continued the Physician. "Every man, I think, 
 should have a complete health examination and 
 record at least once a year. Defects can then be 
 promptly remedied, and occupation and recrea- 
 tion be properly adjusted to individual capaci- 
 ties or limitations. One's family and personal his- 
 tory and tendency should be considered in every- 
 thing. More than a third of us have remediable 
 defects in sight, about a tenth in hearing, and so 
 many people neglect their teeth that they cause, 
 
 [ «6 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 Dr. Osier says, more deterioration than alcohol. 
 Digestion has a way of announcing its disturb- 
 ances, but the heart and spine disorders that one- 
 tenth of us have are usually allowed to spread 
 their deterioration unheeded; while almost no- 
 body considers the structure and function of the 
 feet as important as they are." 
 
 "I remember," said the Vicar with a smile, 
 "your first prescription for me — a looser hat, 
 firmer shoes, and a belt instead of braces." 
 
 " But does not such self-knowledge make one 
 morbid?" queried Professor Maturin. "Have I 
 not heard of a physician who had to abandon 
 practice because he fancied himself afflicted with 
 every disease that he diagnosed?" 
 
 "Surely," responded the Physician, "you refer 
 to Ferguson — the less we think about our own 
 anatomy and physiology the better; but your 
 physician must know them to keep you in health, 
 as well as to extricate you from disease. Know- 
 ledge about sanitation and hygiene, however, is 
 both intelligible and helpful to a practical belief 
 in personal and social health and good living. 
 I wish that every one would preach as well as 
 practice my favorite prescriptions of less heat and 
 more humidity indoors, gray-green wall-papers 
 and furniture to fit the individual, vacuum clean- 
 
 [ I2 7 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 ers and patent filters, and, ever, more fresh air. 
 Outdoor air is the most valuable therapeutic that 
 we know, just as it is the cheapest and the most 
 neglected. Forty per cent of our mortality is due 
 to neglect of fresh air. 
 
 "If, in fine, every aspect of life were consid- 
 ered first from the point of view of health; or if 
 food and sleep and exercise and good air were 
 put even on a par with other interests, we would 
 have so much vitality that we might practically 
 dispense with effort and enjoy all the profit and 
 pleasure of spontaneity. Instead, we so neglect 
 the entire physical basis that we allow a hurried 
 breakfast, a heavy coat, an uncomfortable chair, 
 or a bad light to spoil a whole day 's work, and, 
 perhaps, permanently to damage the worker. 
 Sedentary students ignore the need for activity 
 until interest and perception grow sluggish, mem- 
 ory dims, and minds that should produce snap- 
 shots require long time-exposures. If, on the other 
 hand, we would only practice a complete, instead 
 of a partial, economy, we should all be twice as 
 efficient and happy." 
 
 "You are surely right," said Professor Maturin 
 thoughtfully. " Plato was called so because of his 
 broad shoulders, Xenophon and Erasmus loved 
 horses, and Ronsard gardening. Christopher 
 
 [ »8 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 North walked from London to Oxford after din- 
 ner. Fitzgerald sailed half the year. The Physi- 
 cian does well to le&ure us, dominie. Let us both 
 reform, and go in for Greek sanity and the joy 
 of the age of chivalry. The times have changed 
 since the Bishop of London was the licenser 
 for physicians. But," he continued, as we rose 
 to go, "if the Vicar and I promise to pra&ice 
 your preachment this summer, what shall we do 
 when we come back to town? My walking up 
 and down and the Vicar's riding evidently need 
 something more, by way of paprika." 
 
 "I hope eventually to convert you both to 
 golf," smiled the Physician, "but until then, ob- 
 serve your needs and invent exercises to meet 
 them, as I have indicated. Write me out a list 
 of your inventions this summer; in the autumn 
 I will go over both you and them, and perhaps 
 suggest others. Next year I may prescribe moun- 
 tains and motor cars for variety. Meanwhile, use 
 the fountain of youth and prepare to live long 
 and prosper." 
 
 "Good-by, good-by," said Professor Maturin. 
 " Many thanks. You have surely suggested a 
 great perhaps." 
 
 [ I2 9 ] 
 
XIV 
 
 The Contemporary Fiftion Company 
 
 "T^XCELLENTLY well met," said Pro- 
 
 I J fessor Maturin, as we nearly collided on 
 a down-town sidewalk, — "excellently well met. 
 Come with me to the Contemporary Fiction 
 Company." 
 
 "And what may that be?" I inquired. 
 
 "I do not yet quite know," he replied, "but 
 with your kindly aid I hope soon to learn." 
 
 The visible part of the Contemporary Fi&ion 
 Company proved to be a private corridor in 
 an office building, surrounded by half a dozen 
 rooms occupied by young men and women and 
 typewriters. Its master-mind was evidently the 
 youthful but most business-like president, who 
 included me in his welcome to Professor Maturin, 
 and described his company as a semi-mutual 
 corporation engaged in the production of fi&ion 
 for the trade. 
 
 "Our staple," said the president, "is short sto- 
 ries, and in the present state of the market we can 
 scarcely keep even with our orders. Last week 
 we delivered one dozen each of aviation, auto- 
 mobile, rural and suburban, settlement and soci- 
 
 [ *3° ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 ology, power-boat and yachting, and two dozen 
 heart-interest stories. To-day we ship a dozen 
 near-Mexico army and navies, a rush order. We 
 are now at work on a gross of adventure stories 
 for a syndicate. The magazines are delighted to 
 find that we may be depended upon to supply 
 precisely what they want just when they want it, 
 and save them the infinite annoyance of deal- 
 ing with individual authors; and they also find 
 that our rates for quantity save them a good deal 
 of money. Therefore we are working up to our 
 capacity of about seventy stories a week, and, 
 incidentally, accumulating a tidy little surplus. 
 Our system is very simple. I and the secretary- 
 treasurer control the company, and draw up the 
 specifications for all work. The sketching, filling 
 in, and finishing are done by heads of depart- 
 ments, who hold smaller blocks of stock, and by 
 junior assistants, whose salaries are a share of the 
 profits — a plan that insures their best interest 
 and efficiency. But I fear that I bore you — " he 
 hesitated. 
 
 Being assured of our very great interest, the 
 president led us to a long table beside which 
 stood several drawers from filing-cases on a kind 
 of rolling truck. "I have been working here on the 
 specifications for the adventure stories I spoke 
 
 t '3> ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 of," he continued, taking up a sheaf of printed 
 blanks. " Here are some beginnings from the Ac- 
 tion file. This newspaper clipping headed ' Fire- 
 man rescues four' is not uncommon, but you can 
 see the story grow when you combine it with this 
 one — ' Little girl gets pass to feed fire horses.' This 
 next clipping is sufficient in itself — 'Freighter 
 sails to Africa to barter beads for wild animals.' 
 These others — 'Palace ablaze,' 'Island sinks,' 
 and 'Whole town destroyed' — are also promis- 
 ing. Here is an item from the Anecdote file — 'A 
 young fellow in a supper restaurant stares rudely 
 at a lady, and flicks his cigarette-ash in the face 
 of her remonstrating escort. The latter picks up 
 the offender, shakes him like a bottle, and returns 
 him gently to his chair. The escort happens to 
 be Sandow.' In dull seasons we make up action 
 outlines from lives of filibusters and explorers, 
 from opera librettos and plays, and, finally, from 
 nursery rhymes. You are perhaps surprised at the 
 last, but they contain a great deal of fundamen- 
 tal human interest. 
 
 "Having selected a number of such Action- 
 starts, as we call them, we turn to Situation. Here 
 are some items from that file — 'Saw Flying 
 Dutchman,' ' Racing against ship fire,' 'Chinese 
 crew burns joss-sticks to comet.' Cut out the 
 
 [ J 32 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 comet, and all of these items go with the African 
 barter ship. ' Religious seel: awaits the end of the 
 world' — that may combine with 'Island sinks' 
 or 'Whole town destroyed.' These others furnish 
 Situation-starts — ' Smuggling by aeroplane,' 
 'Foreign officers caught spying on forts,' 'Colo- 
 nial returns displeased with home,' ' Has custom 
 house search her social rival,' 'Fashionable wo- 
 men see prize-fight.' That last gives a welcome 
 variation from the conventional Monte Carlo 
 gambling-hall opening. Many stories, of course, 
 we begin with ' Charade r-starts.' Some of these 
 come from clippings, like the following — ' Man 
 who feeds nuts to squirrels,' ' Dead laborer was 
 wealthy sociologist,' 'Former waiter becomes 
 hotel manager.' Members of the staff, also, turn 
 in suggestions, like the following — 'The man 
 with the wardrobe trunk,' 'Doubles in appear- 
 ance but not in character,' 'Hero and centre of 
 story who never appears.' Gradually we are mak- 
 ing up a canon of contemporary characters like 
 the famous stock characters of the Roman or the 
 Restoration comedy. Butlers and sailors, engi- 
 neers and explorers, are staple. Bosses and spies 
 are a bit stale, and we are going slow on commer- 
 cial travellers and advertising managers. But we 
 are featuring the army-woman, and we expecl: a 
 
 [ J 33 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 good response to our new ticket-chopper series. 
 Live new characters are always in demand. 
 
 "The last general specification is 'Setting and 
 Scene,' like — 'Oil fire fogs the river,' and so forth. 
 We consider scene so important that we have in 
 every office Stevenson's words, 'Culminating mo- 
 ments, epoch-making scenes, that strike the mind's 
 eye, put the last mark of truth upon a story.'" 
 
 After again hesitating and being again assured 
 of our extreme interest, the president continued: 
 "Theme, character, action, incident, situation, 
 and scene being thus stated on the specification 
 blanks, we write in hints for Treatment. Thus we 
 keep the characters as simple as possible, trying 
 for individual examples of conventional types, 
 for definite persons that develop sharply, in small 
 groups, with strong contrasts. The presentation 
 we elaborate as much as possible — how the char- 
 acters affect one another and display themselves 
 in deeds and words. We cut out analysis and 
 comment, but expand on appearance, manner, 
 dress, and speech. Similarly, in action we make 
 the pulsation of interest primary: emphasizing 
 expectation, uncertainty, surprise, and quick so- 
 lutions. With these various suggestions the spe- 
 cifications go the rounds of the heads of depart- 
 ments, each of whom makes further additions rep- 
 
 [ '34 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 resenting his special field. When the blanks come 
 back we finally approve or amend them, and as- 
 sign the stories for writing. Each junior assistant 
 writes about one story a day, directly on the type- 
 writer. When each story is written to the speci- 
 fied length, the writer adds a title, and the piece 
 goes the round of the heads of departments once 
 more, for approval or amendment. All details of 
 character, or action, or setting that are questioned 
 are either omitted, or verified from sources in the 
 office, or referred to people outside who know. 
 A slight seasoning of humor is also written in 
 wherever the characters would express or display 
 it. We are, however, very conservative about 
 humor, since it is impossible to know how read- 
 ers will take it. Irony and satire are so generally 
 misunderstood that we exclude them altogether. 
 " Finally, our style man supervises all dialogue 
 and diction. He is learned in every form of liter- 
 ary speech from Platonic symposia and mediae- 
 val disputation, down to mid-Victorian table talk 
 and contemporary slang. He sees that all conver- 
 sation is clear and consistent. In style he suffers 
 nothing that is not expressive of the matter or 
 instantly intelligible to the average reader, and 
 yet, under his criticism, the style of our output 
 is on a very high level. He hates adjectives, and 
 
 [ '35 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 has an eye even for syllables and letters, being 
 severe with explosives and gutturals and cordial 
 to liquids and labials. He has a collection of fine 
 lines of verse to be memorized by any assistant 
 whose di&ion grows commonplace. It was he 
 who devised our system of naming characters 
 from places, in order to avoid the possibility of 
 annoying a&ual people, although he does some- 
 times invent names to suit characters — like Mrs. 
 Grandy,or Miss Miniver, or Monsieur Galantin. 
 It was he, also, who devised our system of signing 
 each story with a name appropriate to its variety, 
 so that these signatures become trade names. 
 Many of our best titles, too, are his. He named 
 * Mary-Go-Round' and 'Helping Harrington,' 
 'Yellow Jacket' and 'The Golden Goose,' 'The 
 Rule of Three' and 'One Hundred and One,' and 
 our ' Half-portion' and 'Tales of To-day' series. 
 He becomes an officer of the company shortly, 
 investing some of his large outside earnings from 
 naming apartment houses, sleeping-cars, and man- 
 ufactured articles like the 'Fair-price products."' 
 
 "But what will be the effect upon literature?" I 
 wondered, when we were again upon the street. 
 "It will have no effect upon literature," said 
 Professor Maturin. 
 
 [ '36] 
 
XV 
 
 The Old Doctor 
 
 THE Old Do&or is dead," said Professor 
 Maturin, holding up a marked newspaper, 
 as he led the way to two easy chairs before the fire. 
 " He was a very individual man of power and 
 integrity, a philosopher as well as a physician — 
 one of those rare people who love and tell the 
 naked truth. So far as I know, he never blinked 
 a fa6t nor shirked a danger. I feel as though I had 
 known him all his life. For the last twenty years 
 I have seen him only occasionally. But I saw 
 much of him when I was a boy and a young 
 fellow home from college, and my family knew 
 him intimately before I was born. 
 
 "As a small boy on some family errand I used 
 often to wait in his outer office, looking through 
 its window to the street, or gazing at its one en- 
 graving of a lion staring at the sun, or its portrait 
 of an Italian physician who gave his life to con- 
 quer the plague. I always jumped when the doors 
 of the inner office slid apart and the old docior 
 stood, one hand on each door, with his large head 
 bent and his gray-blue eyes intent upon me from 
 their ambush of tumbled yellowish hair and 
 
 [ J 37 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 bristly beard. His rapid questions, in a rich but 
 husky voice, always upset me, and although I 
 knew him to be kindliness itself, I always re- 
 sponded shakily to his summons into his sanc- 
 tum. 
 
 "I can see him, vividly, now, as he sat there 
 writing prescriptions, his tall, thin form bent over 
 his desk, his left hand, white and shapely, hold- 
 ing the paper, his right, heavier and stained, trac- 
 ing the words with nervous jerks and a lavish 
 expenditure of ink. I see at the same time both 
 the thinning thatch of his broad forehead and 
 the much creased silk skull-cap that crowned his 
 wrinkles later. 
 
 "That inner office was crowded with cases 
 that reached to the ceiling and overflowed with 
 books and papers and glittering instruments 
 that proclaimed their owner surgeon as well as 
 physician. The old do&or seldom allowed his 
 servants, whom he chose and kept with more 
 kindliness than discretion, to enter it. And it 
 was so full of all sorts of things that it seemed 
 quite disorderly, although its owner could put his 
 hand instantly on anything that he wanted. The 
 whole place was redolent, moreover, of many 
 drugs and, I regret to say, of horse-blankets. 
 Sometimes, for exercise, the old do&or walked 
 
 [ 138 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 on his rounds — paying little heed to the road, 
 moving fast or slow, upright or bent, according 
 to the thought that abstracted him. But mostly 
 he drove in a much-splashed chaise, a handsome, 
 well-blooded, but ill-groomed horse, to which 
 he was devoted. He was faithful all his life to 
 such speedy but shaggy steeds, just as he was to 
 pepper-and-salt suits and large, soft black hats, 
 each precisely like its predecessor. At the conclu- 
 sion of each of my early visits he would show 
 me, through a window, some dog or cat or bird 
 that he kept in his back yard, for he ranked pets 
 among the consolations of life. 
 
 " Even then I was interested in him as a per- 
 sonality, for I had been told how, as a boy, he 
 used to carry a bag of papers and do similar ser- 
 vices for his father, a stately and irritable old 
 judge, who was so formidable that few people 
 could see any fatherly pride and affection in him. 
 But as people used to say that the old judge 
 could see in the dark, there is no reason to think 
 that he was blind to his son's exceptional charac- 
 ter and promise, especially as he sent him to col- 
 lege, which was then very unusual in the town. 
 There, after a time, the young fellow decided to 
 go in for medicine. His reasons, which he did not 
 tell his father, were that law was a selfish and soul- 
 
 [ x 39 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 less career, which contracted, instead of expand- 
 ing, the mind, but that medicine was an oppor- 
 tunity for both social service and, through its 
 sure and universal truth, an apprehension of the 
 divine disposition of affairs. This last belief he 
 retained throughout his life, his spirit and im- 
 agination never capitulating to the fatalism of 
 his profession. 
 
 "The old judge died while the boy was in col- 
 lege, leaving an estate composed chiefly of loans 
 to poor people who could not pay, and rich men 
 who were slow to do so. Still, there was enough, 
 with considerable sacrifice on the part of the 
 mother, to enable the young man to complete 
 his college years and go on to a metropolitan 
 university until he earned his degree in medi- 
 cine. With this, for the time, most exceptional 
 training, and the approbation of his best pro- 
 fessors, he returned to the old town to enter 
 upon general practice, so enamored of his pro- 
 fession that he wondered why all men were not 
 physicians. 
 
 "He soon won back the intimacy of a few 
 close friends, but soon came, also, to be disap- 
 pointed in the force and genuineness of most of 
 his townspeople. On the other hand, his own care- 
 lessness in dress and indifference to small formal- 
 
 [ Ho ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 ities confirmed the general local suspicion of any 
 one who had been so long "away." He discon- 
 certed people, also, by his superior knowledge 
 and diredtness, and his unfailing attack upon 
 whatever savored ofweakness or insincerity. Con- 
 sidering the family finances and his own lack of 
 physical ruggedness, he definitely put marriage 
 aside from his calculations, and when this, like 
 most of his conclusions, became known, it fur- 
 ther discounted his social availability. Hence, his 
 life soon became restricted almost wholly to his 
 home, his small circle of intimates, and his pro- 
 fession. 
 
 "At his profession he continued to work tre- 
 mendously, giving exhaustive study to each case 
 that came his way, inquiring into local epidem- 
 ics and sanitation, tirelessly investigating new 
 ideas, and organizing his entire technical know- 
 ledge. He cheerfully turned night into day when 
 he was needed, as he did later, when I knew him 
 to get up in the middle of the night to visit a 
 seriously sick patient whom he had already seen 
 before and after breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and 
 just before going to bed. Birth and death loomed 
 so large in his horizon that he was far from ever 
 considering what it was in his place to do. Self- 
 forgetful as he was, however, he made no senti- 
 
 [ Hi ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 mental sacrifices, but was the first to introduce 
 trained nurses into the town, and to urge, every- 
 where and always, the need for the local hospital 
 that came only long after. He had, even, some 
 dreams of preventive medicine. 
 
 "His father's successor and the group of able 
 lawyers, bankers, and business men that con- 
 trolled the town, looking upon all of this with 
 favor, determined him, although still young, to be 
 one of themselves, and made him health officer 
 and physician to the county jail and poor-farm. 
 This confirmed his identification with his work 
 until he thought of it all the time, riding, walking, 
 at his desk, at meals, or lying awake at night. In 
 this way, without relaxing his following of the 
 latest professional knowledge, he came to believe 
 increasingly in dire6t observation and experi- 
 ence, and acquired a discriminating respect for 
 the traditional lore of old men and women. Grad- 
 ually, more and more people began to see in him 
 the true physician — working for work's sake, 
 giving time and labor to the poor without re- 
 ward, a tireless guardian of the lives entrusted 
 to him, a devoted champion and example of all 
 sanity and wholesomeness. 
 
 "Some of his traits, however, still delayed his 
 complete success. He was often restless, some- 
 
 [ H2 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 times impatient in argument, and not always con- 
 siderate of his opponents. Once he even slapped 
 a recalcitrant patient. He was deeply humiliated 
 over that, and candid and regretful over his other 
 defe&s, but he held that one could do but little 
 by special effort to change one's character. He 
 was, moreover, too learned and quick-witted and 
 plain-spoken to be a comfortable colleague for 
 most of his fellow practitioners. They felt obliged 
 to look with disfavor on his preference for simple 
 medicaments and his emphasis on hygiene, and 
 they were publicly pained and privately severe 
 concerning his carelessness of appearances and 
 his open pooh-poohing of what he called 'the 
 hocus-pocus of the profession/ 
 
 "But after his marriage, which was an incon- 
 spicuous one, the softer and finer sides of his 
 nature took the permanent ascendency, and the 
 community, although it knew little of his family 
 life, felt a new gentleness behind the firmness 
 of his growing power of command. It was then 
 that he began the practice, which he would have 
 scorned earlier, of carrying in his pockets cheer- 
 ful and humorous quotations as means for en- 
 livening depressed patients. Thus, slowly but 
 steadily, through some conspicuous successes 
 and many sure ones, his reputation became more 
 
 [ '43 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 and more established, until, at about forty-five, 
 he was accepted by all as unquestionably the 
 chief physician of the town. 
 
 "His frankness, however, by no means de- 
 creased as his fame advanced, but people increas- 
 ingly understood his eccentricities as they in- 
 creasingly honored his intellect and revered his 
 charade r. He never hesitated to say, for example, 
 that his successes were due more to experience 
 and common sense than to any scientific know- 
 ledge. This was, perhaps, a limitation of his loca- 
 tion so far from the centres of scholarship, but 
 he would have followed reason rather than au- 
 thority anywhere. When the chief apothecary 
 caught cold and died from a consumption that 
 the old dodor had long pronounced cured, he la- 
 mented that this mistaken judgment had brought 
 him more reputation than any real cure he had 
 ever accomplished, and he would sometimes re- 
 gretfully compare the tremendous exertions that 
 had gone unrecognized in his earliest pradice 
 with the late unreasoning praise of almost every- 
 thing he did — 'So hard it is,' he would say, 
 'to establish unpopular truth or check popular 
 error.' 
 
 "In spite of the fad. that his penetration so far 
 exceeded the ordinary that his wit often led him 
 
 [ M4 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 beyond knowledge to track nature to her lair, he 
 used to grieve that so many things were hidden 
 from him. He trusted much to the wisdom of the 
 natural course of things, watching his cases and 
 all their surrounding conditions closely, sweep- 
 ing away many of the cobwebs of current prac- 
 tice, and emphasizing chiefly prescriptions of hy- 
 giene. Most diseases, he held, were either hope- 
 less or would cure themselves if people would be 
 reasonably careful. After his income became ade- 
 quate for his modest needs he disliked to take 
 money for his services, preferring to get whatever 
 he wanted from the local tradesmen, and to care 
 for them and their families without charge on 
 
 either side. 
 
 "Gradually, without decreasing his labors — 
 I have heard that he made fifty thousand pro- 
 fessional calls — he became the community's phi- 
 losopher and friend, as well as its physician. This 
 was especially the case after he came home, a citi- 
 zen of the world, from a late European journey, 
 during which, apparently, he had ignored land- 
 scape, archite&ure, and art in order to converse 
 with all sorts and conditions of men. As his ear- 
 nestness and meditation increased with age, and 
 his utterance, always unexpected and pithy, grew 
 ever more apt and forcible, his sayings became 
 
 [ MS ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 widely quoted and accumulated into a body of 
 doctrine. 
 
 "He was by no means chiefly a critic, for, 
 as he said, there were always more unfortunate 
 men needing encouragement than fortunate men 
 needing reproof. He maintained that a clean mind 
 and busy hands were proof against any tribula- 
 tion, and that happiness lay not in the world, but 
 within the mind. 'Whoever would live wisely,' 
 he would say, ' must know what he wants,' and 
 ' Good humor bears half the ills of life.' 
 
 "It will be long, indeed, before his place and 
 his friends forget 'the Old Do&or.' " 
 
 [ h6 ] 
 
XVI 
 
 Breakfasting with Portia 
 
 "T~)ROBABLY few persons who are not pro- 
 X fessionally interested," said Professor Ma- 
 turin, u realize how earnestly the schools of to-day 
 are endeavoring not only to conserve the proved 
 excellences of traditional knowledge, but also to 
 provide new varieties of training that are made 
 imperative by present-day conditions. Hence 
 the subjects in the curriculum that appear fads 
 to the fathers — nature study, manual training, 
 physical education, household science and art, 
 music, and the fine arts. Probably fewer yet know 
 that American experiment in one of these fields, 
 especially, has been so notable that the British 
 Board of Education sent a special commission 
 to study and to report to Parliament on the teach- 
 ing of domestic science or household economics 
 in the United States. 
 
 "It was the scientific and comprehensive char- 
 acter of this report, sent me by a young friend, 
 that first informed me of our distinction in this 
 difficult field. This same young person had pre- 
 viously overcome my doubt as to the propriety 
 of making such matters the subject of academic 
 
 [ H7 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 study by learnedly quoting Xenophon's Socrates, 
 to the effe6t that 'domestic management is the 
 name of an art, as that of healing or of working 
 in brass, or of building.' 
 
 "It should be understood, to be specific, that 
 she, whom we may call Portia, as a present stu- 
 dent and a prospective propagandist of domestic 
 science, is about to receive her degree from that 
 part of one of our metropolitan universities which 
 conduces research in education and trains teach- 
 ers both of the ancient liberal arts and of such 
 modern practical sciences as Portia's own. After 
 several years devoted to the usual college sub- 
 jects, her attention is now concentrated upon ed- 
 ucational principles and procedures in general, 
 and on the practice and presentation of her chosen 
 subject in particular. For a considerable period 
 she has overflowed with such interesting infor- 
 mation concerning the chemistry and biology, the 
 production and manufacture, and the preparation 
 and the assimilation of foods, that I was more 
 than delighted one day to be invited to partake 
 of a breakfast prepared by her and an associate, as 
 one of the numerous practical tests of knowledge 
 and efficiency demanded by her curriculum. 
 
 " On my arrival, the Princess Ida who presided 
 over this department of the modern Athenaeum 
 
 [ us ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 exhibited the equipment for the study and prac- 
 tice of her science, — a technical library of many 
 volumes; elaborate collections of current reports 
 and monographs; photographs, charts, and rec- 
 ords of investigations; especially equipped of- 
 fices and lecture and conference rooms, — and 
 then presented me to the half-dozen instructors 
 under her direction. The laboratories for the bio- 
 logical and chemical study of food materials were 
 not unlike others that I had seen; but those de- 
 voted especially to food preparation uniquely 
 combined the facilities of an elaborate club 
 kitchen with the scientific immaculateness of a 
 surgery. The whole I was told, by the way, was 
 merely preparatory to a really perfect set of lab- 
 oratories which were building. 
 
 "A tile-topped laboratory table, with a skel- 
 eton gas-stove above, and various drawers and 
 cupboards beneath, stood in the centre of the 
 room for the demonstrator. About this, arranged 
 on three sides, like a banquet table, were perhaps 
 thirty similar but connected desks at which the 
 students sat in trained-nurse uniform, facing their 
 instructor. 
 
 "The right hand drawer of each desk con- 
 tained such familiar small utensils as knives, 
 forks, and spoons, along with certain others that 
 
 [ J 49 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 would have seemed strange to our grandmo- 
 thers; all carefully listed, their condition and ar- 
 rangement being subject to military inspection. 
 Each drawer at the left contained flours, sugar, 
 spices, and condiments in laboratory precision. 
 The cupboard below each desk, closed by a slid- 
 ing shutter, contained measuring-cups, bowls, 
 platters, pans, and the like; each equipment be- 
 ing adequate for all ordinary cooking processes. 
 Around the sides of the room were stoves and 
 ranges of various designs heated by coal, char- 
 coal, electricity, steam, gas, and oil, not forget- 
 ting the professor's Aladdin oven, or the peasant's 
 hay-box cooker. 
 
 " Here were also immaculate porcelain sinks 
 where uniformed maids cleaned the larger uten- 
 sils. Each student kept her own equipment neat. 
 Cases and frames held special implements and 
 supplies drawn from a nearby stock-room, or 
 from library or files. Here and there were bul- 
 letin boards displaying tables for computing 
 dietaries, and newspaper clippings concerning 
 the cost of living. In one corner, as an interest- 
 ing reminder of the needs and possibilities of 
 the simple life in the midst of this intentionally 
 ideal equipment, stood an outfit that might be 
 made and used in the remotest rural school — 
 
 [ 'SO ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 a cheap but good oil stove, mounted on the zinc- 
 covered top of a packing-box, that included 
 inexpensive examples of the fundamental im- 
 plements, and had an upturned fruit crate for 
 a seat. This entire outfit cost about four dol- 
 lars. 
 
 "In one of these laboratories, students were 
 making a comparative, experimental study of 
 breads; halting occasionally to hear from the 
 demonstrator and ponder the do&rine of the pro- 
 gression of batters and doughs from corn bread, 
 through waffles, to twin mountain muffins — 
 'which are the beginning of cake/ In another 
 room, fruits were being preserved separately and 
 in combinations, and in all mediums from dis- 
 tilled water to heavy syrups. In a third, the vis- 
 itor was given, as specimens of material for dis- 
 tribution, a mimeographed recipe; a blue-print 
 diagram of the conventional cuts of beef, lamb, 
 veal, and other meats; and a sheet of small pho- 
 tographs showing how typical cuts of good meat 
 should look. 
 
 " Meanwhile, Portia and Nerissa had been 
 busy with the breakfast in a separate kitchen 
 and dining-room, as like as possible to those in 
 ordinary homes, yet planned with the best wis- 
 dom and taste of the departmental staff. To this 
 
 [ «5i ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 dining-room the pilgrim was now summoned 
 by his young friend, costumed as a maid and 
 appearing slightly anxious, for she and her ally 
 were also to serve the meal that they had pre- 
 pared. The Princess Ida's premier acted as host- 
 ess, and a masculine professor and a feminine 
 instructor joined to make a party, typical, the 
 hostess announced, of sedentary men and of 
 moderately a&ive women — a statement that 
 apprised me of the facl that I was considered not 
 merely as a guest, but also as scientific data. The 
 simple goodness of the linen and china, however, 
 was only that of the discriminating home, and 
 the growing plant on the table was there, I was 
 told, for purely aesthetic reasons. 
 
 "But superior knowledge and skill entered 
 with the food — stewed prunes and apricots, as- 
 tonishing in size, delicious in flavor. Although 
 I am unaccustomed to breakfasting at noon, 
 and although years of housekeeping have been 
 unable to blot out the remembrance of previous 
 prunes, I fell to with avidity. My memory of the 
 ensuing conversation is somewhat mingled with 
 later talks with Portia, but then or afterward, 
 I learned that our total consumption of this dish 
 was only about four ounces, at a cost of approx- 
 imately three cents for four persons. A home, of 
 
 [ 152 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 course, must also count the cost of all the food 
 prepared, but not consumed. 
 
 "The delectable quality of the cereal that fol- 
 lowed was due, along with its superior digestibil- 
 ity, I was informed, to its first having been briefly 
 boiled in order to open the grains, by bursting, 
 to the action of the gentler after-cooking. The 
 cost of cereal, I was reminded, was small when 
 compared with that of its accompaniments. We 
 ate one cent's worth of cereal, but the sugar upon 
 it cost an equal amount, and the cream five 
 times as much. But the professor justified the 
 combination because of the constituent elements 
 of the three; cream being largely fat, sugar largely 
 carbon, cereal largely protein. 
 
 "When later I asked Portia what this protein 
 was, she replied in a sort of chant, as though 
 she were assisting at some mystic rite : ' Next to 
 water, protein is the largest ingredient in the 
 human body, forming about eighteen per cent. It 
 is similar to the white of egg, the lean of meat, 
 the curd of milk, and the gluten of wheat.' This 
 and other intimations gave me to understand that 
 protein is the sine qua non of dietetics. 
 
 "As we enjoyed the admirable omelet which 
 followed — eight ounces: one of proteid, one of 
 fat, one-half ounce of carbo-hydrate; cost ten 
 
 [ '53 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 cents for four — the professor informed me that 
 the nutritive value of food is measured by the 
 heat it gives off in combustion, the unit of com- 
 putation being the calorie, or the amount of 
 heat which would raise one pound of water four 
 degrees Fahrenheit. Protein and carbo-hydrate 
 yield eighteen hundred to the pound, fats about 
 four thousand. The necessary number of calories 
 per day for a professional man is somewhere 
 between the thirty-two hundred averaged by 
 American and the thirty-three hundred averaged 
 by Japanese university professors. The standard 
 is placed at twenty-seven hundred by the spe- 
 cial agent in charge of the United States Depart- 
 ment of Agriculture's investigations in nutrition. 
 Hard muscular labor requires half as much 
 again. These figures are the result of measure- 
 ments, by means of a so-called respiratory calori- 
 meter, of the entire receipts and expenditures of 
 the human body, under varying conditions and 
 for periods of from three to twelve days. These 
 and similar experiments are described in bul- 
 letins published and distributed without charge 
 by the Department of Agriculture. Recent ex- 
 periments by other investigators make the ideal 
 number of calories considerably less. 
 
 "Toasted rolls and drip coffee ended our meal; 
 [ '54 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 the former weighed four ounces, two-thirds carbo- 
 hydrate, the remainder equally proteid and fat; 
 the ingredients costing only two cents, or as much 
 as the butter used on them. Throughout, of course, 
 no estimate was made of the cost of labor, an ele- 
 ment which, together with rent or interest on 
 equipment, usually more than equals the cost of 
 food. Fuel costs, approximately, one-tenth of this 
 amount. 
 
 "Coffee was assigned no nutritive value in the 
 tabular statement of our breakfast that Portia 
 worked out and brought me some days later. But 
 as a mild stimulant, it does more good than harm, 
 very much less harm than tea, which, when not 
 freshly made, contains chemicals difficult of di- 
 gestion. The coffee we four enjoyed cost approx- 
 imately three cents. 
 
 "When Portia told me that she was also to 
 give a luncheon, with soup, entree, salad, and a 
 sweet, I fear that I was too precipitate in my 
 commendation of her work, my prophecies for 
 her future, and in implying my willingness again 
 to serve the cause of science. I tried my best, 
 however, to be discreet, for I am very anxious 
 to be invited again, and I was rather pleased at 
 my adroitness in presenting her with an individ- 
 ually bound volume of Ruskin, with the red silk 
 
 [ 155 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 marker at that page of 'The Ethics of the Dust' 
 which says of cooking: 
 
 "'It means the knowledge of Medea and of 
 Circe and of Calypso and of Helen and of Re- 
 bekah and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the 
 knowledge of all herbs and fruits and balms and 
 spices; and of all that is healing and sweet in 
 fields and groves, and savory in meats; it means 
 carefulness and inventiveness and watchfulness 
 and willingness and readiness of appliance; it 
 means the economy of your great-grandmothers 
 and the science of modern chemists; it means 
 English thoroughness and French art and Ara- 
 bian hospitality; and it means, in fine, that you 
 are to be perfe&ly and always "ladies" — "loaf- 
 givers;" and, as you are to see, imperatively, 
 that everybody has something pretty to put on, 
 so you are to see, yet more imperatively, that 
 everybody has something nice to eat.'" 
 
 [ 156] 
 
XVII 
 
 Summer Science 
 
 " "IV If Y young friend, Portia," said Professor 
 i.VX Maturin, "was plainly dubious when I 
 suggested making a week-end visit to the scien- 
 tific colony where she planned to spend the sum- 
 mer doing research work in biology. She did not 
 believe that I would be interested in observing 
 a hundred college professors and students listen- 
 ing to lectures and looking through microscopes. 
 She implied that occasional visitors were felt, by 
 their holiday moods, somewhat to distract the 
 attention of the serious workers. And, finally, 
 she suggested that I was perhaps temperament- 
 ally unsuited to lead the very simple life that 
 prevailed, the place being as unlike as possible 
 to the typical summer resort. However, when I 
 pleaded my sympathetic interest in all things 
 human, modestly called attention to my reputa- 
 tion for discretion, and gently reminded her that 
 I had proved an acceptable and even welcome 
 guest among the peace agitators of Lake Placid, 
 the literati of Onteora, and the artists of Cornish, 
 she ceased to protest. I might do as I liked; she, 
 of course, would be glad to see me. 
 
 [ '57 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 "So it was that I found myself, one calm Sat- 
 urday evening, en route for her • Marine Biologi- 
 cal Laboratory.' During my sail along the Sound 
 I found myself amusedly wondering whether 
 Portia's professors would prove to be anything 
 like the important mate who gave so many more 
 and so much louder orders than were necessary, 
 in warping the boat from the dock. I was pleased 
 to find them rather more like the lights that 
 later appeared along the shore — some clear and 
 steady, some brilliant but intermittent, others a 
 trifle spectacular in coloring, all plainly enjoy- 
 ing a comfortable sense of their importance to 
 the community; but all of them interesting, and 
 some performing services really indispensable to 
 human progress. 
 
 " The realization of high thinking and, presum- 
 ably, plain living began with a six o'clock land- 
 ing next morning and the writer's earliest break- 
 fast in years, watching, meanwhile, coming events 
 cast their shadows before in the person of a slen- 
 der spe&acled gentleman in blue, who slowly 
 consumed one roll and a cup of frequently di- 
 luted coffee, while he rapidly assimilated the con- 
 tents of a thin, black, scientific-looking volume 
 with round corners and red edges. 
 
 "Within an hour, on a smaller steamer, we 
 [ '5» ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 sighted the red brick, yellow shingle, and green 
 slate buildings of a station of the United States 
 Fish Commission. It was because of this station, 
 devoted to everything that affects our fisheries, 
 and of its especial facilities for collecting and 
 preserving marine life, that a group of college 
 scientists established the biological laboratory 
 by its side, some twenty years ago. Their leader 
 was still the director, and although most of the 
 administrative details were now delegated to 
 younger men, he was still regularly in residence, 
 in a cottage erected by his appreciative col- 
 leagues to replace one destroyed by fire, and sur- 
 rounded by hundreds of carefully reared pigeons, 
 which for years he had made the basis of minute 
 studies in heredity, with the aid of two Japanese 
 artists, who painstakingly recorded the contour 
 and coloring of every peculiar bird. 
 
 " The slow and careful entrance of the steamer 
 into the landlocked harbor, through passages so 
 tortuous as to make a local pilot often necessary, 
 indicated the peculiar geographical character of 
 the locality. So great has been the sea's erosion 
 that it is difficult to say whether the rocky shore 
 line most resembled the margin of a cake at 
 which youthful teeth had been at work, or the 
 end of a flag whipped into tatters by the wind. 
 
 [ J 59 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 It is this intricate character of the region that 
 makes it the congenial home of many sea crea- 
 tures elsewhere obtainable only with difficulty. 
 
 " Portia met me at the pier, explaining her 
 somewhat tempered summer bloom by the fad 
 that she was spending the sunniest hours of 
 the day indoors in the laboratory. She conducted 
 me through a typical, old-time New England 
 village of perhaps five hundred inhabitants, 
 through streets almost as devious as the water- 
 ways, and similarly appropriated by science. 
 Next to the village church, which displayed the 
 usual placard that the ladies of the congregation 
 were about to hold a fair where refreshments and 
 a large assortment of aprons might be had, the 
 village store made the unusual announcement 
 that pure paraffin and proof alcohol were always 
 on hand, and that microscopes with all attach- 
 ments might be ordered. This emporium was 
 even the subjeclof a biological joke, which Portia 
 kindly explained to me: 4 Why was Portrope's 
 shop like an amoeba?' 'Because it was a single 
 cell with all the functions.' This comforted me 
 with the feeling that even if the scientists did 
 take themselves seriously, they yet preserved the 
 saving grace of humor. 
 
 "I was led to the most remarkable lodgings 
 [ '60 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 that I have ever occupied, kept by a publisher's 
 reader, who had elected to spend her summer in 
 this way for the sake of variety. I am convinced 
 that she got it, or at any rate, that she gave it. 
 Her furnishings were of the simplest, and the 
 strangest, having been leased from the amoeba 
 at ten per cent of their cost for each month of 
 use — an arrangement which, like the furnish- 
 ings, would scarcely have been acceptable to any 
 but an imagination that had been subje&ed to 
 the severest strains. 
 
 "The roof also leaked, but in such a desultory 
 fashion that it was about the only thing in the 
 place that impressed me as free from the influence 
 of scientific efficiency. But the house was direclly 
 on the harbor, my room overlooking that and the 
 laboratory, which occupied a compound next 
 to the commission. Portia departing to finish a 
 drawing before the bathing hour, I was left to 
 observe with interest, at a window apposite, an 
 assiduous young man intently bent over his work, 
 which, Portia informed me later, was a study of 
 the coagulation of lobster's blood. Subsequent 
 observation of a few of his neighbors convinced 
 me that at least some of the investigators were 
 not unacquainted with academic leisure. Down 
 by the shore an officer of our regular army nurses 
 
 [ '6. ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 was living in a specimen hospital tent, for the 
 purpose of testing the capabilities of its construc- 
 tion, texture, and color for service in the field. 
 
 "The taste of the publisher's reader was equal 
 if not superior to her imagination. If the house 
 reminded me that she was in the habit of re- 
 ceiving many strange things, the food was proof 
 that her standard of acceptance was very high. 
 Steamed clams, real chicken, and delicious vege- 
 tables, where they must have been by no means 
 easy to procure ; lobster in a chafing-dish, fruit sher- 
 bet, and thoroughly sophisticated coffee, formed 
 our Sunday dinner. The conversation was no less 
 interesting, my opposite at table being a distin- 
 guished biological painter. It had never previ- 
 ously occurred to me that of course there must 
 be such. Usually busied in evoking the outward 
 form and semblance of prehistoric creatures from 
 their remains in museums, he was here for semi- 
 recreation, painting marine life from the aquaria 
 of the Fish Commission. I was later presented 
 to the object of his current admiration, a creature 
 with the anatomy of a frying-pan and the man- 
 ners of the Bowery, popularly known as a 'sting- 
 ray' because of a dangerous weapon in its tail. 
 His next sitter was to be a rare specimen of para- 
 site fish, which, although nearly two feet long, was 
 
 [ is* ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 deriving all its locomotion about the tank from 
 a much-embarrassed but helpless shark, to the 
 under side of which it was complacently attached 
 by means of a su&ion arrangement on the top 
 of its head. 
 
 "Portia, like most of the other students, had 
 lodgings in a private house in the village, there 
 being not more than half a dozen cottages ex- 
 clusively devoted to summer guests. She took 
 her meals at the laboratory mess, where the plain 
 but adequate food was flavored with abundant 
 talk of distribution, variation, regeneration, mu- 
 tation, and the dynamics of protoplasm. Having 
 once fixed these catchwords in mind, I rapidly 
 acquired the local language, and could shortly 
 ask simple questions without difficulty. 
 
 " In addition to the long, low mess hall, the 
 laboratory occupied three other square, two-story 
 buildings of gray shingle, set off by dark green 
 paint. The largest, with several wings, contained 
 class-rooms and laboratories for two of the three 
 regular courses of instruction in physiology, mor- 
 phology, and embryology. On the upper floor 
 was an excellent technical library with Agassiz's 
 motto, 'Study nature, not books.' Around the 
 sides of both floors and in the other buildings 
 were individual working rooms, in which the 
 
 [ '63 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 more advanced investigators sentenced them- 
 selves to solitary confinement during the major 
 part of each day. These rooms and the students' 
 tables in the several larger rooms were at the 
 disposal of the colleges from whose annual con- 
 tributions most of the working funds of the lab- 
 oratory are derived. 
 
 " During the six weeks of regular class instruc- 
 tion in July and August, there are two or more 
 public evening le&ures each week, in which visit- 
 ing scholars present the more generally interesting 
 aspects of their special fields of study. I did not 
 share Portia's enthusiastic anticipation of the com- 
 ing of a lecturer who had just returned from hunt- 
 ing a particular variety of snail in the South Sea 
 Islands, but the le&ure changed my apprehen- 
 sion to appreciation, and, finally, to admiration. 
 
 "Other le&ures dealt quite as attractively with 
 the development of habits among birds, the de- 
 tection of the minute organisms that cause many 
 human diseases, the study of heredity in families 
 of rabbits and guinea-pigs, and the creation of 
 new forms of plant life. Every considerable in- 
 vestigation of which I heard had definite relation 
 to some generalization that was capable of prac- 
 tical application — a striking contrast to similar 
 work in certain other sciences. 
 
 [ 164 1 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 "Portia's problem, which I was interested to 
 find important enough to deserve a private room, 
 was the regeneration of planarians, minute ma- 
 rine parasites which have the power, when di- 
 vided, of developing new heads or tails. Her 
 endeavor was, by means of a microscope, mag- 
 nifying some twelve hundred times, to observe 
 and trace the earliest differentiation of the cells 
 that were to form the several new organs. Of 
 the hundred or more students in residence, about 
 half of them young women, perhaps one-half 
 were carrying on similar studies, of varying de- 
 grees of difficulty. Among these were college 
 professors and instructors who were conducting 
 researches that had extended over many years. 
 The volumes of the laboratory's monthly publi- 
 cation, containing records of the processes and 
 results of such work, made more than ordinarily 
 interesting reading, even for the layman. 
 
 "The recreations of the place were as inter- 
 esting as its labors. The social life was that of a 
 highly sele&ed college community, where every- 
 body knows everybody else and his wife, and 
 finds them well worth knowing; and everywhere, 
 always, there rose and fell a tide of excellent 
 talk. 
 
 "In short, I had so good a time that I visited 
 
 [ '65 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 Portia not three days, but ten, and then departed 
 with a regret that was not dispelled even when 
 she formally approved my conduct by inviting 
 me to come again. She was so smiling and sym- 
 pathetic at the pier that I found myself asking 
 a question that had repeatedly suggested itself, 
 but which had as often been spontaneously re- 
 pressed. 
 
 "What, if any, was the definite or practical 
 value of her summer's work, as compared with 
 that which she had previously been doing in the 
 field of domestic science? That, she replied, was 
 for me to determine. Perhaps, when I thought it 
 all over, some such bearing would occur to me. 
 I was afraid that she was going to be disap- 
 pointed in me, after all, and hastened to change 
 the subject by inquiring why, since the afternoon 
 was so fine, she was wearing her long oilskin coat 
 and sou'wester hat. It was certainly a becoming 
 costume, although it too much concealed her 
 trim figure — her color was now all that could 
 be desired. 
 
 " ' Oh, I don't work in the laboratory all of the 
 time,' she answered. 'I — that is, we — are going 
 sailing.' Just at that moment the importunate 
 mate's 'All aboard' precluded further leave-tak- 
 ing. But as I watched her from the deck of the 
 
 [ -66 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 receding steamer, after a farewell wave of the 
 hand, turn expectantly toward a jaunty sail-boat 
 that was skimming in the direction of the pier 
 under the guidance of one of the younger pro- 
 fessors, I began to have glimmerings of at least 
 one answer to my question." 
 
 [ '6 7 ] 
 
XVIII 
 
 Measuring the Mi?id 
 
 WHEN Professor Maturin discovered that 
 his young friend Portia had become a stu- 
 dent of psychology, he expressed no surprise, 
 having learned where she was concerned to 
 expedt the unexpected. But he did voice his 
 impression that the science was one that had, 
 as yet, but an imperfect appreciation of the fem- 
 inine mind. " Precisely," replied Portia; "listen 
 to this," and opening one of her note-books, she 
 read: "Our modern knowledge of woman rep- 
 resents her as primitive, conservative, nearer the 
 savage than man. She is lighter, weaker, slower, 
 less dexterous, less accurate, less individual. She 
 is more nervous, more emotional, more supersti- 
 tious, and more often insane. In short, her lack 
 of accomplishment is due not to subje&ion, but 
 to fundamental inferiority." 
 
 "Now that," concluded Portia, "was undoubt- 
 edly written by a man, and is therefore probably 
 as mistaken as what men have usually written 
 about women in novels and poems. At any rate, 
 I intend to see for myself." Professor Maturin 
 immediately commended her intention, and sub- 
 
 [ '68 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 sequently followed her progress with an interest 
 which, after a time, she rewarded by an invita- 
 tion to visit the laboratory where she was work- 
 ing. It was not long, by the way, before she dis- 
 covered that, although the particular statements 
 of the German scientist she had quoted were in 
 the main correct, an obsession of the Kaiser's 
 "church, children, cooking, and clothes" doc- 
 trine had made him ignore equally striking facts 
 on the other side. Her other discoveries shall be 
 given in Professor Maturin's own words. "As we 
 started on our expedition she read me a counter 
 quotation, from an even more famous authority: 
 'Woman is more observant, more assimilative, 
 more sympathetic, more intuitional, more aes- 
 thetic, and more moral than man. She is more 
 typical of the race and nearer the superman of 
 the future. Man in comparison is senile, if not 
 decadent.' 
 
 "My burst of admiration for a science that 
 could solve the same problem in such opposite 
 ways, was checked by Portia's remarking that 
 she attributed scarcely more importance to the 
 latter than to the former statement. She was 
 quite in accord with the directors of her labora- 
 tory, in considering much of what calls itself 
 psychology to be based on philosophic deduction 
 
 [ '69 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 or popular generalization, rather than on scien- 
 tific observation and experiment. As a matter of 
 fad, scientific psychology, as a development of 
 the present generation, was just beginning to find 
 its accumulated fads sufficient for any general- 
 ization. This statement gave me a sense of en- 
 tering a theatre just as the curtain was going up. 
 
 "After a glimpse at the general arrangement 
 of the department's score or more of rooms, Por- 
 tia proceeded to lead me systematically through 
 the suite devoted to physiological psychology. 
 Concerning the sense of smell, little seemed to 
 be known, except that it is sufficiently sensitive 
 to detect a thimbleful of odorous gas diffused 
 through a very large room. Not much more is 
 known concerning taste, except that it can be 
 stimulated electrically, as smell cannot be, and 
 that sweet and sour are distinguished chiefly by 
 the tip of the tongue; bitter and salt by the back. 
 
 "But discoveries in physics have made pos- 
 sible extensive studies of sound sensation. The 
 average ear has a compass for sounds of from 
 twenty-eight vibrations a second to twenty-two 
 thousand, and can detect differences caused by a 
 variation of sixty. The figures for sight are even 
 more surprising. The sensation of red is caused by 
 rays of light which vibrate from four hundred and 
 
 [ l l° ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 forty to four hundred and seventy billion times a 
 second. At this stage of my observations, I aban- 
 doned my memory for a pencil and note-book. 
 Increasingly rapid vibrations produce the other 
 colors, up to violet, which is caused by about 
 seven hundred and twenty-two billions. 
 
 "It is not surprising, therefore, that the sense 
 of sight displays considerable inertia. It takes 
 a perceptible time for the eye to see what is 
 before it, and its images persist after the object is 
 removed or the eye is closed. Such after-images 
 are at times like the object, but show its comple- 
 mentary color if the sense is fatigued. This last 
 fa& is said to be taken advantage of by depart- 
 ment-store salesmen, who change fabrics ofwhich 
 their customers are wearied for others comple- 
 mentary in color. Pressure and temperature are 
 felt only at certain spots on the body, very close 
 together, but quite unevenly distributed. The 
 forehead and the back, for example, are more sen-^ 
 sitive to cold than to heat. Some spots are sensi- 
 tive to heat or cold alone, seeming to indicate 
 separate sets of nerves for these sensations. 
 
 "The lower limits of any sensation may be 
 determined by gradually diminishing a stimu- 
 lus until its effect is not noted, or by increasing 
 a smaller stimulus until a sensation is produced. 
 
 t '7' ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 Delicacy of perception is measured by noting the 
 smallest increase or decrease of stimulus needed 
 to produce a change in sensation. Some persons 
 can distinguish, by touch, a difference of half an 
 ounce in a pound weight. Measured by the dis- 
 tance apart at which the points of a divider can 
 be separately felt, the cheek is but half as sensi- 
 tive as the finger, the finger but half as sensitive 
 as the tongue. Hence, it is probably in order to 
 touch as well as to taste that infants carry every- 
 thing to the mouth. The direction of sounds is 
 determined by the difference in the relative in- 
 tensity of the sensation in the two ears; the posi- 
 tion of the body, when the eyes are closed, is 
 somehow felt by means of semi-circular canals 
 in the ear. Measured by moving a candle away 
 from an object until its shadow seems the same 
 as that produced by a fixed candle, or by rotat- 
 ing disks bearing black lines on white, the eye 
 can distinguish a difference of one one-hundredth 
 in a quantity of light. Judging distance by sight 
 is said to involve at least ten separate operations 
 of perception and judgment, vision being really 
 mental interpretation, based on association and 
 memory as well as on sensation. Hence, errors 
 in visual perception are so common that paint- 
 ers, sculptors, and architects always take them 
 
 [ x 72 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 into account. Estimates of distance with one eye 
 alone are usually inaccurate ; vertical seem longer 
 than horizontal distances. The size of small 
 objects and the speed of larger ones are usu- 
 ally underestimated; the speed of small bodies 
 and the size of larger ones, exaggerated. Yet, in 
 judgment of space, sight is more accurate than 
 touch. 
 
 " The most interesting rooms of this series 
 were those devoted to measuring the time of ner- 
 vous and mental processes, by means of compli- 
 cated and delicate machinery, electrical for the 
 most part, and arranged so as to cause certain 
 sense impressions, and to record the time between 
 these and a response in some form of motion. 
 Each experiment is repeated many times, with 
 the same person, and with many persons, in order 
 to eliminate errors due to inertia of after-impres- 
 sions, to expectation or practice, to surprise or 
 fatigue. In even so simple a procedure as press- 
 ing an electric button with one hand on feeling 
 a touch on the other, nearly a dozen distinct ele- 
 ments were considered — stimulus of the sense 
 organ, conduction through nerve and through 
 brain, reception and transformation of the im- 
 pulse, reconduction through brain and through 
 nerve, and, finally, muscular action. The speed 
 
 [ *73 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 of nerve transmission being known as from one 
 hundred and fifty to two hundred feet a second, 
 it is possible to deduce the approximate rate of 
 mental reception and action. It is not flattering 
 to learn that electricity is about one thousand 
 times as quick. The total reaction from hand to 
 hand occupies from one-tenth to one-fifth of a 
 second ; the ear has approximately the same rate 
 of action; the eye is about one-fourth slower. The 
 mind's interpretation of sensation averages about 
 one-twenty-fifth of a second ; its determination 
 to act, a shade less. 
 
 "It takes less time to perceive color and form 
 than letters or words, and all of these differ 
 among themselves. The number three seems a 
 sort of natural unit, it being almost as easy to 
 perceive three objects at once, as one; it is much 
 harder to perceive four. The imaginative repro- 
 duction of an image requires about one-fourth of 
 a second; the association of abstract ideas, about 
 three times as long — all according to the previ- 
 ous alteration or multiplication of the six hun- 
 dred million or more brain cells which are the 
 average individual's stock in trade. 
 
 "The numerical records of all such, experi- 
 ments are transformed graphically into diagrams, 
 whose bases represent the number of experi- 
 
 [ '74] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 ments, and whose heights represent the varying 
 accomplishment. Such surfaces of frequency, as 
 they are called, show at a glance the entire per- 
 formance of the trait studied, and are therefore 
 much superior to the ordinary method of aver- 
 ages. The intellectual average of a town that 
 contained a university and an insane asylum 
 would be about that of a town that had neither. 
 A diagram, however, would show not only the 
 average, but the much more significant distri- 
 bution. Attention is also paid to the 'mode,' or 
 measure that occurs most frequently, and to the 
 ' median,' or record above and below which half 
 of the measurements lie. Then, by calculating 
 the average deviation from the average, and cer- 
 tain similar ratios, it is possible finally to obtain 
 a small group of figures which contain the es- 
 sence of the entire distribution. This, in turn, 
 makes possible the measurement and the com- 
 parison not only of particular mental functions, 
 but of the characteristic ability of individuals 
 and of groups. In this way, for example, it has 
 been found that mental activities vary in much 
 the same manner as do the functions of most of 
 the natural organs that have been measured by 
 biologists, anthropologists, and physicians. In 
 general, two-thirds of all mental performances 
 
 [ '75 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 lie within the middle third of ability. Average 
 efficiency is very near to the most common, 
 and both lie about half-way between the two 
 extremes. 
 
 "Perhaps the most striking result of such 
 study is the discovery, by means of a large 
 number of measurements, that mental functions 
 are much more independent of one another than 
 is usually thought, and that a change in one 
 fundion alters another only so far as the two 
 have identical elements. There is, for example, 
 only a slight correlation between remembering 
 numbers and remembering words, and no per- 
 ceptible relation between perception of time and 
 perception of rhythm, or between sense percep- 
 tion in general and memory. Judged from the 
 grades given by instructors to several thousand 
 school and college students, the natural sciences 
 are closer to Latin, in the kind of ability they 
 require, than they are to mathematics. Algebra 
 and geometry are almost as different from one 
 another as mathematics in general are from non- 
 mathematical subje&s. 
 
 "Such facts certainly seemed to warrant the 
 conclusions of the professor to whose guidance 
 Portia now consigned me: 'The mind is not a 
 functional unit, nor even a collection of general 
 
 [ '?6 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 faculties which work irrespective of particular 
 material. It is rather a multitude of separate 
 fun&ions, each closely related to only a few of 
 the others, and to most in so slight a degree as 
 to elude measurement. It is impossible to infer 
 success in one field from success in another, or 
 success in an entire subject from success in a 
 part of it. To estimate the general ability of any 
 individual requires the separate measurement of 
 traits sufficiently numerous and well-chosen to 
 represent fairly all of his capacities. By means 
 of such specific measurements, however, we can 
 determine pretty definitely an individual's capa- 
 bility for any of the highly specialized activities, 
 such as music or painting.' 
 
 "The rooms devoted to the study of genetic 
 psychology, or mental development, contained 
 much interesting data concerning the mental life 
 of children, collected usually through very sim- 
 ple tests, such as estimating the size of geomet- 
 rical figures, the length of lines, or the duration 
 of sounds; arranging in graduation a series of 
 weights, or the shades of a color; or recalling 
 series of related or unrelated letters or words. 
 While the material thus obtained seems to in- 
 dicate the existence of certain general laws of 
 mental growth, it is not yet considered suffi- 
 
 [ l ll ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 cient to establish them. The implications are that 
 the masculine mind is slightly more variable, 
 the feminine slightly better in perception; and 
 that the relation between early and later ability 
 is one not of antagonism, but of resemblance. 
 
 "I wished that I might linger over the studies 
 of rapidity of movement, tested by tapping; and 
 of precision, tested by drawing lines in a narrow, 
 intricate path, or by tapping in a small circle 
 without touching the sides; and I would gladly 
 have spent a day examining the ingenious con- 
 trivances for recording and measuring the atten- 
 tion demanded and the emotions aroused by dif- 
 ferent sorts of reading. But our time was growing 
 so short that I was hurried on, after only a glimpse 
 at a mass of material that would have delighted 
 or distressed — I had not time to learn wmich — 
 the heart of a spelling reformer — the records of 
 the spelling of thirty-three thousand children! In 
 this connection the professor remarked that his 
 own experiments had convinced him that good 
 spelling depended not on memory or on observa- 
 tion in general, but upon a certain specific ability 
 to notice small differences in words, by means 
 of sight, hearing, or, in the case of the blind, 
 through touch. 
 
 "In the next, so-called 'heredity room' were 
 
 1 178 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 records showing that children of the same parents 
 are slightly more like one another than they are 
 like the average, in height, color of eyes and hair, 
 and in all the mental traits that have been studied 
 in this conne&ion. The physical traits of parents 
 tend to alternate, their mental traits to blend, 
 among their children. Eminent men are almost 
 always found to have near relatives of eminence. 
 Family resemblances are most marked in traits, 
 like musical ability, that are least afFe&ed by en- 
 vironment. Here, too, were the life histories of 
 many twins, showing that those closely alike at 
 birth and in early rearing usually remained so in 
 spite of later changes in environment; and that 
 those unlike at birth remained so in spite of iden- 
 tity of nurture. From such and similar fa6ts the 
 department drew the conclusions that nature pre- 
 dominates greatly over nurture, that inheritance 
 is specialized rather than general, and from the 
 original nature of the parents rather than from 
 acquired traits. 
 
 "Individuals who are subjected to the influ- 
 ence of a particular environment are usually so 
 much more influenced by the forces that select 
 them for that environment, that accurate know- 
 ledge in this field is obtainable only with diffi- 
 culty. The fad, for example, that most Congress- 
 
 [ *79 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 men are college graduates is probably due not so 
 much to their education as to their early giving 
 evidence of ability that demanded such train- 
 ing. In the words of the professor: 'The fa&or of 
 selection is commonly neglected, the influence 
 of environment commonly overestimated. En- 
 vironment does not create, but merely selects and 
 stimulates natural abilities. About all that educa- 
 tion can do is to supply facilities for and remove 
 obstacles to the growth of the brain, encourage 
 desirable activities by making them pleasurable, 
 and inhibit their opposites by making them un- 
 comfortable. Mental hygiene, opportunity, and 
 incentive are the foundations of the teacher's 
 Blackstone.' 
 
 "I was prepared to be impressed most of all 
 by what Portia called the 'human-nature room,' 
 for here were printed records of many studies 
 based on answers to widely circulated 'question- 
 naires.' From one set it was deduced that half of 
 us have favorite sounds, open vowels and liquid 
 consonants leading; one-fourth are fond of par- 
 ticular words, 'murmur' being the choice of the 
 majority; most people are fond of particular 
 names, 'Helen ' being the prime favorite. Similar 
 records showed that women read more than men, 
 but reach the period of maximum reading sooner, 
 
 [ 180] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 the greatest reading age being about twenty, the 
 average amount small after thirty-five, most 
 people reading for emotional rather than intel- 
 lectual reasons. Yet others indicated that muscu- 
 lar power increases and attention decreases in 
 summer, the mind being at its best from Decem- 
 ber until April. 
 
 "I was concluding that here was a very mine 
 of richness for the novelist, when the professor 
 remarked: 'We attribute small importance to 
 this sort of thing. Conclusions based on reports 
 from artificially sele&ed and incompetent ob- 
 servers and combined in an unscientific manner 
 have no general validity. Only direcl: expert ob- 
 servation of representative cases, and accurate 
 statistical study of all the factors involved, can 
 bring reliable results. We may base our educa- 
 tional ideals on philosophic or popular theories, 
 but our study of the nature of mind and the 
 ways of arTe&ing it, to be at all valuable, must 
 be rigidly scientific' 
 
 "Well, I had learned enough and to spare 
 without these suggestive, if inaccurate, observa- 
 tions of general human nature, and without even 
 looking into certain rooms, where zoologists and 
 psychologists united in studying the develop- 
 ment of mind in the animal world. 
 
 [ 181 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 "'I presume,' I remarked to Portia as we left 
 the building, 'that when you come to consider 
 suitors for your daughters, you will inquire into 
 not their social and financial standing, but their 
 personal equations of perception and motor- 
 a&ivity, and request statistics concerning the 
 central tendency and variability of each of their 
 mental and moral traits'? ' ' Undoubtedly,' she re- 
 plied, 'and I should want to know similar fadls 
 for their parents, and also the details of their 
 reaction to humidity and to heat.' 
 
 "'Shall you require similar data concerning 
 the prospective father of those daughters?' I 
 asked. 'Perhaps,' she concluded; 'but consider- 
 ing the present undeveloped state of the science, 
 I should insist on conducting those investigations 
 myself. Just now I have no time for such experi- 
 ments. I must to a le&ure. Good-bye.' 
 
 "Thus Portia left me to proceed to my lunch 
 and to cogitate alone, a more confirmed perfe&i- 
 bilian than ever, marvelling at the achievement 
 of this generation, and half prepared to accept 
 as true an inscription that I had seen in the last 
 room we visited: 'Psychology has a message to 
 the world, richer and more original than that of 
 the Renaissance.'" 
 
 [ 182 ] 
 
XIX 
 
 The Club of the Bachelor Maids 
 
 PROFESSOR Maturin told me that he 
 was convinced, after very brief cogitation, 
 that no one but his young friend Portia could 
 have caused him to receive the impressively 
 simple card which lay before him, reading: 
 "The Pleasure of your Company is requested 
 at the First Annual Gentlemen's Day at the 
 Club of the Bachelor Maids." Therefore, before 
 dispatching his acknowledgment to the house 
 committee, he wrote to Portia that he should be 
 more than happy to accept the invitation if she 
 would be good enough to accompany him and 
 see him safely through. To this she acceded 
 with a promptness that implied her anticipation 
 of the suggestion; and so the designated after- 
 noon found them entering the portal together. I 
 quote the account of his experiences as exa&ly 
 as I can remember it. 
 
 "The house, which had been remodelled out 
 of two dwellings in the fifties near the avenue, 
 was very interestingly although simply furnished, 
 in colonial fashion for the most part. There was 
 a spacious public room with tapestried walls and 
 
 [ '83 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 wicker furniture, a library and a reading-room 
 with home-like fireplaces, and an extensive lunch 
 and dinner room in mahogany and cream. I 
 understood that there were also Turkish baths 
 in the basement, and a sun parlor and a garden 
 on the roof, but these were not shown. 
 
 "When I turned my attention from the fur- 
 nishings to the company which had assembled 
 in the larger rooms, I realized the truth of a 
 recent observation that our American women 
 are steadily improving in personal appearance. 
 There was never, to be sure, any crying need for 
 such improvement. Yet, after examining the por- 
 traits of early American women by Copley, West, 
 and Stuart, hung in the dinner-room, or the loan 
 colle&ion of Malbone and Staigg miniatures in 
 the library, it was impossible not to be forcibly 
 struck by the living faces about them. Whether 
 due to the operation of natural selection or to our 
 national crossing of races, to modern intellectual 
 advancement or to contemporary social empha- 
 sis on better air, food, and exercise, I cannot 
 say. But the superiority of the modern women in 
 symmetry and grace, delicacy and modulation 
 of coloring, and in variety and individuality of 
 expression, was beyond question. The splendid 
 carriage of many of the guests and their refined 
 
 [ '8 4 j 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 voices, Mr. Henry James to the contrary not- 
 withstanding, were a delight at the moment, and 
 have been a pleasant memory ever since. 
 
 "Portia was so much pleased at my pleasure, 
 that she was quite willingly drawn to a recess 
 whence I could look and where she could elu- 
 cidate without interruption. There she told me 
 what she could concerning the possessors of such 
 aesthetic mouths, lustrous eyes, and autumn- 
 tinted hair as especially fascinated my gaze. 
 
 " I ventured also to inquire about the wearers 
 of particular gowns, for even my masculine eye 
 could perceive, here and there, certain rare har- 
 monies of costume with appearance and bearing, 
 and I was flattered to be told of almost every 
 person who thus attracted my attention that she 
 was generally thought to be especially interest- 
 ing. Whereupon I jotted down in my pilgrim's 
 scrip the observation that, in spite of fashion, 
 dress may yet sometimes become a subtle ex- 
 pression of personality. Portia, indeed, told me 
 that fashion troubled some of these ladies so little 
 that one of them had made an aphorism to the 
 effect that 'Individual women are seldom in fash- 
 ion; they are usually in advance of it.' Which 
 saying I remembered instead of my own. 
 
 "This phrase and its maker, a gifted designer 
 
 [ '8 5 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 of jewelry, deflected our conversation to the sub- 
 ject of occupations, it being a qualification for 
 membership in the club that 'one must be some- 
 body or do something for one's self,' as Portia 
 put it; a requirement more strictly enforced than 
 that of the celibacy implied by the name of the 
 organization. As one member and another ap- 
 peared or passed with her guests, Portia singled 
 out for me the architect and the decorator who 
 had planned and furnished the house, and then 
 the florist who had arranged the decorations, and 
 the caterer who had provided the unique refresh- 
 ments of the day. There were also numerous li- 
 brarians and settlement workers, two successful 
 real estate operators, and the manager of an im- 
 portant branch of the office work of a huge life 
 insurance company. One handsome, middle-aged 
 woman, that I took to be one of the philanthropic 
 patrons who had made the club's equipment pos- 
 sible, Portia singled out as a practitioner of what 
 struck me as the most interesting profession of all 
 — a department store critic. It was her function 
 to make a daily survey of every part of one of 
 our immense emporiums in order, from her ob- 
 servation, her knowledge of other shops, and of 
 their patrons' tastes, to make suggestions for im- 
 provements in stock, display, or service. I saw 
 
 [ .86] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 also a number of artists and authors, reviewers 
 and publishers' readers. In one of the rooms an 
 excellent programme was being rendered by sev- 
 eral members representative of a musical group, 
 which alternated with similar literary, artistic, 
 and dramatic coteries, in providing entertain- 
 ment for a series of weekly club evenings 
 throughout the winter. 
 
 "Upon my making particular inquiry con- 
 cerning such of the club's members as were 
 graduates of our colleges for women, Portia for a 
 time devoted her attention to representatives of 
 that class. A number of these, naturally enough, 
 were college instructors. Several were physicians 
 and hospital officials; one, an attorney, was proba- 
 tion officer in a juvenile court; two were on the 
 editorial staff of newspapers. Many found regu- 
 lar employment in religious or philanthropic 
 enterprises; only one was in business — as as- 
 sistant to the secretary of a large electrical com- 
 pany. 
 
 "When I was unoriginal enough to ask the 
 conventional question concerning the general 
 attitude of college women toward marriage, Por- 
 tia gave what I instantly recognized as the only 
 possible answer, inconclusive as it was: the col- 
 lege woman was as yet too recent a phenomenon 
 
 [ '87 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 for any generalization about her to be safe. The 
 particular question of her attitude to marriage 
 could be solved only by the well-nigh impos- 
 sible process of comparing equal groups of 
 college and non-college women of the same so- 
 cial kind. Such indications as there were showed 
 no great differences, except perhaps that college 
 women were likely to marry somewhat later. 
 
 "Indeed, I found that the club was intended, 
 for one thing, to be a sort of outpost for studying 
 and, if need be, aiding the solution of just such 
 problems in the economic and social life of wo- 
 men, 'especially of such as would go a-career- 
 ing,' in the words of the phrase-maker. Among 
 the many announcements on a bulletin board, I 
 saw that a well-known litterateur — or should one 
 say litteratrice % — was to speak on Madame de 
 Stael, George Sand, and Mrs. Browning; a phi- 
 lanthropist on Madame Roland and the Count- 
 ess Schimmelmann; a psychologist on Marie 
 Bashkirtserfand Mary Mac Lean. And there were 
 lists of conferences on physiology and hygiene, 
 sociology and economics, and religion and phi- 
 lanthropy, in addition to announcements of the 
 weekly entertainments already mentioned. 
 
 "Another bulletin bore an equal number of 
 announcements of all sorts of outside recrea- 
 
 [ '88 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 tions, from the opera and sele&ed theatres to 
 golf and Adirondack camps. 
 
 "In all of its activities the organization dis- 
 played not only the same energy but also the 
 same breadth of view. The cant of sentimental- 
 ity and the anti-cant of grievance were alike con- 
 spicuously absent. The club picture gallery in- 
 cluded Rossetti's 'Blessed Damozel'and Alma- 
 Tadema's ' Cleopatra,' as well as portraits of Su- 
 san B. Anthony and the Countess of Warwick. 
 Its library contained social studies as unlike as 
 Aristophanes' 'Ladies in Parliament' and Mary 
 Wollstonecraft's 'Vindication of the Rights of 
 Women ; ' and philosophic deductions as opposed 
 as Comte's 'Worship of Women' and Schopen- 
 hauer's 'Woman as Insufficient Reason.' The 
 only piece of militant feminism anywhere to be 
 seen was one of a series of inscriptions on oaken 
 panels: 
 
 Women have risen to high excellence 
 
 In every art whereto they give their care. 
 
 On closer inspection, I found this to be a quota- 
 tion from Ariosto. Beside it was an inscription 
 from Herbert Spencer which read: 'If women 
 comprehended all that is contained in the do- 
 mestic sphere, they would ask no other.' That the 
 club realized the humorous as well as the seri- 
 
 [ '89 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 ous suggestion of such juxtaposition was proved 
 by one of the mantelpieces, where rested side by 
 side an effigy of Egypt's great queen Hatasu, 
 and a fragment of a Roman matron's epitaph, 
 reading, 'She stayed at home and span.' 
 
 "When I asked Portia to what conclusions, 
 if any, her club life had led her, she confessed 
 to only a few, and those very tentative. As com- 
 pared with the married women of her acquaint- 
 ance whose cultivation was equal to that of her 
 fellow club members, most of the latter appeared 
 over-serious, self-distrustful, or inconsistent. A 
 few seemed to find full activity and satisfaction 
 in careers for which they obviously possessed 
 decided gifts. But the majority, after a certain 
 eagerness for experience and self-realization had 
 become satisfied, seemed to be but half-heartedly 
 filling in their time while anticipating or desir- 
 ing something else. This attitude, together with 
 the census statistics, appeared to indicate that the 
 chief career for the great majority of women was 
 still through marriage. Whether it was becoming 
 less so for the kind of women the club comprised, 
 and if this were the case, what was the alternative 
 — these were among the questions upon which 
 the organization held itself open to convi&ion. 
 
 " For herself, Portia was happy still to be in 
 [ J 9° ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 the mood of acquisition : there were many things 
 that she was eager to learn and to experience be- 
 fore it became time to inquire what she was going 
 to be. As yet she had got no further than realizing 
 that, while being a bachelor woman seemed to 
 have obvious limitations, it was surely extremely 
 pleasant to be a bachelor maid. 
 
 "I very honestly replied that, considering her 
 youth and her opportunities, I would not have 
 her feel differently — certainly not at present." 
 
 [ >9« ] 
 
XX 
 
 A Small College 
 
 PROFESSOR Maturin has always ques- 
 tioned the somewhat popular belief that the 
 small college, once so important, is about to dis- 
 appear between the portentously rumbling upper 
 and nether millstones of the universities and the 
 public schools. He was therefore more than glad 
 to accept, in the form of an invitation to visit 
 a professorial friend at a country college, an op- 
 portunity to see for himself. 
 
 During two hundred express-train miles away 
 from the metropolis, and twenty more deliberate 
 ones away from the main line, he thought a good 
 deal about the matter, not without regret that the 
 German ideal of specialized scholarship should 
 completely overcome the English ideal of gen- 
 eral culture. After the professor's cordial greet- 
 ings, conversation at once turned to this topic. 
 The professor, however, was so unapprehensive 
 that he claimed attention rather for the attractive 
 situation of his town, after remarking that, as a 
 matter of fad, the small colleges were increasing 
 in attendance and resources much more rapidly, 
 in proportion, than the great universities. His 
 
 [ J 92 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 own college, in the last five years, had enlarged 
 its endowment from three hundred thousand to 
 nearly a million dollars, and its attendance from 
 two to nearly four hundred students. Five hun- 
 dred was to be the limit, the president and his 
 faculty being unanimous in believing that no 
 college should be too large to give attention to 
 every student every day in every class. "This 
 was sufficiently reassuring," said Professor Ma- 
 turin, as he told me about it, "to permit my at- 
 tending comfortably to my surroundings, which 
 were indeed charming." I continue the account 
 in his own words. 
 
 " The college campus stretched along the main 
 street, at the southern end of the town — a large 
 rectangle of wonderful greensward, resulting 
 from the English recipe of watering for a hundred 
 years, and guarded by a small army of enormous 
 elms that must have been already in occupation 
 when the tract was bought from the provincial 
 proprietors, in the early years of the republic. 
 Here stood the two buildings that accommodated 
 all the academic and domestic life of the college 
 during its first half century. Both of native lime- 
 stone, with softer brownstone trimmings, the 
 older was a notable example of the best Amer- 
 ican public architecture of an hundred years 
 
 [ J 93 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 ago. The dozen other buildings nearby were sim- 
 ilarly landmarks in the later history of the in- 
 stitution. 
 
 " The brownstone and dark brick chapel gave 
 its lower floor to the libraries of the college and 
 the literary societies, w T hich made a total of about 
 forty thousand volumes, some of them purchased 
 and imported in bulk by the founders of the col- 
 lege. For student use the collection seemed quite 
 adequate, not indeed for specialization, but cer- 
 tainly for the fundamental, general training for 
 which the college stood. The work of the fresh- 
 man and sophomore years consisted largely of 
 required subjects, the junior and senior years 
 largely of electives. This system, long in vogue, 
 proved most acceptable, particularly to such 
 graduates as my friend the professor, who had 
 taken in college, Latin, Greek, French, and Ger- 
 man; much English, some history, and a little 
 economics; geology, physics, chemistry, physi- 
 ology, and hygiene; mathematics up to and in- 
 cluding calculus and astronomy; logic, psychol- 
 ogy, ethics, and an introduction to philosophy — 
 surely a broad foundation for his subsequent 
 specialization in history. Later experience made 
 him wish that he had studied also biology, sociol- 
 ogy, and something of music and the fine arts. 
 
 [ *94 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 The first two of these were now provided by the 
 institution. 
 
 "I had long heard of the president of the col- 
 lege as a distinguished clergyman and a more 
 than kindly man. My first meeting with him left 
 an impression of rarely mingled strength and 
 fineness that every subsequent conversation but 
 confirmed and deepened. I saw most of the pro- 
 fessors, next morning, ranged on the chapel plat- 
 form, and I subsequently learned to know all of 
 them, either personally, or through my friend's 
 characterizations. This acquaintance was entirely 
 in rebuttal of the charge that all professors belong 
 to the mutually exclusive classes of those who 
 know their subjects and those who love their stu- 
 dents. These professors, almost to a man, man- 
 aged to do both. The amount of wise and kindly 
 personal consideration given to every student 
 was little short of incredible, and had notable re- 
 sults in both character and culture. A better-man- 
 nered set of undergraduates I never saw, and this 
 in spite of the fad that the freshmen indicated, 
 for the most part, that the college had to work 
 with more than ordinarily raw material. Some- 
 thing in the atmosphere added a fineness to the 
 prevailing vigor, which delighted the eyes of a 
 visitor accustomed to city anaemia, and produced 
 
 [ '95 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 a host of generous customs like doffing the hat 
 to professors and standing in chapel while the 
 president passed. 
 
 " I could not see that my friend's very consid- 
 erable scholarship was hindered by the obligation 
 that he felt to know the name and something of 
 the nature of each of his students. Indeed, I think 
 that it was rather helped. His intellectual life had 
 a freedom from dreaminess, on the one hand, and 
 from pedantry, on the other, that I could attribute 
 to no other cause. Such constant and intimate 
 contact w T ith youthful immaturity and ignorance 
 would probably cause deterioration in a man of 
 inferior ability and training, but my friend was 
 both able and well trained, and so were most of 
 his colleagues. His college course had been im- 
 mediately followed by a year at one American 
 university, and two years at another. Then, after 
 an interval of teaching, he had had six months in 
 England and a year and a half on the Continent, 
 finishing in Germany with a doctor's degree and 
 a dissertation of real historical value. The others 
 had had similar experiences, the language men, 
 particularly, having enjoyed prolonged foreign 
 residence. 
 
 "I was interested to learn that the head of the 
 department of English, although an inspiring 
 
 [ '96 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 teacher and a writer of originality and distinction, 
 had never been to college at all, but had gained 
 his training and had amassed his really notable 
 scholarship entirely through private instruction, 
 individual reading, and extensive travel, and had 
 come to his professorship only after a successful 
 career as a critic and an editor. I was sufficiently 
 impressed by this to inquire of the president how 
 he avoided the requirement I had heard more 
 than one university officer make, that every in- 
 structor should be the possessor of a doctor's de- 
 gree. He answered almost abruptly: 'In selecting 
 our staff, as everything else, we try to ignore the 
 union label. It is always the sign of the conven- 
 tional, and the conventional, especially in the 
 humanities, too often means the mediocre.' And 
 then he changed the subject. That was surely radi- 
 cal educational doctrine, but in this case, at least, 
 it was certainly justified by the results. 
 
 "In fine, the faculty seemed to me quite equal 
 to the average of a university staff, and, because 
 of their constant accessibility, appeared to be con- 
 siderably more influential as teachers of imma- 
 ture students. 
 
 " Most of the professors lived near the college. 
 My friend was the owner of an attractive small 
 house, with a bit of ground, opposite the campus, 
 
 [ l 91 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 computing the entire carrying cost at less than 
 three hundred dollars a year. Adequate food and 
 service were equally available and cheap. 'In- 
 deed, I have,' he said, very earnestly, — I take 
 pains to quote him exactly, — 4 I have the small- 
 est quarrel that it is possible to have with the 
 academic income. Ours is not the ill fortune of 
 those professors who suffer privation because am- 
 bitious presidents and business-like trustees agree 
 that advertising is better than instruction, and 
 spend on unessential but showy buildings funds 
 that would relieve the men on their staff from 
 financial anxieties distra£ting in themselves and 
 occasioning those efforts to earn from outside 
 sources which so often seriously undermine a 
 professor's academic usefulness, if not his intel- 
 lectual and physical health. We manage to live 
 on the two thousand dollars which is the pro- 
 fessorial stipend here, knowing that proportion 
 of the income of the college to be a generous 
 proof of its belief in the primary importance of 
 instruction. We decrease the numerator to suit 
 the denominator. We seek the simplest food, 
 clothing, and furnishings; reduce service to a 
 minimum; buy fewer books; take shorter vaca- 
 tions; give less to charity, and nothing to pub- 
 lic causes. Not being able to have what we want, 
 
 [ i98 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 we succeed pretty well in enjoying what we have, 
 sustained by the intellectual and moral satisfac- 
 tions of our calling — except sometimes. We, 
 of course, become accustomed to the humiliat- 
 ing knowledge that the public does not consider 
 our labor and devotion worth paying highly for. 
 But the realization that the meagreness of our 
 incomes, by more and more separating our lives 
 from those of other men, is steadily decreasing 
 our usefulness and influence — that is at times 
 hard to bear. 
 
 " • So far as living in a small town is concerned, 
 save for the spice of variety which one may store 
 up in vacation, it furnishes ideal nourishment for 
 the intellectual life. The time at one's command 
 seems almost inexhaustible, and there are prac- 
 tically no distractions. Our social circle is lim- 
 ited, but interesting. Lacking the opera, our ladies 
 become fair pianists. In place of museums of art, 
 they have a club that studies art appreciation and 
 history. Instead of going to the theatre, we read 
 and talk of books, of which we know a few well 
 rather than many slightly. Being devoid of the 
 opportunity and hence free from the obligation 
 of winnowing the current ephemera of my spe- 
 cialty, I am constantly occupied, instead, with 
 the monumental, permanent contributions to the 
 
 [ x 99 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 subject. One cannot do both things, and I am 
 content with my enforced choice.' 
 
 "The students were unquestionably gainers by 
 their rural environment. They evidently studied 
 a great deal, that being the most interesting oc- 
 cupation available. The cheapness of the place 
 enabled many of them to obtain for a low tuition 
 and a ridiculously low cost of living, a training 
 they would elsewhere have been unable to pay 
 for. For recreation they spent much time in the 
 gymnasium, on the athletic field, and wandering 
 far through the charming surrounding country. 
 There was a not unhealthy amount of what is 
 known as college and class spirit, with the nu- 
 merous traditional customs thereto attendant. 
 
 " I could not see that the fraternities, which 
 played a large part in the student life, did any- 
 thing more than give to natural tastes and tend- 
 encies an organization that helped the student 
 to see qualities, and the faculty to watch defe&s, 
 in the mass. The religious life of the place im- 
 pressed me as abundant and powerful, but in 
 no way overstrained. When I saw some of the 
 young ladies whose habit it was to be at home 
 to students on Friday evenings, I wished myself 
 a youth again. The boys repaid their kindness in 
 many ways, not the least pleasing of which was 
 
 [ 200 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 the serenading which invariably followed the 
 closing of the fraternity meetings, which were 
 held from ten o'clock to midnight on the night 
 preceding the weekly holiday — a custom that 
 seemed to satisfy the youthful desire to a& very 
 much grown up, at the small price of conse- 
 quent sleepiness. The healthy spirit of the place 
 frowned on actual dissipation. 
 
 "Thinking over my visit, during the return 
 journey, I realized that the whole question of 
 the relative usefulness of the metropolitan uni- 
 versity and the rural college reduces to an esti- 
 mate of the comparative values of the large and 
 the small, the near and the remote, of efficiency 
 and culture. Our national environment and his- 
 tory have emphasized the importance of the 
 large, the immediate, the efficient. But there is 
 always much to be said on both sides of every 
 question, and it is at least possible that enough 
 importance has not been attributed to the small, 
 the distinctive, the fine. 
 
 "On the whole," concluded Professor Ma- 
 turin, " I am inclined to disagree with my friends 
 in the universities, and to believe that the future 
 of the small college is bright rather than dark." 
 
 [ 201 ] 
 
XXI 
 
 Old 'Town Revisited 
 
 1 FOUND Professor Maturin, the other even- 
 ing, recently returned from a visit to the home 
 of his youth with a bundle of such pleasant mem- 
 ories that I set them down as nearly in his own 
 words as possible, without any of the inquiries 
 and the interruptions of appreciation that they 
 inevitably drew from me. 
 
 "In the first part of the journey thither, re- 
 peated efforts failed to conjure up anything like 
 a full and definite pi&ure of the place. But, sud- 
 denly, as so often happens, the mists of memory 
 cleared, and it seemed as though I had never 
 been away. This almost theatrical change caus- 
 ing me to look about with surprise, I became 
 quickly aware that the train had swung into the 
 beginning of what we used to call 'The Happy 
 Valley.' With a sigh of content, I sank back into 
 the comfort of old adjustments, with a sense of 
 their completeness that could come only from a 
 knowledge of later maladjustments to compare 
 them with. 
 
 "This valley, perhaps a hundred miles long 
 and from a dozen to a score of miles wide, is 
 
 202 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 walled in by blue mountain ridges of from twelve 
 to two thousand feet in height, their bases sweep- 
 ing nearer or farther and their sky-lines higher 
 or lower in a series of almost symmetrical curves. 
 The same restrained variety characterizes the 
 surface of the valley, which billows and rolls 
 throughout like a solidified section of mid-ocean. 
 The mountains, foothills, and small patches of 
 the valley are still covered with oak and chest- 
 nut, pine and cedar timber, which make spring- 
 time delightful and the autumn splendid. Else- 
 where all is fertile farm land, squarely fenced or 
 marked with low walls of ever available lime- 
 stone, which also provides firm, smooth roads 
 stretching in every dire&ion over hill and 
 meadow. Many farm-houses and barns are built 
 of this stone, softened with the mellowness of 
 years. Later structures of local brick with slate 
 roofs seem scarcely less sturdy. 
 
 "This same pleasant variety of surface and 
 solidity of building characterizes the town itself. 
 Cheerful two-and-one-half story houses, of red 
 brick, with green shutters still prevail, although 
 about the central square and along the business 
 blocks the height is usually greater. I well re- 
 member the builder of the first three-story house 
 in town. The first four-story structure was reared 
 
 [ 20 3 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 in my boyhood. Its completion was celebrated 
 with fire-works and the first ele&ric lights seen 
 in the town. Now there are even cut-stone bank 
 fronts, and they are building an apartment house 
 and a five-story department store. Near the edges 
 of the town, where the dwellings stand back from 
 the streets with lawns and flowers and trees, the 
 march of improvement is particularly noticeable 
 — as indeed it well might be, for the place has 
 doubled in size since I left. 
 
 "These dwellings indicated to me that local 
 prosperity had caused the tide of physical well- 
 being to rise to the second or shelter stage. For- 
 merly, ideas of luxury centred chiefly in food, 
 which was consumed in a variety and abundance 
 that would have made a dietitian shudder. The 
 land is still one of plenty and good cheer, and 
 a progress through the town would delight the 
 monarch who said, ' Let me have men about me 
 that are fat,' but other creature comforts have 
 come to be considered also. The stage of personal 
 adornment has yet to be reached: the men sel- 
 dom have their hair trimmed or their trousers 
 pressed, and the costume of the women is simple. 
 The local attention to such matters seemed inter- 
 estingly different from the metropolitan order 
 of clothing, shelter, food. 
 
 [ 204 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 "But as it was not progress that I had chiefly 
 come to see, I found myself returning repeatedly 
 to the old town hall, which once sheltered the 
 oldest bank and is still surmounted by a tower 
 of strange local architecture, bearing an equally 
 erratic clock. All this, like everything else in the 
 place, seemed by no means so large or so impos- 
 ing as I had remembered it, and the bank's dis- 
 appearance prevented the repetition of our one 
 local author's jest concerning 'the bank where 
 the wild thyme grows.' But when I once more 
 climbed the tower and picked out, one by one, 
 the old landmarks, I felt all of my early fondness 
 for the place return. No one, I believe, can be 
 without a certain proprietary affection for a place 
 upon which he has often looked down from a 
 tower. 
 
 "There, above the town, my memory of many 
 of its personages became vivid. First, always, we 
 admired the old Governor — we never called him 
 'ex,' although he had been that for many years. 
 A fine, burly figure, even in old age, he was usu- 
 ally seen driving to or from his model farms in 
 a vehicle which must have antedated the one- 
 hoss shay. And he seldom passed without some 
 one relating how, when a misguided ram, not 
 being in position to be awed by his countenance, 
 
 [ 2 °5 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 had made the conventional attack, he expanded 
 to his fullest height and, with his favorite, his- 
 toric, expletive, thundered: 'Continental dam, 
 sheep! What do you mean?' 
 
 "The Senator, who logically came next, was 
 by no means so impressive; for, being regarded 
 chiefly as a provider of political places, he was 
 forced, when he walked abroad, to assume an ab- 
 straction profound enough to make him oblivi- 
 ous of the hungry eyes of his constituents. I fear 
 that his was not a happy life, at least when he 
 was at home, which grew to be more and more 
 seldom. 
 
 "The General, however, loved to parade his 
 tall, proud figure. It was currently reported that 
 he wore stays; certainly he carried his shoulders 
 always ready for epaulettes and his head poised 
 for a chapeau. For years he longed to be ele&ed 
 a Congressman, but always in vain. A tradition 
 that he had once compared a poor man to a wet 
 dog embodied the popular distrust of his aris- 
 tocratic nature; and his set speech of compli- 
 ment to each village where he spoke — that the 
 fairness of its daughters almost persuaded him 
 to renounce his bachelorhood — usually waked 
 sarcasm rather than applause. 
 
 "After the General came the Colonel, an at- 
 
 [ 206 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 torney so genial that, it was said, he habitually 
 bowed to trees and hitching-posts, from mere 
 force of habit. Every one suspe&ed him of stor- 
 ing up popularity against the day when he might 
 run for office. Whether he ever compassed or 
 even desired such an end, I do not know. 
 
 "The Town Beauty, I learned, had long since 
 married an officer in the army. We had, I think, 
 even more than our share of handsome girls, 
 but to gaze upon her was such an unalloyed de- 
 light that she came to be prized as one of the chief 
 attractions of the town. It used to be said, jo- 
 cosely, that after visitors had seen the new court 
 house, they were always made to wait until she 
 passed, before any one would show them the way 
 to the fair grounds. Certainly she never disap- 
 pointed the fondest anticipations, except during 
 one sad season when the whole town mourned. 
 Most inexcusably she had attempted to improve 
 the lily and the rose of her complexion by means 
 of a cosmetic, which must have been devised 
 solely to further the sale of the same manufac- 
 turer's healing lotions. The damage wrought was 
 most distressing, and recovery was slow and 
 anxious, but happily complete. There was some 
 desire to express the public anxiety that there 
 should be no more such experiments; but the 
 
 [ 207 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 lesson had been learned, and thereafter her love- 
 liness only bloomed the richer. 
 
 "The persons mentioned were all conspicuous 
 members of the local aristocracy, to which the 
 professions of law, and, to a lesser degree, of 
 medicine, were the open sesame. The chief mem- 
 bers of these professions, together with all such 
 persons as were distinguished for family, and a 
 selection from those who were distinguished for 
 wealth, made up a somewhat exclusive social 
 set, which gave an annual ball, invited friends to 
 dinner, and went on vacations — sometimes even 
 to Europe. As for the great majority, the men 
 were devoted chiefly to business and sometimes 
 to politics; the women to their homes and their 
 churches, which last regulated all of their social 
 as well as their religious activities. 
 
 "For the recreation of our elders there was 
 always a great deal of driving. It was possible 
 to keep a carriage on an income that would not 
 suffice for that alone in the metropolis. The car- 
 riage roads were and still are excellent and the 
 country charming, with here and there a stately 
 old manor house for historic atmosphere. Even 
 then the mountains were frequently resorted to. 
 Now they are easily accessible, and boast not only 
 numerous hotels, but many cottages to which 
 
 [ 2°8 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 the more fortunate go back and forth daily in 
 summer. To my boyhood the mountains repre- 
 sented not only untamed nature, but their ho- 
 tels were outposts of the great world beyond. 
 The mountains represented history also, for on 
 the side of one was a battlefield, marked with a 
 huge cairn of stones; and they meant literature, 
 as well, for in one of the gaps was the home of 
 an author whose novels and poems were in the 
 town library. 
 
 "With us young people bicycles were popu- 
 lar to a degree that once, in the days of the old, 
 high wheels, drew even a national meet to the 
 old town. But the simple attractions of the place 
 palled on our travelled guests, and the occasion 
 began to look like a failure until, in the evening, 
 the entertainment committee got together and 
 started a false alarm of fire, which allowed the 
 visitors to pull the hand-apparatus of the local 
 fire companies madly about the streets, until 
 their superabundant energies were exhausted and 
 they went to bed happy. 
 
 "These volunteer fire companies were centres 
 of the most intense interest, making up in antici- 
 pation and preparation for the practical efficiency 
 which, happily, they were seldom called upon to 
 demonstrate. They held innumerable initiations, 
 
 [ 209 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 ele&ions, anniversaries, and reorganizations; and 
 they were always considering, with infinite atten- 
 tion to detail, the adoption of new uniforms and 
 the purchase of new equipment. All of which we 
 youngsters ardently emulated with an organiza- 
 tion which, in a vocabulary more aspiring than 
 accurate, we called 'The Juneviles.' 
 
 " Even more, if possible, than by the fire com- 
 panies, our interest was stirred by the annual 
 county fair, which, for four days in the autumn, 
 crowded the town with visitors and filled the cen- 
 tral square, of evenings, with all sorts of travel- 
 ling mountebanks. This was eagerly welcomed 
 as practically our only opportunity for familiar- 
 ity with the histrionic art, for the attractions of 
 the town theatre were not of a sort to be gen- 
 erally approved. I remember, however, attend- 
 ing at least one performance there when young 
 enough to be tremendously puzzled by the 
 difficulties of a harlequin in attempting to get 
 through a wall the door of which mysteriously 
 changed from place to place, while from time 
 to time the wall became all doors or showed no 
 doors at all. 
 
 "Sometimes the few bookish people gathered 
 into reading clubs or welcomed visiting lecturers, 
 who also conducted discussions and criticised 
 
 [ 2I ° ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 essays, when anybody wrote them. The only 
 le&ure that I recall dealt with Rugby, and im- 
 pressed me partly for Tom Brown's sake, but 
 chiefly because on that occasion the most sensi- 
 tive man in the town covered himself with con- 
 fusion by absent-mindedly clapping his hands to- 
 gether in pursuit of a mosquito, with the effect of 
 applauding loudly at a most inappropriate time. 
 The after-lecture discussions struck me then as 
 very learned, but I judge now that I must have 
 been easily impressed, since the only specimen 
 that I remember was the statement that 'Carlyle 
 was a bear, wallowing in a sea of words/ made 
 by the principal of the high school. 
 
 "Even now I should consider him as remark- 
 able as his rhetoric. For he was not only the offi- 
 cial head of the dozen schools in his building, 
 but he also taught, alone and unaided, all of the 
 classes in the high school, preparing us for col- 
 lege in every subject from algebra to zoology, and 
 doing it well. His only limitation was that he 
 chewed tobacco, secretly, or as secretly as he 
 was able with the eyes of thirty boys constantly 
 upon him. 
 
 "Not the least interesting feature of my visit 
 was the opportunity it provided for noting the 
 present status of old schoolmates. Most of them 
 
 [an] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 had developed indirections that might have been 
 anticipated from their youthful traits. Even the 
 fact that two of the most harum-scarum had be- 
 come responsible bank directors was explained 
 by the remembrance that youthful lawlessness 
 may often represent merely a superabundance of 
 excellent energy. The school dreamer had be- 
 come the chief confectioner of the town, expend- 
 ing his imagination on a new-art shop and a 
 summer garden lighted by the electric eyes of 
 Cheshire cats and owls perched in the trees. The 
 serious boy had acquired practice as a physician 
 until his stout body and large head seemed burst- 
 ing with incommunicable knowledge concern- 
 ing the local human comedy. The clever boy had 
 become a successful attorney, more than satisfied 
 with his profession as an excellent working hy- 
 pothesis in an unintelligible world. The boy who 
 had become a musician pleased me, perhaps, 
 most of all. With a talent that would win dis- 
 tinction anywhere, he rejected the distractions of 
 cities for a simple environment, where he might 
 discover and develop his spontaneous self. 
 
 "If those that I had known as boys were now 
 men, those I had known as mature were now old. 
 The fine old clergyman who for years had led 
 in every movement for things of good report now 
 
 [ 2I2 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 saw much of his seed bring forth abundantly, and 
 had, moreover, the personal satisfaction of know- 
 ing that his youngest son had won distinction as 
 the first Rhodes scholar from his state. The one 
 local artist, a landscape painter, still pursued with 
 modest determination his honest, if undistin- 
 guished, toil. The old florist was still the finest 
 of idealists in his devotion to nature, irrespective 
 of worldly considerations. I was happy to note 
 that he seemed to have prospered materially, in 
 spite of his fondness for giving and his distaste 
 for selling his plants. 
 
 " One or two old men that I had known were 
 still able to regale me with memories of 'the 
 Rebellion,' and of the installation of the town 
 water-works. But most of my familiars of that 
 generation had passed away. The two old ad- 
 mirals who had so strangely chosen such an in- 
 land berth for their final cruise, the old do&or 
 who urged his horse by explosively uttering the 
 words 'effervescent' and 'fundamental,' the little 
 old librarian with his fondness for Josephus, and 
 the sadly wheezy conductor of 'the Madrigal 
 Club ' — even the decayed old gentlewoman who 
 wore different colored wigs to suit her gowns — 
 all had passed on. 
 
 " But, in spite of many such absences, and of 
 [ 2I 3 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 some sadder memories, my visit was one of pro- 
 found and lasting pleasure. I did not mind the 
 omniscient small-town scrutiny, which somehow 
 apprised my friends of all that I had been do- 
 ing, even before I called. And I found the whole 
 place full of the most delightful little interests, 
 even for one who has so little of 'the restless 
 analyst' about him. From the point of view of 
 contrasting the residential values of capital and 
 province, the advantages of the old town are, per- 
 haps, largely of a negative character. But all the 
 essentials of life are there, although in little, and 
 success being so much less difficult, and failure 
 so much less disastrous, the balance of vitality left 
 over is satisfyingly large. It was not at all a bad 
 place to spend one's youth, and it would be by 
 no means a bad setting for one's old age." 
 
 [ *H] 
 
I 
 
 XXII 
 
 The County Fair 
 
 FOUND Professor Maturin deeply ponder- 
 ing, the other evening, the season when the 
 county fair stirs semi-rural communities, all over 
 the land, with anticipation, realization, and fresh 
 reminiscence. " No one of our institutions for 
 pleasure or profit," said he, "is more firmly es- 
 tablished; and yet students of local manners and 
 customs and of social psychology appear to have 
 given it small attention, and there is no notable 
 record of it in literature, save that by Mr. How- 
 ells in the beginning of 'The Coast of Bohemia.' 
 Its phenomena, however, are easily ascertainable 
 by any one who has rural acquaintance or access 
 to rural newspapers." 
 
 I asked him to instruct me concerning the sub- 
 ject, and he continued substantially as follows: 
 " For weeks before the great occasion these 
 newspapers record and reflect the steady growth 
 of the greatest enthusiasm of the year. Meetings 
 of the Fair Association begin, and become more 
 and more frequent, until it is announced that the 
 secretary will be at his office daily. Immediately 
 thereafter rumors spread, or are spread, concern- 
 
 [ »s ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 ing larger exhibits than ever before, of live stock, 
 of machinery, of household entries; in short, of 
 everything. 
 
 "Extra offices are ostentatiously opened for 
 every sort of entry, and are as ostentatiously filled 
 with more and more assistants, who periodically 
 and publicly exhaust their entire supply of ex- 
 hibit tags. After a secretly anxious interval the 
 officers of the association begin to smile over the 
 conscious possession of actual cash paid for con- 
 cessions, and lavishly hire a negro of aldermanic 
 proportions, in a costume boasting three hundred 
 and fourteen brilliant patches and two hundred 
 and three assorted buttons, to parade the streets 
 in the interests of advertising. 
 
 "At the last meeting but one before the fair, 
 it is officially announced that the 'outlook is for 
 the greatest collection of exhibits ever entered/ 
 and the association decides, out of the fullness of 
 its heart and pockets, to equip the new barn with 
 electric lights, and to issue complimentary tickets 
 to all clergymen who apply for them. 
 
 " At the same meeting it awards the 4 feed 
 privilege,' and appoints judges, ticket-takers, 
 grand-stand ushers, and many guards, under the 
 command of a military train-announcer, together 
 with various unnecessary marshals and sundry 
 
 [ *>6 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 mysterious functionaries known as 'hill-men 'and 
 'hatchet-men.' All of these, especially the night 
 guards, speedily become heroes in the now almost 
 painfully wide-open eyes of the town's small 
 boys. 
 
 "The Poultry Fanciers' Association likewise 
 begins to hold frequent meetings, planning its 
 own exhibits and its entertainments for visiting 
 exhibitors, and announcing that silver cups may 
 be given as prizes, in which event the cups also 
 will be exhibited. Finally, at least one cup makes 
 its appearance, and is displayed in advance, sur- 
 rounded by many ribbon rosettes and streamers 
 destined for such happy birds as are only less than 
 the best. 
 
 "Hotel and restaurant keepers hungrily fur- 
 bish up old and install new equipment, increase 
 their attendance and provide music, and make 
 bids for the reward of virtue by refusing entertain- 
 ment to such undesirable citizens as Mormon 
 missionaries. Local real estate booms more loudly 
 than ever, and local commerce plumes and preens 
 itself with all kinds of 'openings' and 'fair-week 
 bargains.' It keeps a jealous eye on competition, 
 requiring visiting street vendors to keep moving; 
 but it is so hospitable to visiting custom that when 
 visiting custom's sleepy children tumble into its 
 
 [ 2I 7 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 show-cases, it grandly refuses to accept payment 
 for the resulting damage. 
 
 "And now 'the Midway' begins to cast its 
 lights and shadows before. Its prospective patrons 
 sorrow over the enforced absence of the glass 
 swallower, who has at last succumbed to the rig- 
 ors of his profession. But they are felicitous over 
 the return of the electric woman, and look for- 
 ward with eager anticipation to the yet untasted 
 delights of riding on a 'sea-wave,' and of throw- 
 ing rings at the heads of a flock of live geese. 
 They read with avidity long newspaper accounts, 
 by correspondents who sign themselves 'it,' of 
 the approaching Russian midget and the Igor- 
 rote village ; and the report that two balloonists 
 are contesting for a concession distra&s them be- 
 tween the comparative merits of a real wedding 
 in mid-air and a cannon that shoots an aeronaut 
 and a parachute. 
 
 "Meanwhile 'Ten Nights in a Bar-Room' 
 comes to town with a tent and a band that pa- 
 rades, but so few persons attend that no perform- 
 ances are given. Local entertainers, however, 
 climb to the very pinnacle of competition. The 
 Family Theatre provides 'An Entire Change of 
 Programme!' and the Academy of Music pre- 
 sents 'A Repertoire Company of World Wide 
 
 [ 2.8 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 Reputation ! ! ! ' The skating rink advertises a new 
 floor, and a grand opening, with decorations of 
 American flags and Japanese lanterns. And the 
 dancing academy announces a series of fair-week 
 dances with a new palm-room capable of seating 
 an orchestra of six pieces. 
 
 "Soon the zest of danger is added to the local 
 frame of mind by the appearance of two men 
 'from away/ who appear dissatisfied with all the 
 watches that the leading jeweller can display, 
 until it is learned, after their departure, that they 
 have taken several with them for more leisurely 
 examination. Thereupon all strangers are looked 
 upon with suspicion, doors and windows are 
 doubly locked; valuables are guarded; and local 
 justice warns or incarcerates on suspicion the best 
 or worst-known local offenders, and congratulates 
 the town on the loss of fewer horses, watches, and 
 pocket-books than usual. Anxiety over property, 
 however, at no time approaches that concern- 
 ing the weather, which cannot possibly last if it 
 is good, although it will certainly continue if it 
 is bad. 
 
 " Local finance shows its approval of the gen- 
 eral course of things by promising its bank clerks 
 two half-holidays, and local learning smiles in- 
 dulgently in paying its teachers earlier than 
 
 [ 2I 9 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 usual, and granting its pupils a two days' recess. 
 The Grand Council of the Ancient and Hon- 
 orable Order of Fraternity promises its annual 
 visitation during fair week, and the church en- 
 deavors to leaven the worldliness of the season 
 by announcing the twenty-sixth annual conven- 
 tion of the Woman's Home and Foreign Mis- 
 sionary Society. 
 
 "When the exhibits a&ually begin to arrive, 
 one wonders how enthusiasm can rise higher. 
 The fair grounds present an increasingly busy 
 scene, until there is scarcely moving room be- 
 tween workmen and wagons. Incoming teams 
 grow more and more crowded with exhibits and 
 exhibitors, fakes and fakirs, and, finally, with visit- 
 ors. Every private house entertains old friends 
 and new. Public accommodations are taxed to 
 the utmost, and trading at the city market be- 
 comes well-nigh frantic. 
 
 "The visitors represent all sorts and conditions 
 of men and women. The old woman who has 
 never ridden on a railroad train and the old man 
 who attended the first fair fifty years ago, the 
 veteran who helped defend the town during the 
 civil war and the business man who is taking 
 his first vacation in twenty-four years — these 
 divide interest with the principals in the run- 
 
 [ 220 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 away marriages, of which there are two or three 
 daily. 
 
 "Numerous former residents return for the first 
 time in many years, and several new families de- 
 cide to locate permanently. At the last moment 
 the Governor finds himself unfortunately unable 
 to be present, but the president of one railroad 
 and the general manager of another come in pri- 
 vate cars, and two rival political candidates are 
 much seen but not much heard. 
 
 "Various other distinguished guests arrive in 
 touring cars, and countless other less distin- 
 guished but equally dust-covered persons arrive 
 in carriages. Street movement grows very brisk. 
 Buggies clash, automobiles bump, and trolley 
 cars jump the track; and over all begins to rise 
 the call of the cabman, 'Going right out.' By 
 night all the shops are brilliant, sidewalks are 
 crowded, and in the square there are moving pic- 
 ture advertisements, and the flaring torches of 
 vending and performing fakirs. 
 
 "The opening day dawns bright and clear, and 
 every one jubilantly follows the call of the cab- 
 men, until the town itself seems half deserted. On 
 the grounds bands boom, marshals gallop, and 
 crowds pour through and around the buildings. 
 Within one of these, merchants display pipes and 
 
 [ 221 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 pianos, furniture and furnaces, hardware and 
 haberdashery, shoes and sewing-machines, car- 
 pets and candy, in apparently endless array. 
 
 " On an upper floor the household department 
 demands appreciation for two thousand four hun- 
 dred and twenty-four glasses of jelly, six hundred 
 and fifty-one jars of pickles, three hundred and 
 thirty cakes, and eighty-nine specimens of home- 
 made soap. Nearby in the department of fine arts 
 are paper flowers, worsted mottoes, six hundred 
 and fifteen pieces of embroidery, one hundred and 
 forty-two cushions, four hundred and forty-three 
 drawings and paintings, and one hundred and ten 
 curiosities and relics, mostly 'over one hundred 
 years old.' Among the latter the palm is borne 
 by six cocoanut-shell baskets and a tray of seven- 
 teen-year locust shells. 
 
 "Elsewhere are many worthy flowers, shrubs, 
 and trees; fruits, vegetables, and grains — celery 
 a yard tall, pumpkins a yard wide, and forty- 
 seven varieties of beans. The pavilions and 
 grounds devoted to machinery present a bewil- 
 dering array of ploughs, planters, cultivators, 
 reapers, and stackers; of threshers, separators, 
 huskers, shellers, cutters, and grinders; of engines 
 and pumps, saws and mills, and of all things after 
 their kind. 
 
 222 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 "Every domestic animal, too, after its kind, 
 seems to be represented in countless pens and 
 stalls, until one tarries only long enough to sign 
 the Poultry Fanciers' demand for a new build- 
 ing and to be grateful for the railroad congestion 
 that has delayed many other exhibits, and then 
 departs, resolutely undefleclied by the charms 
 of the Midway, the miniature railway, and the 
 innumerable ice-cream, sausage, and popcorn 
 stands. 
 
 "By the second day it is a commonplace that 
 the exhibition is the greatest ever given; every- 
 body begins to count it nearly half over, and 
 a few acknowledge that they wish it were. The 
 cabmen complain of trolley car competition, and 
 a sight-seeing automobile decides that its license 
 is too high to allow it any profit. Lady visitors 
 complain that there are not enough seats on the 
 grounds, that admission to the grandstand is in- 
 creased to fifty cents, and that the classification 
 of the fancy work department is years behind the 
 vogue. The judges of jellies and the connoisseurs 
 of cakes are prostrated after their investigations 
 into the merits of the two thousand four hundred 
 and twenty-four and three hundred and thirty 
 specimens to which they have submitted their 
 respective tastes. 
 
 [ 22 3 ] 
 
The Observations of 
 
 "On Thursday, however, the third and, by 
 tradition, the greatest day, enthusiasm and opti- 
 mism return under the stimulus of the largest 
 crowds the town has ever seen. Nobody can count 
 the people, and estimates of their number are as 
 inflated and soaring as the great balloon, which 
 finally does its duty handsomely. Nine trolley 
 cars are counted in the square at one time; there 
 are eighty passenger coaches in the railroad yards, 
 and one livery-stable entertains two hundred and 
 thirty-four visiting horses! People who did not 
 exped them receive premiums, and the indefati- 
 gable Poultry Fanciers have a parade and a ban- 
 quet, at which they announce their building as 
 assured. 
 
 " On Friday, the final day, the blessing contin- 
 ues to brighten as it takes its flight. The Fair 
 Association smilingly admits about eight thou- 
 sand dollars profit, entertains itself, and its live 
 stock and machinery exhibitors, at luncheon, 
 promises the Poultry Fanciers their new building, 
 and utters mysterious hints concerning a great 
 aquarium for next year. Nothing mars the grow- 
 ing satisfaction save that some unknown mis- 
 creant drops a lighted match into an entrance 
 ticket box and burns up approximately a bushel 
 of tickets. 
 
 [ 22 4 ] 
 
Professor Maturin 
 
 "Such are some of the phenomena of the 
 county fair," concluded Professor Maturin. 
 "They promise much to any proper scientific 
 and literary exposition. Here, as everywhere else, 
 we need only a little more information and a little 
 more intelligence to transform our contemporary 
 superficiality into a realization of life that is, at 
 the same time, strong and fine." 
 
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