LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 0000fi42a57fi Class Boole CoBv-ri^MN" /<^r ^ COHfRIGHT DEPOSm i FELLOW CAPTAINS The foolishest book is a leaky boat upon the sea of wisdom: some of the wisdom will get in anyhow. — Holmes. FELLOW CAPTAINS All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by. John Masefield SARAH N. XLEGHORN AND DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1916 j6£> ^'' ,,-f^ COPYRIGHT, 191 6, BY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY Portions of this volume have been copyrighted sepa- rately as follows: The Secret of Serenity, copyright, 1907, by The Ridgway Company. Come, Captain Age! copyright, 1916, by The Century Company. The Lookout, The Anodyne, For Believers in Immortality [as "Mother"], copyright, 1916, by The Atlantic Monthly Company. The Deep Spring in the Ever- green Forest, copyright, 1913, by the Frank A. Munsey Rec" Als 1915, by The Ridgway Company. To Keep Alive the Company. To Realize the Quality of Immortality [aa " But This is Also Everiasting Life "1, copyright, )15, by The Ridgway Company. To Keep Alive the Spirit of Adventure [as " The Young Man's Dariing "], copyright, 1913, by The Phillips Publishing Company NOV 16 1916 ©C!.A445bi)i V Blow, wind; swell, billow; and swim, bark I Shakespeare. His eyes forever on some sign To help him plough a perfect line. John Masefield. The difference between happiness and sorrow is as between a glad, enhghtened acceptance of life and a hostile, gloomy submission. Maeterlinck. I count life just a stuff To try the soul's strength on. Browning. Let those fear who wiU. The soul is in her native realm, and it is wider than space, older than time, wide as hope, rich as love. Pusillanimity and fear she refuseth with a beautiful scorn. They are not for her, who putteth on her coronation robes and goeth out through universal love to universgJ power. Emerson. The pleasantest things in the world are pleasant thoughts: and the great art of hfe is to have as many of them as possible. Montaigne. Miirger said of himself that his heart was always on the side of the singing grasshopper. FELLOW CAPTAINS LOQUENTES PERSONAE I. Anna, a handsome, self-confident spinster, about forty-five years of age, who has spent twenty eminently successful years at the head of a New York business office but is now taking a year's leave of absence because she has been threatened with a nervous breakdown. She is a brisk, out- spoken, clear-thinking, slightly sardonic woman, of whom her friends often say that her bark is worse than her bite. II. Sarah, also a spinster, eager, ardent, tenacious; a writer of magazine verses. III. Emily, a gentle, affectionate, and yielding house- mother, with three partly grown-up sons and a tennis-playing, successful business husband. She is considered by her friends to incline to the sen- timental, which perhaps means that she is the most spiritual-minded of the group. IV. Mildred, intelligent, thoughtful, fastidiously impatient of the obvious, highly sophisticated. She is a brilliant example of the modern school teacher, a typical twentieth-century unmarried woman; independent, but of a less aggressive type than Anna. V. Dorothy, a housewife, mother, and novelist, who was, with odd inappropriateness, trained to special knowledge in Old French philology, and still preserves a leaning towards analytic ways of thought, united with considerable courage in pur- suing them, and accepting their conclusions. THE FORTNIGHTLY CLUB was as- sembled. This traditional, rather pon- derous formula means that five neither young nor old American women had settled themselves in wicker chairs on the porch for the twice-a- month conversation in which, for a good many years, this group of hfelong friends had talked over their differences of opinion. "Well, it's my turn," said Dorothy, taking some sheets of manuscript from her work-basket, " to start things today. And if you don't mind, I'm going to read you a fantastic parable I've just finished. You're used to being the dog things are tried on." "What's it about .^" asked Anna, with the shghtly impatient note of suspicion always aroused in her by the fantastic. "Oh, it's no fairy tale," Dorothy reassured her. "It started with nothing more fanciful than Elbert Willings who absent-mindedly hoed up an entire row of new onions in my garden yesterday." "He did?'' said Emily, sympathetically, "Isn't he the maddeningly exasperating boy! The day he came to weed our garden last week he carefully took out my whole bed of portu- 4 FELLOW CAPTAINS laca because he thought it was pigweed! What did you do ? I should have thought you'd have felt hke ..." "Well, I did, just that, all of it, and more," Dorothy answered the unspoken description of rage. "And then on my way back to the house, still boiling within, I happened to stand under our big crab-apple tree for a few minutes. It's all in bloom now, hke one great bouquet, you know, and the bees make such a hmnming in it, it makes me think of a mon- strous 'cello having its lowest string tuned up softly. I stood there, looking up into that canopy of flowers, until the bees began to murmur to me that the pillars of the world wouldn't fall if Elbert Wilhngs had hoed up an entire row of new onions. And after a while, the humming got inside my head, and I car- ried it off with me to my study and wrote this out of it." She unfolded the manuscript and began to read THE SECRET OF SERENITY ONCE upon a time there was a kingdom full of very unhappy people; and yet they were not all devoured by remorse because they had murdered their grandmothers nor had they all some dreadful and incurable disease which left them no hope. They were just ordi- nary people who had a great many reasons to find Hfe dehghtful, but who were so given to looking on the dark side of things that they never found time really to enjoy themselves. When it rained they worried for fear of floods. Not that they ever had any, but they had read of them in other countries, and they felt that in this hfe you never can be sure. When the sun shone they were afraid of drought, although the lovely valley where they Hved was watered by a thousand springs. When they had bad servants they worried about their stealing, and when they had good ones they worried about their leaving. And so it went on from bad to worse until you never saw a smiling, contented face anywhere in the kingdom. In fact they all looked remarkably hke the faces we see in the street-cars today. Well, one day a wonderful thing happened to 6 FELLOW CAPTAINS that country, although the people knew noth- ing of it for some time. A Wise Man came to the top of the mountain overlooking the valley and gazing down on the hurrying throngs of miserable inhabitants he was filled with pity and said to himself, "I will go down and rescue this folk from the woe which overwhelms them. I will take to them my wonderful discovery, *The Secret of Serenity.'" So down the steep slope he proceeded, his heart filled with sym- pathy for the inhabitants of The Unhappy Kingdom. Now you are to remember about this man that he was wise — really astonishingly wise, as the rest of this story will show. The first person he met was an individual sitting in an attitude of despair beside the road. The Wise Man accosted him. "What's up, my friend?" he said in a cheery tone. The other raised his head and looked at him with lack-lustre eyes. "Nothing's up and everything's down, as it always is," he said drearily. "I am the Court Barber and I have just learned that a special pearl-handled razor which I ordered for the Crown Prince cannot be finished when I thought it would. I am the most unhappy man in the world!" He dropped his head dispiritedly on his hands; for that was the sort of thing which made the people of this land so miserable. THE SECRET OF SERENITY 7 The Wise Man gazed at him in thoughtful silence for a moment, and then s£dd, "Listen, friend, I have a sure and unfaihng recipe for serenity. Once learned, all your troubles roll from you Hke water from a duck's back. Kjiow- ing it, you simply cannot worry any more than you can pick up quicksilver with a needle." The Court Barber looked at him skeptically. "That may do for some one who has no real troubles! But what good could it do me when calamity is upon me and my razors do not arrive on time!" At the thought he groaned aloud. The Wise Man approached him mysteriously, and whispered, "Seeing it's you, I'll sell you the recipe for less than to most folks," and with that he mentioned a sum which made the Barber give a start of amazement, it was so tremendously large. He looked at the Wise Man with a new interest. " It must be mighty fine to cost all that! Does it really cure all one's troubles.^" "Not all," said the Wise Man. "But nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand. And the thousandth it helps a good deal." "Well, think of that now," said the Barber thoughtfully; and after he had meditated a moment he said briskly, "Well, I'll pay that for a sure recipe for serenity. Come, you tell 8 FELLOW CAPTAINS me now, and I'll pay you as soon as I get to the city." The Wise Man started back, horror on his face. "You don't suppose so tremendous a secret can be babbled on the highway!" he cried reproachfully. "You must go home and prepare yourself for three days by fasting and meditation, and then, when you come to me, it takes two days' constant study to learn the mighty secret. You must approach it in a reverent spirit." The Barber looked greatly abashed at this rebuke, and a little alarmed at the notion of learning so deep a mystery, and the two walked along in a solemn silence. It all came about as the Wise Man com- manded. The Barber fasted and meditated three days and on the fourth presented himself at the house where the Wise Man had settled. There, before he was allowed to part the blood- red cm-tain which hung before the door, he was made to swear by all that he held sacred that he would not betray the secret. Giving a last look at the cheerful sun and famihar out-of-doors he took the final step, and with a palpitating heart entered the house of mystery. No one saw anything of him for two days, but then he opened the door and stepped out — another man. Tranquillity shone upon his brow and his eyes beamed in a glad content. THE SECRET OF SERENITY 9 People stared after him in the streets in amaze- ment, very much as they would do now, if anybody should walk along the pubHc highway looking hke that. At the door of his house his wife met him, her face drawn and twitching in nervous ex- asperation. " Oh, Henry ! " she exclaimed petu- lantly, "what do you think has happened now! I've found the cook using the table butter for frying potatoes! With plenty of cooking but- ter right at hand! Does it seem possible any- body can be so utterly conscienceless!" She sighed wearily as if life were a burden too heavy to be borne. The Barber gazed at her intently. His hps moved as if he were repeating some formula. At the end a flashing gladness came into his eyes. Clasping his poor, unliappy wife to his heart he exclaimed, " It really does the business! If we must mortgage all that we possess, you too shall learn the Secret of Serenity." WTien he went to shave the Royal Family that day he found the King's uncle in a desper- ate frame of mind, his old face so full of care- worn wrinkles that the razor could scarcely pass over them. The Grand Duke looked in astonishment at the smihng face of his Barber. It was an unusual sight in that place. "How can anybody look pleased in such an irritating world as this!" he snapped crossly. "It gets 10 FELLOW CAPTAINS worse and worse! It does seem to me that, old man as I am, I might be allowed a few things I want, instead of being balked and baffled at every turn. Here I had ordered up the royal galley to take me for a ride on the harbor, and the captain has the total lack of consideration for my gray hairs to come and say that new upholstery is being put on the deck seats and I can't go until tomorrow. It's always that way with me. Tomorrow it'll rain, I'll warrant ! " The Barber's heart swelled with pity for the wretched old man, and, pausing with his brush full of lather, he told him about the wonderful magician who had just arrived with his wonder- ful secret. He spoke so warmly and described so glowingly how already he felt trebly paid, even for the great sum it had cost him, that the King's uncle decided to go and try it, although he had no faith in it. You can imagine what happened after the King's uncle and the Barber's wife had emerged from the house of mystery, with beam- ing faces and upUfted hearts. There was a regular rush to the Wise Man and people stood in hue to wait their turn. The Wise Man became so wealthy that he did not have room enough to store all his gold, and the people of that country became so cheerful that the name of the valley was changed to "The Happy Land." By and by, when there were no more THE SECRET OF SERENITY 11 of the Royal Family, the Wise Man was made King. And for a long time everything went to perfection. But the Wise Man had a son, and hke other wise men when it came to his own family his wisdom disappeared. He allowed this boy (and he was Crown Prince, remember, with all the need for wisdom of that position!) to study every thing he pleased and only what he pleased, and uttered no word of protest against the one-sidedness of the lad's theories about political economy and ethics and the nature of govern- ment. He smiled indulgently when his coun- selors told him of the quaint and whimsical ideas of his son and said, "What's this about * absolute ethics'?" "Why, the Prince thinks that every one should tell nothing but the baldest matter-of- fact truth — as he calls it," cried the old coun- selors in dismay. "And he doesn't beheve in allowing a grain of imagination to remain. And he says that manipulating reahty is sin!" The old King laughed outright. "He's young! He's young!" he said. "Give him time and he'll get some sense. I was just so at his age." As a matter of fact the Prince was young, under twenty-one. This was the age set at which those inhabitants of The Happy Land who could afford it, learned the Secret of Seren- 12 FELLOW CAPTAINS ity. "When he's of age," said the old King, "I'll have a serious talk with him, tell him about the secret and we'll get all these twists in his head straightened out. You'll see what a sensible man he'll make." But the unexpected happened, as it will do even to wise people, and the day before the Prince's twenty-first birthday the old King died and left the kingdom to be governed by the Prince without any words of advice from him, and without a knowledge of the Secret of Serenity. It is possible that if the Prince had learned it from the old King who best understood the true nature of it, all might have been well; but he was initiated by a circle of white- bearded, solemn old wise-acres, and he came out from the house of mystery with a crude scorn on his beardless face, and a sore and misunderstanding contempt for his father in his fooKsh young heart. " It's a farce, a fraud, the most hoary and contemptible of supersti- tions!" he cried, "and my first duty to my people is to disabuse them of this error." For this was the secret. I can't stop to tell you of all the ceremonious rites by which it was approached, but when you got there, the formula was this. When you were troubled and worried; as when you found the cat asleep in your best hat, or when THE SECRET OF SERENITY 13 right in church you thought with a pang that you'd given your stenographer the wrong sum for that shipping of iron nails, or when, driving back from town, you suddenly remembered that you had not told the groceryman the very thing you went to town to tell him, or, while you were taking tea with a neighbor, when it suddenly came into your mind that you'd forgotten to tell the cook at home to use the three tomatoes in the corner of the ice- box for soup . . . when any of the thousand worries which day after day draw your face into fretful hues, came into your mind, you were to go through the following process: "Think carefully and intently of a rabbit, jumping over a brush fence back and forward, lippety-lop, three times; try to see in your mind's eye three black hens in the snow; think of an apple tree all rosy in the spring; and try to remember how it smells in the woods in spring after a rain. Then suddenly think again of the worry that affhcts you, and at once apply every energy of your mind to thinking, saying, and feeUng with all your might, "What o/it! What 0/ it!" Thus — to give a concrete example — sup- pose you are sitting in church and you think of the three tomatoes and you frown and say fretfully to yourself, "Oh, bother! The cook will never find those, and if she does she 14 FELLOW CAPTAINS won't have the sense to use them for soup today before they spoil." At once you begin, run rapidly over the for- mula and end with, "Well, what of it! What if she doesn't!" If you are an inveterate worrier you may still screw your face up irritably and say to your- self, "Why, by tomorrow they'll be too old to use!" Again the formula and again you say, " Well, what of it, really now? Suppose they areV Usually this makes you smile at the smallness of the worry, but some there are who must apply the formula still further. If there is still in your mind the wail, "Why, I'll have to throw them away! Three tomatoes!" the formula continues its heahng work, "What of it! What if I do! Three tomatoes! against my peace of mind! " And let me tell you, there are very few who cannot, by this time, with an amused smile at their own folly, sit back contentedly to hsten to the minister talking about the beauties of rehgion. This was the great secret, and this was what so revolted the hot-headed young Prince. "Oh! what base treachery did my father prac- tise on his unsuspecting people!" he cried with the bitterness of disillusion. "Why, there is nothing to that so-called mystery but common THE SECRET OF SERENITY 15 sense! Anybody knows that much! Think of making poor people pay out of their pitiful little wages for such a simple thing as that. For you can't deceive me!" he shouted, getting more and more excited, and shaking his fist in the faces of the old men, who were gazing at him sadly, "You can't deceive me with your hugger-muggery of black hens and jump- ing r£ibbits. They have nothing to do with it! All there is to your silly old mystery is to say *What of it,' and as far even as that goes, I don't approve of the idea. Suppose a switch- man should say coolly, * There, I've forgotten to shut the switch and the express train will smash into the switch and be wrecked, but what of it? I shan't stir from my comfort- able bed.'" The old counselors looked at each other in dismay. Said one, "Sire, we be aged men, having hved many more years than Your Highness, and you must allow that we may have learned a httle wisdom. No one ever supposed the magic formula would apply to everything. Indeed that is its chief value — to act as a touchstone to distinguish between real and fancied worries. For if you had Hved but a very few years longer you would know that it is the small and imaginary worries which poison hmnan life. Great and real troubles only sweeten and ripen people. The 16 FELLOW CAPTAINS switchman when he thinks of the open switch and asks himself, *what of it?' springs to his feet at once as he sees the possible con- sequence of his action; and it is evident that he will move with ten times the energy and force he would have had if he had worried equally about an open switch and losing his penknife. As to the black hens and apple trees you so rashly despise, they serve a twofold purpose. First, they divert the mind from the trifling worry which afflicts it and, secondly, they make the worriers think, in flowering apple trees and fragrant forests, of something infinitely pleasing, before they come to the vital point. As to the mys- teries of initiation, and the cost therefor, it is scarcely possible that even Your Majesty is so young and has seen so Httle of the world as to fancy that people will value what is given them freely or what they can readily imderstand." The young King looked at them in disgust. "You are hke all old people," he said in cold scorn. "You have lost your faith in human nature, and you degrade Truth by mixing it with superstition. I have trust in my people and the first act of my reign shall be to call them all together and tell them the truth about your formula." The old men fell on their knees in terror, but THE SECRET OF SERENITY 17 their prayers were of no avail. The young King was inexorably upright. " No more cheat- ing of ignorant, hard-working people for me!" he cried in a fine burst of pig-headed altruism. "The truth! The truth!" The next day in all the highways and by- paths of the kingdom there rode heralds of the King, drawing the people about them and electrifying the crowds by announcing that the next evening the king would, from the balcony of his palace, express to his subjects publicly the mighty Secret of Serenity, which had hitherto been sold at so high a price. You can imagine the stir this made. Men left their work and hurried home to tell their wives about it, women began planning at once what the children should wear, and young ladies put their cm-ling-irons on to heat. The next day the roads were filled with excited and happy folk, walking and driving, in carts and wagons and ox-carts; rich and poor, old and young, and all with the same look of supreme expec- tation on their faces. Of coin-se people who had already bought the Secret were provoked that it should be given away free, but they could not understand how what had cost them so much time and trouble to learn could be told in a few minutes in pubHc. So they went along out of curiosity. By nightfall the pubHc square was packed 18 FELLOW CAPTAINS with an expectant throng, gazing up at the palace with eager eyes. The young King looked down on them and his generous, fool- ish heart yearned over them. He had said that when the cathedral clock struck eight he would begin his announcement and he could scarcely wait the appointed hour. As the great strokes boomed out over the square a breathless hush settled on the crowd. The King stepped hurriedly out on the balcony and raised his hand. "My people," he said in solemn tones, "I am about to put a great trust in you. I am going to give you freely and in a pure and truthful form, the secret which has so long been sold in a corrupt version. This is the secret." The people held their breaths. "When anything worries you, simply think, 'What of it?'" Even as he spoke, although he was so young and foolish and in such a state of exaltation, the King was aware that there was something lacking. It did not sound impressive. "That is all," he went on rather lamely, "you just say 'what of it ?' and think how, after all, your worry is a small one and it will disappear." The people were perfectly silent for a mo- ment. The young King had expected this, but he had not expected the angry babel which broke out an instant later. Furious shouts of THE SECRET OF SERENITY 19 disappointment and anger at what they con- sidered a cruel practical joke rose to his as- tonished ears, mingled with triumphant cries from those who had already known the secret, of, "No! No! Don't beheve him! He doesn't know it all! That is only a mutilated version. It is a great and sacred secret." To these last the King answered hotly, "You poor deluded fools! Your rabbits and your black hens and your red curtains and your fasting and all are simple nonsense. They are only used to throw dust in your eyes." At last the true behevers fell silent, hurt to the heart. All their hves they had known and trusted that formula, and it had saved them from every petty misery. Now at one stroke to have it shorn of mystery and ridiculed by the King himself, shook them with a rending pain. With angry shouts they too joined the rioters who were storming the doors of the palace, crying for revenge on the heartless mocking young sovereign, who had so played with their most sacred emotions and faiths. Inside, the young man stood aghast. The white-haired old counselors moaned, and rent their garments, and his world, his foohsh, study- book, two-dimension world fell in pieces about his head. But wisdom came too late to save his king- dom. After the crowd withdrew, sullen and 20 FELLOW CAPTAINS tired of trying in vain to force their way into the palace; even after they had gone back peaceably enough to their daily work, he found them a changed people. Gloomy, fretful faces sm-rounded him on every side. Nervous pros- tration came into fashion again with the rich, and suicides with the poor. At one jump the kingdom had gone back to its former state, and by common consent the name was changed too, to "The Unhappy Kingdom." The King was as miserable as his subjects and was known as "Lurenoff of the Mournful Eyes." He was in despair over his mistake. He wept over it in the night-time and groaned aloud by day, but there was no remedy. With one sweep of his rash young hand he had shattered the edifice it had taken his wise old father years to build, and it could no more be restored than a burst soap-bubble. Once he tried to repair the dam- age by getting the people together and explain- ing to them; but they were so exasperated by the mere mention of the matter that they mobbed his heralds in the highways and he was forced to give it up. Long years he lived and reigned, a broken- hearted man, seeing no cheerful face in all his kingdom, and hearing naught but fretful and despairing voices. One day, however, he was riding sadly along through a narrow, hedge- THE SECRET OF SERENITY 21 bordered road when he heard some one singing in so joyous a tone, with so merry and care- free an accent, that he stopped, amazed, sweet souvenirs of his lost childhood crowding into his heart. An old, old man, bent with infirmi- ties, was walking along, pushing a heavy bar- row, stumbling and tripping weakly as he labored, but always pouring out this flood of cheerful melody. Beside him Avall^ed a man with the gloomy visage of irritation and dis- content the King saw constantly on all his subjects. He was young and strong and the world was all glorious about him, but he glow- ered fretfully at the King, whom he did not recognize, and said with an accent of savage gloom: "Well, I'm glad to see somebody I can exchange a word with and relieve my mind. I was looking forward to a pleasant day, though I maght have known that we never can have that in this world. And now I remember that we've taken the longest way to get to the village and lost as much as twenty minutes. There is always something to thwart me in whatever I . . . " The King broke in impatiently on his com- plaint to ask, "What makes that old man so cheerful, when he's old and poor and must work so hard?" The young man spoke with a sort of culmi- nation of exasperation: "Isn't he irritating! 22 FELLOW CAPTAINS He's an old fool who still believes in that exploded Secret of Serenity. He learned it when he was young, and by the time the young King told us what a fraud it was he had grown stone deaf, and as he can't read, he's never learned that it doesn't amount to anything." The King looked in silence at the old man, who, giving him a cheery nod of greeting as he passed, went singing gaily down the road. Long after the hedges had hidden him from sight, the sound of his hght-hearted song hung in the air. But is it Artificial? WLEN she had finished, there was a mo- ment's silence and then Anna, with the resentful air of one who has been rather a dupe — for after all it had been fanciful — said, "Well, I for one am totally in sym- pathy with the young king. He looked things straight in the face. No mystery, mummery, abracadabra, presto change for himl Or for me. Life is hard," Anna pronounced with all the fervent pessimism of the successful, prosperous person. "It's full of disappoint- ments, worry and troubles of all sorts. Better meet it on its own ground and see it as it is, not try to throw rose-water over it and fight a shaded lamp to look at it by." "I'm incfined to agree with you, Anna. I'm not much in sympathy with artificial helps in fiving, or trying to alter the essential facts by an ingenious stage setting," said Mildred, speak- ing as usual slowly and thoughtfully, with an instinctive guard over her words. "But is it artificial, is it mysterious?" Sarah demanded eagerly. "Isn't it natural to have flesh on the skeleton, and leaves on the trees ? You know, Dorothy, — maybe you 24 FELLOW CAPTAINS all know, — I've been using something a good deal like that for years. It doesn't seem a bit mysterious when you do it. Not a bit Hke a stage setting or a shaded lamp! You feel a great deal more normal and reasonable than you ever did before." "Black hens aren't anything so excessively uncommon, that you should all be calling them artificial and mysterious," protested Dorothy, tucking her manuscript under a bulging pile of rompers and overalls in her work-basket. "Rabbits, woods, snow — nothing unusual about any of them. Even red curtains aren't unknown. My Aimt Mattie used to have some in her Hving-room." "Well, I don't care, I call it intellectually dishonest to try to cover up the hard facts of life in any such fanciful way," Anna insisted. "I don't. I think it's lovely to escape from them sometimes," Emily mused aloud, with a wistful look on her over-refined, fair face. "The point is, it wasnt escaping from hard facts or trying to cover them up! Just the opposite! The whole idea is trying to see all the facts you possibly can! It's opening your eyes wider and trying not to squint at things and distort and twist and magnify them. The whole object is to let in more fight, and clearer fight. If you'd only try it for yourselves, all of you, you'd see!" cried Sarah, warmly. BUT IS IT ARTIFICIAL? 25 " Dorothy has just made a romance with a few httle whimsical curlicues in it, just enough to keep you all guessing as much as is healthy for you. ..." Emily looked from Dorothy to Sarah with an air at once thoroughly puzzled, a Uttle timid and rather hopeful. "Just whimsical enough to keep ice in the refrigerator so it won't go sour," continued Sarah, "but the material she has used is plain dandehon greens she has picked in her own front yard, and the meadow opposite, and what those Court Barbers and Prime Ministers do in the story is just essentially what any num- ber of more or less hard-headed people do all the time, and what any number more — everybody in fact! — could do. She has just taken off the materiahstic bhnders Anna always thinks she can see better with." Anna laughed good-naturedly with the others and remarked without perturbation, "I can see pretty well, thank you." "A funny thing too," Sarah went on, "is that we all do it in a few cases; about as much as a New York family exercise their dog. They take it out for a walk round the block when fifteen miles across country is what it needs. That's just about the amount of exertion we get out of our perfectly ready and willing (not to say pining) subconscious powers." 26 FELLOW CAPTAINS "What few cases do we use it in, I'd like to know?" asked Anna belligerently, "I don't know what in the name of sense it is, but I warrant I don't use it at all!" "What'Uyou bet?" "Sundaes for the Club." "All right. Let's see now. Do you ever impress upon yourself to wake up at exactly ten minutes of seven?" "Why, certainly! That's nothing queer or peculiar or mysterious." "Certainly not. Nothing about our notions either that's at all queer or peculiar. Why should you say it's not peculiar to order your- self to wake up at ten minutes of seven and insist that it's abracadabra to order yourself to wake up in a good temper ? Here's a whole department of each of us that's not Kving on the surface, a great division of human nature Hving in the dark, in the garret or the cellar, whichever you hke. ..." "Cheer up, everybody. Sarah always has to trot out that subconscious self. It's aU the fashion nowadays, hke full skirts," said Mil- dred, resignedly. "Go on, Sarah, do." "Well, Anna, don't you see, you impress it on your mind, as the saying goes, to wake you up at six-fifty. You do wake up at six- fifty. Trust the little old subconscious for that. He'll turn the trick. And that's not the only BUT IS IT ARTIFICIAL? 27 thing we use it for, either. I don't suppose there's a person alive that hasn't thought up a name.''^ "Now she's going to claim that she and Dorothy invented the human memory," said Anna. "Well, look here, Anna, just look at what we do, when we 'think up' a name. First we im- press on ourselves (did you ever stop to think how we always call our subconscious selves, our selves, and so they are, the biggest part of ourselves) ..." Anna and Mildred both groaned, and Mildred said, "She's worse than usual." "We make a great point of the general idea of the name we want," continued Sarah ear- nestly. "We go round and round it, describing what it almost is and isn't quite. . . . No, it isn't Campbell. No, it isn't Clayton. Cool- edge ? No. But it's something with a capital 'C and a httle *!' in it. Why, we tell the sub-conscious confidential clerk exactly what to look for as if we were saying to the cook, *In the second bureau drawer you'll find a gray knitted shawl — no, not a shawl exactly, one of these what-you-call 'ems, worsted things, with a point in the back and a point in front. You'll find it all right by that de- scription.' And then you go on with whatever you're doing and wait for her to find and bring 28 FELLOW CAPTAINS you the what-you-call 'em. Exactly the same with the subconscious clerk. Off he goes, and you calmly stop thinking about it and go on reading the paper or sorting the children's socks or watering the geraniums. You say, 'When I'm not thinking of it, it'll come to me'; and of course it does, handed up on a tray from the neat underground shelves of the subconscious memory. * Caldwell! That's what it is! I knew it would come to me!'" "Do you mean to say you call that using the subconscious?" Mildred asked incredu- lously. "Of course we do, because it is. There are dozens and dozens of ways the subconscious self expresses itself through the body, without any orders at all. The trouble is they're so common we never think of their being there. Take blushing for instance. Take crying. Take the way your heart acts when you hear a call of *Fire!' in a crowded place. Take the wave of actual physical nausea that rolls over you at the sight of some horrible medicine you re- member only too well and have to take again." "Well, that sounds better than some of the I'arned talk you've had about that old sub- conscious," confessed Mildred. "You see Dorothy hasn't invented so much of that story after all. As I said before, she's looked around and picked out facts that every- A SELF-SUGGESTER 29 body else, or nearly everybody else, all but those Emmanuel Movement people and a few other lucid exceptions, have walked over, and trampled underfoot, all their hves. Gracious Heavens! How we have wasted it on thinking up names and waking up at ten minutes of seven and never once using it for anything the least bit important!" "You keep talking about *it' and saying you do *it,' Sarah. What is it that you do? And how did you ever begin in the first place?" Autobiography of a Self-Suggester "Didn't I ever tell you? Why it was that old hay fever of mine that really drove me into learning how to give myself a brace. Don't you remember how I used to sneeze and choke ? My! But how that miserable httle chronic ailment spoiled my summers! You know I had a lot of surgical treatment, but it really didn't permanently improve at all, and at last I be- gan to get the notion that there was an element of hysteria mixed up in it. I thought if I could only forget to sneeze my head off every morn- ing, forget to expect to choke and wheeze, I would get out of the habit and begin to get well. So I asked the doctor and he said, *0h yes, it wouldn't do me or anybody else any harm to cheer up a Httle and forget their un- 30 FELLOW CAPTAINS comfortable feelings as often as they could.' And I said something about it to the family at home, and they all said *yes, that was a good idea,' and I'd better by all means cheer up and forget my hay fever. All my friends ap- proved. 'Take your mind right off it,' they said; * think you're going to be better and you will be. Don't give it a thought,' and so on. "Well, that was all very encouraging, but it sounded a little like pulhng yourself up by your bootstraps. I didn't know how to go to work, cheering up and forgetting. I didn't seem to have any tools." "Why didn't you write to Dr. Worcester, of the Emmanuel Church in Boston," asked Emily. "That's what I should have done." "That's just what I did do. I just plainly stated my case and asked where I should apply, living up here in Vermont, to get instructions how to begin. In due time I got an answer. Dr. Worcester had found time to write to me, among goodness knows how many other stran- gers, and to tell me to read two books, which I bought for a moderate price: Feuchtersleben, that famous old Viennese doctor, you know, on 'Health and Suggestion,' and a book called 'The Mystic Will,' by C. G. Leland." "Were they any good?" asked Mildred. "They were just exactly what I needed. They put the tools right in my hand. They A SELF-SUGGESTER 31 came on the morning mail, I spent most of the afternoon reading them, and by the time I went to bed (where I generally woke up at two in the morning and sneezed and choked and smarted till five) I was ready to begin." "What did you do?" asked Mildred. "Why, I willed myself, just as the book said, to sleep quietly and breathe comfortably all night. Or, if I waked up, just quietly to fall asleep again." "Did it work.^" asked Anna and Emily at once. "Do you know I can't even tell you about it now, five years afterwards, without getting excited," confessed Sarah. "I woke up at the usual time, scared to death for fear the new idea wouldn't work, and I'd begin to sneeze as usual. But I didn't. Minutes crept along, and still I didn't sneeze. After a long time I cautiously turned over. Still no sneezes. The clock struck the half hour. I began to get sleepy. I went to sleep emd slept until morn- ing; and I've never had those midnight sneezes since, — not once." "Well, I should say that showed there was a lot of hysteria mixed up with them!" ex- claimed Anna. "Certainly it does. But call it what you like, I was losing weight and losing appetite and feehng generally miserable. The doctor 32 FELLOW CAPTAINS couldn't stop them, and people telling me to cheer up and forget them didn't do me a par- ticle of good, though I wanted so very much to follow that advice." "How well did it keep on working when the novelty wore off?" asked Anna shrewdly. "Well, it didn't always work as well as that, and once or twice, that first simimer, I got quite discouraged. But the books said not to get discouraged, to keep hammering away; and I did keep hammering away, and on the whole I kept steadily getting better. And when I went to New York a year afterwards, and went in to see the rather well-known nose and throat speciahst I always go to, he said the whole architecture of the inside of my head was improved." "Oh, you kept on going to a specialist, did you? Isn't it well yet, not after five years .^^" asked Emily, disappointed. "No, but it's well enough to be neghgible," said Sarah cheerfully. " I never bother suggest- ing at that old hay fever any more. — Oh, once or twice a season perhaps, if it gets bothersome. But for all practical pm-poses it's well, and has been, for about three years. Self-sugges- tion and the specialist together put it in its place. I should be bored to death going back to that nowadays! I suggest now mostly against cloudy thinking, and hackneyed, con- FOUNDATIONS 33 ventional ways of writing, and against irrita- bility and selfishness, and the fear of death." "It sounds interesting," hazarded Mildred. "Go ahead and tell us more about the details of it. I don't suppose you begin right off after making up your accounts, or putting away the wash, to tell yourself to sleep restfully all night .^" Foundations "Well, no. I take a few minutes first for a little general preliminary thought, about the foundations of my life. Of course everybody else might not do it in just that way (although a great many saints and sinners in all ages seem to have found that way satisfactory). I don't think Dorothy and I do it the same way. But anyhow it's essentially the same principle we all use. "What I do first is to stretch out and rest and relax on my foundations, on what I beheve in, — well, why shouldn't I say it right out ? — on the thought of God. I concentrate my whole mind on the reahzation of God, for a minute or two, maybe five. I try to feel him; his greatness and power, or else his wholesome- ness and pleasantness, or, above all, his un- faihng interest in me and my affairs, £uid his sure readiness to back up any daring or ambi- tious project my conscience may have in view. 34 FELLOW CAPTAINS And immediately I find myself rested, liixiu*iat- ing on the safety of the bed-rock that's under- neath everything in my life. You might almost call it what that old monk they had a revival of a year or two ago — yes, Brother Lawrence — what he called the * practise of the Presence.' Don't shy off Hke that, Mildred. You and Anna can stand it and Emily knows what I mean." Emily nodded, and said "Yes, I think I do." "Or you might call it taking a walk on the seashore, or in the biggest woods you know. Dorothy probably would. It's the one best way to rest, anyhow; go right down to what you really beheve in, the realest things you know, and stay there with them a little while." "What do you call ^real'?" demanded Anna. "Why, I think that's for everybody to decide for himself," rephed Sarah, drowning Emily's murmurous quotation, "The Actual is not the Real." "As I said, God is real to me. But you all try it for yourselves. Take a good look for your foundations and when you've found them, lean on them. If you beheve in God, lean on him. But you can't lean on what you don't really beheve in, and it'll never rest you a particle to try." "I've given up trying to persuade myself that I beheve in God," said Mildred, quietly. "I gave it up long ago." FOUNDATIONS 35 "All right," said Sarah. " Find out what you do believe in, and rest on that." "Oh, I haven't taken up with any of these Oriental cults, or anything," said Mildred vaguely and rather wearily. "Mercy on us, woman! I didn't mean any- thing Hke that! I don't mean anything in a book or a series of lectures. I mean what you beheve in, yourself, — what you beheve in. Whatever your everyday hfe is founded on, it stands to reason you can found a Secret of Serenity on it too." Dorothy nodded. "That sounds like cold common sense to me," said she. "I doubt," said Anna dryly, "if you can get such good company as cold common sense to associate with those new-fangled notions of yours." Emily looked a little worried. "I'd just as soon not have everything so sensible!" she exclaimed. "Everybody wants everything so business-hke." This tickled Anna's sense of humor and put her into very good temper. She Ustened toler- antly, while Sarah went on expounding her scheme. " It's a little effort, that journey back to the foundations. Of course you have to use yom- mind and yoin* will-power quite vigorously before you can stop thinking about the unsatis- 36 FELLOW CAPTAINS factory condition the laundry came home in, and the fact that the painter has not come to put the second coat on the windowsills, and concentrate your mind on something a Httle more permanent and important. Why, do you know, Dorothy, — Emily, — all of you — sometimes I've come home from our chm'ch fair, or the Band of Mercy picnic or the Alumni dinner at the Seminary so tired with thinking of details I thought I'd never get out of the ruck and confusion of them. It was the hard- est work to think of anything else but the pro- ceeds and the expenses and returning the tables and chairs and plates and napkins and turning off the electric Hght in the hallway and locking the side door and the cellar window of the parish house; or going all over again what a fright I'd had when I missed the Httlest Thomp- son boy at the picnic and some of the children said he'd run off to the river. Well, you all know how it is. You've all lain awake, I sup- pose, painfully wide awake, overtired. I declare sometimes it has seemed too much trouble to bundle all those ha'penny tup- penny anxieties out and make the effort that would rest me. I would think ' I'm too deadly tired to use the Secret tonight.' " "Nobody else can get a word in edgewise, now Sarah's off on her hobby, I suppose," said Anna. FOUNDATIONS 37 "Let's go into this thing as deep as we can," urged Dorothy. "We've all thought about it enough, I'm sure. We'll never have a better chance to air our pet theories and adopt one another's if we want to." "Well, Hsten, — I want to finish." Sarah managed to insert herself again into the lead- ing place in the conversation. "As I say, you may often think you're too tired to do it, but if you use the muscles of your will a Httle bit, the rested feeling you get right away, instanta- neously, is perfectly indescribable. It's deh- cious! It makes you feel hke a child going to bed after a happy day, who knows his mother is sewing in the next room." "I'm not so fond of my own thoughts as all that!" Mildred demiu-red. "It might easily get to be unwholesome, I should think, all that self-centered thinking. I'd rather rest myself on Maeterlinck." "But Mildred, MaeterHnck won't do your beheving for you. What is your real founda- tion? I've got a theory about it myself. I believe it's the sense of beauty! Your whole life is such an honest workmanlike absorption in understanding beauty, and making other peo- ple understand it, in its highest forms, bring- ing it out as a chief end of education, making it increase and triumph in the minds of yoiu* httle boys and girls . . . my soul! what a 38 FELLOW CAPTAINS splendid foundation! I should think you could rest on that, shouldn't you, Dorothy P Don't you all remember what Dorothy said in that last novel of hers, about keeping your life in drawing, keeping the color-scheme of yoiu* life harmonious; something like that?" "No," Mildred answered slowly, "that wouldn't do for me. My love for beauty would never connect with conduct. Life doesn't seem to me a kind of art. It is beautiful, even its most sorrowful and tragic parts, but I want it (if I could only have it so!) to be clear and intelligent and reasonable. I got very tired of beautiful paintings when I was in Italy, I remember. So often there wasn't any ade- quate plan, and the ruck of beautiful colors over my head in Santa Maria Maggiore almost drove me insane. Ten thousand lovely bits in twenty vaultings apiece, in twenty chapels! It was just such a kaleidoscope as the world is, and this life." Sarah began more soberly, "I guess then, your foundation isn't a sense of beauty, not the luxuriant Itahan sort of beauty at any rate. Greek, perhaps .^^ Beauty full of clearness of purpose, coherence, proportion ? Couldn't you rest on that ? The thought of ideal, austere beauty, the perfect, intelligent, purposeful, pro- portioned beauty! 'And beauty's law of plain- ness and content.'" FOUNDATIONS 39 "Perhaps I could do something with the ideal of beauty. ... It does give me a notion of sohdity. I think I might get a sense of some- thing permanent out of that," Mildred mused aloud. They were all silent for several moments, until Dorothy exclaimed, "Let's dig down together, to all our respective foundations, right now. Come on, everybody! What are yours, Emily? What are yours, AnnaP" "Why, I beheve in God," said Emily, in a tone having in it the faintest possible shade of disapproval of the others. "I beheve in a personal God." "So do I," said Sarah, promptly, "I believe in a God who's the whole universe, crimes and all; and yet who always backs the right. I think he's everything we can imagine and a great deal more than we can imagine, and yet I think he's just like what the old- fashioned devotional books say, what the Bible says, a real human father, to the whole big family of us. And if these two ideas of him contradict each other, then I must do what Mr. Chesterton says the sane average person does; — take the two truths and the con- tradiction along with them. And so sometimes I think of him as the ocean, or the wind out of the pine woods, and sometimes I think of him almost hke a very much finer and greater Mr. 40 FELLOW CAPTAINS TulKver, saying to us all, as Mr. Tulliver did to Maggie, when she was so sorry and ashamed about having cut off her hair, " Come over here and stand by me, little one. Father'U take your part." "Do you think of God as a human father too, Emily?" asked Dorothy. " I believe I do. My own father was always like a big stone wall between me and the world. I had such a feehng of safety if I could get where he was! If he went with me to the dentist's Fd have any number of teeth pulled. Even after I was married and had children of my own, I didn't lose that feeling about my father. And now I've grown to think of God very much in the same way." " I never had much of that feehng about my father, for all I loved him so dearly," said Dorothy. "Even as a very Httle girl, I knew perfectly well that I was the one who had to stand the pain of the tooth-pulHng, no matter who held my hand. And I feel that way now a good deal; that I must stand on my own feet and bear my own bmdens and have plain, sheer endurance for a daily ingredient in my hfe; and mustn't try to throw the responsibihty upon anybody else, — not even on God, — even if I had that personal idea of God, which I haven't at all, Hke Sarah and Emily. I haven't a bit of the mystic in me, you know, FOUNDATIONS 41 and I get dizzy at the very idea of contempla- tion, the * practise of the Presence' that gives Sarah so much comfort. Trying to think of things in the abstract that way makes me feel as though I were leaning over the edge of a bottomless chasm and very hkely to lose my balance and fall in. So I never used even to try to discover what I did believe in, or what was the ultimate foundation of my Ufe. I used to depend entirely on what the Quakers call *the inner hght' (what the rest of us call conscience) and just try to do the best I could from day to day. You know the Quakers say that if you only listen quietly, your own heart will tell you what is right. I still steer my course mostly by that, even now. But a ques- tion of little Sally's brought home to me what that inner hght really means to me. Haven't you noticed," (she addressed the other mother), "how the children are always making you go to the heart of things ? Sally came to me one day when she was about four years old, with her great friend and playmate, LilHan. She said * Mother, what is God ? Lilhan says he's an old man with a white beard who hves up on top of Red Mountain and looks down at us.' "Well, there I was, face to face with the question I'd been dodging all my hfe. Sally looked up at me confidently and I had to 42 FELLOW CAPTAINS answer. And in trying to make it simple enough for a fom'-year-old child to understand, I made it, for the first time, simple enough so that I could understand. I said right away as though I'd had that answer ready for years, *Why, Httle daughter, I think that God is the feehng in our hearts that makes us want to do what's right. I think when we want to be good to other people instead of tormenting and harming them, we have God in us. Goodness and bravery and unselfishness — those are other names for God.' "And ever since then I've reahzed that I trust the inner fight because I really befieve, even in my blackest moments, that there is something immortal and eternal in it. For all that it's so often corrupted and obscured with bigotry and self-interest (I suppose the best of the Inquisitors were following their inner fight!) I do befieve in it. I don't befieve very emphatically in many things because ' the world and all that in it is ' seems to me in such a state of flux and confusion; but I discovered then that I do befieve, very emphatically, and in all my moods, that there is something in human nature far beyond the instincts to feed and propagate and possess." Several of the others, while Dorothy spoke, had nodded once or twice as if in unconscious agreement. Anna herself had looked unusually FOUNDATIONS 43 thoughtful, though she now said rather shortly, "Well, as far as I'm concerned, the less I think about what I beHeve, the better. The more I think about it, the more it dwindles away." "'When half-gods go . . .'" began Emily, who had an insatiable habit of quoting. "No gods at all arrive to me," Anna finished, mordantly. "No use being optimistic about it. For a long time I tried to think I beHeved in *a Power not ourselves that makes for righteousness.'" "Well, that's enough, I should think," exclaimed the temperamentally sanguine Sarah. Without noticing, Anna went on, "At first I spelled it with a capital, and then without. But it disintegrated, either way, and disappeared without leaving a single trace behind." She paused, and then went on. "I've been sitting here all this time Hstening to what you folks all believe in, as if it were a kind of dia- lect you were talking; a dialect I didn't under- stand. All I can really sense is a tremendous feeling of responsibihty, a feeling of burdens being the proper thing to bear, and that it is up to me to bear them." Dorothy unostentatiously took the great liberty of pressing for an instant Anna's hand. She knew what some of the burdens had been. "I was brought up, Hke the rest of you, to 44 FELLOW CAPTAINS be perfectly orthodox," Anna proceeded. "/ don't know where it's all gone! It's melted, scattered, blown off somewhere. I've even given up trying to find a principle Uke Mil- dred's. I've got absolutely nothing left but a dogged unwillingness to fool myself." She ceased abruptly, and before Sarah could bring her thoughts to the definiteness of speech, Dorothy had exclaimed, cheerfully, "Well, Anna, there you are. What a splendid granite foundation!" "What!" cried Anna. "Why, honesty, rock-ribbed, uncompromis- ing honesty of behef! It rests me to the marrow of my bones just to think of it." Sarah added eagerly, "Rest the whole weight of your Hfe on it, this very night, Anna, do! Just concentrate every atom of your mind on the imperishable strength of honesty! I think, with no less a person than Spinoza, that it's immortahty itself to hold a behef hke that." "Well, — but look here! You two tran- scendentalists have snatched it out of my hand and turned on the colored lights, somehow. All I had in mind was just what I've learned out of every-day business experience; that's all. I've learned by a thousand experiences with new hands, old hands, green, blundering, smart, conceited, — oh, everything, every kind of human there is (for they all come into my FOUNDATIONS 45 office in the course of time), that there's ex- actly one thing you can tie to, and nothing else in the entire world, and that is honesty." "Well, that's what you want to tie to, then," Mildred added her assent to what Sarah and Dorothy had said. "But — why! . . . How is tliis, anyway P" asked Anna, bewildered. "I never thought of it as a principle . . . never as a kind of phi- losophy ! It's just experience, and only business experience at that!" "Any reason why it couldn't be granite, just because the quarry's in your own pasture?" asked Dorothy energetically. She went on, " I think Anna's foundation underlies all that's best in the nineteenth century. That unspar- ing, austere faith in intellectual integrity, that perfect trust in honesty no matter where it leads you, — without that not a single step towards the strength and splendor of modern science would have been taken. It began, didn't it, with Bacon's * Novum Organum,' — one of the greatest minds of all times being needed to conceive it in the first place! And now it has spread and spread till it's the bul- wark behind which innumerable modern lives are sheltering themselves from the void. That habit of mind, so widely acquired, — it's the great springboard off which I expect the twentieth century to jump to goodness knows 46 FELLOW CAPTAINS what shining new certainties. I can hardly wait to get a glimpse of them." "Why, but I never ... I can't get it through my head, quite. . . . When I began to talk about it, I didn't suppose I was on the track of anything like thisV Anna subsided into astonished contemplation of the mine she had uncovered, beginning from time to time exclamations of amazement and increduhty. . . . "Trying to make my ugly duckhng out a swan!" The others too were silent for some time, in spite of a few spasmodic false starts back to conversation. Perhaps each woman was asking herseK how adequately or how inadequately she had stated the case for her own beUef, thinking of shades of meaning she hadn't brought out, and impUcations she was doubtful of being able to stand by all the way through. At length Emily dissipated all these thoughts by the sudden demand, "Well, when you've got thoroughly rested, what then, Sarah .^" Drawing Checks on the Subconscious Forces "Well, then, of course, you begin on the other part. You go to market and supply your- self with what you need. It may be a sweeter disposition, it may be self-confidence under an expected strain, it may be freedom from the SUBCONSCIOUS FORCES 47 sense of hurry, or more success in being com- panionable; or it may be the courage of your convictions and a little more boldness in living up to them." "Well, but what do you do and how do you doit?" asked Mildred. "I forgot to say that in the beginning you lie down, or else you lean back in a comfort- able chair, and it's just as well to darken the room a httle, if you can. (Anything that con- duces to quiet nerves and relaxation.) Sleep- ing porches are good places to do it in. When you've thought about your foundations long enough, and that dehcious feehng of rest that such thinking always brings comes over you, you concentrate your attention on what you want, and use yoiu* will-power to draw it out of the subconscious storehouse you have the keys to. For instance, let's suppose you want relief from the apprehensive habit of mind so many of us — perhaps women particularly — are so tormented by, — the habit of looking for all sorts of small trouble. You say to yourself something Hke this, " All you good-for-nothing small fears and cares, I rake you up like a parcel of dry leaves; I rake you into a heap, I touch a match to you! Blaze up, blaze away, dead leaves 1 And crumble down into ashes. 48 FELLOW CAPTAINS The wind cheerfully blows them away And scatters them over a thousand miles." Mildred murmured, "Oh, heavens! if I could only get rid of them as easily as that!" "Lots of people have got rid of them as easily as that," Sarah maintained. "Only — it's not easy! it's no lazy woman's job to spend fifteen minutes to half an hour a day patiently and toilfuUy concentrating your mind on that form of words and others hke it; — for they don't last very long, only about a week or ten days; and when one begins to lose its sharp- ness and brightness of outHne, it's time to make up a new one." "I never could make one up in the world," cried Emily. "Well, you don't have to," said Dorothy. "I never use that kind of thing, never could. But I have a storehouse of fine quotations that do the same thing for me, just give me a jolt and get my eyes back into right focus, like looking off into the distance after you've been straining your eyes over fine needlework. If I were in that state of mind Sarah speaks of I should give myself a good laugh with that thing from Emerson, how Nature greets us as we come busthng from the caucus or the committee meeting, *Why so hot, little man?'" SUBCONSCIOUS FORCES 49 "But you're mistaken about not being able to make up definite forms of suggestion for yourself, Emily ! " cried Sarah. " Of course you could. And I think you're probably one of that large class whom they'd help ever so much. You'd soon discover that you could make a great deal better ones for yourself than any printed ones you can find." "Some of yours, Sarah, are really just good vers litres,'' declared Dorothy, "and I've got some of those in my quotation treasury." Sarah insisted, "I feel that nobody but yourself can say exactly what you want to say and say it in just the way you want it. Grammar and rhetoric and all those things don't matter at all. The only point is, does it suit you? Does it work.^ You shouldn't have them too long, of course, or too compli- cated. The efi'ect needs to be simple and strong." "Have you entirely given up using it for physical help? " asked Emily. " I don't suppose you come down to that any more." "Indeed I do, though I" said Sarah, "when- ever I need it. I just happen not to need it much. But it seems to me the whole of fife is team-play anyway. (* Soul helps flesh and flesh helps soul.') That old monkish medieval idea that's so attractive to people who are naturally ascetic, about the body's being something 50 FELLOW CAPTAINS beneath our notice, seems to me just as absm^d and wrong-headed and thick-headed as any- thing can possibly be! Why, of course you draw on the subconscious reservoir for more physical strength whenever you want it — for cahnness and quiet nerves under an opera- tion, for instance; or in ordinary, every-day life, for sounder sleep, reKef from headache, and so forth. It's particularly useful for people in that discouraged period of recovery from a serious illness. You know how buoyant they are when they first sit up. Every day they sit up a fit tie longer; and then comes the grand event of being entirely dressed and walking across the hall into the spare room. And then comes on that disheartened time that wears out the family worse than the crisis itself did. The convalescent can't see that he's going on at all! He'll never get his strength back at this rate ! If he could only walk to the corner ! " "That's exactly where my oldest boy is now, after pneumonia," exclaimed Emily. *'Hell try your Secret! He'd try anything, if he thought it would get him back to Princeton in the fall!" "Well, if he'll go to sleep every night saying this over, putting his mind on it hard, I'm pretty sure it'll help him," answered Sarah. " It's an old favorite of mine. SUBCONSCIOUS FORCES 51 ** Sail, ship of health, On the homeward voyage Through storm and calm, Plough the deep water. Steadily the ship comes Nearer and nearer, Steadfastly steaming Through north wind and south wind And east wind and west wind, Steaming and ploughing straight home." Emily said, "I wish you'd write that down, ni take it home." "She's got it written down already," said Dorothy. "She has a lot of them written out in a little note-book. See here, Sarah, while I'm serving tea (we're going to have it at five today) won't you run back to the house and bring that note-book over here.^ I know Emily- would hke to see them. And perhaps the others too. I don't use them the way you do, but I read them as I read your verses." "All right," agreed Sarah, "I'll show my note-book, if you'll go up to your study and bring down that assorted collection of fine sayings you find so suggestive." Mildred asked, "You say lots of people have really hastened their convalescence by that kind of thing .^" "Certainly they have; and by the way that's something I wanted to say at the very beginning. 52 FELLOW CAPTAINS You ought always to keep in the back of your mind, every time you suggest to yoiu'self, the fact that lots and lots of people have worked it successfully, and if you are as persevering and energetic as they are, you'll certainly work it successfully too." "You don't mean by that, though, do you, Sarah," Dorothy asked, "that you claim to ciue everything by self-suggestion? Because if you do, I'm going to climb right off your wagon this minute." "Well, you'll find me climbing right down beside you," said Sarah laughing. "Nobody has a profounder respect and admiration than I for the glorious achievements of doctors and nurses and hospitals and camps and fresh air and cleanHness and exercise. All along the line body and soul work together, it seems to me. I think we ought to declare war on the spirit of exclusiveness, hydra that it is, when- ever it sticks up one of its ugly heads. Only I'm sure that there are a good many other people just the way I used to be. Whenever they go to a doctor, down they sink as hmp as a rag into the office chair, and wait there Uke a lump of putty to be put into shape. They are millstones round any self-respecting doctor's neck, and I know a few trained nurses well enough to know they hang the same way on a niu'se; especially those who can afford to SUBCONSCIOUS FORCES 53 keep a nurse indefinitely. Well, as I told you, I was thirty years old before I ever found out that I had a fine Httle tonic right in the house, that I could administer to myself. No sooner had I begun using it than I was perfectly astonished to find how often it was the only medicine in the world I needed." "I didn't mean only that," Dorothy ex- plained. "I meant that there are deep waters we must wade through, that no secrets of serenity will save us from. Deep and real anxieties must be borne, and weakness and illness and sorrow, partings and pain and loss and loneliness. We can't be always walking, as old Bunyan said, in our silver sHppers in the sunshine. Just to live under the present industrial system, with its idiotic waste and brutahty, is enough make any modern brain curdle with indignation and exasperation." "But that's exactly where some such Secret as ours is needed most of all," cried Sarah in eager haste. "That's just why we need all our strength. When you have to go step by step through the hardest kind of rough coun- try, when you have to wade against the strong- est current, that's the time, above all other times, when you need to lean hardest on your own real faith, and to reahze it most. That's the time to call out every ounce of power you've got, to keep on, and keep steady, and see the 54 FELLOW CAPTAINS thing through. Intolerable burdens of pity and sympathy, intolerable indignation, such as this war places on us all, — forebodings that are only too reasonable, and inescapable, slow- coming-on calamities; — they are the situa- tions that call the loudest for strength beyond our ordinary strength, and they are the situa- tions when it's most available." " Give us a preventive, then, " said Anna in a colorless voice, "against old age." "Against the fear of it, you mean, of course. All right. Here's one I used last year when I got so blue over the fact that I was thirty-six and starting down the shady side towards the seventies. " Come, Captain Age, With your great sea-chest full of treasure! Under the yeUow and wrinkled tarpaulin Disclose the carved ivory And the sandalwood inlaid with pearl; Riches of wisdom and years. Unfold the India shawl With the border of emerald and orange and crimson and blue, Weave of a lifetime! I shall be warm and splendid With the spoils of the Indies of Age." "That's very pretty! You just say it over three or four times, I suppose," Mildred con- jectured. SUBCONSCIOUS FORCES 55 "Three times, or even two, ought to be enough, if you concentrate with the most intense preoccupation on every one of the important words. (Some people, by the way, can think without words.) It takes a long time, of course, to do that." " Exactly what do you mean by concentrate ? " asked Dorothy. "For me it only means stop- ping on each idea till I have fully taken in all the meaning there is in it." "Why yes, that's what I mean. Concentrate on the idea of the word — not the letters of it!" "Fm afraid I should just be spelhng it over and over," Emily said. "But you mustn' t ! " Sarah exclaimed. * * You must make yourself think of the idea. You must keep at it till you do. And of course you have to keep bringing your mind back over and over again ..." "I was just going to ask," said Anna, with a shghtly ironical air, "how you expect these mothers and housewives Hke Dorothy and Emily here to get half an hour a day without interruptions. All very well for us single women . . ." Dorothy broke in, "Interruptions don't matter! As far as that goes, the very worst of all interruptions come from the inside, and they're always certain to come. Starts of recollection, * Heavens! did you shut off the 56 FELLOW CAPTAINS furnace draughts? Where did you put the grocer's sUps? Mustn't forget to write that letter to so-and-so the first thing in the morning. ..." "I suppose," remarked Mildred in an elabo- rately dreamy tone, "you put the furnace draughts out of your mind and let the house burn up if necessary." Dorothy gave her vigorous shout, "Well, I guess not! You get right out from your easy chair or tumble off the lounge and go straight down to the furnace, but you don't have to stop thinking hopefully about the thoughtful serenity of old age, while you are going." "And you needn't hurry back even if you do hurry down," said Sarah. "You can come up the cellar stairs slowly and think as you come. Now about the grocer's slips, and the letter to be written the first thing in the morning, the best thing to do with those is to turn them over to the same subconscious confidential clerk that watches Anna's clock all the time she's asleep and wakes her up according to the order she has given, at a quarter to seven in the morning. You just say with a tranquil con- fidence, * Remind me of this at the proper time, please,' and having settled it, go on to your suggestion." "How much can you let your imagination out.^^" asked Emily. SUBCONSCIOUS FORCES 57 "A good deal ; in fact, all you like. When you command, or will (for that's the most ener- getic moment of the whole affair), you may like to think of yourself rolhng a heavy stone up over the crest of a hill, or riding a horse across country leading a troop of rough-riders. And then again on another day, you may like better just to think of the naked moral force of the will, and feel it stiffen, brace and build up your mind and heart and body." "Can't you all guess what Zephine would say to that if she were here?" exclaimed Mil- dred, referring to a sixth friend, who since her marriage and removal to a neighboring town, had frequently been unable to meet with the others. Zephine was a woman of keen and dehcate perceptions and of a mystical devo- tional spirit, to whom the traditional forms of religion were far more full of meaning than they were to any of the others. "Zephine would say," Dorothy promptly answered, "that she didn't see why Sarah doesn't just kneel down and pray." "So she would!" exclaimed Sarah. "And I'm ever so glad you spoke of that, Mildred, because I think myself that the Hne between suggestion and prayer is rather a shadowy one. Before I began suggesting, though, while I used to pray very behevingly, I never felt the bracing challenge to self-reliance that sug- 58 FELLOW CAPTAINS gestion gives, and that a weak-kneed party like me needs so badly. Perhaps you might call it a very active and self-helpful form of prayer." Anna shook her head. "Zephine wouldn't pray to her own subcon- scious self," she said shortly. "That's true, too," assented Sarah, smiling with the others. " Very likely Zephine wouldn't care about that particularizing, definite part at all. She would be contented with throwing herself on the thought of God, and resting there. She would begin just as I do, probably, laying the whole weight of her life on her faith in God. . . ." "And she'd end there," said Dorothy with conviction. "No — I don't beheve she would end there," Emily, who knew her best, said firmly. "I think she would go on and pray for what she specifically wanted, just as anybody would. Only I don't think she'd do it at all the way Sarah does, or at all according to Dorothy's ideas." "I wish," said Sarah, "you'd tell us all you can about Zephine's mental attitude in prayer. She wouldn't mind, I'm sure — I never knew anybody more unaffectedly frank in talking about rehgious things. And I feel that we need to get light on this discussion from the mystically rehgious temperament, such as SUBCONSCIOUS FORCES 59 Zephine's. If you'll tell us all you can, it'll be the next thing to having her here to tell us for herself." "Well, you see, to begin with," began Emily, a little awed at taking the egoistic Sarah's place in the center of the discussion, "I'm sure she doesn't make that effort of the will you talk about. I think she becomes as passive as possi- ble when she prays. She 'neither strives nor cries.' And do you know, she told me once that whenever she prayed for anything, she always had to give it up, in good faith, too, — give up all hopes of it, — before it would ever be given to her. And then — it often was given." "Books about self-suggestion," Sarah mused aloud, "often advise — in fact they sometimes insist upon — that passive state. It must suit a great many people; but then again, there must be a great many others, Hke me, who feel, as Milton says, * unexercised and un- breathed' unless they call out their will-power to put its shoulder to the wheel. "It just goes to show, doesn't it, what rich- ness and variety there is in life ! as much variety in spiritual things as there is in material ones, — as much, did I say ? Of course there must be a great deal more! To me," concluded Sarah, "it seems as plain as day that it's one and the same power Zephine and Dorothy and I all use; and that 'inside ourselves' and 'outside 60 FELLOW CAPTAINS ourselves' are probably just our ignorant ways of talking about it." " I was just going to ask, when you all went off talking about Zephine, how many treat- ments — suggestions — whatever you call them — how many you can be giving yourself at a time? Or isn't there any limit?" inquired Mildred with some curiosity. "Why, it seems to me all anybody can use at once would be one for the body and one for the character. You can use both at the same session, first one and then the other — turn and turn about. The physical ones are rather stupid, of course, compared with the others." "By the way, one or two of Sarah's recipes actually turned into magazine verses. Did you all know that?" asked Dorothy. "Which, for instance?" Mildred inquired with interest. "Why, there was one in the Atlantic, last fall or winter, wasn't it ? Say it for us, Sarah." "Why, I just wrote out what I'd been using to quiet myself when I'd been thinking too much about the war. This is it. THE ANODYNE " In the late evening, when the house is still, For an intense instant, I Uft my clean soul out of the soiled garments of mortality. SUBCONSCIOUS FORCES 61 No sooner is it free to rise than it bends back earth- ward And touches mortal Ufe with hands Uke the hands that troubled the waters of Bethesda. So this incorruptible touches the corrupt; This immortal cools with a touch The beaded forehead of mortahty." "That's in my collection of quotations," said Dorothy. "That's a form that even I can use, little as I like forms. Let's have the 'Lookout' too," she went on, with her usual partial estimate of Sarah's verses. *'They were printed together." "All right. It's a little like your * inner light,' I think, Dorothy. THE LOOKOUT " Imperious Self beyond self that I call my soul, Climb up into the crow's nest. Look out over the changing waters of my life And shout down to me whither to change my course. Warn me of the reefs and bergs; Warn me well of the mirages I No, I cannot release you, you cannot rest; There is no one I can trust in your place." "Why, Sarah, I really like those very much!" said Mildred heartily. "You don't mind, do you, if I ask you perfectly straight out, why you repeat them so slowly and monotonously V 62 FELLOW CAPTAINS "Well, just because that way suits me best and puts me quickest into a sleepy, fixed state of mind, and helps me to hold the ideas motion- less before my attention, until they fog and I drift off from them, something the way you do in a hot church, you know, on a cold winter morning." "Do you want to get drowsy doing it? Doesn't it spoil it to doze off? I don't see, anyway, how concentration can put you to sleep. And I should think you'd repeat them more expressively," said Emily. "It does, though," maintained Sarah stoutly; "concentration on quiet thoughts does put you to sleep. You don't want to repeat it for an audience, you know, hke an elocutionist. What you want to do is to hold the main ideas, one after another, so long and still and firmly in your mind that at last it fairly fills up and overflows with them. Yes, you want to get sleepy if you can. That cKnches it all the more, solders it into the brain." Dorothy said, "Do you know, Sarah, I very often don't go to sleep, though. I'm very apt to do it when I'm walking down to Arhngton, or strawberrying, or getting greens, or going nutting." "I suppose everybody would have his or her own ideas about that," Sarah conceded. "Whatever time and place seemed most con- SUBCONSCIOUS FORCES 63 venient and congenial. When I was living in East Orange and coming into New York often for the day, I used to suggest on those roaring Lackawanna trains, on the way home. I used to have quite a struggle sometimes, too, not to buy an evening paper when I saw other commuters getting aboard with scare head- hnes about Mexico and the big strikes I was absorbedly interested in. But generally I persevered and spent the half-hour from Ho- boken to the Oranges in a perfectly dehcious sail back into serenity. There's something soothing about the monotonous roar of the train, and the vibration is like a cradle when you come to think of it. Commuters have a splendid chance to do this kind of thing. I remember one elderly man I used to see doing it. I'm sure he was. He had that miles-away- focused look in his eyes. And there was another, a young fellow who always came out on the five-fifty. I used to look at him and bet myself a cookie he was doing it too." "Well, I still don't see any reason for all this picking and choosing of places and times to do it in," objected Anna. "As I said in the beginning, if you and Dorothy have got hold of a Secret, if you know how to five per- fectly beautiful fives without a wrinkle ..." She was interrupted by Dorothy's shout of whole-hearted laughter. 64 FELLOW CAPTAINS "Well, my point's perfectly clear,'* insisted Anna, unaccountably mollified. "If you've got the pot of gold, why can't you use it all the time ? Why special horn's and places and moods ? All that coddhng of yourself! Why not just briskly stop having headaches and stop worrying, and as I said, be perfectly well and perfectly happy once for all?" "Nobody said it was easy and simple. ..." Sarah burst out in a nettled tone. But at the same moment Dorothy began more peaceably, "Well, don't you think, after all, that the element of external preparation and right setting, is more or less a matter of temperament ? Most people feel more rehgious in a beautiful church with stained-glass win- dows than in a railway station. Most people can eat a better meal at a fresh, clean, well-set table than grabbing their food out of a clutter on the pantry shelf, — even the very same food. Most people probably can sooner lift them- selves out of triviaUties up to a higher mood in some quiet place, without much light, and in a physically relaxed condition. But if there are people strong-minded enough to pray as well while buying a ticket to Chicago and eat as well in an untidy kitchen and call out their better selves for active service in the midst of a talk with the dressmaker . . . why, let 'em, I say! I envy them! But most of us need some exter- THE DIAGNOSIS PLAN 65 nal helps. And don't let the strong-minded, like Anna, grudge them to those who do." "I don't suppose, anyhow," Mildred com- mented musingly, "that's an essential point for either you or Sarah?" The Diagnosis Plan "Essential — no, for of course surround- ings, in the nature of things, can't be essentials. What does seem essential to me, though," Dorothy continued, "is a clear diagnosis of what's wrong with me, before I undertake to set it right. I don't really see how anybody can call up his best strength and send it out to do battle unless he knows what he's fighting against. If I were going to advise a serious- minded young person beginning hfe with a serious purpose of making a success of it, I'd tell him to spend some quiet time every day in a mental laboratory, fussing around with moral test-tubes and spiritual acid-tests, ana- lyzing what goes on inside him. That's how I spend a good part of my quiet half-hour a day — when I can get it to spend — caUing my own bluff, so to speak." "Oh, but that's introspection V cried Anna, damning the process by her accent. "WeU, I never could see," said Dorothy some- what combatively, "why under the sun we are 66 FELLOW CAPTAINS convinced of the necessity for frequently in- specting our household drains and the diges- tions of our children and the state of the sheets and pillow-cases and whether the rose-bushes need hellebore, and are afraid to inspect what's going on inside our heads and hearts. For my part I frequently find myself more in need of a figurative hanging-out-on-the-Hne, th£ui any rug in the house." "But how can you inspect what's going on inside your mind?" inquired Emily with her sweet and slightly melancholy accent. "I know I feel horribly sad and depressed very often, but that's as far as I can go." "You don't just say you know you have head- aches very often, do you, and let it go at that ? You know nobody has headaches without some reason. You try first one diagnosis and then another. You wonder if it's not the mince pie last night, or if perhaps coffee isn't good for you, or maybe you need your glasses changed. Then, having made a guess at the causes, you try to remove them. You give up coffee, or you go to the oculist, or you try going for a month without pie. Why don't you apply the same reasoning for that indefinable dead weight of depression that troubles you? You might trace it back, dignified as it seems, to nothing more formidable than too tight shoes, or a fear that that competent cook of yours has THE DIAGNOSIS PLAN 67 a young man and may leave you, or that your waist measure is two inches bigger than it was last year. Honestly, a lot of Weltschmerz isn't a real doubt of the goodness of the world, but a subconscious squirm of wounded vanity over the poor showing you made in presiding over a club meeting last week. Here, let me give an example out of my own experience, though it's anything but creditable to me. The other day when I sat down for my quiet half- hour of thinking things over, I brought before the bar a wretched, teasing uneasiness that had kept me in low spirits all day long. It had colored everything; had made me think Jimmy's cold was certainly worse, that Sally's spelling never would improve, and that my writing was absolutely no good at all. By nightfall it had put on a fine dark mantle of poetic gloom. 'What was the world, what was fife, that we should make such a bother about them?' I asked myself. . . . "Well, when I dragged it out and looked at it squarely, what do you suppose I found the old thing really was ? Anita WilHams, talking about their new car, had said that of course they had to get an expensive one because their oldest boy had said he'd rather walk any day than ride in a Ford. And then she said, *0h, there! I forgot all about yours being a Ford. You don't mind, do you.^' 68 FELLOW CAPTAINS "I had laughed out loudly, really a genuine laugh with all the top of my brain highly amused at the idea of my caring what that whippet of a Jim WilUams thought about Ford cars, and I had used the same top of my brain to philosophize wonderingly about the inexpKcable prejudice of the American people against the Ford car and to hope that it didn't indicate such an incurable national vulgarity as it seemed to. But there's a lot more to a person than the top of her brain. There's a whole lumpish mass of soft, fat, ignoble prejudices and desires, inherited perhaps from ancestors scattered through the generations who did care awfully what silly whippets of boys thought, who cared awfully what anybody thought, who hardly cared for anything else except what other people thought, and who lived, almost consciously lived, only to excite envy in others. "We're told we have to pay for everything, and I suppose we pay for all that wonderful subconscious strength that Sarah's always leaning on, by this malevolent subconscious inheritance from very low-browed ancestors. Well, into that broad target of unconscious, inherited standards, Jim WilHams's silly little arrow had buried itself to the head, and all day I had gone about conscious of something wrong, but entirely unwilling to look myself THE DIAGNOSIS PLAN 69 honestly over and see what it was. I'll make a writer's confession to you. I'd written out of that mood of depression one of the strongest descriptions of melanchoHa that my feeble pen has ever turned out. Of course when I went back reasonably over the day, step by step, I soon foimd out what the matter was, and wasn't I chagrined! I made that high- falutin top of my brain come down off its perch, I tell you, and I made it stop comparing French and English Gothic for a minute and get right down to work and be of some practical use to me. It snatched that absurd, childish, unworthy feehng and threw it out of the win- dow, double-quick. Yes, literally out of the window. I often throw such a thing out of the window, out into the blackness where the stars shrivel it up and the night-wind blows it away to be trampled into dust by honest people's feet, as it deserves to be. Do you know, after I had found that sUver stuck into my vanity and pulled it out, I had an actual physical sense of relaixation, as you do when you finally get a rose-thorn out of your finger." Sarah said to the others, "You see, that isn't a bit the way I do it. Dorothy's zestful de- fight in the workings of her analytical mind would be thin comfort to me. And yet essen- tially the habit's the same. What we both do is to try to measure our small affairs on the 70 FELLOW CAPTAINS scale of the permanent, dignified, real values of life, and the exact way we handle that scale doesn't matter. Dorothy particularizes first, sees just where she stands and just what her mistakes have been and just what fine elements of strength and courage and cheer she needs to call into her life; whereas I don't bother to look at every dirty spot on the floor before I scrub it. I just flood it all with cleansing soap and water. And yet, you know, Dorothy's plan works just about the way mine does in the end." "Does it always work, Dorothy .^^" asked Mildred. Dorothy was moved to a burst of her rather boisterous laughter at the idea. "Of course it doesn't always. What does.^ But it helps, Hke anything. Do you know what I think of every time I see a hen fluttering and squawk- ing along in front of my car, so frantic with hen-headedness that she can't for the hfe of her remember that all she has to do is to step quietly over on the grass at the side of the road in order to be perfectly happy and safe ? Every squawk she gives, every unnecessary flap of her wings, shows me what I do with my life, half the time. I get so tangled up with triviali- ties I can't collect my mind enough to remember that most of them don't matter in the least. What I use my quiet half-hour for is to make THE DIAGNOSIS PLAN 71 myself remember that nothing in the world but my own fooHshness keeps me from stopping my hurrying, breathless, pelting scramble and going along, most of the time, peacefully and tranquilly, through green pastures by still waters." "All the same, she never does forget the most important, most essential things," persisted Sarah, whose almost fiercely high estimate of her friend always moved honest Anna to tip the balance in the other direction with a jerk perhaps more energetic than was strictly necessary to scientific equilibrium. "Yes, she does too, forget the important things," Anna declared stoutly; "she forgets to have her china closet cleaned out as often as it ought to be; she forgets to keep her sewing-room in order; she forgets to hem dish-towels; I saw one in her kitchen today, hanging up as big as life with both ends as rough as the day the clerk cut it off the bolt, — and she forgets to get hair ribbons for Sally. ..." "But she doesn't forget Sally's bedtime story," suggested Emily softly. "She doesn't forget to have her children go to sleep with some sweet uplifting thought about ..." Dorothy wriggled uncomfortably and looked cross. There were moments when Emily's gentle sag towards sentimentalism roused in 72 FELLOW CAPTAINS her something of Anna's harsh and unintelli- gent irritation. Moments of feeling thus towards Emily made her understand with amused vividness Anna's frequent irritation with her and her unhemmed dish-towels and her fine ideas. The Wholesomeness of Primitive Earthy Elements in Life "Oh, I think there can easily be too much sweet upHftingness in children's hves," she said, almost roughly. "I think there can easily be too much of it in anybody's Hfe, especially morally self-conscious people. We're awfully complex creatures, all of us, and it takes all kinds of elements to keep us well-nourished mentally and spiritually as well as physically. That's one of the things I often do in what I call my evening diagnosis of the day, — try to see if it's had a balanced ration. You know we've all been trained, for about a generation, by our good domestic science instruction, to consider carefully whether we are giving our families and ourselves enough protein or car- bohydrates or whatever. We often say in reviewing the day, 'Now, that dinner was too exclusively starchy. I must make tomorrow's soup of lentils, and be sure we have a fruit dessert.' But we don't often enough say, PRIMITIVE EARTHY ELEMENTS 73 at least I don't, *Why, here is a whole day gone by without one hearty laugh heard in this house! The children must have some charades after dinner tomorrow evening.' Or, *It's a week, I declare, since we've had any music! I must get out my fiddle tomorrow and we'll have a sing.' Or even, *Now we've been all slopping around, camp-fashion, in Idiaki and middy blouses and overalls. I believe it would do us all good to dress up om* prettiest for dinner tomorrow and have shaded candles on the table.' Or perhaps the other way about, 'I've just been pestering the life out of the children about keeping their clothes clean! Now I'm going to let them have one good big dose of freedom, and be as Hvely as they please with no reproaches for a day or so, till we've both had a rest.' Yet those and a lot more like them are all things that come readily enough into any house-mother's mind if she stops to think of the moral health of her household at all. But there's one element I don't think we modern American women ever call to our aid in steadying and fortifying our Uves. I don't believe we even know that we need it when we encounter, as we often do, those dull, savorless stretches of hfe, when there's nothing special the matter, no shver sticking in your vanity, and still you have a gone feeling." 74 FELLOW CAPTAINS "Gracious, do you have those too?" asked Mildred, "I didn't suppose anybody else knew such stale, flat hours as come to me, nothing in the world the matter, especially, and yet such an oozing, soggy, bilge-water air to everything!" "I don't think anybody escapes those," said Dorothy, "any modern woman at least. I fancy it's especially hard on such fastidious, over-refined women as you, who shudder to your fingertips when your pet Joss of Good Taste gets jolted by life. Do you know what I think is the matter with us.^ I believe it's the same thing that causes rebelhous out- breaks in men — they are apt to be so much more positive than we! — the same thing that makes them ferment angrily till they burst the bottle they're shut into and go off on a brutal spree, makes us just inertly sour and curdle and gather mould on top." "What do you think the trouble is.^" in- quired Anna. She groaned and murmured "metaphors again!" as Dorothy went on, "Now take httle chicks — you know it's the queerest thing about them! You keep them on a concrete or a board floor all the time, and they won't thrive; lots of them won't even live. You may feed them exactly the right food and give them plenty of water and keep them in the right temperature, but they won't PRIMITIVE EARTHY ELEMENTS 75 do well unless they can walk about on the ground and scratch in it. Honestly, the best chicken experts don't know at all what it is they get out of the earth, but they have to have it to be healthy." "I detest reasoning from animeJs to us," said Anna. *' Little chicks thrive on raw wheat and bran mush, but if you fed me on that . . . ! " Dorothy laughed, but stuck to her point. "Well, — you and the chicks both need food, and apparently the necessity for earth and earthiness is something as essential as food for everybody aHve, from baby chicks to college professors, — especially the college pro- fessors. If you don't get a certain amount of it in your life, you won't thrive." "Now we're in for gardens!" murmured Mildred, who abominated earth stains under her fingernails. "Or for mountain hikes!" added Emily, whose increasing weight made physical exer- tion an effort. Dorothy waved aside these suggestions. "Don't be so hteral. By earthiness I don't necessarily mean actual contact with the soil. We're not baby chicks, as Anna says. That's not the only way, though it's the simplest and surest way, if you happen to be fortunate enough to like it. No, I mean that everybody needs to spend part of every day doing things 76 FELLOW CAPTAINS that aren't done with the civilized part of us. After all, that civihzed part isn't all of us, nor the most firmly estabhshed part. If we keep it too steadily on the job, we're likely to make it sickly, and if we don't give the rest of us some work to do — that big, hulking, instinc- tive, subconscious part, the other's likely to get the fidgets and the cramps and indulge in spasmodic involxmtary violence that'll upset and smash all the pretty things we make with the highly seK-conscious part of our brains. The instinctive part simply must do something, and it's for us to give it not only harmless things to do, but useful ones, if we can." "Seems as though I'd heard something like that before, haven't I.^" inquired Mildred, with her ironic, weary impatience of platitudes. " Oh, I don't claim it's anything new. Noth- ing is new," protested Dorothy. "There isn't even anything new in our lack of good sense in refusing to apply to our own fives what we've always known to be true. You emit a superior groan at the mention of our need for primitive activities in our lives, but I'll war- rant that in all the series of your recurrent soggy and bilge-water hours of ennui, it never occurred to you to try more plainness and tonic roughness in your life. Suppose now in one of your moments of conviction that fife is by no means worth the trouble it causes, you had PRIMITIVE EARTHY ELEMENTS 77 been suddenly attacked by a charging bull, and had had to run across a field and fall headlong over a stone wall into safety, don't you suppose ..." At this they all laughed out suddenly, the school-girl loudness of their laughter proving Dorothy's point. "But we can't all lay up bad-tempered bulls in the backyard against dull hours," cried Mildred, still laughing. "Well, you wouldn't need to apply such a fierce counter-irritant if you didn't let the congestion get so bad. If you can keep the circulation up naturally you won't need mus- tard poultices." "Dorothy," said Anna resolutely, "will you do something for me, as an old friend?" "Anything within my power," said Dorothy. "I'm not sure it is within your power, but I'd like to have you try to say plainly what you mean by earthiness and primitiveness in our fives ... no charging bulls or fluttering hens or mustard poultices, now, just fiteral, specific words. What do you mean in my case, in Emily's case, for instance?" She had the triumphant air of one who has pushed an adversary into a corner. Dorothy put her back against the wall of fiteralness, drew a long breath and began, "I mean in every case that we need some activity 78 FELLOW CAPTAINS which harks back to the days when physical necessities made up a large share of our lives. They're taken care of, mostly, nowadays, by civilized cooperation. It's that very coopera- tion that is going to give us a black eye unless we look out. We used to have to take care of ourselves against all sorts of obstacles. Now we have only to do one little same thing, over and over, as our share of everybody's taking care of everybody. To be personal, let's take you. Instead of hustHng around, shelter- ing yourself against the weather, and getting yourself food, and dodging stone clubs that happened to fly your way, and shinning up trees to escape from wandering saber-tooth tigers, what did you do for twenty years of your strength and vigor? For seven hours every day you sat motionless at a desk, using the fingers of your right hand occasionally to make a note, and the self-conscious top of your brain every minute. All the rest of you, all those faculties and powers acquired during ages and ages might as well have been dead for all the use you made of them. In fact they'd much better be dead than neglected. Maybe in the course of more ages and ages they will die, but for the present they're with us, and can't be cut out Hke the appendix. You see you never gave them any chance at all, not a bit of exercise. You lived in a hotel PRIMITIVE EARTHY ELEMENTS 79 and when you wanted anything you exercised the tip of your right forefinger in pressing a button. And by and by you began to 'get nervous,' and those cherished higher brain- centers of yours went on a strike from over- work and no vacations, and you were on the edge of a 'breakdown.' I should say you needed a bigger dose of primitiveness thgoi most of us. If I were your doctor, I'd make you move right out of that boarding-house where you are supposed to be resting, and where you are getting worse every moment, and put you into a plain Httle two-room cottage and make you get your own meals and sweep your own floors and struggle with your own plumber and make your curtains hang straight after they were washed. ..." "That's about enough for me, don't you think?" Anna suggested dryly, a httle nettled. "How about Emily? She's been making her ciutaias hang straight and locking horns with her plumber, long enough, but she has nerves too." "Well! Everything's relative. What would bring healthful primitiveness into your highly artificial life wouldn't be enough for Emily and me. I should diagnose Emily, along with most of us house-mothers, as house-boimd. And if I had the time I'd make a couple of illuminated mottos to hang up over our respec- 80 FELLOW CAPTAINS tive desks, with those dehcious prim eighteenth century hues of Hannah More's on them, * Small hahits well pursued betimes May reach the dignity of crimes.' And I'd have Emily knock out a big hole in the wall of her pretty, tasteful, pleasant, cozy home, and walk out through it into the first raging thunderstorm that came along. I'll just warrant that a thunderstorm has come to mean for her nothing more than a scurry to shut down the attic windows and be sure that Harry's bicycle and the new porch chairs are indoors. I don't beUeve she has really looked at the might, majesty, and glory of a thunder- storm since she was nine years old . . . and very hkely then her mother scolded her for staying out in it! Or if not thunderstorms, I'd recommend camp hfe for a while . . . nothing to dust, no cellar to keep in order. Oh I know, Mildred, camp life is a pretty well- worn platitude of modern hfe, but when you come down to it there's nothing very new or original in eating beefsteak or taking a bath once a day, but both those things are good for your health. And I beheve camp hfe would do Emily a world of good, for a big dose to begin with, to get straightened out. And after that a daily dose of earthiness would keep OJff that gentle gloom a house-bound woman PRIMITIVE EARTHY ELEMENTS 81 is sure to cast over her family. It's lots better to have a daily dose of it, as a constant ingre- dient in your Hfe like exercise or food, than to live without it for fifty weeks of the year and try in two weeks' concentrated dirt and bar- barism in a caimp to get enough to last you for the next fifty. Though goodness knows the two weeks are much better than nothing. Why couldn't Emily do her garden-work herself, or take care of a horse or a cow or chickens or bees, or make a trail with her own hands through the woods back of her house to a lookout spot, or concrete a path, or rake the driveway, or even, if those all seem uninterest- ing, spend fifteen minutes every day in observ- ing minutely what kind of a day it is, how it differs from every other day that ever was or will be, how the clouds look and drift, and what they portend, exactly what happens to the rain when it falls, exactly how the wind heaps the snow. You see, for ages, the weather vfas the very most important thing to us, and it's hardly healthy to be so oblivious to it as our tight roofs and automobiles make us. Just to look up into the sky, steadily, till you feel something of the immensity of it inside you, relaxes those tiny, fretting nerve-knots, and is something splendid and big all day to bring up before you in vexatious moments when you forget there is anything bigger in the world 82 FELLOW CAPTAINS than the ceiling to your hving-room, — when you forget there is anything splendid in the world at all! And yet lots of us go for days and days with no more look at the sky than a grudging glance to see if we need to take an umbrella. Here we crawl around under it, gazing down at mudpuddles, and there it broods over us, the visible throne of Heaven by day, and by night . . . Oh, Emily, do go out and look at it by night!" "Wouldn't you better save all that for your next book ? " suggested Mildred, with her mild, slow irony. The Beauty Bank Dorothy laughed, though not whole-heart- edly. "I know how you feel, I do myself, terribly afraid of being stilted and highfalutin. But after all, doesn't it seem rather a pity to save up all the shining, radiant words and thoughts one has for the insides of books, and to be afraid to use them in every-day life ? It seems to me we're as spiritually provincial and mediocre if we do that as if we kept a *best room' with all the good furniture in it, shut up and darkened, the way our silly old New England grandmothers did, and spent their lives in the kitchen. What harm does it do to speak right out about the beauty of stars and the strength of storms?" THE BEAUTY BANK 83 "It makes me squirm," said Mildred. "It makes me think you're going to talk religion next." "And of course there's nothing so indecent as religion to mention in a conversation be- tween friends," agreed Dorothy. She went on, "Do you know I believe Mildred's remark has put us on the right track. Don't you sup- pose it's because we are afraid somebody's going to talk religion next; and we're afraid of that as a reaction from Puritanical forebears who were forced into helpless hypocrisy by pubKc opinion and made to talk religion whether they felt Hke it or not?" "Or maybe," said Mildred, "it's just in the Anglo-Saxon blood to distrust rhetoric." "Well, in the first place it's not necessarily rhetoric to mention the well-known fact that the contemplation of a starry night drags you up to a liigher kind of thought. And in the second, wasn't that gloriously rhetorical King James Bible done by Anglo-Saxon translators? Not to mention all the Ehzabethans. Well, anyhow, I'm going to take my courage in my two hands and just boldly, barely, indeco- rously mention beauty as a factor in daily hfe. If it shocks any of you too much you can go 'round the corner of the porch till I get through. I want to tell you about a device I make use of. I couldn't seem to work it into my whimsi- 84 FELLOW CAPTAINS cal story, and so you've got to take it in talk. It began years ago when I was a little, little girl and had just learned Wordsworth's 'Daf- fodils' by heart as my turn for a school com- mencement. " 'I gazed and gazed, but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought; For oft when on my couch I he In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash across that inward eye That is the bUss of solitude, And then my heart with rapture thrills And dances with the daffodils.' "One time, as I repeated that over and over to be sure I had it right, I said to myself, 'I wonder if after that he did have the sense to know, whenever he saw something lovely, that the show was bringing him wealth?' Great-Aunt Ann had just started me off with a Httle savings-bank account then, and it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to bank all the fine and beautiful and joyful things that happened to me and have them there to draw on when the quite different hor- rid and irritating and discouraging things happened. I took the notion then at twelve with childish Hteralness and it's stayed by me just in that first form, as childish notions will. And it's not only splendid pictiues and books THE BEAUTY BANK 85 and music I save up and deposit in my memory. When I see a glorious sunset, or a radiantly happy child, or a peaceful, serene old age, or a beautiful room, I quite consciously appro- priate it, make it mine for keeps, impress its every detail on my mind, so that I can't forget it. Then on a gloomy, sour afternoon, or when one of the children is cross, or I encounter a fretful, suspicious old person, or an ugly, tasteless room, I draw on my bank account of beauty or strength or success to offset the drain on one's vitaHty that's always made by ughness and failure. My bank accepts all sorts of deposits, it's not a bit high-brow, thank goodness. One of the best accounts I have is the baUroom at Cullom Hall at West Point where I danced away so many hght- hearted hours of my girlhood. And another — this is particularly fine when I have to talk to some foolish, spiteful, shallow woman — is the recollection of that great, clear, lucid reading-room of the British Museum all walled around with immortal thoughts, where I spent three or four of the happiest months of my early twenties. And one of the very best things I have laid up is the recollection of a succulent, savory meal eaten with my hus- band in a httle hotel in the south of France, and of the excellent vigorous white wine and the far more excellent and vigorous conversa- 86 FELLOW CAPTAINS tion which played Hke hilarious heat-Hghtning around the tahle. I never saw those jovial, bearded, Galhc commercial travelers but that one hour, and yet I brought them all back to Vermont with me, and the serious-minded, pine-covered slopes of Red Mountain occa- sionally ring to their laughter, to this day." "Oh! I do that too," said Mildred. "There are certain hours in my schoolroom, when the children are very happy and busy, all their young eyes bright with that ineffable clear look of confidence they sometimes have for * Teacher' ... I often say to myself 'Feel this! Feel it to the marrow of your bones. This is happiness. However it may come to other people, this brings joy into my life!' But I don't know that I ever tried consciously to bring back a sun-flooded hour like that in a moment of depression. I might try." Anna said, "Since you're on this topic, it comes back to me how I used to feel in the office some days, when things were going well; when I could feel the machine hum imder my hand, with every stenographer doing just what she was best fitted for, and the fifing system working fike a charm. . . . !" "You try," suggested Sarah, "making a con- scious effort to bring that recollection back to your mind the next time your dressmaker doesn't keep her appointment. It may keep THE BEAUTY BANK 87 the world from seeming composed uniquely of untrustworthy and incompetent dressmak- ers, as it's so apt to, at such times." "I've had a way a Httle like that, for years," Emily put forth rather timidly. She was quite aware that some of her hard-headed friends found her sentimental and, more sen- sitive and responsive than Dorothy, could not bring herself to the latter's attitude of not caring if they did. "I used to find that read- ing the newspapers made me horribly depressed. I might start the day brightly enough, but my morning half-hour with the Times always left me imdone. You know, — divorces, sui- cides, embezzlements, mmrders! But then, first, I heard somebody suggest that those things were only put into the paper because they run so contrary to the usual course of human life, and second, I began to resolve that I'd read as few as possible of those items, and that I wouldn't lay the paper down with- out finding something heartening and inspiring to remember. I call it my daily Golden Deed," she murmured, with a deprecatory glance at Anna, who however spared her an audible sniff and only remarked caustically, "Well, you must have to take a microscope some mornings to find anything like that in your paper." "No, you don't," said Emily, bristhng in 88 FELLOW CAPTAINS defense of her idea like a mother hen before her brood. "There's always something if you look. Often its some old familiar thing we're so used to we don't think anything about it. There's that threadbare old incident of a fireman rescuing a woman or a baby. There's hardly ever more than a brief reference in the paper to that, but it recurs over and over. And if you really think what that means, a man risking his own life to save strangers, just because they're human beings and mustn't be allowed to suffer or die if the rest of humanity can help it . . . !" "He gets paid for it," opposed Anna, her own bristles rising a httle. "Well, and then again who pays him.^ We do! Part of our taxes go to keep him alive and well, so he can save others. It makes me think more of the rest of us. We have a httle share in what he does, when he creeps along the coping and grabs the baby. And besides that, nobody makes him go into that business. It's his own magnanimity, I beheve! He could be tranquilly overcharging a customer as he sets up bathroom fixtures, if he wanted to, or driving a truck and drinking all the beer he Hked." "Why, Emily," cried Dorothy, "you're right in the middle of all this, aren't you.^^ You've been having a Secret of yom* own, without THE BEAUTY BANK 89 jumping up and down and shouting the way Sarah and I do, when we get an idea." Emily flushed with pleasure and went on, "I do something else too, that's hke what you're talking about. You know even as a child I was a 'fraid-cat,' scared to follow the rest of you into the highest limbs of the apple trees. Well, since the children were born and I haven't been so strong, I began to be afraid I was going to lose my nerve altogether, and get like Cousin Margaret, — you know the jumpy, scary nuisance she is, always afraid of something and spoihng everybody's fun! I wondered how I could get around that, and I took to collecting all the instances of strength I could get hold of to brace myself on. It began by my happening one day to walk abreast of a great team of dappled gray Per- cheron dray horses, huge, powerful creatures with the muscles on their chests Hke iron. They were pulhng a heavy load of iron rails and the way they put their tremendous strength into their work and stepped along so slowly and confidently, sure of their strength, quietly enjoying their own vigor ... it stuck in my mind, and I began trying to go around my own work that way, instead of stooping and hurrying and straining. Then again, I took the boys to the Zoo. We were in the Hon house just before feeding time, and the Hons 90 FELLOW CAPTAINS and tigers were roaring. You know, that great, full-throated roar that shakes the earth under your feet and makes your diaphragm go up and down. It fascinated me, I couldn't think why. I stood the longest time in front of the biggest Hon, and every time he let out that heart-shaking roar I felt (I didn't know why) as though some lack in me had been satisfied. After I got home it occurred to me that what had fascinated me was the enormous power represented by that roar, and now often where there's a hard job to do, the cellar to be cleaned or somebody disagreeable to be interviewed, and I feel all withered and used-up at the idea, I remember the Hon and give a great roar inside, and go right at my job." Everybody laughed at this, but it was laughter with no sting of scorn in it. Emily herself laughed. "Our mild Emily roaring inside as she ex- horts Mr. Harkness to put new blackboards in the schoolhouse!" chuckled Anna. "I often have to roar inside when I'm talking to you, Anna," said Emily unexpectedly, with the sly humor which was the salt of her gentle nature. The laugh turned against Anna. Dorothy said, "I haven't had any roaring lions or mighty drayhorses in my bank-of- strength, but I'm depositing them there this THE BEAUTY BANK 91 minute, along with tliat great new dam at the foot of Kensico Lake, north of New York. It's the largest dam in the world, so somebody told me, and whether it's that or not, it's a joy and stronghold to me. I never lose a chance to go and look at it. That huge wall, curved in that smooth hne of infinite strength and suavity, the enormous body of water it holds back with such silent steadiness . . . many's and many's the time, when my job has been to keep something back, a rising flood of ex- asperation, the slow advance of dishearten- ment, or tears, perhaps, — I've put the strength of the Kensico dam at my back and braced myself against it." "Sometimes I think it all comes back to that notion of power," said Sarah. "I've used it so much and with such really surprising results, and yet I haven't used it half as much as I might have, if I weren't so lazy. (And lazy people, as our grandmothers always said, work the hardest in the end.) The changes and shocks and strains of fife call on all of us for endless discrimination and adjustment on the one hand and for endless steadying and en- couragement on the other, and demand more power in us than we've got, unless we use every possible means to increase it. Of course it isn't just sheer strength we need, though we need a lot of that; but endurance, and above 92 FELLOW CAPTAINS all confidence in ourselves, confidence that we shall see straight and keep on trying to do right, "*Our eyes forever on some sign, To help us plough a perfect line.' " "And to help us be equal to enjoying the whole of the day's pleasure too," cried Dorothy. "Don't leave out my bank of beauty, and my theory about homely pleas- ures, jolhty and jokes!" " I think the most essential thing to me isn't exactly strength," said Mildred thoughtfully. "And it certainly isn't homely pleasure. You said something a while ago about * seeing straight,' Sarah. That would be my idea, my Secret, if I could only see things in a plan, see them coherent and in proportion, above all in proportion! I think I shall spend all my quiet half-hours of thought in an effort to make big things, and big things only, seem big to me." "I would like the sense of freedom," said Emily. "I beheve a good many housekeepers would like that more than anything else." "I want endurance," said Anna, with elo- quent brevity. "Any way, we all need something," said Dorothy, "and now that most of us won't let priests or theologians tell us what it is, we THE BEAUTY BANK 93 mustn't shirk the task of thinking it out for ourselves. After all, isn't it the most exciting and absorbing and thrilHng occupation in the world, to be holding the tiller of your own bark I Here's to you, fellow-captains! Here's hoping for us all, " ' A wet sheet and a flowing sea, A wind that follows fast!' And here's a motto to hang up over our charts, "'Blow, wind; swell, billow; and swim, bark!'" SARAH'S COLLECTION THE DEEP SPRING IN THE EVERGREEN FOREST A General Reflection for Believers in God Who will turn and enter the green forest ? Who will seek and taste the fabled spring ? Cares £ind competitions of the market Leave a little while; nor hither bring Hot Ambition; These from off thy burdened shoulders fling. Enter then at once the open gateway, Where the columned branches sway and soar. Though thou live amid the dust and tumult Of the speeding city's pauseless roar, Turn: the forest Spreads its green enchantment round thy door. Rest, senses, and revive, spirit, In the cool and everlasting shade Of a thought that turns to things immortal, Where a little pause of heart is made, And a far hope Rises in the distance, not dismayed. Part the branches, seek Emiong the mosses. Till that spring thou find, most deep, most clear, Of the practise of the mighty Presence, Consciousness of Godhead present here. Living water. Quench the dusty thirst of many a year I 98 FELLOW CAPTAINS Spring of health, deep spring of saner hving, Ever in the heart thou slakest rise Fortitudes, serenities, devotions — All those brave and great Realities That so blithely Mock the wisdom of the worldly-wise. Should the morrow trouble and perplex thee, Come again at even, comrade mine, To the deep spring in the silent forest, Whereunto the best of earthly wine, Palely sparkling, Tiu-ns into a cup of lifeless brine. SARAH'S COLLECTION 99 For Sleep The room is quiet, The hghts are dim, The sounds are drowsy And far away ; My pillow is cool. My heart is at peace. I rest ... I am resting ... I rest. For Sleep when Overtired or Worried Cares and anxieties, I roll you all up in a bundle together; I carry you across the meadow to the river. River, I am throwing in a bundle of cares and anxieties. Float it away to the sea! Now I come slowly back across the meadow, Slowly into the house. Slowly up to my room. The night is quiet and cool; The hghts are few and dim; The sounds are drowsy and far away and melting into each other; Melting into the night. Sleep comes creeping nearer, creeping nearer; It goes over my head like a wave. I sleep ... I rest ... I sleep. 100 FELLOW CAPTAINS For Relief from Moderate Pain I take my pain up to the dark, dusty garret And leave it there, In a dark corner, With cobwebs and forgetfulness all over it. I take my mind off for a holiday: I take it aboard an oceein liner Sailing for Naples. Blue seas, rise and fall! Slowly roll. In the distance are looming the Azotcs. . . . [£J/c., etc.y following any journey remembered pleasantly, or imagined.^ For Relief from Severe Pain I take the heavy weight of my thoughts in both hands; With all my strength I Uft my thoughts up off my pain. Heavy — but I can lift them. . . . Steadily, powerfully, I will carry my thoughts Away, Step by step — further and further away, Up the hill. Over the brow of the hill, And down into the thick of my day's work. [This must be followed closely and absorb- ingly with plans for work, as interesting, complicated, and important as possible. 2 SARAH'S COLLECTION 101 To Hasten Recovery There is spring in the air! The winter of my illness is past. Now in the dead trees of my weakness The sap is running stronger than ever! The trees will be all in leaf next month — The May-flowers wiU be out next Sunday — It is going to be an early spring, The spring of my recovery. Another to Hasten Recovery The storm is over, The blue skies are clearing. I WILL, I COMMAND, that like a fresh wind, Rising and freshening. My cheerful courage shall blow the clouds away; Briskly blow them away From the bright blue morning. Before a Minor Operation Rise, placid strength, within me! Strong, steady pulse, Cool, quiet nerves ; Tranquilly pass through the operation: Wholesomely heal; Serenely recover. 102 FELLOW CAPTAINS Before a Serious Operation \_IS desired J use while taking the anaesthetic. 2 Deep, still reservoirs of power and strength within me, I send down this bucket of my need. Fill it with the water of Ufe! Fill it with power and strength and calmness, Deep and all-pervading. I drink in strength; I quench my thirst for power and calmness. Yet there will be plenty left For aU. the emergencies in my life; For the deep reservoirs Are fed by the never-failing springs on the ever- lasting mountains. To Relieve Asthma. [_Asthma is peculiarly amenable to sugges- tion, but it may be found more desirable for a friend or relation to suggest to the patient. The patient meanwhile should in- dustriously remember that in asthma there is no infection, no inflammation, no lesion whatever; that the wearisome panting is spasmodic and convulsive and consequently VERY CONTROLLABLE by the imagination and will.]] Now quietly ... At last more quietly . , . At last more easily . . . And still more easily; SARAH'S COLLECTION 103 You relax . . . you rest . . . you are resting. Breathing more calmly . . . Breathing more slowly . . . Relaxing, growing quieter; At last you are able to rest. You are resting . . . you rest. . . . lEtc, with slight variations, for an hour if necessary, including one or two short rests for the suggester. It should be repeated in an exceedingly soft, soothing voice.2 To Make Well-grounded Fears Endurable In the shifting cross-currents of hoping and fearing Here I stand! busy with my work . . Securely balanced among the shifting currents Standing steady . . . secure . . . going on stead- ily with my work. Against a Chronic Ailment I hght my will, like a torch, I lift it blazing on a tall pole, To drive out the wolves of discouragement that feed on my health. Back, wolves! Blaze up, my will! The torch blazes up; The wolves slink away, out of the light, . . . into the darkness, . . . lost and forgotten. . . . 104 FELLOW CAPTAINS For Use in an Incurable Ailment At bedtime I put my head out of the window to symbolize going out of my small, steam-heated, gas-lighted bedroom of mortality into the light of stars and the boundless fresh air of the im- mortal life. Here, out-doors in immortality, I breathe in power and calmness; I stock my soul with freedom and power. For tomorrow. And all the days beyond tomorrow that I can make this reach to. Lift up The golden cup! God's grapes are always red. — T. E. Brown, To Receive a Verdict My strong and fearless Will, Remember, If the verdict is against us. And yet we win out, in the teeth of it, I and my Will Shall be the hope and the inspiration of many, Great explorers, great pioneers ! After Discouraging News of One's Physical Condition Impregnable and immortal part of me. Remind me. That of these leaks in the cottage we have rented for the summer SARAH'S COLLECTION 105 Many are repairable, with time and patience, Even when they seem impossible to repair; And when the cottage becomes at last uninhabit- able. The soul will merely move into another house. Against the Fear of Death Wind, blow full the wide sails for death, the ad- venturous voyage! I will pack up all my bravery, and cleanness, and kindness, and usefulness, Along with all my friendships and loves. And be ready to sail at a moment's notice, Whenever the ship sails. Courage! home is not all: there are houses and gardens elsewhere. Another Against the Fear of Death Friendly, natural, normal, wholesome death, You shall never be a bugbear to me! I steadfastly, obstinately, lomiovably, Will not be afraid to go to sleep And wake up in a strange place. I will go to sleep cheerfully. Remembering how I foimd a welcome here, Sure of a welcome there; Sure to be at home. Let those fear who will; the soul is in her native realm. — Emerson, 106 FELLOW CAPTAINS For Believers in Immortality Foundress and lover of my life, My Mother, Immortality, Lean down to this backward and unstable daugh- ter: Take hold of my hand! For Hopers in Immortality Yes, I accept the challenge ! I will ride my horse up to the barrier, And take the leap. If he misses it this time, I wiU ride at the barrier again, — Abreast of ten thousand others, — And if need be again and again, Until, at last. We will leap high enough, We will leap over it. To Realize the Quality of Immortality We caU this Time, and gauge it by the clock, Deep in such insect cares as suit that view: As, whether dresses fit, what modes are new. And where to buy, and when to barter, stock. We think we hold, based on some Scripture rock, Claims on immortad life, to press when due: Imagining some door between the two. Our deaths shall each, with presto change, unlock. SARAH'S COLLECTION 107 But this is also everlasting life! On Monday, in the kitchen, street and store, We are inunortal, we, the man and wife, — Immortal now, or shall be nevermore. Immortals in immortal values spend Those lives that can no more begin than end. For a Sense of Comparative Values I firmly will, That all tomorrow I may be steadily aware of the real values of hfe; Steadily preferring The interests of eternity To the affairs of today ; And steadily preferring the true interest of today To the whims of the moment. ''An Air of Coolness Plays Upon His Face'' Out of the four and twenty hours, To take one sheaf of moments To open the house and air it In the May morning of Eternity, Will not, my dear Self, Leave aU your cares and duties Naked to the little foxes, But guard them with a golden bayonet! Efficient would we be with the farming, The baking, the children. Swing wide the dormer windows of Now To the sunht breezes of Forever! 108 FELLOW CAPTAINS To Keep Alive the Spirit of Adventure Man! Which is thy darling ? Fat ease, dull comfort, Base prosperity, Or craven safety P Or fair-faced danger, Bright-eyed danger, Golden-haired danger ? State! Would'st thou allure youth Into thy service ? Ply him not then With rich emoluments. Pomps of office. Inaugural pageants! But dare him rather To risk his fortune, To burn behind him The bridges of Mammon, And loss and peril and toil embracing, To build thy glorious future. Church! Would'st thou enroll him Beneath thy banners. And sign on his forehead The blood-red cross ? Oh, call him not then With plaintive music. And soothing sermons; SARAH'S COLLECTION 109 Oh never for him Expunge and soften The words of Jesus! But bind upon him The shield and buckler And march him forth With the trumpets sounding The charge of the long Crusade! Yes, This is man's darling, — Not ease, not comfort, Tame prosperity And coward safety! But fair-faced danger. Strong young danger, Free-hearted danger! 110 FELLOW CAPTAINS To Relieve Hearts too Sore with Sympathy If then some natural shadows passed The inward prospect over, The soul's deep vaUey was not slow Her brightness to recover. — Wordsworth, For the sake of the sorrowful man and child and beast whose wrongs I make mine ; To keep strong, to keep sane. For the sake of their battles I have to fight; I think long tonight of the freedom of birds And the wild life of the woods. And lovers wedking by starlight. And the glory and splendor of athletes, And old men and women sitting in doorways in the cool of the day and of their age, And the shouting frolics of children. Loved and happy and safe in a thousand homes. These rest the heart, until there come Far echoes of the summoning drum, And on the windy plain The colors rise again. For the Enjoyment of Little Things All along the wayside today I will pick the wild-flowers, Sweet-scented Ordinary, bright-flowering Every- day; SARAH'S COLLECTION 111 Brightness of common colors and sweetness of familiar voices and faces; Beauty and bravery of neighbors and of members of the family; I will make a bouquet of them for our table, And set them up in a blue and gold pitcher On the mantel over the hearth. For Light-heartedness Once in the middle of the plodding morning, And again in the middle of the dispirited afternoon, I will turn my eyes away from the clock, And my heart from responsibility, — And into my mind I will invite, helter-skelter, Pictures of children on roller skates Flying down the shining pavements In an April sunshower ; And the sound of the horseplay of boys in the swimming-hole, Ducking and dousing each other; And the thrill of dance music to the feet of sixteen. And the clapping and stamping and whirl of the Virginia reel; And the swish and tinkle of ice-water and the breath of a palm-leaf fan. And the jovial voices of friends on the porch in the evening, And the sound of my own voice, overcome with laughter. 112 FELLOW CAPTAINS Against Self-indulgence in Clothes Dream dresses, Modish, graceful, Remembered dresses of delicate color, Delicate textm-e, inviting my hand to stroke them as they lay on the counter, Melt away! Melt and shrink away, dream dresses I Be forgotten. I might buy dresses For children sitting on tenement fire-escapes, Whose dresses are soiled, Frayed, faded, Ump and forlorn; Whose dresses were never new. For them I might buy Pink and blue calicoes . . . White dresses for holidays, and Roman sashes. . . . And Brother Peter asked him, "Why seemeth the raiment of St. Francis more fair than thine?" "Forasmuch as when he lived on earth, he did wear raiment more poor and mean than mine." To Safeguard the Heart from Hardness I steadfastly willf I firmly command my heart. That when next I feel the leaden cooHng of friend- liness and pity within me, Into my memory shall run The thought of the child I love best, SARAH'S COLLECTION 113 Undressed and ready for bed, Or hiding behind the door, And cautiously peeping out; Or stubbing his toe and falUng, And crying a little and chmbing up on my lap, To hear the story of the Three Bears over again. Against Absorption in Small Details; or The Camp Now after the close day indoors Oiling and whirring the machine, Contriving, arranging, calculating, Piecing small details of haste and expediency into each other, I will sleep tonight in the camp I I will make my bed of balsam And my pillow of pine, And the stars shall be my candles, And the four points of the compass my open window I I will camp in my own free heart, And rest on the evergreen thoughts Of the meaning and greatness and challenge of life. In the deep woods of the Remembrance of Eternity. 114 FELLOW CAPTAINS Against Fidgets Nervous apprehensions. Blow away! Blow far away! Over the edge of the world; Be lost there! Lost and forgotten. . . . For Adequacy under Strain Quit you like men: be strong. — St. Paul. In front of my house Grows a tall, powerful pine tree; And now when I hear the wind roaring up from the Hollow, Blowing along a storm, I come out of my house. And hold on to that great pine, Winding my arm round it. Till I feel its firm strength against my heart. For the wind may blow down the chimney built by the hands of man, And tear off the flimsy roof, And crack the panes. But this pine tree, Steadfastness, Only bends and recovers and stands again straight, Stronger and straighter than ever. And having done all, stand.— Ephesians. SARAH'S COLLECTION 115 For Courage Altitudo! Into the loud surf, Down over the sands of safety, I come running and shouting. Against me the breakers Crouch and spring, hurtle £uid roar. I make myself an arrow; Dizzily I dive through them, Blinded, with singing ears. And pounding heart. Suddenly I am in the clear water, The deep-sea water, The buoyeuit and calm water Beyond the breasted danger, On the far side of courage. 116 FELLOW CAPTAINS For an Increase of Fellow-feeling Momentous to himself as I to me Hath each man been that ever woman bore. — William Watson. I throw my imagination, like a bull's-eye lantern, On the sorrows and blunders and happiness and triumph and disgrace that come to my neighbors, And even to people whose names are in the paper. Who have been elected to office, Or have been arrested for crimes. Brightly I Ught them up with the bull's-eye lan- tern, Showing them fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers; Human, with human relations and human feeUngs and foolishness. Into the shadow and darkness, "What is it to me .^" I throw the clear light of "Suppose he were I, and I he I" SARAH'S COLLECTION 117 For Fellow-feeling toward Animals Whenever I see roast beef on the table, Remind me, memory, that it was once alive, and that it died in pedn. When I see lions in menageries, Remind me that they are slaves, and that they long to be free. When I see beautiful furs, Make me thmk of the terror and thirst and fever and pain Of a small wild creature crushed in the steel teeth of a trap. Self within myself, then inquire of me. What sort of foundation for my pleasure is their pain .^ ... He turned an easy wheel, That set sharp racks at work. ... — Keats, 118 FELLOW CAPTAINS J. 0. H,'s Recipe for Calmness I see the early twilight settling over a ploughed field With tiny drifts of spring snow in the furrows; The spring air, fragrant and sharp with dampness, Darkens round an old farmhouse, And a quiet farmyard, settled and still for the night. All but a faint far-off lowing And a drowsy far-off tinkle. . . . Another for Calmness^ by J, 0, H. Eyes of my memory and soul, Dwell on the picture of Whistler's mother, On the long lines of the plain dress. And the calm attitude, In the still light in the quiet room; — Infinite tranquillity. SARAH'S COLLECTION 119 For a Feeling of Freshness in the Morning Freshening showers, all night Are blowing up from the southwest To revive my thirsty garden. . . . When I wake up, After the long refreshment of the darkness, I shall be rosy and cheerful and brisk and clean; I shall feel like working and like whistling. For a Quick Eye for Beauty Now, my beauty-craving eyes, I bathe you in the cool spring, In the wide violet meadow. Feel the coolness! Feel the freshness! Forever after this I shall rejoice in the beauty of the wisdom of a wrinkled old face, And the beauty of leafless weather. And the beauty of rain and mist. The beauty of a bit of blue paper blowing in the grass, And prisms and rainbows in a glass of water at the breakfast table. I shall see the sweet eyes of soiled and neglected children, And I shall hear the music of the patient voice of middle age replying without rancor. "0 Beauty, touch me, make me wise!" — John Masefield. 120 FELLOW CAPTAINS For the Deliberate Recalling of Great Moments in Life Jaded and disillusioned as I am, Suffocated with drudgery and monotony, I will go to the chest in the storeroom And take out the great days of my life, To put back the lost heart into the small days. I remember the day of the Emergency, When I rose — (it was I !) to the greatness of the occasion, Directed, decided, took the great step, Saved the day for all of them. I remember the day of my Bravery, When I risked my life, when I kept faith, when I lived gloriously and fearlessly! I remember the first day of my Love . . . And I remember the day of my great Sorrow, When I said I would never be blind again to the comfort of calmness and contentment. Last I remember the day When a man or a woman, by my help, withstood a temptation; And the day When I saw him withstand it alone. SARAH'S COLLECTION 121 THE SOUL AND BODY Body and soul are married lovers: God was their witness when they wed, Beside the tree of life in Eden; "These twain shall be one flesh," He said, But man has put them oft asunder: And not alone by fire and sword, But duped by lying metaphysic, He oft denies, in deed and word, This marriage between earth and heaven; While ever to the steadfast skies, The prayers of these old constant lovers In patient iteration rise: "OA Priest, my little love remember! My patient love, the Body, see! What thou canst do to ease her burdens Shall greatly lift and strengthen me/" *'0/i wise Physician, now no longer Neglect my Lord and Love, the Soul! While he lies sick in pain and fever No drugs can make the Body whole.'' DOROTHY'S NOTE-BOOK Next to the originator of a good sentence is the quoter of it. Emerson. For Warm-heartedness Harden not your heart! — Psalms, The only way to have a friend is to be one. They eat your services Hke apples, and leave you out. But love them and they feel you! — Emerson, Ah! why cannot we live as though we always loved! It was this the saints and heroes did, — this and nothing more. — Maeterlinck. Little do men perceive what solitude is and how fair it extendeth; for a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures and talk but tinkling cymbals, where there is no love. — Bacon. The best Society and conversation is that in which the heart has a larger place than the head. — LaBruyere, The heart has reasons which reason cannot know. — Pascal. Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices. — Emerson. The heart must often correct the follies of the head. — Froude. "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in." "I should have called it Something you somehow haven't to deserve." — Robert Frost 126 PELLOW CAPTAINS Against Revenge and Hatred The desire for revenge keeps a man's own wounds fresh and green which otherwise would heal and do well. — Bacon. It is the glory of a man to pass by an offense. — Psalms, He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now. — St. John. No man ever had a point of pride that was not injurious to him. — Burke. Folks never understand the folks they hate. — Lowell. Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord God: and not that he should return from his ways, and live ? — Ezekiel. DOROTHY'S NOTE-BOOK 127 For the Love of Truth Happy the man taught by the Truth itself, Not by the shapes and sounds that pass across his life. — Thomas a Kempis. In all debates let Truth be thy aim, not victory, and endeavor to gadn, rather than to expose, thy opponent. — William Penn. Conscience replies, There is but one good rest, Whose head is pillowed upon Truth's bare breast. — James Thomson. Truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not show the masks and mummeries and triumphs of the world half so daintily and half so stately as candle-hght. — Bacon. Truth, like a torch, the more it's shook the more it shines. — Bacon. The most fatal of thoughts is that which cannot be friends with reality. — Maeterlinck. I have nothing to do with creeds. It is more than I can do now to be a good man. — Emerson. Truth is the hiest thing a man may keep. — Chaucer. It takes two to tell the truth; one to tell it and one to hear it. — Thoreau. 128 FELLOW CAPTAINS Aspiration Prayer that craves a particular commodity, — anything less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the high- est point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. — Emerson. Hath man no second life ? Pitch this one high I — Sits there no judge in Heaven our sin to see ? More strictly, then, the inward judge obey. — Was Christ a man like us ? Ah, let us try If we then too can be such men as he I — Arnold, Strange that we creatures of the petty ways, Poor prisoners behind these fleshly hais, Can sometimes think us thoughts with God ablaze Touching the fringes of the outer stars. And stranger still that having flown so high And stood unshamed in shining presences We can resume our smallness, nor imply In mien or gesture what the memory is. — Richard Burton. Immortality is not a gift! Immortality is an achievement. — Masters. What I aspired to be And was not, comforts me. — Browning. A man's reach should exceed his grasp Or what's a Heaven for ? — Browning. DOROTHY'S NOTE-BOOK 129 It is comforting to people with free and vagrant minds, to feel that there is a Christianity back of, and even without, Christ, to which Christ seems . . . interpreter. — Samuel Bowles, Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel! — St. Paul At man thou smilest, Inaccessible! The cUmbing instinct is enough for thee. — Lowell Well, I say, live it out like a god. Sure of immortal Hfe though you are in doubt. If that doesn't make God proud of you. . . . Sleep is the golden goal. — Masters. And he who flagged not in the earthly strife, From strength to strength advancing, — only he. His soul well knit, and all his battles won. Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life. — Arnold. 130 FELLOW CAPTAINS Social Relations Bear ye one another's burdens. — St. John, Let's all both of us do it together! — Saying of a Four-year-old. To every one according to his need: from every one according to his abihty. — Louis Blanc. Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them. — St. Paul. To what end do we arm ourselves with this har- ness of philosophy ? Let us look down at the poor people, that we see scattered about the face of the earth, prone and intent upon their business, that neither know Aristotle nor Cato, example nor pre- cept. From these does Nature every day extract effects of constancy and patience, more siue and manly than those we so inquisitively study in the schools. The very names by which they call dis- eases sweeten and mollify the sharpness of them. The tisik is with them no more than "a cough," the pleurisie but "a stitch" and as they gently name them, so they patiently endure them. These sick- nesses are very great and grievous indeed when they are allowed to hinder ordinary labor; and they keep their beds but to die. — Montaigne. Society gains nothing whilst a man not himself renovated, attempts to renovate things about him. — Emerson. DOROTHY'S NOTE-BOOK 131 The beggarly question of parentage, what is it, after all? What does it matter whether a child is yours by blood or not ? All the Uttle ones of our time are collectively the children of the adults of the time, and entitled to our general care. That excessive regard of parents for their own children and their disregard for other people's is, like class-feeling, patriotism, save-your-soul-ism and other such vir- tues, a mean exclusiveness at bottom. — Hardy, He regarded the world as his natural prey, and was enraged and furious because it was too large for him to swallow. — Holland, One can as easily hide personaUty and individuahty under ever so great a mass of machinery as one could hide the ocean under ever so big a piece of chiffon. We may possibly be living in that infinitesimal fraction of time when the chiffon first strikes the water, but it can be but the time of a heartbeat before humanity comes soaking through. — D. C. F. What, indeed, is their whole life [i.e., the very poor] but a species of physical punishment? — Seymour Deming. Everybody gets invited out to dine except the people who need a dinner. — Walter Rauschenbusch, The passion of passions, the hope of hopes, that he, even he, may somehow make the world better. — Henry George. How dare you place anything before a man? — Whitman. 132 FELLOW CAPTAINS Despairer, here is my neck! By God, you shall not go down; hang your whole weight upon me. — Whitman, When the devil takes the hindmost, the wrench is felt by the topmost; felt to the very marrow of his bones. — Edmond Kelly. With all your main and all your might, You back what is against what's right. — John Masefield. He who gives a child a treat Makes joy-bells ring in heaven's street; And he who gives a child a home Builds palaces in Kingdom Come. — John Masefield. If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there re- memberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. — Jesus. The traditions of past ages weigh like an Alp on the brain of the living. — Karl Marx. What is this, the sound and rumor ? What is this that all men hear. Like the wind in hollow valleys, when the storm is drawing near. Like the rolling on of ocean in the eventide of fear ? 'Tis the people marching on. — William Morris. DOROTHY'S NOTE-BOOK 133 For Clear Thinking Skeptics empty out the baby along with the bath. — Carlyle. Suppose you should be startled in the dark night by something which looked like a specter. Would not he who should bring a lantern and show you that it was but a white cloth hanging to a bush, give you far greater encouragement than he who merely exhorted you to keep up your heart, look the other way, whistle and pass on ? — Whately. An intelligent conscience is one of the greatest of luxuries. — H. W. Beecher. The doctrinaire lays all the blame, for the dis- crepancy between himself and the universe, on the universe. — Crothers, The laws of morality are also the laws of art. — Schumann. There is many a conquering hero to whom Fate has malignantly appended a Tin Kettle of Ambition. — Carlyle. Anger is one of the sinews of the soul. — Fuller, No man has learned anything rightly, till he has learned that every day is Doomsday. — Emerson, 134 FELLOW CAPTAINS No one is infallible at Oxford, not even the youngest of us. — Dr, Jowett It was said of Gladstone that his conscience, in- stead of being his monitor, was his accomplice. Parched corn eaten today that I may have roast fowl for my dinner on Sunday when people see it, is baseness; but parched corn and a house of one apartment that I may be free of perturbations, that I may be serene, so that the mind may speak and be girt and road-ready for the poet's mission of knowledge and good-will, is frugality for gods and heroes. — Emerson. I have no expectation that any man will read his- tory aright who thinks that what was done in a remote age by men whose names have resounded far has any deeper sense than what he is doing today. — Emerson. Children need models more than critics. — Joubert, Why, sir, if Bolingbroke really does think there is no distinction between vice and virtue, when he leaves our houses, let us count our spoons. — Dr. Johnson. Neither pity and benevolence nor hope can ever dispense with justice. — Turgot. The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it can never be made impulsive to good. — Horace Mann. DOROTHY'S NOTE-BOOK 135 Radicals of forty trying to stamp the life out of radicals of twenty. — Meredith. The egoist feels that possession, without obliga- tion to the object possessed, approaches felicity. — Meredith. The wages of sin are death, but they are not paid every Saturday night. — Benvenuto Cellini. What maikes life dreary is lack of motive. — George Eliot. 136 FELLOW CAPTAINS Against Dullness and Routine Now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. — Romans. Awake, awake, put on thy strength, Zion; put on thy beautiful garments. — Isaiah. If I have faltered more or less In my great Task of Happiness, Lord, thy most pointed Pleasure take And stab my spirit broad awake. — Stevenson. Our little lives always stagnate into hypocrisy or morbidity unless the general wave of the world continually refreshes and recreates them. — Chesterton. We do not stumble over mountains, but over mole-hills. — Chinese Proverb. Yet a little while, Yet a little way, Saints shall reap and rest and smile All the day; — Up I let's trudge another mile! — Christina Rossetti. DOROTHY'S NOTE-BOOK 137 Why do we heap huge mounds of years Before us and behind, And waste the little days that pass Like angels on the wind ? Each turning round a small, sweet face As beautiful as near, — Because it is so small a face, We will not see it clear. And so it turns from us, and goes Away in sad disdain: Though we would give our lives for it, It never comes again. — Dinah Muloch Craik, 138 FELLOW CAPTAINS For a Sense of Beauty Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry. And every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song. — Emerson. Oh Beauty, touch me, make me wise! — John Masefield. Beauty rests on necessities. The line of beauty is the result of perfect economy. — Emerson. For the good man delights in acts of virtue and is vexed by acts of vice just as a musician is pleased by good music and pained by bad. — Aristotle. Loveliness, magic, grace, They are here! they are set in the world. They abide; and the finest of souls Hath not been thrilled by them all, Nor the dullest been dead to them quite. — Arnold, DOROTHY'S NOTE-BOOK 139 For a Sense of Responsibility for One's Own Life Trust thyself. Every heart vibrates to that iron string. — Emerson, Religion, science, philosophy, still at variance upon many points, all agree on this; that every existence is an aim. — Mazzini. If thou wouldst conquer thy weakness, never gratify it. — William Penn. Use what language we will, we can never say any- thing but what we are. . . . What you are thun- ders in my ears so loud that I can not hear what you say. — Emerson. I have learned that no man in God's wide earth is able to help any other man. Help must come from the bosom alone. — Pestalozzi. There comes no adventure but wears to our soul the shape of our everyday thoughts; and deeds of heroism are but offered to those who for many years have been heroes in obscurity and silence. — Maeterlinck. Our chief want in Hfe is somebody to make us do what we can! — Emerson. Half the self-sacrifice, half the self-denial, the moral resolution which Fitzgerald exercises to keep himself easy, would amply furnish forth a martyr or a missionary. His tranquillity is hke a pirated copy of the Peace of God. — Spedding. 140 FELLOW CAPTAINS Blessed is he who has dropped even the smallest coin into the iron box which contains the precious savings of mankind. — Henry James, The man who is contented with what he has done has lain down to die. The grass is already growing over him. — Bovee. DOROTHY'S NOTE-BOOK 141 For Moral Independence Whatever any one does or says, I must be good. — Marcus Aurelius. Seek the good of other men; but be not in bondage to their fancies, for that is but a softness that taketh an honest man prisoner. — Bacon. In the brain of a fanatic, in the hair-splitting con- scientiousness of some eccentric person who has found some new scruple to embarrass himself and his neighbors witheJ, is to be found that which shall constitute the times to come. — Emerson. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. . . . Whoso would be a man, must be a non-conformist. — Emerson. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them; [i.e. the sane, mystical, ordinary man.] — Chesterton. Feeble souls do not wish to be lovely, but to be loved. — Emerson. How does Nature deify us! Give me health and a day, and I can make the pomp of emperors ridicu- lous. — Emerson. God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. — Emerson. Woe to him who has no court of appeal against this world's judgment. — Carlyle. 142 FELLOW CAPTAINS For an Enlightened Acceptance of Hard Facts in Life I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but shnks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for not without dust and heat. — Milton. "What will you have?" quoth God. "Take it and pay for it." — Emerson. Nature does not coddle us. We are her children, not her pets. — Emerson. Never hesitate to apply the most sublime con- solation to the smallest trouble. — Phillips Brooks. Transition is ever full of pain. The eagle when he moults is sickly. — Carlyle. All that can be annihilated must be annihilated, that the children of Jerusalem may be saved from slavery. — Blake. Ease is the worst enemy of happiness. — Chesterton. Not the absence of vice but vice there and virtue holding her by the throat is the ideal human state. — William James. Rest! Almost nobody needs rest. What they need is hard work and tranquil minds. — Robert Herrick, DOROTHY'S NOTE-BOOK 143 The very fiends weave ropes of sand Rather than taste pure Hell in idleness. — Browning. The every-day cares and duties which men call drudgery are the weights and counterpoises of the clock Time, giving its pendulum a true vibration and its hands a regular motion; and when they cease to hang upon the wheels the pendulum no longer swings, the hemds no longer move, the clock stands still. — Longfellow. There is one thing that a man knows about his own business better than any outsider, and that is how hard it is for him to do it. The adviser is al- ways telling him how to do it in the finest possible way; while he, poor fellow, knows that the para- mount issue is whether he can do it at all. — Crothers. There are certain self-pleasing minds that go near to think their girdles and geirters be bonds and shackles. — Bacon. Excellence is not common and abundant. She dwells among rocks hardly accessible and a man must almost wear out his heart before he can reach her. — Greek saying. Virtue rejecteth facility to be her companion. She requireth a rough, craggy, and thorny path. — Montaigne. 144 FELLOW CAPTAINS All are not taken! There are left behind Living Beloveds, tender looks to bring, And make the dayUght still a happy thing. — E. B. Browning. Drudgery leads to felicity. — Whistler. That those things which cannot be shaken may remain. — Hebrews. St. Paul's "faith" was the full assent of the soul. — Spinoza. DOROTHY'S NOTE-BOOK 145 For Courage and Endurance . . . The thirty-third year of life, that earher climacteric when the men with a vision first feel conscious of a past and reflectively mark its shadow. It is then that they either press forward eagerly with new impulse in the way of their high calling, knowing the Hmitations of circumstance and the hour; or else fainting draw back their hand from the plough and ignobly leave to another or to none the accomplishment of the work. — Morley. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, £uid though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea. — Psalms. Winds blow and waters roll Strength to the brave. — Wordsworth, 'Tis writ on Paradise's gate, "Woe to the dupe who yields to Fate I " — Hafiz. For while the tired waves, vainly breaking. Seem here no painful inch to gain. Far back through creeks and inlets making Comes silent, flooding in, the main: And not by eastern windows only When daylight comes, comes in the fight. In front, the sun cfimbs slow, how slowly! But westward, look! the land is bright. — Clough. Strengthen me by sympathizing with my strength, not with my weakness. — Thoreau. 146 FELLOW CAPTAINS To fear not Fortune's endeavors, Nor covet the game at all, But fighting, fighting, fighting, Die driven against the wall. — Louise Imogen Guiney. It is too late ? Ah, nothing is too late Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate I Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles Wrote his grand Oedipus, and Simonides Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers When each had numbered more than fourscore years. — Longfellow. The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed. Lets in new light from chinks that time has made; Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become As they draw near to their eternal home. — Waller. . . . the much-sought prize of Eternal Youth Is just arrested growth. — Masters. 'Tis man's perdition to be safe. — Emerson. The bark of danger is worse than its bite. — H.G.Wells. 'Tis cowardice, not virtue, to lie squat in a fur- row under a tomb, to evade the blows of fortune. — Montaigne. Glory and rest do not sit in one same form. — Montaigne. DOROTHY'S NOTE-BOOK 147 But who, if he be called upon to face Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined Great issues, good or bad, for human kind Is happy as a lover. — Wordsworth. It fortifies my soul to know That though I perish, Truth is so . . . I steadier step when I recall That if I slip, Thou dost not faU. — Clough. "Fight on, my men," Sir Andrew said: "A little I'm hmrt, but not yet slain. I'll just lie down and bleed awhile And then I'll rise and fight again." ■- Old Ballad. 148 FELLOW CAPTAINS For a Trust in Life and Nature The highest gift of knowledge ; — That all life, grief, wrong, Turn at the last To beauty and to song. — R. W. Gilder. On spring days I tramped through the country, To get the feeling, which I sometimes lost, That I was not a separate thing from the earth. — Masters. Wisdom makes but a slow defense against trouble, misfortune and grief, but at the last a sure one. — Goldsmith. After winter foUoweth summer, after night the day returneth, and after the tempest a great calm. — A Kempis. Where lies the land to which the ship would go ? Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know. And where the land she travels from ? Away Far, far behind, is all that they can say. — Clough. A ship-wrecked sailor, buried on this coast, Bids you set sail! Full many a gallant bark, when we were lost. Weathered the gale. — Greek Epitaph. DOROTHY'S NOTE-BOOK 149 I have grown to believe that an old man seated in his armchair waiting patiently with his lamp beside him, giving unconscious ear to all the eternal laws that reign eibout his house, submitting with bent head to the presence of his soul and his destiny; — I have grown to believe that he, motionless as he is, does yet live in a reality deeper, more human, more universal, than the captain who conquers in battle. — Maeterlinck, Go with mean people, and you think life is mean. Then read Plutarch, and the world is a proud place. — Emerson. If you will not budge, those hot cities must be burnt about you. You must come out of them. — H. G. Wells Free the immortal part of your being, and give it charge concerning the rest. — Feuchtersleben. The cool disengaged air of natural objects makes them enviable to us, chafed, irritable creatures with red faces, and we think we shall be as grand as they if we but camp out and eat roots. But let us be men instead of woodchucks. — Emerson, The great majority of men seem to be mutes who cannot report the conversations they have had with Nature. — Emerson. 150 FELLOW CAPTAINS . . . under heaviest sorrow earth can bring If from the affliction somewhere do not grow Honor which could not else have been, a faith, An elevation, and a sanctity, The blame is ours, not Nature's. — Wordsworth. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him. — EzekieL DOROTHY'S NOTE-BOOK 151 For Cheerfulness A merry heart doeth good like a medicine. — Proverbs, Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers ? sweet content! Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplexed ? punishment! Can'st drinli the waters of the crisped spring ? sweet content! Swimm'st thou in wealth, yet sink'st in thy own fears? punishment! Then he that patiently want's burden bears No burden bears, but is a king, a king! sweet content! — Dekker. Not rejoicing because we have quelled our lusts, but contrariwise, because we rejoice, quelling our lusts! — Spinoza. But I will hope continually. — Psalms, Age is opportunity no less Than youth itself, but in another dress. And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars invisible by day. — Longfellow, Why labor at the dull mechanic oar When the fresh breeze is blowing. And the strong current flowing Right onward to the eternal shore ? — Clough, 152 FELLOW CAPTAINS A good man wishes to live with himself, for his own company is pleasant to him. The memory of his past life is sweet and for the future he has good hopes. — Aristotle. Miirger said of himself that in reading Lafontaine's fables, his heart was always on the side of the sing- ing grasshopper. I must believe that life affords to the soul, as it does to the body, cheerful ways of growing strong. — William A. Smith. For many intellectual products the winter of the body is the autumn of the mind. A beautiful old age is for all beholders a delightful promise. — Jouhert. There is nothing so cheerful as wisdom; I had almost said, so wanton! — Montaigne. * There is something about Death Like Love itself. If with someone with whom you have known passion And the glow of youthful love You also, after years of life Together feel the sinking of the fire, And thus fade away together Gradually, faintly, dehcately, As it were in each other's arms, Passing from the famihar room; That is a power of unison between souls Like Love itself. — Masters. DOROTHY'S NOTE-BOOK 153 Rectitude is a perpetual victory, celebrated not by cries of joy but by serenity, which is joy fixed or habitued. — Emerson. The loss of wealth is loss of dirt; As sages in all time assert. The happy man's without a shirt. — Heywood, Over the shoulders and slopes of the dune I saw the white daisies go down to the sea, A host in the sunshine, an army in June The people God sends us to set our hearts free. The bobolinks rallied them up from the dell. The orioles whistled them out of the wood, And all of their singing was "Earth it is well," And all of their dancing was "Life, thou art good." — Bliss Carman. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. — Psalms.