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WINDFALLS 
 OF OBSERVATION 
 
WINDFALLS 
 OF OBSERVATION 
 
 GATHERED FOR 
 
 THE EDIFICATION OF THE YOUNG 
 
 AND THE 
 
 SOLACE OF OTHERS 
 
 EDWARD SANDFORD MARTIN 
 
 AUTHOR OF " A LITTLE BROTHER OF THE RICH " 
 " COUSIN ANTHONY AND I," ETC. 
 
 , NINTH Ev^rM^: ' ' '':'")'" 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1901 
 

 Copyright, 1893, by 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 TROW DIRECTORY 
 
 PHINTINQ AND BOOKBINDINQ COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 FAGE 
 
 I. Horse i 
 
 II. Climate iS 
 
 III. Courtship 25 
 
 IV. Marriage and Divorce 49 
 
 V. College 65 
 
 VI. The Tyranny of Things 89 
 
 VII. Wills and Heirs 107 
 
 VIII. The Travel Habit 117 
 
 IX. Newspapers and People " 133 
 
 X. The Mysteries of Life 147 
 
 XI. Missing Senses and New Ones . . . 165 
 XII. A Serious Time of Life 181 
 
 XIII. The Question of an Occupation . . . 193 
 
 XIV. Women and Families 213 
 
 XV. As to Death 229 
 
 XVI. Inclinations and Character ..... 237 
 
vi Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XVII. A Poet and Not Ashamed 249 
 
 XVIII. Some Christmas Sentiments . . . .261 
 
 XIX. Feathers of Lost Birds 275 
 
 XX. Outrageous Fortune 283 
 
 XXI. Certain Individual Views of Major Brace 295 
 
HORSE 
 
HORSE 
 
 PEAKING for the State of /«^a^ 
 New York and contiguous 
 vicinities, it is perfectly safe 
 to say that if there were six 
 weeks that could be spared 
 out of the year without doing it any 
 harm, they would be the six weeks be- 
 ginning on the first Monday in March. 
 They make us a lenten quarantine that 
 we have to keep whether we like it or 
 not. The real, true spring and May- 
 day are put upon the market in these 
 latitudes at about the same time. Spring 
 threatens sporadically and intermittently 
 as early as the middle of April, but so 
 long as it yields two sprigs of pneumonia 
 to one of arbutus it is hardly worth talk- 
 ing about as spring. When base-ball be- 
 comes a marketable sport, and one's flan- 
 nels have been oppressive three days 
 running, then we may begin to believe 
 
 3 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 that there really is a spring and that we 
 are in it. 
 aj^oun^ It has been said by a favorite author 
 
 IfiaKs fancy •' 
 
 that at this time of year a young man's 
 fancy turns to thoughts of love. That 
 may have been so in other climes and 
 times, but contemporary observation 
 hereabouts persuades the observer that 
 what our young men's fancies turn to in 
 May, and as much as to anything else, 
 is horse. When the town begins to 
 warm^ and the mud is known to have 
 dried on the country roads, the desire 
 to go on or after a quadruped begins to 
 wrestle in many minds with the other 
 reasonable desires that cost money, and 
 in a certain percentage of minds, every 
 year, horse prevails. 
 
 A lover, even a successful one, is an 
 affecting sight to any one with due ap- 
 preciation of the chances he is taking ; 
 but only to a man who is ignorant of the 
 possibilities of horse-flesh, is a lover half 
 so affecting as a young man who is buy- 
 ing his first horse. There is so much 
 that he does not know, and it will cost 
 him such a pretty penny to learn it ! 
 
 4 
 
Horse 
 
 Still, though a little knowledge of 
 horse is a dangerously expensive thing, 
 if one can afford to acquire it, it is a 
 knowledge that has only one superior in 
 its power to add to one's intelligent in- 
 terest in life. The noblest study of 
 mankind is man, as heretofore ; but the 
 study of horse is gloriously supplement- 
 ary thereto. It is worth a reasonable 
 bit out of one's surplus in the glad, hope- 
 ful spring, to get in the way of learning 
 how many things a horse may have the 
 matter with him and still be able to 
 get about. There are so very many of 
 them! more than even with the worst J";;"//" 
 luck the beginner can hope to learn in 
 one season, for a single horse does not 
 have them all ; certainly not in any one 
 summer. A horse's blemishes are like 
 virtues, in that they have to be devel- 
 oped ; but the beginner may assure him- 
 self that the less he knows about horse 
 the more blemishes he will be able to 
 develop, so that his ignorance and his 
 opportunities of curing it will go hand 
 in hand. Craniology is a very interest- 
 ing study, but the bumps on your head 
 
 5 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 Collectors 
 
 come ready-made, or grow out so very 
 slowly that you cannot note their prog- 
 ress. With the bumps on a horse's legs 
 it is different. If the horse is young 
 enough, and the country is hilly, or the 
 carriage heavy, or if your notions of 
 driving or riding are a little crude, a 
 notable lot of knobs will sometimes ac- 
 cumulate on a set of legs almost while 
 you are looking. It is as interesting to 
 watch them as it is to see the seeds come 
 up in the garden after a warm rain. 
 
 There have been men who have held 
 that there was a greater measure of pure 
 felicity in being a collector than in ad- 
 diction to horse. The collector's hobby 
 has two excellent qualities : It is im- 
 mensely entertaining and it is compara- 
 tively innocent. It tempts men to ex- 
 travagance, no doubt, but if they buy 
 wisely they get their money back when 
 they sell. It gives no man headaches 
 in the morning ; nor does it seriously 
 interfere with the peace of families, so 
 that it is more tolerable than rum or 
 flirtation. It is a less hazardous pleas- 
 6 
 
Horse 
 
 ure, too, than horse, which sometimes 
 inveigles men into saddles to the peril 
 of necks, and which usually, if pursued 
 with due zeal, usurps their faculties to 
 a degree that is detrimental to the in- 
 terests of society. Collectors are usu- 
 ally more interested in their treasures 
 than in anything else on earth, but it 
 must be said for them that the very 
 depth of their passion usually operates 
 to give it modesty. They are not more 
 apt to prate endlessly in mixed society 
 about their havings than a lover is to 
 talk about his sweetheart. The con- 
 sciousness of possession is ordinarily 
 enough for them, though, of course, 
 when they get among persons whose 
 sympathy they know is with them, con- 
 versation takes its natural course. 
 
 There is a reasonable fraction of hu- 
 man sentiment left in most collectors, 
 but the man whose hobby is horse has a 
 very limited claim to rank as a biped. 
 Books and pictures and jades and " solid 
 colors," when once you have got them, 
 stay calmly where they are put and 
 leave their owners some peace. Not so 
 
 7 
 
 not so bad 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 ihusiasts. 
 
 the horse. Nothing compares with him 
 for intrusiveness except babies. He is 
 constantly up to some devilment, devel- 
 oping possibilities or impossibilities, get- 
 ting colds, ringbones, spavins, nails in 
 his feet, strains, curbs, galls, scratches, 
 navicular disease, corns, lung difficul- 
 ties, heaves, and unascertained worth- 
 lessness. Every detriment that shows 
 in him shows immediately in his owner, 
 whose mind is temporarily unfit for the 
 consideration of anything else. The 
 horst en- collcctor Can take his first editions out 
 and dust them and put them back on 
 the shelf, and go out and talk about sil- 
 ver-coinage ; but a man who has horse 
 seldom comes out of his stable without 
 the preoccupied air, which is the ex- 
 ternal sign of internal worry. Laws 
 designed for the protection of society, 
 provide, with more or less success, that 
 men shall have but one wife each, at a 
 time. But strangely enough, the num- 
 ber of horses a man may possess is left 
 unlimited, except by his purse and his 
 preferences, so that any citizen is at 
 liberty to own as many as he can main- 
 8 
 
Horse 
 
 tain, and go about with dimmed and 
 distorted faculties, to prey upon the pa- 
 tience of his fellow-men. 
 
 If there were no other drawback to 
 the horse habit, a respectable argument 
 (albeit not a strictly valid one) could be 
 reared against it on the ground that it 
 necessitates the continued existence of 
 horse - dealers. Now the business of Hazards 
 horse-dealing, an avocation of large and Vfarhorse^ 
 increasing importance, is yet of such i^^jl"^^"" 
 peculiar characteristics as to be dis- 
 tinctly hazardous to the reputation of 
 people who take it up. That there are 
 and always have been honest horse- 
 dealers it is absurd to doubt, but the 
 immemorial experience of mankind in 
 buying horses is such that demonstrated 
 examples of absolute integrity in selling 
 them excite very much the same sort of 
 admiration as white plumage on black- 
 birds. Of course there is a dearth of 
 absolutely honest men anyway, but the 
 reputed scarcity of honest horse-dealers 
 cannot be entirely due to that. There 
 are dishonest grocers but it cannot be 
 
 9 
 
IVhuifalh of Observation 
 
 said that the grocery business is disrep- 
 utable. Such a statement is hardly jus- 
 tifiable even of the business of dealing 
 in stocks, and if it can be made of horse- 
 selling there must be special reasons for 
 it. 
 
 There are such reasons, and very good 
 ones. They consist largely in the cir- 
 cumstance that two extremely uncer- 
 tain quantities enter into every sale of 
 horses. One of these is the horse, the 
 other is the purchaser. From the day 
 he is foaled -to the day his hoofs go to 
 the glue-factory, every horse is, in a con- 
 siderable measure, a matter of opinion. 
 There is no absolute certainty what he 
 will do until he has done it, and then 
 there is no absolute certainty what he 
 will do next time. A man under opti- 
 mistic influences may see a thousand 
 dollars' worth of value in a horse, and 
 sell him next day in a pessimistic mood 
 for three hundred, and all without any 
 variation in the animal or in the state 
 of the market, or anything else except 
 the owner's feelings. A horse-dealer of 
 the sincerest integrity may sell for a 
 lo 
 
Horse 
 
 large sum a horse which gave every in- 
 dication of value. Within a week or a 
 month the horse may develop an incur- 
 able ailment which makes him worth- 
 less. Nine times out of ten the inex- 
 perienced purchaser believes that the 
 dealer cheated him, and an upright man 
 endures the imputation of being dishon- 
 est as a penalty for dealing in wares that 
 are subject to sudden fluctuations of 
 value. Of course, the temptations of 
 horse-dealing are enormously increased 
 by this liability of seemingly sound 
 horses to go suddenly and unreasonably 
 wrong. Of course, too, a good many 
 dealers yield in greater or less measure 
 to the stress of these temptations. 
 Thus one reason why the reputation of 
 the business is so doubtful is that so 
 many men who go into it too readily 
 convince themselves that caveat emptor 
 applies as properly to the vendor's rep- 
 resentations as to the wares. But an- 
 other reason is that it is so difficult for 
 even a very Bayard of horse-dealers to 
 avoid the imputation of cheating which 
 he did not do. 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 But that the reputations of honest 
 men are apt to be impaired in horse- 
 dealing is really not the fault of the 
 horse so much as of the other variable 
 quantity, the purchaser. Horses are 
 subject to preventable as well as un- 
 foreseen detriment. The more valuable 
 they are, the easier it is to ruin them 
 by misuse or neglect. The dispositions 
 and habits of horses, particularly of 
 young horses, may easily be spoiled in 
 a very little while by the ignorance or 
 spitefulness of grooms. The average 
 horse-buyer knows little about horses, 
 and less about grooms. If he pays a 
 fair sum for a horse, and the animal 
 goes lame or grows vicious, he is apt to 
 assume and to proclaim that he has 
 been cheated. Whereas the mischief 
 may have been wholly unforeseen by the 
 seller, or may all have been done in the 
 buyer's own stable, of the workings of 
 which he has about as much practical 
 knowledge as contemporary scientists 
 have of home life on the planet Mars. 
 Inasmuch as the horse - dealer's busi- 
 ness reputation rests very largely on the 
 
 X2 
 
Horse 
 
 buyer's testimony, it is evident that the 
 honest dealer who values his fair fame 
 has got to be almost as careful to whom 
 he sells as what he sells. 
 
 Thus we see what an extra-hazardous 
 occupation horse-dealing is, and how 
 many reasons careful men can find for 
 keeping out of it. But as a matter of 
 fact, men never do keep out of the haz- 
 ardous occupations. There is a recog- 
 nized charm about uncertainties, and 
 they are never more alluring than when 
 they go on four legs, and haul carts, or 
 jump fences. Men not only sell horses 
 in increasing numbers for profit, but 
 they dabble in the business out of sheer 
 love of adventure and horse, and sell 
 quadrupeds to friend or foe, reckless of 
 the fact that every beast that passes 
 through their hands is a hostage given 
 to society. Such men are the chief in- 
 stigators of horse-shows, which are use- 
 ful in stimulating trade, and giving them 
 a chance to show their stock, and, above 
 and beyond that, m educating buyers so 
 that they shall not only desire good 
 horses, but shall know them, and know 
 
 13 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 what to do with them after they are 
 bought. In the improvement of the 
 horse and the education of the buyer 
 lies the honest horse - dealer's hope. 
 When sound horses stay sound after 
 they are sold, and buyers learn what 
 they may and what they may not expect, 
 virtue in the horse business will be surer 
 of its reward, and honesty will seem 
 more like a policy and less like a quix- 
 otic whim. 
 
 14 
 
II 
 
 CLIMATE 
 
CLIMATE 
 
 CORRESPONDENT who 
 lately wrote in rather a pes- 
 simistic vein from Los An- 
 geles, averred that the mo- 
 notony of the climate there 
 was a depressing influence. There was 
 not difference enough between the sea- 
 sons, she said, to give to life that varie- 
 gated flavor which is so acceptable, and 
 goes so far to prevent the soul's palate 
 from being jaded. When the corre- 
 spondent's letter had been printed and 
 found its way back whence it came, the 
 local journals immediately denied all in 
 it that was disparaging, and explained 
 that the writer took sad views of life 
 because of disappointment in a trans- 
 action in corner-lots. Whether South- 
 ern California lacks seasons or not is a 
 question of fact that is best settled on 
 the spot, where daily instances of the 
 
 17 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 Some re- 
 ■markable 
 results of 
 physical 
 conditions. 
 
 climate may be put in evidence. Prob- 
 ably it doesn't ; but if it does, its defi- 
 ciency is a serious one. 
 
 We of New York and New England 
 and the comparatively effete East abuse 
 our climate a good deal, and sometimes 
 with plenty of reason. Professor Shaler 
 has said that " it is rather to the physi- 
 cal conditions of North America than to 
 any primal capacity on the part of its 
 indigenous peoples to take on civiliza- 
 tion that we must attribute the failure 
 of indigenous man within its limits to 
 advance beyond the lowest grades of 
 barbarism." No doubt he is right about 
 that. Physical conditions include cli- 
 mate, and North America, the best 
 parts of it, is blessed with what may 
 be termed a rot-you-before-you-are-ripe 
 climate. An indigenous people have 
 never been able to mature in it in a de- 
 liberate and thorough manner, but have 
 invariably acquired a precocious, sickly 
 smartness, and perished off the soil, 
 leaving mounds, arrow-heads, embroi- 
 dered moccasins, and sculptured cities 
 behind them. The climate infuses irre* 
 i8 
 
Climate 
 
 sistible energy in the folks that it acts 
 upon, and they ripen too soon. The 
 continent is a sort of forcing-bed. But 
 while it it is impossible for indigenous 
 races to come to much in it, it is 
 possible to get wonderful results from 
 transplantation. Full-grown English- 
 men, Dutchmen, and Germans, brought 
 here full of blood and sluggish strength, 
 have been amazingly quickened, and 
 have sometimes made greater progress 
 here in a decade than their brethren at 
 home have made in a century. A spe- 
 cial marvel that is apposite is the effect 
 of American air upon the Irish. Almost 
 all of the Irish are well known to be of 
 royal extraction, but at home the stock 
 had fallen into decline. Not only have 
 their abilities in general been notably 
 quickened by sniffing the free American 
 breezes, but in particular it is found that 
 when the Celt sets foot on America's 
 shore an instinct of being boss, which in 
 many cases had slept in his blood for tens 
 of centuries, springs as if by magic into 
 full-sized life, and the long-lost prince 
 drops his hod and steps out a ruler of men. 
 
 19 
 
IVindfalls of Observation 
 
 But the climate is as wearing as it is 
 stimulating. It uses up the materials 
 in an emigrant race presently ; and then 
 if the members don't take very good 
 care of themselves, they waste away. 
 Nevertheless, we ought not to forget 
 that whatever its defects are, it is par- 
 celled out to us in excellent variety. It 
 is a vast inconvenience in summer some- 
 times to have to pick up a sick baby and 
 rush for the seashore or the hills ; and 
 in the winter there is pneumonia and the 
 whole family of throat and lung expe- 
 riences ; and in the spring there is the 
 liver. But it is a well-seasoned climate 
 all the same, and where we are not too 
 set upon getting our whole annual expe- 
 rience of it in any one spot, it does as 
 well by us as any climate can be expect- 
 ed to do by people of desires and infirm^ 
 ities such as ours. It is our duty not 
 merely to make the best of it, but to 
 The value make the most of it. Does the valued 
 
 of seusons, 
 
 and intelligent reader take pains to do 
 that ? Does he fully realize that in liv- 
 ing in a climate that is seasoned he en- 
 joys opportunities which all people do 
 20 
 
Climate 
 
 not have ? And is he prepared for in- 
 dustrious and painstaking appreciation 
 commensurate with his chances ? Let 
 him consider peoples whose lot is cast in 
 regions where the meteorological vicis- 
 situdes are unimportant. Take the good 
 people of Hayti, whose vitals are never 
 frozen up ; or the Esquimaux, or Ice- 
 landers, who never really get thawed 
 out. Are they over-bright, these worthy 
 folks ? Read what Ibsen has found it 
 necessary to write to enlighten the sim- 
 plicity of his compatriots ; inquire as to 
 the experience of Hayti since Toussaint 
 L'Ouverture's revolt ; and draw such 
 conclusions as you must as to the use- 
 fulness of due alternations of freeze and 
 melt in making men's wits active and 
 promoting their energies. There is said 
 to be foliage in the tropics of a certain 
 sort, great lazy leaves for which the 
 botanists have names ; but where there 
 are to be oak or maple leaves, or hick- 
 ory or beech, the sap must run up the 
 trunk in the spring. Leaves with come- 
 and-go to them, and wood with a snap 
 in it, are not the product of those all- 
 
 21 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 the-year-round climates. Similarly men. 
 We are the salt of the earth, brethren ; 
 and it is to the shifting of our seasons 
 that we owe very much of our savor. 
 And therefore we ought to make it 
 more of a religious duty to get the very 
 most out of our seasons that we can. 
 
 And especially make the most of the 
 spring. It is a trial oftentimes. It 
 makes heavy the heads of men and pains 
 them in the small of their backs ; but 
 that is precisely because they neglect it, 
 and take no pains to accommodate them- 
 selves to its requirements. For its spirit 
 is exacting in proportion to its value. 
 It is the season of moods, of introspec- 
 tion, retrospection, meditation, procras- 
 tination, forecasts ; of waiting around 
 the spring, for things to begin ; of catching the 
 germs of enterprises to be hatched dur- 
 ing the summer and launched into activ- 
 ity when the energies recur in the fall. 
 It is a season that men are too much in- 
 clined to crowd, and it avenges itself on 
 them for their unwisdom. Do not hurry 
 it ! Give it time to work itself out in 
 you ! Dawdle a little ! If you cannot 
 
 22 
 
 Go to meet 
 
Climate 
 
 get into the woods, get into the parks ; 
 and when you cannot get to the parks, 
 saunter on the avenues, and stop long 
 before the flower-shop windows. Go to 
 meet the spring if you can. Go to 
 Washington in April ; there you cannot 
 hurry. There you must saunter and 
 dawdle, and invite your soul to make 
 suggestions to you. Go down the Po- 
 tomac. Sit in the sun in Lafayette 
 Square and listen to things as they 
 grow. There you will hear the identi- 
 cal lenes susurri that caught the Hora- 
 tian ear in the Campus Martins. There 
 there is an atmosphere ; there you have 
 sunshine overhead, green grass under- 
 foot, and the past and the present and 
 the future all about you. Get a taste of 
 a Washington spring, if only once ; for 
 it will come back to your senses as often 
 as spring itself returns, and as often as 
 it comes you will bless it. 
 
 23 
 
Ill 
 
 COURTSHIP 
 
COURTSHIP 
 
 |F any one has his choice 
 about where he shall grow 
 up, let him stipulate for a 
 family in which there are 
 singers. It is a sore pity to 
 grow up where there is no singing. In 
 earlier days an American child's chances 
 were better than now of being born 
 into a reasonably large family ; and 
 though in some families all the members Scngimhe 
 
 . ... , . . household 
 
 have music m them, and m others none, 
 of course the more there are the better 
 the chances of song. Song is almost 
 pure gain. It need not be of very high 
 quality so long as it emanates naturally 
 from inside of the singer, and does him 
 good. Its value as an appurtenance to 
 domestic life lies not in its merit as a 
 performance, but in its success as an 
 expression of the feelings. Singing as 
 a fine art is, of course, worth cultivat- 
 27 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 as an acces- 
 
 ing ; but the species of song that we are 
 now talking about, is of the same sort 
 as the singing of birds and of negroes. 
 Ordinary, normal children ought to learn 
 it by ear as they do language ; and they 
 should sing because they are happy, as 
 the birds do. A child that grows up 
 where there is no singing, no more gets 
 his rights than a young robin that is 
 hatched out in an incubator. The robin 
 is pretty sure to sing when he grows up 
 and is turned loose in the sunshine, 
 whether his ear got any early culti- 
 vation or not, for the habit has been 
 strong in the robin family for genera- 
 tions. But if the child does not get his 
 singing instincts developed by example 
 while he is a child, they may stay asleep 
 permanently. 
 
 It appears that the best singing of 
 
 '^urtthii> ^i^ds is performed as an accessory to 
 courtship. Certainly it is that way with 
 humans ; and a child whose parents are 
 past the singing age, or have had the 
 song stopped out of their lives by too 
 much cloudy weather, may still have 
 tunes running in his head, and sentiment 
 28 
 
Courtship 
 
 percolating through his soul, if only he 
 has an elder sister with a proper string 
 of beaux. Just what the songs of court- 
 ship are in this decade, the lovers of this 
 decade best know. A quarter of a cen- 
 tury ago there was a set that are still 
 running in the heads of middle-aged 
 people, and that will continue to run in 
 the heads of some of them for a quarter 
 of a century to come. 
 
 In that period, as doubtless now, there 
 were songs of encouragement and songs 
 of consolation, songs for the right man 
 who came at the right time, and for the 
 wrong man, and for the right man who 
 came at the wrong time. Particularly 
 there were songs for the right man 
 who came forever too late, after the 
 wrong man had put the bars up and was 
 sitting on top of them with a gun across 
 his knees. The song in these cases came 
 floating through the bars. " I'll hang my 
 harp on a willow-tree," was a prevalent 
 ditty in those days, and a great favorite 
 with the wrong man, as it is bound to be 
 in every generation that it can reach. 
 Another particularly serviceable ballad 
 29 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 was worn smooth in the service of the 
 wrong man, being sung sometimes by 
 the man himself to drown his misery, and 
 again by the maiden, with the design of 
 letting him down as tenderly as pos- 
 sible. It began, "Yes, I know that you 
 once were my lover ;" and it ended — 
 some readers may remember it — with 
 this time-honored sentiment : 
 
 .- *' I can love you indeed as a brother, 
 But my heart is Jo Hardy's alone." 
 
 The tender mercies of the wicked are 
 said to be cruel, and perhaps they are, 
 absolutely speaking. But compared with 
 the tender mercies of the betrothed 
 maiden to the wrong man, they certainly 
 seem less harsh. 
 
 One of the songs that used to be sung 
 by the right man twenty-five years ago, 
 was " Kathleen Mavourneen." As often 
 as not they used to sing it together. It 
 is an old song now as songs go, and it is 
 hardly probable that the lovers of this 
 generation often sing it. There must be 
 biggish children who have never heard 
 it. Poor lovers ! Poor children ! the 
 
 30 
 
Courtship 
 
 middle-aged will say : " It must be hard 
 to have to grow up like that ! " Indeed, 
 there was once an incurable enthusiast — 
 he must be middle-aged now — who used 
 to aver that when he got to be rich 
 enough to have what he wanted, he was 
 going to employ a military band, with a 
 solo cornet player, to play " Kathleen 
 Mavourneen " in the garden underneath 
 his window at sunrise every fair morning 
 in the month of June. 
 
 So it seems that, although an old song 
 Is the synonyme of worthlessness to any 
 one who doesn't know it, with any one 
 who ever really took it in, it passes cur- 
 rent always. One and indivisible is a 
 man and the songs he heard when he 
 was young, provided he heard any. 
 
 And speaking of the old songs and 
 their associations, what is a man to do 
 about those interesting possibilities that 
 he calls his first loves ? I say '* possi- 
 bilities," using the plural (and thereby 
 doing violence, perhaps, to popular pre- 
 judice), because of the conviction that 
 experience does not always teach enough, 
 
 31 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 and that in a good many cases expe- 
 riences are needed. If there are any 
 agencies which are more usefully instruc- 
 tive than first loves in ripening adol- 
 escence into manhood, this deponent 
 knoweth them not, and his ears are 
 erect, and his eyes intent for the cata- 
 logue of them. 
 First -^y ^^st loves be it understood to in- 
 
 ^^" elude not only that preliminary being 
 
 who first makes the incipient man aware 
 of a peculiarity in his affections, but all 
 the constellation of beings, more or less 
 angelic, who become the successive 
 guiding stars of his existence, from the 
 time he achieves tailcoats until some 
 woman takes him for better or worse, 
 with all the fruits of a protracted train- 
 ing in him. Of course there are some 
 individual males who find their pole-star 
 at the first essay, and never wobble af- 
 terward in their courses. The limited 
 knowledge of men of this sort may pre- 
 vent them from realizing that their ex- 
 perience is exceptional. They must go 
 to the books to learn what is the common 
 lot of common men, and there is no book 
 
 32 
 
Courtship 
 
 that recalls itself at this moment to which 
 they can go to better purpose than to 
 Edmond About's "Story of an Honest 
 Man." There they will discover, if they 
 need it, how the impact of successive 
 entities upon the affections may hammer 
 them at last into a durable article, grace- 
 ful to contemplate, and able to stand the 
 wear and tear of a work-a-day life. 
 
 Now as to those several entities. Many 
 a man, unlike About's autobiographical 
 hero, feels constrained to regard them 
 as monuments of his own inconstancy 
 and weakness, and either buries his 
 memories of them in unmarked graves, 
 or recalls them shamefacedly and with a 
 very sneaking sort of tenderness. The 
 greater fool he ! I miss the proper point 
 of view if such half-hearted sentiments to be cher* 
 are not mistaken ; and if, by entertain- luays. 
 ing them, he does not needlessly con- 
 tribute to blot out some of the most 
 charming and interesting oases in all his 
 desert of a past. A lad at college, though 
 college for the time is all the world to 
 him, does not deem it necessary to forget 
 that he was once at school : nor does a 
 
 33 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 man new launched in the real world 
 affect to forget that he was once a part 
 of the microcosm known as college. In- 
 deed, the difficulty often is to make a 
 college man remember anything else. 
 But, by a very prevalent affectation, a 
 married man is supposed to forget that 
 eyes are fine in more than one color, or 
 that other agencies than age or dye 
 have ever been potent to change his 
 views as to the proper hue of hair. The 
 truth is, to be spoken flatly and with 
 confidence that it is the truth, that a 
 man who does not love his first loves 
 all his life long makes a great mistake 
 and does injustice to his own past. But, 
 of course, he is to love them as they 
 were. The affection they inspired in 
 him, when they did inspire it, is a part 
 of himself for all time, and they, as they 
 then seemed, are a part of him too, and 
 it is as idle for him to try to eradicate 
 them from his actuality as for the leop- 
 ard to attempt to change spots with the 
 Ethiopian. That he should love what 
 they may become with the lapse of years 
 is manifestly inexpedient and unreason- 
 
 34 
 
Courtship 
 
 able, as well as usually improper, if for 
 no other reason, because 
 
 " One must not love another's." 
 
 There was obviously a corner in 
 Praed's heart where "the ball-room's 
 belle " had permanent lodgings, but ob- 
 viously, too, he had no special tender- 
 ness for " Mrs. Something Rogers," but 
 regarded her, no doubt, with an interest 
 that was always friendly, but never un- 
 comfortably acute, as one is apt to regard 
 the cocoon from which some particularly 
 lovely butterfly has escaped. True al- 
 ways to the butterfly, doubtless Praed 
 disassociated it from Mr. Something 
 Rogers's cocoon. When the fledgling 
 Pendennis loved the Fotheringay, he 
 loved her from his hat to his boot-soles, 
 and don't imagine that he ever succeed- 
 ed — even if he was fool enough to try — 
 in erasing that lovely image from his 
 memory. The Fotheringay saw the be- 
 ginning of a habit of woman-worship of 
 which, in due time, Laura reaped the 
 benefit. And there was Genevieve ! 
 
 35 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 What an education she was to Coleridge! 
 And can you imagine that he ever re- 
 canted, whatever Mrs. Coleridge's bap- 
 tismal name may or may not have been! 
 Men may as well make up their minds 
 — ^and women, too — that first loves are 
 facts — most respectable and laudable 
 facts, and not shadows ; and while they 
 need not be obtruded on a world that is 
 not interested in them, they are neither 
 to be snubbed nor denied, but respect- 
 fully entertained and cherished. Of all 
 history, the most instructive to a man is 
 his own. He can keep it to himself, if 
 he will, and oftentimes it is very proper 
 that he should, but he cannot afford to 
 forget any of it. The discreditable parts 
 he must remember as a warning to him- 
 self, and the rest, his first loves among 
 them, to encourage him. 
 
 One of the parts that will make him 
 blush, when he recalls it, is his callow 
 and dishonest attitude toward that ad- 
 junct of courtship, the maiden's natural 
 protector. In a letter announcing that 
 he would visit me, a certain young friend 
 
 36 
 
Courtship 
 
 says : " It is a year since I have had a 
 talk with you, and this is the time of all 
 others when I feel the need of taking 
 counsel with you over certain matters." 
 I daresay the matters that he wants 
 to talk over are not more momentous 
 than whether checked trousers or striped 
 are best suited to the conformation of 
 his maturing legs ; nevertheless, his no- 
 tice sends a momentary chill down my 
 spine. The trouble is that he is at that 
 unscrupulous age when youths of aver- 
 age sentiment and no definite expecta- 
 tions make no bones at all of falling 
 desperately in love, and appealing to 
 the most available elder to know what 
 to do about it. 
 
 Now, he is a fairly prudent lad, and 1 
 cannot really believe that he is coming 
 to me with any such audacious confes- 
 sion ; but if he does, my mind is per- 
 fectly made up as to what I shall say to 
 him. I shall show no more sympathy 
 for him than if he were an intending 
 burglar meditating on the expediency 
 of breaking into some honest house- 
 holder's tenement. I shall treat his 
 
 37 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 case as lightly as if it were measles, cal- 
 lously assuring him that it is a thing to 
 be endured while it lasts, but which calls 
 for no action more fundamental than, 
 possibly, a brief season of retirement 
 from society, followed by a spirited re- 
 sumption of the ordinary duties of life. 
 One thing in particular I shall insist 
 upon, out of mere reasonable regard for 
 fathers of daughters — a class to which I 
 have recently come to find myself be- 
 long. I shall not permit him to attempt 
 any dealings with the individual known 
 to persons in his state as " the old man." 
 ** The old He shall not be suffered, if I can help it, 
 
 man " has ' *^ ' 
 
 somt rights, to make a conscientious parent acces- 
 sory in any degree to his callow infatua- 
 tion. He shall himself bear the burden 
 of his complaint, and the full responsi- 
 bility of his recovery, and there shall be 
 no bringing down of gray hairs or inter- 
 ruption of parental repose with untime- 
 ly worriment. It will be time enough 
 for him to tackle the old man when 
 he has prospects, at least, to divulge to 
 him. 
 
 But all counsellors will not be so coh' 
 
 38 
 
Courtship 
 
 siderate as I of the old man's comfort. 
 He will have a lot of bad quarter-hours 
 between now and next spring. It is har- 
 vest time for the summer's sowing of 
 flirtation, and before it ends and the 
 crop is all in, too many careful parents 
 will wonder whether they are in truth 
 kind fathers, solicitous for the welfare 
 of their girls, or " bouncers " employed 
 in a matrimonial agency. All the world 
 loves a lover, and is anxious to see him 
 win ; but nobody seems to care for the 
 old man, or have a reasonable apprecia- 
 tion of his trials. What is he to do, 
 poor old chap, when Romeo, with a bold 
 front and a heart quaking with conscious 
 malfeasance, discloses that during the 
 prevalence of the last full moon but two, 
 he and Juliet, discovered that they were 
 affinities, and an experience of eight 
 weeks has confirmed them absolutely in 
 that conviction. Being as yet a bache- 
 lor of arts not lucrative, Romeo does 
 not feel warranted in asking for an im- 
 mediate marriage, but feels bound, as 
 a man to whom deception is abhorrent, 
 to put Mr. Capulet in possession of the 
 
 39 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 facts, and learn the conditions, if any, 
 on which he will assent to his daugh- 
 ter's betrothal. Poor old Capulet ! He 
 knows the Montagues ; a most respect- 
 able but too abundant family, with tastes 
 disproportionately poUte to the dimen- 
 sions of their income. He is aware that 
 Romeo is just out of the college where 
 it strained his father's means to keep 
 him, and has yet to make the first prac- 
 tical demonstration of wage-earning ca- 
 pacity. He has no personal objection 
 to Romeo, but he is perfectly aware that 
 to permit his engagement to Juliet is 
 tantamount to a guarantee that an in- 
 come shall presently be forthcoming on 
 which they may marry ; which income, 
 so far as it is possible to forecast, will 
 have to take the form of periodical 
 checks signed " Hiram Capulet." 
 itfiastobe Poor old Capulet ! He doesn't think 
 kindtohitn. jt fair that honors should be thrust upon 
 him like that. It is too much like hold- 
 ing up his hands at the request of an 
 enterprising brigand. He is not ready 
 to say yes, and knowing that the old 
 man who hesitates is lost, he says no, 
 40 
 
Courtship 
 
 politely, but with decision. He will 
 make no conditions or concessions, nor 
 make himself a party to Romeo's 
 schemes in any shape or manner. So 
 Romeo finds himself left on his own 
 hands, with his fortune still to win, and 
 on such terms with old man Capulet as 
 must make it embarrassing for him to 
 sit for any length of time in the moon- 
 light on the Capulet's garden fence. 
 And all his own fault, too. He had only 
 to hold his tongue and go to work, and 
 he might have led the Capulet german 
 next winter, and worn holes in the car- 
 pet under that hospitable family's ma- 
 hogany, both in town and in the coun- 
 try, for several seasons to come — until, 
 indeed, he could broach his project to 
 the old man with reasonable expectation 
 of a welcome. As it is, of course, he 
 isn't necessarily beaten, but he has got 
 an unnecessary set-back, and all because 
 he would try to shift the responsibility 
 of his own enterprise on to shoulders 
 where it did not belong. And not only 
 has he damaged his own cause, but he 
 has inflicted on the old man a very dis- 
 
 41 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 agreeable job, which he had not de- 
 served, and which probably made him 
 hate himself for half the night and all 
 the next day. 
 
 My counsel-seeker shall do no such 
 thing as that. He may adore Juliet 
 from her hat-pin to her heels just as 
 much and just as long as she will let 
 him, and he may impart to her such dis- 
 creet intimation of his sentiments as he 
 thinks it profitable to disclose and she 
 to hear ; but upon the old man he shall 
 not intrude until affairs are in such a 
 state that his consent has become mere- 
 ly a felicitous incident of an inevitable 
 event. It is not the young fellow that 
 wants his girl that the old man respects, 
 but the man who is ready to take her. 
 The story is familiar (and, doubtless, au- 
 tobiographical) of the eminent American 
 humorist who, having made up his mind 
 that it was time to speak, approached 
 the old man, inquiring, " Judge, have 
 you noticed anything going on between 
 Miss Lizzie and me ? " And getting 
 a negative response, retorted, " Well, 
 Judge, look sharp and you will." The 
 
 42 
 
Courtship 
 
 eminent humorist's method was rather 
 more abrupt than I should recommend, 
 but it showed the right spirit, such as 
 can only be shown by the right man at 
 the right time. If my young friend 
 should prove to have reached a crisis of 
 this sort, and is not ready to meet it in 
 just such a spirit, I shall recommend 
 him to lie low ; and if he feels that he 
 must tackle the old man now, to take 
 counsel of a recent comic paper and do 
 it by letter, anonymously. 
 
 And further, as to courtship : — Owing Longen- 
 to the complications of modern life, and ^'^^'^^"**' 
 the large increase in the list of creature 
 comforts which polite people have come 
 to regard as necessaries, marriage has 
 become a vastly more serious undertak- 
 ing than it used to be, and is deferred 
 until a later period of life. People in 
 cities who have been used to wear good 
 clothes, and to have servants to wait on 
 them, and to go out of town in summer, 
 no longer marry when the girl is eigh- 
 teen and the man twenty-two. The man 
 is apt to be nearing thirty before his in- 
 
 43 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 come will stand the matrimonial strain, 
 and the maid is proportionately expe- 
 rienced. It would not be quite accurate 
 to say that, though it is harder to get 
 married than it was, it is as easy as ever 
 to become engaged. That would not be 
 quite true. The difficulty of getting in- 
 come enough to marry does defer, and 
 even prevent, a great many betrothals ; 
 nevertheless, engagements do often hap- 
 pen when the prospect of marriage is 
 remote, and a reasonable percentage of 
 them last until marriage ends them. 
 Long engagements are not popular, but 
 enough of them are running to make the 
 behavior of their beneficiaries a fit sub- 
 ject for comment in the interest of hu- 
 man happiness. 
 
 Now, society's attitude toward lovers 
 is favorable, but lovers make a serious 
 mistake when they presume too far on 
 the strength of the world's traditional 
 regard for them. The polite world loves 
 its lovers exactly so long as they are 
 interesting and agreeable. When they 
 cease to be so, its sentiments toward 
 them take the form oi anxiety to have 
 
 44 
 
Courtship 
 
 them married, which may indeed be so 
 extreme as to result in practical efforts 
 to put them in the way of pairing, but 
 which is more apt to take the form of 
 what is vulgarly known as the cold 
 shoulder. Lovers who are intelligent, 
 and who are disposed to make them- 
 selves agreeable, ought to be exception- 
 ally charming. They are enveloped in 
 a pleasant blaze of sentiment which 
 makes them interesting. So long as 
 they are nice, all kind people are in a 
 conspiracy to indulge them and make 
 them think that life is lurid with rose- 
 tints. Their politeness is the more ap- 
 preciated because it is thought to in- 
 volve especial self-sacrifice, and what- 
 ever they do for the community's amuse- 
 ment is rated above its ordinary value 
 because they have done it. ^^^^^.^ 
 
 All the worse, then, when lovers re- ^o/>er 
 
 ' ' thereto. 
 
 gard themselves as temporarily exempt 
 from the ordinary obligations of polite- 
 ness, and abandon themselves to spoon- 
 ing and mutual absorption. The sort of 
 courtship that goes on for hours behind 
 closed doors, that insists upon seclusion 
 
 45 
 
IVindfalts of Observation 
 
 and resents a third person, that thinks 
 first of the beloved object and not at all 
 of anyone else — this may do for a six- 
 weeks* intermission between maiden- 
 hood and marriage ; but long engage- 
 ments should be conducted on radically 
 different lines. Was there ever a dearer 
 sweetheart than Lorna Doone, whose 
 maidenly reserve allowed John Ridd one 
 kiss a day, and no spooning whatever ? 
 And do you remember Mary Garth, so 
 true to her not-any-too-eligible Fred, 
 and yet so strait and strict with her- 
 self? Engaged or not, she must sure- 
 ly have been a welcome companion in 
 any house, Fred or no Fred. And, 
 again, that dame in silver-gray who 
 married John Halifax — be sure that her 
 betrothal was a modest and unselfish 
 one. 
 
 Lace yourself straitly, Mistress Lucy, 
 and encourage Colin to understand that 
 while you stay under the paternal roof 
 the obligations of that shelter are on 
 you, and forbid you to concentrate all 
 your courtesy on a single guest. It will 
 be time enough to be engrossed and ex- 
 
 46 
 
Courtship 
 
 elusive when the parson has given you 
 his blessing ; and having a roof of your 
 own, you may properly decide whom it 
 shall shelter, and what shall be the 
 measure of its hospitality. 
 
 47 
 
IV 
 
 MARRIAGE AND DL 
 VORCE 
 
MARRIAGE AND DI- 
 VORCE 
 
 |UT it is a perversion of dili- 
 gence to formulate stand- 
 ards of behavior for engaged 
 persons, if it is true, as di- 
 vers otherwise unemployed 
 persons insist, that the institution of is marriage 
 holy matrimony is on its last legs. The ^^^■^^^^«^-' 
 idea that marriage is getting out of date 
 has become so familiar since Mona 
 Caird slipped its leash some years ago, 
 that it no longer startles. It has set- 
 tled down into a subject for regular dis- 
 cussion, like the Behring Sea difficulty, 
 or coinage, or the alleged misrule in 
 American cities. A recent writer in the 
 Westminster Review produced official sta- 
 tistics, from England, France, Germany, 
 and the United States, to show that the 
 matrimonial habit was losing its hold ; 
 and in a late North American Mrs. Wells 
 
 51 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 gave so many good reasons why more 
 girls do not marry as to make a reader 
 wonder why any girl should ever marry 
 at all, unless sentenced to do so by a 
 court of law. 
 
 Tolstoi insists that the whole institu- 
 tion is rotten and sinful ; but Tolstoi is 
 so palpably hipped that his anathemas 
 are hardly profitable to discuss. Mona 
 ^17rd>s Caird's theories it is at least possible 
 plan. to consider. She does not believe in 
 
 the modification of marriage by petty 
 changes in the laws, nor yet in its abol- 
 ishment. She believes in marriage by 
 private contract. She thinks that peo- 
 ple should be allowed, under gradually 
 lessening restrictions, to make their own 
 marriage bargain, and she believes that 
 they would stick to bargains that they 
 chaffered over for themselves a good 
 deal more successfully than to such as 
 they pick up ready-made. It seems that 
 Mona Caird's marriages would be part- 
 nerships terminable according to the con- 
 ditions of the contract, at proper inter- 
 vals, or by mutual consent at any time, 
 as other partnerships are. Such is the 
 
 52 
 
Marriage and Divorce 
 
 elegant diversity of marriage laws al- 
 ready existing in the several States of 
 this Union, that it seems as if her theo- 
 ries might get an approximately fair 
 trial here without any new preliminary 
 legislation. As it is, by selecting the 
 American State in which they chose to 
 be joined, people might be married in 
 different degrees, according to their 
 hopes or confidence in their own charac- 
 ters. Couples who retained doubts of 
 their own stability could be married by 
 justices of the peace in Rhode Island, 
 New Jersey, or Delaware. Those whose 
 hopes were stouter could have a civil 
 marriage in New York, and church mar- 
 riages could be reserved for people who 
 were really enough in earnest to stand 
 up and solemnly take each other for 
 better or worse, for good and ill. The a bad way. 
 objections, however, to such a plan are 
 manifold. For one thing, making the 
 best of a marriage is a form of disci- 
 pline that is often of the highest value to 
 the character ; but few people would be 
 at much pains to improve themselves in 
 just that way if marriage should cease to 
 
 53 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 be even theoretically permanent. But 
 perhaps the most striking objection is 
 that it would so complicate courtship. 
 At present the custom is to get married 
 first, and settle the conditions after the 
 fact. No man and woman discuss like 
 sane beings how much they will marry. 
 Such a discussion would only be pos- 
 sible to two sophisticated humans, en- 
 dowed, both of them, with such an active 
 sense of humor as would certainly keep 
 them from becoming more than friends. 
 When there is marrying to be done some- 
 body has got to be in the deadest ear- 
 nest about it. Marriage may result when 
 both parties are in dead earnest, or 
 where one is in earnest and one acqui- 
 escent, or where the friends or relatives 
 are in earnest and both the parties are 
 acquiescent. But it may be doubted if 
 people in sufficient command of their 
 wits and their sense of humor to discuss 
 comfortably whether they had better 
 marry at all, and if so for how long and 
 to what extent, are in a state desperate 
 enough to warrant their entering the 
 marriage state at all. Punch's advice 
 
 54 
 
Marriage and Divorce 
 
 was meant for such as they, and they 
 would take it. Courtship, as at present 
 conducted, is as though the man who 
 had gained by persuasive arts a measure 
 of the woman's confidence, led her out 
 to the end of a pier. The water is deep 
 blue, and you can't see the bottom. He 
 invites her to jump in with him, and it 
 depends upon the degree of satisfaction 
 she finds in his company, and her opin- 
 ion of his ability to fetch her ashore, 
 whether she complies. Mona Caird 
 would have her say : " I will not jump 
 off here, where it is over my head ; but 
 if you will come nearer the shore, where 
 the water is not above my knees, per- 
 haps I may jump off with you there ; 
 then if we don't like it we can wade 
 ashore." But then the man would say : 
 "No! wading is not swimming. There 
 are plenty of girls who are willing to be 
 sisters to me, but what I am after is a 
 wife." 
 
 Everybody knows — everybody, that 
 is, except Mona Caird — that woman is 
 not a good hand at an ante-nuptial bar- 
 gain. When once she makes up her 
 
 55 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 mind to jump off the dock with her man, 
 she doesn't care to take soundings. It 
 is sink or swim then, and the deeper 
 the better. Marriage is the bargain the 
 law makes for her. It may be a faulty 
 one, but it is incalculably better than she 
 would make if left to herself. Perhaps 
 she may grow warier as the eons accum- 
 late. Who can tell ? 
 Divorce. Meanwhile, contemporary marriage is 
 
 a bourne from which travellers return 
 with an audacity that many persons re- 
 gard as not a little scandalous. Critics 
 of divorce and divorced persons, how- 
 ever, show an increasing disposition to 
 cleave to the general in their censure, 
 and avoid the particular. Easy or frivo- 
 lous divorce is condemned and deplored, 
 but the easily divorced are not excluded 
 from the politest society, nor do they 
 seem to find much difficulty about remat- 
 ing with people who are understood to 
 put a high value on their respectability. 
 There seems to be no particular use 
 in squeezing the divorce laws up any 
 tighter, unless public opinion will back 
 up the squeeze. It isn't law that con- 
 
 56 
 
Marriage and Divorce 
 
 trols the actions of the average citizen 
 so much as the opinion of that citizen's 
 fellows. There is much in contempo- 
 rary experience that favors the belief 
 that if divorce were more difficult, a 
 good many people who were excep- 
 tionally addicted to each other's com- 
 pany, but could not legally marry, would 
 live together without marriage if society 
 were complaisant enough to condone it. 
 It is easier still to believe that neither 
 statute nor public opinion will keep peo- 
 ple together who really want to sepa- 
 rate. The surest hope for the survival 
 of the marriage relation is based upon 
 the conviction of intelligent people that 
 continuous marriages are the best, and 
 that divorce at best is a confession that 
 the judgment has been mistaken in a 
 vital matter, or that affections that were 
 formally warranted to hold have fetched 
 loose. However easy the laws may be- 
 come, or whatever complaisance polite 
 society may achieve, divorce, with all its 
 privileges and possibilities, must con- 
 tinue to be a second-rate bliss by no 
 means comparable to true marriage. 
 
 57 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 special 
 
 One innovation, however, might rea- 
 sonably be introduced. It must be ap- 
 marriage parent to anvonc who will take the 
 
 laivs/or '■ 
 
 players. troublc to read a column of current dra- 
 matic gossip in any newspaper, that 
 there ought to be a special marriage law 
 for players. While some persons of the 
 histrionic profession stay married a good 
 while, there is no denying that the aver- 
 age of domestic infelicity in that pro- 
 fession is exceedingly high, and that an 
 exorbitantly large number of married 
 actors and actresses make application 
 first or last to be unmarried. One can't 
 go to a play without realizing that this 
 tendency toward a variegated domestic- 
 ity is a natural outgrowth of play-act- 
 ing. Our minds, it is true, control our 
 actions, but our actions, conversely, have 
 a reflex influence on our minds, and a 
 gentleman who conscientiously comports 
 himself on the stage as the husband or 
 lover of successive charming ladies, is not 
 to be over-much blamed if matrimonial 
 change becomes a second nature to him, 
 and he flits from flower to flower in real 
 life as he does in his profession. 
 
 58 
 
Marriage and Divorce 
 
 It seems odd enough, sometimes, that 
 players should marry at all ; but it will 
 be remembered that marriages wind up 
 every play, and the actor's professional 
 experience strengthens rather than di- 
 minishes his prejudice in favor of a con- 
 ventional ceremony with a priest and a 
 ring. It is the artist that marries, not 
 the man ; but the artist and the man 
 being inseparable in the law's eye, the 
 man is held bound by the artist's action, 
 and has to go to trouble and expense, 
 and sometimes wait long and make dis- 
 tant journeys, before he can go free. It 
 doesn't seem quite right that it should 
 be that way. If a man has the artistic 
 temperament, and the public encourages 
 him to cultivate it by going to see him 
 act, it seems mean and unreasonable to 
 subject him to the same sort of matrimo- 
 nial legislation as if he had had the do- 
 mestic temperament to begin with, and 
 had never been encouraged to do any- 
 thing .to break it up. Something ought 
 to be done about it, but the State leg- 
 islatures have adjourned again without 
 doing it. 
 
 59 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 Polygamy ^^ ^^ ^^^ sooYi yet, but if cvcr it is set- 
 as^arem- ^Icd that marriage as it is won't do, and 
 that something must be done about it, 
 some strong and persuasive arguments 
 may be made in favor of a reinstatement 
 of polygamy. The basis of the contem- 
 porary matrimonial decline, as most 
 writers interpret it, is man. Man cannot 
 very well be left out of marriage alto- 
 gether without defeating some of its 
 more important ends and impairing its 
 results. But he can be modified and 
 etherealized, and of course there would 
 be less of him in a plural marriage than 
 in a dual one. We are told that " in 
 woman's discovery of her ability to be 
 independent, self-supporting, and self- 
 sufficing, and in her wish to work for 
 humanity, and not for one man, her de- 
 sire for marriage has lessened." It is a 
 pity that her independence should be 
 interfered with, or that it should only 
 be fostered at the cost of her family life. 
 Of course, if she marries a whole man, 
 she may have to be devoted to him un- 
 comfortably ; but she might take a half 
 or a third interest in a man without in- 
 60 
 
Marriage and Divorce 
 
 terfering too much with her higher 
 aspirations. 
 
 Such polygamy as is here suggested is 
 by no means the same sort of institution 
 as the patriarchs experienced or as the 
 Mormons have lately repudiated, since 
 its design would be, not to increase 
 man's importance, but to abate it. To 
 secure this result it would probably be 
 necessary to reserve to women the initia- 
 tive in courtship, and the power of nom- 
 inating new candidates for the family 
 circle, the husband to have a veto power, 
 perhaps, if that should seem desirable. 
 Some interesting consequences might 
 unquestionably spring from such an ar- 
 rangement. Sisters who were co-heir- 
 esses might unite upon a single husband, 
 thereby keeping the undivided estate in 
 the family. Dear girl friends might ab- 
 solutely refuse to be separated, and de- 
 cline to marry any man who had not 
 room in his heart and his house for both. 
 So wives who might form close attach- 
 ments for other women after marriage, 
 could invite their inseparables to share 
 their roof and their husband. This pro- 
 6i 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 posed dispensation, too, would operate 
 as a form of co-operation to put within 
 reach of women who are moderately well 
 to do, luxuries which at present are only 
 to be had by the very rich. In this 
 way several American ladies, by lumping 
 their resources, might make such a show- 
 ing as to win a British duke or a German 
 or Italian prince of a grade such as no 
 one of them could pretend to by herself. 
 Often it happens that a man loves sev- 
 eral marriageable women, and the story- 
 tellers even say that several feminine 
 hearts have been known to soften con- 
 temporaneously toward the same man. 
 Under an amended marriage law they 
 £Ould all marry him, and all the wear and 
 tear of making a choice and the anguish 
 of blighted affections be avoided. Nor 
 would it be the least advantage of a 
 wisely planned polygamy that it would so 
 change the conditions of courtship that 
 ninety-nine-hundredths of the existing 
 mass of fiction would become obsolete, 
 and leave the field open to a brand-new 
 set of novels with fresh plots. 
 
 There may be therapeutic value in a 
 62 
 
Marriage and Divorce 
 
 well-devised polygamy. When dual mar- 
 riage has been abolished, it might be 
 tried before humanity despairs and re- 
 solves to die out. 
 
 63 
 
V 
 
 COLLEGE 
 
COLLEGE 
 
 ELCOME, Mr. New College 
 Graduate, into the world. 
 It is true of the world, as 
 the " Complete Angler " sug- 
 gested of the strawberry, 
 that God may have made a better one, 
 but not for our immediate use, for he 
 hasn't put us in it. The world is a 
 good enough place if you play fair and culture vs. 
 pay attention to the rules. Money is a '^^^u'^^tion. 
 handy thing in it, but Mr. Carnegie has 
 been saying that you are spoilt already 
 for money-making on a very large scale. 
 He doesn't think your chance of making 
 an eminent business man is as good as 
 it might be if you already had three or 
 four years of shop-boy experience to 
 start with. 
 
 Mr. Pardridge, the Chicago plunger 
 who once made a million dollars in a 
 
 67 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 single day, seems somewhat of Mr. Car- 
 negie's opinion, since he has been quoted 
 as observing that a man's financial suc- 
 cess is not always dependent on his 
 education. What Mr. Pardridge calls 
 " education " is more accurately ex- 
 pressed by the word *' culture ; " for of 
 course a man has got to have education 
 of a very definite quality before he can 
 hope to find any profit in balancing him- 
 self on the edge of the Chicago wheat- 
 pit. Education is trained development ; 
 and the country-store boy whose mind 
 runs on trading, and who makes gradual 
 progress from peddling mouse-traps to 
 swapping railroads, gets education that 
 is quite as distinct, though probably not 
 as broad, as if he were in special train- 
 ing to become a college president. The 
 thing he usually doesn't get is culture ; 
 and Mr. Pardridge is probably right in 
 thinking that the sort of education that 
 gives culture is a factor of no particular 
 importance in most processes of money^ 
 making. 
 
 But his remark in its inverted form is 
 just as true and just as important, to 
 68 
 
College 
 
 wit, that the sort of education that' 
 merely results in money-making is of no 
 particular importance in the promotion 
 of culture. A man may get ever so 
 much culture and never get rich ; and a 
 man may get ever so rich and never 
 achieve culture enough to speak polite 
 English, or know good poetry from bad. 
 Now, a money-maker who has no cult- 
 ure is liable to be hard put to it to get 
 his money's worth out of life ; and the 
 upshot of his embarrassments usually is, 
 that not being fitted by education to en- 
 joy the things that give pleasure to cul- 
 tivated minds, he either takes up with 
 less innocent amusements, or else sticks 
 to business because it is the only thing he 
 likes to do. At best he divides his time 
 between money-making and the cultiva- 
 tion and enjoyment of that wonderfully 
 remunerative animal, the horse. When 
 the money has been made in a business of 
 large speculative possibilities, there are 
 disadvantages about going on, merely 
 for amusement, after one has won 
 enough. Many men could speak elo- 
 quently of the disadvantages of being 
 
 69 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 Cotnpensat- 
 ing advan- 
 tages of ed- 
 ucation. 
 
 driven by defective culture to buy and 
 sell wheat for occupation. 
 
 And yet it is very awkward, too, to be 
 very long of culture and very short of 
 money. Culture does not make g^rind- 
 ing poverty easier to bear, but rather 
 the reverse ; for though it is true that 
 people of the highest culture can be 
 happy on moderate incomes, it is also 
 true that cultivated tastes mean culti- 
 vated wants, and an income on which an 
 uncultured person could live happily 
 might be below the minimum indispen- 
 sable to the comfort of another person 
 whose carefully cultivated wants had be- 
 come necessities. 
 
 And that is why I am glad that even 
 as money-makers there is some hope for 
 you new graduates. Suppose it is true, 
 as Mr. Carnegie avers, that you are spoilt 
 already for making great fortunes. A 
 lot of you who are to be doctors and 
 lawyers and editors, and possibly minis- 
 ters, his disparagements do not affect at 
 all, since you don't expect to make great 
 fortunes anyway, and for the rest of 
 you who are going into business, there is 
 
College 
 
 certainly this for consolation, that even 
 if the sort of education you have got 
 has lessened your chances of becoming 
 millionaires, it has certainly improved 
 your chances of making a reasonable 
 living. It will surprise no one ten or 
 fifteen years from now to find you earn- 
 ing from two to ten thousand a year, 
 but if the century goes out and leaves 
 you driving a street-car in New Orleans, 
 or waiting on table in a San Francisco 
 restaurant, it will be thought remarkable 
 enough to warrant extended notices in 
 half the newspapers in the United States. 
 You see the great majority of college 
 graduates eventually make a fair living, 
 and people are so much in the habit of 
 expecting that they will, that if they do 
 not it makes talk. 
 
 Even though you might have been 
 richer if you had never gone to college, 
 your chance of having fun is better as it 
 is. A bachelor of arts who cannot have 
 a better time on five thousand a year 
 than an average self-made millionaire 
 can have on fifty thousand, has misused 
 his time. 
 
 71 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 One point in particular where you 
 ought to beat the self-made rich, is in 
 the ability you should have already ac- 
 quired to command playmates. You 
 probably start out with a much better 
 assortment of pals than the average 
 nascent millionaire had at your age, and 
 your chance of affiliating with congenial 
 companions all your life through is bet- 
 ter than his ever was. That is one 
 thing that college should have done for 
 you, and another is that it should have 
 helped you to make companions of 
 books. 
 
 Pleasant people are the pleasantest 
 thing in the world, and pleasant books 
 are the next pleasantest. Both of these 
 you ought to have learned already to 
 choose and enjoy, and if you have, 
 don't doubt but that your time has 
 been well spent. Professor Everett 
 used to say fifteen years ago — "When 
 Horace says * beatus ' he doesn't mean 
 * happy,' he means 'rich.* Translate 
 it *rich.'" We confuse "rich" and 
 "happy " in these days too, but they are 
 not yet quite the same thing. 
 72 
 
College 
 
 It is a good while since any business 
 man has recorded his opinion of the wekthel^T 
 value of a college education so clearly '^'^^'' 
 and so impressively as was done by the 
 late Mr. Fayerweather, the leather mer- 
 chant, in his will. Mr. Fayerweather 
 was an excellent man of business. He 
 began to earn money very early in life — 
 not from choice, but because he had to. 
 When other lads of his age were at 
 school he was peddling commodities in 
 country villages, and during the years 
 which luckier youths spend in college, he 
 was acquainting himself with the rudi- 
 ments of the leather business. About 
 the time his college-going contempo- 
 raries were beginning their junior year, 
 he got a place in " The Swamp," and in 
 " The Swamp " he continued for the rest 
 of his days. 
 
 Men live a long time in " The Swamp." 
 The smell of hides is not altogether 
 pleasing, but it is understood to be 
 wholesome, and it makes for longevity. 
 But Mr. Fayerweather did not dally with 
 hides for his health. He went to " The 
 Swamp " to make money. And he did 
 
 73 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 make money. He was sagacious and 
 prudent, and worked hard. Moreover 
 he knew all about leather, and leather 
 interested him. He kept his mind on it. 
 When he laid awake nights he did not 
 meditate as to how Julius Caesar built 
 bridges in Gaul or who wrote Homer's 
 poetry, nor about the chances of this 
 year's football team, nor of any of those 
 things that liberally educated minds 
 dwell upon. He put in his meditation 
 upon leather. Accordingly he prospered 
 in the leather business. When there were 
 dimes to be made in it he carefully 
 garnered those dimes, and when some- 
 thing in particular was up, and dollars 
 were being distributed, he was present 
 and took care that such as were coming 
 to him got into no one else's pocket by 
 mistake. So presently he was well-to- 
 do, and had an income that kept heap- 
 ing itself up. Then his aggravations 
 began. 
 
 For though he knew well enough how to 
 make money, there were dreadful defects 
 in his ability to spend it. He dared not 
 stop working, for he had never learned 
 
 74 
 
College 
 
 to loaf, and the more he worked the 
 more money he made. He travelled a 
 little, but he didn't like it. Neither did 
 he care for horse-racing, nor yachting, 
 nor Scotch moors, nor old Chinese 
 pottery, nor pictures, nor books, nor 
 coaching, nor Ward McAllister, nor or- 
 chids. He just liked leather, and next 
 to selling it he liked to buy it. More- 
 over, having had no chance in his youth 
 to make friends, he had very few old 
 friends, and he was shy of attempting 
 any social experiments, because he knew 
 that society was miscellaneous in its 
 tastes and unlikely to be a comfortable 
 field of enterprise for a modest mer- 
 chant who was aware that all he knew 
 well was leather. His children, if he had 
 had any, might have learned to have any 
 amount of fun, and to make gratifying 
 holes in his surplus, but as luck would 
 have it he didn't have any children. 
 
 So, as the old man sat at his desk in 
 "The Swamp," and saw his income pil- 
 ing up and his thousands running up 
 into millions and salting themselves 
 down, he determined that, so far as lay 
 
 75 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 in his power, he would take care that 
 what had happened to him should hap- 
 pen less frequently in times to come. 
 So he carved up his fortune into con- 
 venient slices, by will, and distributed it 
 around among a dozen or more Ameri- 
 can colleges, thereby hoping to make 
 education easier for poor boys, and keep 
 them out of such a scrape as he had 
 gotten into himself. 
 
 Certainly he chose a wise means to 
 accomplish the worthy end he had in 
 view. That any man who has had fair 
 educational chances in his youth will 
 ever accumulate in trade as great a for- 
 tune as Mr. Fayerweather's, is as un- 
 likely as that any college-bred youth 
 would ever find difficulty in having fun 
 with the income of as large a fortune as 
 a Mr. Fayerweather might accumulate. 
 So, by his wise bequests he planned to 
 diffuse a great remedial agent, which 
 works in two ways at once — diminishing 
 men's ability to heap up very great for- 
 tunes, and greatly increasing their capac- 
 ity to get happiness out of small ones. 
 
 The new college-graduate is part of 
 
 76 
 
College 
 
 the high-class, raw material of the world ; 
 and yet, we hope for him that he isn't so 
 raw by a good deal as he might be if he 
 had not gone to college. The primary 
 problem with a lad is to teach him to 
 take care of himself. He must present- 
 ly be turned loose in the world, and we 
 want him, when that time comes, to have 
 sense enough to keep clear of pitfalls, 
 and to cleave unto that which is sincere- 
 ly lucrative. It has been held by high 
 authority that, since it is no part of the Don't skut 
 
 ^ . \ . . ^ all the bad 
 
 busmess of modern university professors boys out/ 
 to spy out the iniquity of bad young 
 men, colleges would be reserved for 
 studious men about whom their fathers 
 and mothers are not anxious. But this 
 opinion is not compulsory, and one may 
 believe, if he can, that men may make 
 their parents anxious and yet be capable 
 of use to a college and of profiting by it. 
 They can be useful as payers of dues, for 
 one thing, and the increased income the 
 college derives from them can be spent 
 in giving additional advantages to their 
 fellows. Their presence is worth some- 
 thing, too, as giving their quieter breth- 
 
 77 
 
IVindfalls of Observation 
 
 ren an opportunity to witness the re- 
 puted delights of a gay life, and to real- 
 ize their hollowness. There are many 
 things a man need never do in after-life 
 if he has had the necessary experience of 
 them in college ; and many things he 
 need never do at all if only he has seen 
 them done. Thus, in colleges that per- 
 mit the presence of some frivolous char- 
 acters, studious young men are enabled 
 to get, by observation alone, an ample 
 and costly experience of life without be- 
 ing subjected to personal sacrifices either 
 of time or money. Thus it appears that 
 both the funds and the actual didactic 
 abilities of a college are increased by let- 
 ting in some of those young men as to 
 whom their parents are anxious. 
 
 It is worth while, too, to consider the 
 young men themselves. Even though 
 they are defective in studiousness and 
 cause their parents anxiety, should they 
 be utterly thrown out for those reasons 
 alone ? There is always the chance that 
 association with studious lads may be a 
 benefit to them, and, certainly, if they 
 are prohibited in advance from college it 
 
 78 
 
College 
 
 is hard to suggest an experiment that 
 may properly be tried with them, inas- 
 much as home has usually failed already 
 with this sort, and they are not yet ripe 
 for the gallows. If such young men ac- 
 quire sufficient book-learning to pass the 
 examinations preliminary to getting into 
 a good college, and are willing to make 
 a sufficient sacrifice of their personal in- 
 clinations to do the work which is indis- 
 pensable to their continuance there, it is 
 easily possible that they come as near to 
 being in the right place as their per- 
 verted natures will permit. 
 
 It should not be forgotten, either, that 
 though the boy is father to the man, the 
 man is sometimes a very late crop. 
 Some men ripen long after they have 
 left college, but they ripen differently 
 from having been in college. Nor is it 
 invariably the men who have caused 
 their parents the least anxiety who 
 make the greatest figure in the world or 
 show themselves best worth educating. 
 General Grant never did much while at 
 West Point (nor for long afterward) to 
 warrant the expenditure of government 
 
 79 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 money on his education, but when his 
 time finally came, his early training was 
 worth more to this country than a brick 
 house. Bismarck's time at Gottingen 
 seems to have been put in largely in 
 duelling and drinking punch with John 
 Motley. Nevertheless, he was worth such 
 pains as his professors took with him. 
 
 Give the studious youth the best of 
 chances, and don't let them be hindered 
 or cramped by rules which are only 
 needed by roysterers, but don't throw 
 the other sort out entirely. Give the 
 lad for whom his parents quake a chance, 
 too. He has the makings of character in 
 him, and though such friendships and 
 such education as you can give him may 
 not seem like much now, they may make 
 a heap of difference to him forty years 
 hence. 
 
 A circular that has been sent out to 
 Harvard graduates, asking for money to 
 put some new athletic fields in order, is 
 accompanied by a picture of the new 
 grounds as they are going to be. The 
 new fields are just about a hundred 
 So 
 
College 
 
 acres roomier than the old (a good deal , 
 ot It marsh-land, to be sure), and when i^^^^per- 
 they are laid out and planted, and built tfadiorkt 
 upon as the picture shows, with ball- 
 fields, race-tracks, grand stands, boat- 
 houses, and various supplementary tem- 
 ples to Hercules and Diana, they will 
 bear exceedingly significant testimony to 
 the growing disposition in this country, 
 at this time, to seek a sound physical 
 foundation for the intellectual super- 
 structure. The Greeks built that way, 
 and for centuries there has been a col- 
 lege-bred conviction that the way in 
 which the Greeks did things was the 
 right way. All the American colleges 
 recognize now the educational useful- 
 ness of the work that is done with brain 
 and muscle in the open air, and provide 
 for it as they can. 
 
 It is not to be wondered at if, in the 
 last two months of the college year, the 
 tendency toward athletics seems almost 
 too strong, and the provision for it too 
 ample. Then it is that respectable mid- 
 dle-aged fogies come out of their holes 
 and cry aloud that physical education 
 8i 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 has entirely got the better of the intel- 
 lectual department. When spring has 
 fairly cleared her throat and found her 
 voice, her call is all but irresistible, and 
 nothing less than the prospect of an 
 indispensable pecuniary settlement on 
 Saturday night avails to keep rightly 
 constituted individuals indoors. It is 
 particularly potent with undergraduates 
 and legislators, and from class-rooms and 
 State-house halls comes the same moan 
 about the difficulty of getting a quorum. 
 It is so pleasant at this season to sit on 
 a bench in the sun and see good men 
 strike at balls and run bases, or to stand 
 on a moving platform-car and shriek at 
 oarsmen on a river, or even to wave a 
 bat or toil at an oar-handle one's-self, 
 that the athletic proceedings supplemen- 
 tary to education really do get an inor- 
 dinate amount of attention. It is nat- 
 ural enough that any calamitous-minded 
 prophet who contrives to avoid the spell 
 of the season, should heap dust on his 
 head and reiterate, all through June, that 
 the last has become not merely first, but 
 the whole procession. 
 82 
 
College 
 
 It is a comfort to be able to assure .y^, 
 such protestants that there are figures, " 
 veracious and undeniable, which prove, 
 in spite of all delusive signs, that the in- 
 tellectual end of education was never so 
 highly prized as now. Price is not an 
 accurate measure of value, but often it is 
 the most reliable measure to be had, and, 
 at all events, it is good enough for pur- 
 poses of comparison. When the price of 
 the highest grade of intellectual educa- 
 tion goes up because the demand has 
 exceeded the supply, it is a pretty sure 
 symptom that intellectual education is 
 not being neglected. That, in a way, is 
 what has happened in the American col- 
 leges. Term bills have not increased, 
 but college presidents wish they had, 
 and that the resulting aggravation of 
 income was available to meet the in- 
 creasing cost of professors. New uni- 
 versities in the West, strong in position 
 and in the amplitude of their endow- 
 ments, have sent successive emissaries 
 eastward, charged to spare no expense 
 in procuring the most distinguished 
 pedagogical talent that is open to con- 
 
 83 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 siderations of pecuniary enlargement and 
 increased opportunities of usefulness. 
 The result is that, nowadays, a high- 
 grade base-ball player can be hired for 
 less money than a high-grade professor, 
 and that some professors are in honor- 
 able possession of incomes that actually 
 take away one of the immemorial re- 
 proaches of the pedagogical profession, 
 since they would be considered amply 
 remunerative of the services of an ac- 
 complished French cook. 
 
 So, whatever may be the feelings of 
 the fogies as they read of crowded ball- 
 games and boat-races on rivers swarm- 
 ing with yachts, for the present at least 
 they may as well hold their peace. So 
 long as professors are notoriously in de- 
 mand at the highest prices ever offered, 
 the fogies cannot hope to get anybody 
 to believe that the intellectual end of 
 education is neglected. 
 
 The tours of the college glee-clubs 
 during the holidays, and one or two 
 dinners of Yale and Harvard clubs that 
 came to my notice, suggested certain re- 
 
 84 
 
College 
 
 flections as to the proper limit of a gradu- 
 ate's devotion to his alma mater. When 
 he stands up in evening dress, with a 
 glass of champagne in his hand, and 
 drinks her health, of course he is excus- 
 able if he tints his emotion with enthu- 
 siasm, and declares that he is hers and 
 that she is his always, and more or less 
 exclusively. But how far is this really 
 so? and if it is so, is it a laudable or 
 desirable fact ? 
 
 College usually puts a stamp on a man whenyou 
 which sticks to him all his life long. It f^Z/J^""^ 
 shapes his tastes, and usually determines 
 in what company he is to begin the seri- 
 ous work of living. It starts him. The 
 most salient fact about a new graduate 
 of Yale, say, or Princeton, who comes to 
 New York to work, is that he is " a Yale 
 man," or "a Princeton man." 
 
 That is all very well, at the start. It 
 identifies him to a certain extent, and 
 is useful for descriptive purposes. But 
 leave him in the world — New York still, 
 perhaps — for ten years. Then, if he is 
 still described as "a Yale man of '93," 
 without much further detail, I think it is 
 
 85 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 a fair inference that he has not been 
 doing much. The description isn't cred- 
 itable any longer. There ought to be 
 more to say about him. 
 
 I should confess to a feeling of satis- 
 faction if some man whom I had known 
 for ten years in the city of Oshkosh, 
 where I live, should ask me suddenly, 
 "Were you ever in college?" I should 
 tell him I had been, and if he asked me 
 where, I should tell him that ; and I 
 should be better pleased that he should 
 be interested enough in me, or in my 
 mental processes, to want to know where 
 they were trained, than that his first 
 thought should be of my college, and 
 his after-thought of me. And I think, 
 moreover, that I do better by my college 
 by putting in the best work I can on my 
 own account, than if I proclaimed my 
 faith in her methods more loudly, and 
 was more effusive in my sympathy with 
 others who did not have the advantage 
 of her fostering care. Of course, the 
 crime of too much concentration upon 
 college and college men is the crime 
 of the new graduate. But, equally of 
 ^6 
 
College 
 
 course, it is something to be got over as 
 promptly as may be — something narrow- 
 ing, exclusive, and a hinderance to use- 
 fulness. 
 
 When you get out of college, young 
 man, get clear out. You can get back S^/"*** 
 for half a day or so at any time — at a 
 boat-race, a foot-ball match, at com- 
 mencement — whenever there is a reason- 
 able excuse ; but in your daily walk and 
 conversation be something more than a 
 college man — be a citizen. Be even an 
 alderman, if you can. Take the world 
 to be yours, as Bacon took all learning 
 to be his, and don't forever limit your 
 view of it by what was once visible from 
 some point in New Haven or in Cam- 
 bridge. Go and be a man somewhere. 
 Don't be satisfied to be a mere " gradu- 
 ate " for all time. Of course you owe 
 your alma mater a debt that you are 
 always ready to pay, and a loyalty that 
 should have no breaks in it. When you 
 have grown to the size of Daniel Web- 
 ster, and your Dartmouth asks you to 
 defend her in court, you are going to be 
 proud when you do it. That is all right. 
 
 87 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 You can't do too much for her, or do it 
 too well. If you accumulate any repu- 
 tation that is worth having, feel honored 
 indeed when she offers to share it with 
 you, but don't be too persistently anx- 
 ious to strut in her plumes to the dis- 
 paragement, it may be, of worthy men 
 who have no claim to any similar privi- 
 lege. 
 
 88 
 
VI 
 
 THE TYRANNY OF 
 THINGS 
 
THE TYRANNY OF 
 THINGS 
 
 TRAVELLER newly re- 
 turned from the Pacific Ocean j^Jf^J^,^. 
 tells pleasant stories of the gonia. 
 Patagonians. As the steamer 
 he was in was passing through 
 Magellan's Straits some natives came out 
 to her in boats. They wore no clothes 
 at all, though there was snow in the air. 
 A baby that came along with them made 
 some demonstration that displeased its 
 mother, who took it by the foot, as The- 
 tis took Achilles, and soused it over the 
 side of the boat into the cold sea-water. 
 When she pulled it in, it lay a moment 
 whimpering in the bottom of the boat, 
 and then curled up and went to sleep. 
 The missionaries there have tried to 
 teach the natives to wear clothes, and to 
 sleep in huts ; but, so far, the traveller 
 says, with very limited success. The 
 most shelter a Patagonian can endure is 
 
 91 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 a little heap of rocks or a log to the wind- 
 ward of him ; as for clothes, he despises 
 them, and he is indifferent to ornament. 
 To many of us, groaning under the 
 oppression of modern conveniences, it 
 seems lamentably meddlesome to under- 
 mine the simplicity of such people, and 
 enervate them with the luxuries of civ- 
 ilization. To be able to sleep out-of- 
 doors, and go naked, and take sea-baths 
 on wintry days with impunity, would 
 seem a most alluring emancipation. No 
 rent to pay, no tailor, no plumber, no 
 newspaper to be read on pain of getting 
 behind the times ; no regularity in any- 
 thing, not even meals ; nothing to do 
 except to find food, and no expense for 
 undertakers or physicians, even if we 
 fail ; what a fine, untrammelled life it 
 would be ! It takes occasional contact 
 with such people as the Patagonians to 
 keep us in mind that civilization is the 
 mere cultivation of our wants, and that 
 the higher it is the more our necessi- 
 ties are multiplied, until, if we are rich 
 enough, we get enervated by luxury, and 
 the young men come in and carry us out 
 
 92 
 
The Tyranny of Things 
 
 We want so many, many things, it 
 seems a pity that those simple Patago- 
 nians could not send missionaries to us 
 to show us how to do without. The com- com/orts. 
 forts of life, at the rate they are increas- 
 ing, bid fair to bury us soon, as Tarpeia 
 was buried under the shields of her friends 
 the Sabines. Mr. Hamerton, in speaking 
 of the increase of comfort in England, 
 groans at the " trying strain of expense 
 to which our extremely high standard of 
 living subjects all except the rich." It 
 makes each individual of us very costly 
 to keep, and constantly tempts people to 
 concentrate on the maintenance of few- 
 er individuals means that would in sim- 
 pler times be divided among many. " My 
 grandfather," said a modern the other 
 day, " left $200,000. He was considered 
 a rich man in those days ; but, dear me ! 
 he supported four or five families — all 
 his needy relations and all my grand- 
 mother's." Think of an income of $10,- 
 000 a year being equal to such a strain, 
 and providing suitably for a rich man's 
 large family in the bargain ! It wouldn't 
 go so far now, and yet most of the 
 
 93 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 Bad fix of 
 a hospital. 
 
 reasonable necessaries of life cost less 
 to-day than they did two generations 
 ago. The difference is that we need 
 so very many comforts that were not 
 invented in our grandfather's time. 
 
 There is a hospital, in a city large 
 enough to keep a large hospital busy, 
 that is in straits for money. Its income 
 from contributions last year was larger 
 by nearly a third than its income ten 
 years ago, but its expenses were nearly 
 double its income. There were some 
 satisfactory reasons for the discrepancy 
 — the city had grown, the number of 
 patients had increased, extraordinary re- 
 pairs had been made — but at the bottom 
 a very large expenditure seemed to be 
 due to the struggle of the managers 
 to keep the institution up to modern 
 standards. The patients are better cared 
 for than they used to be ; the nurses are 
 better taught and more skilful ; " con- 
 veniences " have been greatly multiplied; 
 the heating and cooking and laundry 
 work is all done in the best manner 
 with the most approved apparatus ; the 
 plumbing is as safe as sanitary engineer- 
 
 94 
 
The Tyranny of Things 
 
 ing can make it ; the appliances for anti- 
 septic surgery are fit for a fight for life ; 
 there are detached buildings for con- 
 tagious diseases, and an out-patient de- 
 partment, and the whole concern is ad- 
 ministered with wisdom and economy. 
 There is only one distressing circum- 
 stance about this excellent charity, and 
 that is that its expenses exceed its in- 
 come. And yet its managers have not 
 been extravagant : they have only done 
 what the enlightened experience of the 
 day has considered to be necessary. If 
 the hospital has to shut down and the 
 patients must be turned out, at least the 
 receiver will find a well-appointed in- 
 stitution of which the managers have no 
 reason to be ashamed. 
 
 The trouble seems to be with very 
 many of us, in contemporary private life 
 as well as in institutions, that the en- 
 lightened experience of the day invents 
 more necessaries than we can get the 
 money to pay for. Our opulent friends 
 are constantly demonstrating to us by 
 example how indispensably convenient 
 the modern necessaries are, and we keep 
 
 95 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 having them until we either exceed our 
 incomes or miss the higher concerns of 
 life in the effort to maintain a complete 
 outfit of its creature comforts. 
 
 And the saddest part of all is that it 
 is in such great measure an American 
 development. We Americans keep in- 
 venting new necessaries, and the people 
 of the effete monarchies gradually adopt 
 such of them as they can afford. When 
 we go abroad we growl about the incon- 
 veniences of European life — the absence 
 of gas in bedrooms, the scarcity and 
 sluggishness of elevators, the primitive 
 nature of the plumbing, and a long list of 
 other things without which life seems to 
 press unreasonably upon our endurance. 
 Nevertheless, if the res angustce domi get 
 straiter than usual, we are always liable 
 to send our families across the water to 
 spend a season in the practice of economy 
 in some land where it costs less to live. 
 
 Of course it all belongs to Progress, 
 and no one is quite willing to have it 
 stop, but it does a comfortable sufferer 
 good to get his head out of his con- 
 veniences sometimes and complain. 
 
 96 
 
The Tyranny of Things 
 
 There was a story in the newspapers 
 the other day about a Massachusetts 
 minister who resigned his charge be- 
 cause someone had given his parish a 
 fine house, and his parishioners wanted 
 him to live in it. His salary was too 
 small, he said, to admit of his living in a tZ^^'oho 
 big house, and he would not do it. He fj**''^^/" 
 was even deaf to the proposal that he 
 should share the proposed tenement 
 with the sewing societies and clubs of 
 his church, and when the matter came to 
 a serious issue, he relinquished his 
 charge and sought a new field of useful- 
 ness. The situation was an amusing in- 
 stance of the embarrassment of riches. 
 Let no one to whom restricted quarters 
 may have grown irksome, and who cov- 
 ets larger dimensions of shelter, be too 
 hasty in deciding that the minister was 
 wrong. Did you ever see the house that 
 Hawthorne lived in at Lenox ? Did you 
 ever see Emerson's house at Concord ? 
 They are good houses for Americans to 
 know and remember. They permitted 
 thought. 
 
 A big house is one of the greediest 
 97 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 cormorants which can light upon a little 
 income. Backs may go threadbare and 
 stomachs may worry along on indiffer- 
 ent filling, but a house will have things, 
 though its occupants go without. It is 
 rarely complete, and constantly tempts 
 the imagination to flights in brick and 
 dreams in lath and plaster. It develops 
 annual thirsts for paint and wall-paper, 
 at least, if not for marble and wood-carv- 
 ing. The plumbing in it must be kept 
 in order on pain of death. Whatever 
 price is put on coal, it has to be heated 
 in winter ; and if it is rural or suburban, 
 the grass about it must be cut even 
 though funerals in the family have to be 
 put off for the mowing. If the tenants 
 are not rich enough to hire people to 
 keep their house clean, they must do it 
 themselves, for there is no excuse that 
 will pass among housekeepers for a dirty 
 house. The master of a house too big 
 for him may expect to spend the leisure 
 which might be made intellectually or 
 spiritually profitable, in acquiring and 
 putting into practice fag ends of the 
 arts of the plumber, the bellhanger, the 
 
 98 
 
The Tyranny of Things 
 
 locksmith, the gasfitter, and the carpen- 
 ter. Presently he will know how to do 
 everything that can be done in the 
 house, except enjoy himself. He will 
 learn about taxes, too, and water-rates, 
 and how such abominations as sewers or 
 new pavements are always liable to ac- 
 crue at his expense. As for the mis- 
 tress, she will be a slave to carpets and 
 curtains, wall-paper, painters, and women 
 who come in by the day to clean. She 
 will be lucky if she gets a chance to say 
 her prayers, and thrice and four times 
 happy when she can read a book or visit 
 with her friends. To live in a big house 
 may be a luxury, provided that one has 
 a full set of money and an enthusias- 
 tic housekeeper in one's family ; but to 
 scrimp in a big house is a miserable 
 business. Yet such is human folly, that 
 for a man to refuse to live in a house 
 because it is too big for him, is such an 
 exceptional exhibition of sense that it 
 becomes the favorite paragraph of a day 
 in the newspapers. 
 
 An ideal of earthly comfort, so com- 
 mon that every reader must have seen 
 
 99 
 
 L.GfC. 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 it, is to get a house so big that it is bur- 
 densome to maintain, and fill it up so full 
 of jimcracks that it is a constant occupa- 
 tion to keep it in order. Then, when 
 the expense of living in it is so great 
 that you can't afford to go away and 
 rest from the burden of it, the situation 
 is complete and boarding - houses and 
 cemeteries begin to yawn for you. How 
 many Americans, do you suppose, out 
 of the droves that flock annually to Eu- 
 rope, are running away from oppressive 
 houses ? 
 
 When nature undertakes to provide 
 a house, it fits the occupant. Animals 
 which build by instinct build only what 
 they need, but man's building instinct, if 
 it gets a chance to spread itself at all, is 
 boundless, just as all his instincts are. 
 For it is man's peculiarity that nature 
 has filled him with impulses to do things, 
 and left it to his discretion when to 
 stop. She never tells him when he has 
 finished. And perhaps we ought not to 
 be surprised that in so many cases it 
 happens that he doesn't know, but just 
 goes ahead as long as the materials last. 
 
 100 
 
The Tyranny of Things 
 
 If another man tries to oppress him, 
 he understands that and is ready to 
 fight to death and sacrifice all he has, 
 rather than summit ; but the tyranny of 
 things is so subtle, so gradual in its 
 approach, and comes so masked with 
 seeming benefits, that it has him hope- 
 lessly bound before he suspects his fet- 
 ters. He says from day to day, " I will 
 add thus to my house ; " " I will have 
 one or two more horses ; " "I will make 
 a little greenhouse in my garden ; " "I 
 will allow myself the luxury of another 
 hired man ; " and so he goes on having 
 things and imagining that he is richer 
 for them. Presently he begins to real- 
 ize that it is the things that own him. 
 He has piled them up on his shoulders, 
 and there they sit like Sindbad's Old Man 
 and drive him ; and it becomes a daily 
 question whether he can keep his trem- 
 bling legs or not. 
 
 All of which is not meant to prove 
 that property has no real value, or to 
 rebut Charles Lamb's scornful denial 
 that enough is as good as a feast. It 
 is not meant to apply to the rich, who 
 
 lOI 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 can have things comfortably, if they are 
 philosophical ; but to us poor, who have 
 constant need to remind ourselves that 
 where the verbs to have and to be cannot 
 both be completely inflected, the verb to 
 be is the one that best repays concen- 
 tration. 
 Lefs blame Perhaps we would not be so prone to 
 tk trick I swamp ourselves with luxuries and. vain 
 possessions that we cannot afford, if it 
 were not for our deep-lying propensity 
 to associate with people who are better 
 off than we are. It is usually the sight 
 of their appliances that upsets our little 
 stock of sense, and lures us into an im- 
 provident competition. 
 
 There is a proverb of Solomon's which 
 prophesies financial wreck or ultimate 
 misfortune of some sort to people who 
 make gifts to the rich. Though not 
 expressly stated, it is somehow implied 
 that the proverb is intended not as a 
 warning to the rich themselves, who 
 may doubtless exchange presents with 
 impunity, but for persons whose incomes 
 rank somewhere between " moderate cir- 
 cumstances " and destitution. That such 
 
 IQ2 
 
The Tyranny of Things 
 
 persons should need to be warned not 
 to spend their substance on the rich 
 seems odd, but when Solomon was bus- 
 ied with precept he could usually be 
 trusted not to waste either words or 
 wisdom. Poor people are constantly 
 spending themselves upon the rich, not 
 only because they like them, but often 
 from an instinctive conviction that such 
 expenditure is well invested. I wonder 
 sometimes whether this is true. conveVien?', 
 
 To associate with the rich seems pleas- '*"-*'^*"'^' 
 ant and profitable. They are apt to be 
 agreeable and well informed, and it is 
 good to play with them and enjoy the 
 usufruct of all their pleasant apparatus ; 
 but, of course, you can neither hope nor 
 wish to get anything for nothing. Of 
 the cost of the practice, the expenditure 
 of time still seems to be the item that is 
 most serious. It takes a great deal of 
 time to cultivate the rich successfully. 
 If they are working people their time is 
 so much more valuable than yours, that 
 when you visit with them it is apt to be 
 your time that is sacrificed. If they 
 are not working people it is worse yet. 
 103 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 Their special outings, when they want 
 your company, always come when you 
 cannot get away from work except at 
 some great sacrifice, which, under the 
 stress of temptation, you are too apt to 
 make. Their pleasuring is on so large 
 a scale that you cannot make it fit 
 your times or necessities. You can't go 
 yachting for half a day, nor will fifty 
 dollars take you far on the way to shoot 
 big game in Manitoba. You simply can- 
 not play with them when they play, be- 
 cause you cannot reack j and when they 
 work you cannot play with them, be- 
 cause their time then is worth so much 
 a minute that you cannot bear to waste 
 it. And you cannot play with them 
 when you are working yourself and they 
 are inactively at leisure, because, cheap 
 as your time is, you can't spare it. 
 
 Charming and likeable as they are, 
 i/toug/i and good to know, it must be admitted 
 
 pleasant. ° . ' . 
 
 that there is a superior convenience 
 about associating most of the time with 
 people who want to do about what we 
 want to do at about the same time, and 
 whose abilities to do what they wish 
 104 
 
The Tyranny of Things 
 
 approximate to ours. It is not so much 
 a matter of persons as of times and 
 means. You cannot make your oppor- 
 tunities concur with the opportunities 
 of people whose incomes are ten times 
 greater than yours. When you play 
 together it is at a sacrifice, and one 
 which you have to make. Solomon was 
 right. To associate with very rich peo- 
 ple involves sacrifices. You cannot even 
 be rich yourself without expense, and 
 you may just as well give over trying. 
 Count it, then, among the costs of a con- 
 siderable income that in enlarging the 
 range of your sports it inevitably con- 
 tracts the circle of those who will find it 
 profitable to share them. 
 
 105 
 
VII 
 
 WILLS AND HEIRS 
 
contrasted. 
 
 WILLS AND HEIRS 
 
 N the same month, not long 
 ago, the wills of two very- 
 rich men who died in New 
 York were made public. One 
 . testator left a widow and sev- 
 eral children. The other was childless, 
 but his wife survived him. The former 
 left the whole of his estate, with the ex- tivo wHU 
 ception of some unimportant legacies, to 
 his wife and children. The other, after 
 providing for his wife an income suffi- 
 cient for her maintenance in reasonable 
 comfort during her life, left very large 
 bequests to colleges and hospitals. His 
 heirs-at-law were remembered with mod- 
 est legacies, and his executors named as 
 residuary legatees. These two wills be- 
 ing probated about the same time, and 
 disposing of estates believed to be of 
 approximately equal amount, were much 
 compared and contrasted, and became 
 109 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 the subject of amusing criticism. The 
 testator who left money to the colleges 
 was lauded and held up as a man of splen- 
 did generosity ; while the fact that the 
 other departing millionaire left nothing 
 to charity was put down in evidence of 
 his selfishness. 
 
 Now, it is a very good plan for very 
 rich men to leave bequests to charitable 
 uses. But the fact that a man leaves a 
 great fortune to charity by will is no 
 proof at all that he was a generous man. 
 He doesn't give his own money, he gives 
 money that was his — that, perhaps, he 
 held on to as long as he could, and that 
 necessarily found a new owner as soon 
 as the breath passed out of his body. It 
 is impossible to be generous by will. A 
 will does not give, it only regulates a 
 division. A will may be cited in evidence 
 of the testator's affection, or of his sense 
 of justice, or of his good sense, but not of 
 his generosity — unless, indeed, he is 
 known to have denied himself and saved 
 and accumulated money, not because he 
 wanted it for himself, but for the sake 
 of those who would have it after him. 
 no 
 
IVills and Heirs 
 
 Of those two wills, the one that, on the 
 face of it, might readily excite criticism 
 is the one that contains the bequests to 
 the colleges and hospitals. That will 
 might convey the impression of a lack of 
 cordial relations between the testator and 
 his family, or that he was a man who did 
 not want his widow or his legal heirs to 
 have anything more than they absolutely 
 needed. Of course, such an impression 
 might do the testator great injustice ; 
 but we are not considering facts, only ap- 
 pearances. As for the other will, it was, 
 in appearance, the will of a man who 
 loved and respected his wife and his 
 children. Practically it was such a will 
 as the law makes for men who die in- 
 testate, and it may be presumed that 
 such a will accords pretty closely with 
 public sentiment. 
 
 It has been remarked that the name of 
 the man who remembered the colleges 
 will live long after that of the man 
 whose children get his money. But 
 that, too, is a hasty conclusion, and one 
 that it is adverse to public policy to con- 
 cede. For, first, it were a poor compli- 
 m 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 ment to pay any man to say that the 
 money he left in the world was of more 
 value to it than the children he left ; his 
 money is something apart from him, but 
 his children are part of himself. And, 
 moreover, that a man is better employed 
 in building up a fortune than in raising 
 •sons and daughters, is what many Amer- 
 icans seem to think ; but the very fact 
 that they think so, and act upon that opin- 
 ion, seems to a good many philosophers 
 a reason to fear for the future of the 
 American people. The childless man 
 who endows colleges does well, and we 
 do well to praise him. But we cannot 
 afford to let such praise go the length of 
 disparaging the example of a man who 
 raises and endows a family. For that 
 husbands should honor their wives, and 
 fathers should take thought for their 
 children, are conditions necessarily prec- 
 edent to the preservation of those 
 "family stocks" that President Eliot 
 tells us are of such importance to the 
 republic. 
 
 And, apropos of wills, it has happened 
 to me, within a year or two, to look on 
 
 112 
 
IVills and Heirs 
 
 at the partition of several considerable 
 estates, and to observe in a general way 
 what the heirs seemed to be doing with 
 their money. They were an assorted 
 lot of heirs, with such differences in 
 tastes as people usually have, and I have 
 been surprised at the similarity in their 
 methods of primary expenditure. A 
 reasonable outbreak in clothes was one 
 of the early symptoms of those that R"uitsof 
 came under my notice ; followed in sev- ^'^^^ <>/ 
 
 1 1 • -1 heirs. 
 
 eral cases by mvestments m horses, car- 
 riages, and hired men, in houses and 
 domiciliary improvements, and less im- 
 mediately by the purchase of increased 
 leisure. Following the leisure came 
 travel. Out of a score or so of these 
 new heirs not less than a dozen reported 
 in the early spring, without any general 
 previous understanding, at an expensive 
 and delightful watering-place in Florida. 
 They have since gone to Europe with 
 a unanimity which brought to some 
 of them the embarrassment of finding 
 themselves on the same steamer with 
 co-heirs with whom those exasperating 
 differences which are so apt to be inci- 
 
 "3 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 dent to the distribution of property had 
 left them on politely antagonistic terms. 
 It is an interesting deduction from 
 the behavior of these heirs that if you 
 distribute a certain number of millions 
 among a certain number of intelligent, 
 adult Americans, you can forecast the 
 general lines of their expenditure for a 
 year or two ahead, and even mark upon 
 the map the places at which they may be 
 confidently expected to appear within a 
 certain time. Of course, your forecast 
 will not be verified in all cases, but if 
 you are reasonably intelligent about it 
 the accordance between what you ex- 
 pect and what you observe will be close 
 enough to give you a new idea about 
 the smallness of the world and the in- 
 fluence of circumstances and personal 
 example on human action. You will 
 find that people newly intrusted with 
 about the same amount of money, in 
 the same country, at the same time, go 
 through for a time about the same set 
 of motions. But, of course, they get 
 different degrees of enjoyment out of 
 them. For any one who can pay can go 
 114 
 
IVills and Heirs 
 
 and do, but the capacity to enjoy is 
 strictly personal. That is why, after 
 heirs have had their money awhile, and 
 tried the amusements that every one is 
 bound to try, they cease to fit your 
 generalities. They find out presently 
 what they like and what they do not 
 enjoy, and then their individuality re- 
 asserts itself, and they go their several 
 ways again, with tastes and purposes 
 modified indeed by money, but not oblit- 
 erated by it. 
 
 "5 
 
VIII 
 THE TRAVEL HABIT 
 
THE TRAVEL HABIT 
 
 [OU probably remember who it 
 was that called travelling the 
 fool's paradise. I do not re- 
 call his name at this mo- 
 ment, and my books are 
 elsewhere ; but he was a man of sense, 
 and I am of his opinion. I say / am of 
 his opinion, for this is a personal pro- 
 test. I dare say no one else feels as I 
 do about it, or has the same sense of 
 injury. Writing, this eleventh day of 'ZToThav 
 April— and begging humbly any future ^^f/f/'^-^ 
 reader's pardon for carrying him so far ^ome. 
 back toward the inclement spring — I 
 ask, Where is the Rogers family, with 
 whom it is my habit to dine on Thurs- 
 days ? Where are the Robinsons, who 
 invited me to dinner the day before I 
 went to New York, and were to have 
 renewed the invitation when I got back ? 
 Where are the Joneses, with whom I dine 
 119 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 on Sundays ? Where are the Browns, 
 that have such pleasant girls with such 
 attractive Easter hats to visit them after 
 Lent ? Where are most of the people 
 who are folks, and keep the breath of 
 life stirring in this town of Wayback ? 
 
 The Rogerses ! The Rogerses went to 
 Florida about the first of February, and 
 are now at Fort Monroe on their way 
 back. They may be home again by the 
 first of May. The Robinsons went to 
 Mexico last week with the Fitztoms. 
 They gave no bonds to return, and 
 won't be back until — until nobody knows 
 when. The Joneses have been spending 
 the winter in the South of Europe and 
 are at Monte Carlo ; and the Browns are 
 still in Colorado. What sort of a spring 
 it is for me any coherent reader can 
 piece out of what he imagines about the 
 number of people in Wayback who are 
 folkable according to my personal taste. 
 
 And how is it for the summer ? Some 
 of the Wayback tramps will be at home 
 again then, perhaps — for little spells of 
 time. I hope so ; but in the summer I 
 like to get away myself for a few days. 
 1 20 
 
The Travel Habit 
 
 But where to ? The whole family of Ire- 
 sons — father, mother, aunts, and all six 
 of the children — who used to make 
 Pittox so lively in August, sail on the 
 City of Jericho the first Wednesday in 
 June, to be gone until September. The 
 Blenkinsops, who had such a good place 
 at Sopton for September, have rented it, 
 and propose to spend June in Japan and 
 August in Norway. Alenson, who used 
 to come up for our September tennis, is 
 going to the Feejee Islands this year 
 instead. He says he wants to go to 
 some place that isn't next door, and that 
 it takes a little while to reach. The 
 Easterlings have hired a moor in Scot- 
 land, and the Westons a castle some- 
 where — in Spain, I dare say — and New- 
 port will know neither of them this 
 summer. No one who has a place will 
 be in it, and there's no out-of-the-way 
 corner of the globe where you won't be 
 more liable to run up against your next- 
 door neighbor than you would be to find 
 him next door. 
 
 For my part I protest against all this 
 straggling and globe-trotting. If there 
 
 121 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 were any limit or end, or any legitimate 
 purpose to it, it might be tolerated. 
 But there is not. It is simply a return 
 to vagrancy and nomadism. The same 
 people who are doing all this straggling 
 this year will be at it again next year, or 
 the year after at the outside. Once the 
 habit is formed they never stay at home 
 except for so long as suffices for nec- 
 essary measures of financial retrieve- 
 ment. 
 
 Of course, there is some use in travel. 
 It is instructive to have seen the world 
 and to know what is in it. It gives the 
 means of making comparisons, imparts 
 culture, and opens the eyes generally. 
 But these contemporary tramps of ours 
 have long since passed the stage of 
 learning anything. Their notion of 
 travel is rest and repairs, and to have 
 fun — good things in their way, but by 
 this generation inordinately pursued. I 
 say they are a frivolous lot — our tramps ; 
 that they try to dodge life ; that by 
 keeping perpetually on the go they suc- 
 ceed in evading the habits of work and 
 the natural ties that stay-at-home people 
 
 122 
 
The Travel Habit 
 
 have to form, and the responsibilities 
 that they have to share. 
 
 In conversation two years ago with 
 this expostulator, an eminent man of let- 
 ters said that he had travelled thor- 
 oughly abroad some thirty years ago, 
 and got great benefit from it, but had 
 not been to Europe since. " My doc- 
 tor," he said, " said to me a number of 
 years ago, ' You must absolutely stop all 
 work and go abroad.' I said to him, 'If 
 I quit work can't I stay at home ? ' ' Oh, 
 yes,' he said, ' if you can do it. What I 
 want is to stop the work. The Euro- 
 pean part of it is not essential.' So I 
 stayed at home, and hardly made a mark 
 with a pen for six months." 
 
 Here was a man who might have gone 
 to Europe and didn't. The excuse came 
 to him ready-made ; he had the inevi- 
 table doctor to put the responsibility 
 upon, but he stayed at home. It was 
 borne in upon me that his example was 
 one that ought to be published as a cor- 
 rective to that vagrant spirit of the age 
 against which Miss Cobbe filed a passing 
 protest when she wrote : " The gadfly 
 123 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 which pursued poor lo seems to have 
 stung us all, and we flit about the globe 
 restlessly, until it has nearly come to 
 pass that everyone who has a home has 
 let it to somebody else, and the last 
 place to expect to find a man is at 
 home." 
 
 One curious exponent of the prevailing 
 restlessness is the practice that obtains 
 so generally just now among American 
 cities of offering bonuses and pecuniary 
 special in- induccments to manufacturers to move 
 Ipnomadic. ^hcir plant. After a fire that burned 
 ^^y- down part of a sewing-machine factory 
 
 the other day, the owners received so 
 many proposals from aspiring cities that 
 wanted to take them in, that they were 
 obliged to publish a notice to the effect 
 that only a small part of their works had 
 been burned, and that they were not 
 open to proposals for adoption. Any 
 factory or established business employ- 
 ing labor can have its choice, nowadays, 
 from a long list of cities, new and old, 
 any one of which will give it a site for a 
 factory, pay the expenses of moving, and 
 124 
 
The Travel Habit 
 
 perhaps contribute substantially toward 
 the construction of a new building. 
 People who own land, or are engaged in 
 business, in cities, realize that it pays 
 them to have their cities grow, and they 
 are willing to hire desirable inhabitants 
 to come to them. They rely upon get- 
 ting their money back in the increased 
 value of land, or the general increase in 
 business. The result is that the migra- 
 tory disposition already so pronounced 
 in these days is intensified, and it has 
 become a familiar thing not merely for 
 individuals to move, but for great ag- 
 gregations of working-men to shift the 
 scene of their activities from one city 
 to another, sometimes thousands of 
 miles away. 
 
 Time was when where the average man 
 found himself living, there he continued 
 to live, unless circumstances of excep- 
 tional urgency impelled him to change 
 his residence. It is different now. 
 Transportation has become so cheap, 
 and travel so easy, that the ties of lo- 
 cality sit very lightly on the average 
 American, and the fact that you find 
 125 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 him settled this year in New York or 
 Pennsylvania, affords you a very uncer- 
 tain basis for expecting to find him 
 next year in the same place. When you 
 hear of him again, if he hasn't moved to 
 Texas, or Tacoma, or Southern Cal- 
 ifornia, or Maine, or North Dakota, you 
 feel that he must have had some excep- 
 tionally good reasons for staying at 
 home. Men used to wag their heads 
 and croak about the inability of roll- 
 ing stones to gather moss. We have 
 changed all that. Moss is at a discount, 
 and there is a premium upon rolling. 
 
 Of course for families including small 
 children, who leave the cities for more 
 salubrious parts in summer, and even 
 for working-men who spend their sum- 
 mer vacation away from home, there is a 
 good deal to be said. " Everybody " goes 
 cusabie; somcwhcre in the summer, and if they 
 can't go on their own hook, a subscrip- 
 tion is got up to send them. " Every- 
 body " now includes all the city minis- 
 ters, the college professors, the wives 
 and children of laborious and well-paid 
 brain-workers in big towns, and people 
 126 
 
 Summer 
 
 traiiel ex- 
 
the Travel Habit 
 
 generally who can afford it, and whose 
 homes do not happen to be so situated 
 that they prefer to go away in the win- 
 ter. The summer vacation habit with a 
 concomitant change of air and abode 
 has taken so strong a hold on the lucky 
 tenth of the population, that the rest of 
 us who either cannot go, or can only 
 stay a fortnight when we do go, should 
 comfort ourselves in our restricted con- 
 dition with any solace that will fit our 
 case. 
 
 There are some compensating reflec- 
 tions that we are entitled to entertain. 
 To get one's mind thrown off the track 
 and jolted into new intellectual gaits, 
 and one's liver, too ; and to see new 
 people in new places and hear them talk 
 about new things ; and to be quit of 
 the daily grind and free to devote the 
 solid part of the day to frivolous uses — 
 those are enviable privileges, and the 
 best of them is that when they have the 
 right effect it stays by you all winter. 
 But if you can't go it is certainly but many 
 worth remembering how sharp the jolt ^n£sa/er 
 often is when the intellectual wheel ''^^^'"''^ 
 127 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 leaves the rail. It is so much easier to do 
 to-morrow what you did yesterday than 
 every day to face the responsibiUty of 
 keeping yourself pacified with novel oc- 
 cupations ! Then at home you know 
 your own plumber, and can recognize 
 the monsters in the drinking-water when 
 you see them under a microscope ; but 
 when you go away you become the cor- 
 pus vile of sanitary experiments to the 
 precedent conditions of which you were 
 not a party. As an involuntary home- 
 dweller you are entitled to meditate on 
 all the cases mentioned last autumn in 
 the newspapers of persons who lan- 
 guished on regretful couches with ty- 
 phoid fevers picked up in a summer 
 quest after health. And if there was 
 any ice-cream poisoning done anywhere 
 in a summer resort, you are entitled to 
 remember that, as well as any and all of 
 the contagious complaints that anybody's 
 children brought home with them. 
 
 So, too, as to the moral, intellectual, 
 and social hazards, which are really a 
 good deal more terrifying than the phys- 
 ical ones. If there are rocks in the 
 128 
 
The Travel Habit 
 
 harbor of one's home there are buoys 
 over them, or at least you know where 
 they are and can steer clear ; but once 
 you get away, unless you have a pilot 
 for every place, reasonable caution de- 
 mands that when you are not absolutely 
 at anchor you shall spend the bulk of 
 your time up forward heaving the lead. 
 There is your husband, madam— such a 
 good, tame, domestic creature at home. 
 Take his work away from him and turn 
 him loose to find himself employments 
 and what astonishing things may happen 
 to him ! Cocktails ! Those are trifles. 
 Kind and devoted husbands lured un- 
 willing to the mountain-tops have found 
 affi?iities there, and affinities that in some 
 cases were the theretofore devoted wives 
 of other men. Surely any good man who 
 has one wife already would stay at home 
 till moss accumulated on his scalp rather 
 than go gadding and take the chance of 
 running against his affinity. To be 
 slaughtered, or partly slaughtered, in a 
 railroad accident on the way is bad, but 
 nothing like as bad as to arrive safely 
 and find your affinity awaiting you. 
 129 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 Wives, too, have found affinities in 
 their summer holidays. Others a little 
 less unfortunate have developed a dis- 
 astrous craving to get into society. 
 Others have become dissatisfied with 
 their customary raiment and incurred 
 aspirations pregnant with pecuniary dis- 
 aster. Maidens have broken coins with 
 ineligible youths not of their own set ; 
 parents' hopes have been blighted by 
 the collapse of eligible sons before im- 
 possible summer girls. The rector of an 
 affluent Episcopal parish was once con- 
 verted at Bar Harbor and became a Bap- 
 tist, to his severe pecuniary loss and the 
 manifold detriment of his family. So, it 
 is narrated, a Boston physician became 
 infatuated with Christian Science during 
 a month's holiday at Narragansett Pier 
 and abandoned his practice because of 
 conscientious scruples. 
 
 People have stayed at home and lived 
 to be a century old. A shorter experi- 
 ence than that has qualified careful ob- 
 servers to assert that when they have 
 been unable to go in search of change a 
 little patience has enabled them to en- 
 130 
 
The Travel Habit 
 
 joy it at home. They even say that the 
 arrangement known as the seasons has 
 been expressly contrived to bring whole- 
 some varieties of climate around to the 
 doors of folks who wait for them. They 
 are old fogies, such people, but there are 
 compensations about their way. 
 
 131 
 
IX 
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND PEO- 
 PLE 
 
L _ 
 
 NEWSPAPERS AND PEO- 
 PLE 
 
 HY do people care so much ^^^f^^tt 
 about what is said in news- nemsfafers 
 
 say, 
 
 papers ? They do care, es- 
 pecially when the something 
 said is said of themselves. 
 My friend the Judge remarked the other 
 day, on what seemed to him the absurd 
 fact, that when a young man of ques- 
 tionable wisdom made a remark you 
 gave it such attention as his abilities 
 and the accuracy of his information 
 seemed to warrant ; but when the same 
 young man got his remark committed to 
 type, and put into a newspaper, it be- 
 came clothed in an authority which you 
 felt bound to respect, and did respect 
 more or less, however you might differ 
 from the opinion. But the fact was not 
 so absurd as the Judge thought. 
 
 When Brown remarks to Jones, " Rob- 
 
 135 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 inson is an ass," that is one thing. 
 Brown may not really mean what he 
 says. His remark is intended for Jones, 
 and very possibly he counts upon cer- 
 tain qualities in Jones to qualify its 
 force. Beauty lies in the eye of the be- 
 holder, and of course very much of the 
 force of talk lies in the listener's ear. 
 Then, too, when Brown makes his re- 
 mark it may be with recognition of the 
 chance that he may feel differently about 
 Robinson the next morning, and may 
 recall his opinion the next time he and 
 Jones meet. But when Brown, the 
 editor, composing the opinions of his 
 newspaper, has his disparaging opinion 
 of Robinson put into type and published, 
 that is a different matter. 
 
 In the first place, when the opinion 
 once gets into print it becomes some- 
 thing more than Brown's opinion. It is 
 the opinion of a responsible business es- 
 tablishment, which very possibly repre- 
 sents an investment of some hundreds 
 of thousands of dollars, the profits of 
 which depend in a considerable measure 
 upon its reputation, which in turn de- 
 136 
 
Newspapers and People 
 
 pends, to some extent, on the ability of 
 its editor to say the right thing at the 
 right time, and defend it. 
 
 And to anything which a responsible 
 newspaper prints attach many of the 
 qualities which thus characterize its per- 
 sonal remarks. For whatever it says it 
 must be ready either to fight, or to apolo- 
 gize and pay. Inevitably it will have to 
 apologize sometimes ; but the apologies 
 of great newspapers are far between, 
 and are apt, when they come, to relate 
 to matters of minor importance. The 
 obligation to be right, or at least de- 
 fensible, in the first place, is seriously 
 taken, and an apology is a confession. 
 
 In the second place, when an opinion 
 about Robinson gets into a newspaper 
 it is on the way to become the opinion 
 of that newspaper's readers, and from 
 that it is only a step to becoming the 
 opinion of the public. If the remark is 
 so manifestly true, or supported by such 
 evidence that the average intelligence 
 accepts it, it comes with the force of 
 revelation, as did the remark of the 
 little boy in the fairy tale that the king 
 
 137 
 
IVindfalls of Observation 
 
 hadn't his clothes on. From private 
 opinion to public opinion is as great a 
 step as from a liquid to a crystal ; but 
 when matters have come to the right 
 point a little jar will often precipitate 
 the change in an instant. 
 
 Robinson may bear with equanimity 
 the knowledge that Brown in talking 
 with Jones has called him an ass, but 
 the suspicion that Jones's opinion is 
 public opinion may reasonably discon- 
 cert him. 
 
 And speaking of the newspapers, and 
 what they say, a person whose identity 
 it is unnecessary to publish here, but a 
 very important person, who was grum- 
 bling the other day about those ambi- 
 tious paragraphs in the untrammelled 
 press which record from December to 
 May that Mrs. Thompson Jones had a 
 party, and Mr. and Mrs. Brown Robin- 
 son and Mr. and Mrs. Rogers Smith 
 were there, expressed himself as fatigued 
 with the record of these events, and 
 with the constant repetition of the same 
 names in connection with them. Why 
 
 138 
 
Newspapers and People 
 
 these names and no others, he wanted 
 to know, and argued that the apparent one office o} 
 recognition of their worth conveyed in "^^^^j" 
 this exclusive notice was one thing that 
 lulled these people in the delusion that 
 they were "the folks," and made them 
 feel above other persons whose move- 
 ments gained less notoriety. He wanted 
 something done about it. 
 
 This, to tell him that he is fretting 
 over something that ought not to dis- 
 turb him. When he goes to the theatre 
 does he complain because his name and 
 yours and mine are not on the play-bill, 
 but all the space there is given up to 
 identifying a lot of actors who are not a 
 bit more worthy as mere men, when it 
 comes down to real worth, than we are ? 
 Let him take rich society, rich New 
 York society for example, from the 
 same point of view. The persons whose 
 social achievements get so much more 
 notice than ours may not be really more 
 admirable than we, but they are occupy- 
 ing the stage. So far from being vexed 
 at them, he ought to regard them from 
 afar off with grateful emotions, as per- 
 
 139 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 sons who are employed to perform social 
 feats at their own expense for his diver- 
 sion, and whose operations are kindly 
 set forth in the public press so that he 
 can easily inform himself about them 
 when personal observation is not con- 
 venient. Not the books in the Astor 
 Library, not the pictures in the Metro- 
 politan Museum, nor Cleopatra, her nee- 
 dle in the Park, are more distinctly ours 
 to use and to profit by than these Brown 
 Robinsons and Rogers Smiths. When 
 their splendor has its setbacks it is for us 
 spectators to draw moral lessons there- 
 from for our use. When young Thomp- 
 son Smith elopes with a ballet-dancer 
 we can wag our heads as we read about 
 it and be thankful that our sons are not 
 exposed to the demoralizing influences 
 of large means ; and the same when 
 Benita Brown Robinson marries some 
 scarecrow prince, or Lawrence Perry 
 the Younger's difficulties with the gov- 
 ernors of the Union Club are advertised 
 to the world. Be sure the recording 
 angel takes regular note of the advan- 
 tage it is to us to have these rich always 
 140 
 
Newspapers and People 
 
 with us, and that we shall be held to 
 strict accountability for all the profit we 
 ought to have received from our news- 
 paper familiarity with their ingoings and 
 outcomings, and all their vicissitudes of 
 experience. 
 
 There may even be profit for us in 
 the labors of a certain gifted but un- 
 scrupulous gossip who writes letters 
 from Gotham to a Western newspaper, 
 when tattling about New York's eligible 
 youths. She writes : 
 
 Lawrence Perry's son, Lawrence, Jr., will in- xke Law 
 herit most of his father's wealth and much of his rence 
 prestige. Perry, Sr., is, par excellence, the leader ^''^^'• 
 of the * ' f ast-and-swagger " set ; he sets *' the pace 
 that kills," which the ten-millionaires follow, and 
 he nevertheless manages to keep a safe hold on 
 his own millions, which Lawrence, Jr., will get in 
 good time. He has trained the young fellow to 
 walk in his footsteps, to be an exquisite in dress, a 
 bird of prey among women, a hard rider, a deep 
 drinker, a turfman, a gambler, and withal a keen 
 business man, a genial fellow, polished man, and 
 a pretty good friend. He will marry, doubtless in 
 liis own set, a woman as congenial and gay-tem- 
 pered as himself, who will not be jealous, and, as 
 long as the outward appearances are observed, will 
 drive him with a very light hand and loose rein. 
 
 141 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 The names in the correspondent's 
 paragraph have been changed. Very 
 possibly her description of the father 
 and son whom she named does them in- 
 justice, but the type that is portrayed is 
 real. Alas, alas, to how many thousand 
 men of Gotham does the life of the 
 Lawrence Perrys, father and son^ seem 
 the ideal of an existence ! To have 
 abundance of money and health, and to 
 spend both in " having a good time ; " 
 to be a rake and a turfman ; to have 
 the habendum and tenendmn clauses of 
 one's nature developed to the degree re- 
 quired for the successful management of 
 " business ; " to be a graduate of Del- 
 monico's and an exponent of Poole's ; to 
 ride hard ; to drink deep ; to play high ; 
 to marry, but on terms of such mutual 
 consideration as our gossip suggests. 
 What a life to lead, and to lead, not from 
 necessity, but to choose as the highest 
 good ! A life of glitter and go, but 
 shorn of tenderness, of self-denial, of 
 any true service to mankind. 
 
 One of the most repulsive characteris- 
 tics of a great city is the presence in it 
 142 
 
Newspapers and People 
 
 of the Lawrence Perrys and their influ- 
 ence upon the town, especially upon the 
 lads thereof. They are so pervasive and 
 so noisy that they slop over everything. 
 They catch the eye with their glitter. 
 Their coaches, and yachts, and palaces 
 constantly force themselves on the at- 
 tention. It is hard to convince little 
 Joe Brown and young Jack Robinson 
 that there is anything better in life than 
 the Lawrence Perrys have got; and it 
 may be hard presently to keep Joe and 
 
 Jack from following after the Perrys 
 
 albeit afar off, as near as their circum- 
 stances can be stretched to permit. 
 
 The Lawrence Perrys are not much 
 beloved, but they do not incur the full 
 measure of the contempt that they de- 
 serve. Much of the obloquy that they 
 should monopolize is shared by that 
 much more numerous and less objection- The society 
 able product of contemporary civiliza- ^'^''^'«^'^- 
 tion whose misfortune it is to be known 
 as '' the society young man." Alas for 
 him, there is a haze of ambiguity about 
 him which makes his identity obscure 
 143 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 and doubtful. People question his ex- 
 istence just as they do the existence of 
 the devil, but he must exist, for the 
 newspapers are full of his deeds. Un- 
 like Fitz Greene Halleck's friend, whom 
 none named but to praise, the society 
 young man is rarely brought into the 
 conversation without being injuriously 
 dwelt upon. Whatever he may have 
 done is a matter for speculation, but it 
 must have been a dreadful thing. He 
 has no friends. Everybody hates him 
 and evilly entreats him. All the ill-ad- 
 vised infants who lack putative fathers 
 are attributed to him ; his example is 
 held up to Sunday children as a red 
 light on the road to perdition ; his life is 
 pictured as a conglomeration of patent- 
 leather shoes, shirt-front, and opera-hats, 
 irrigated with champagne, punctuated 
 with cigarettes, and seasoned with a 
 deceitful smile. The enthusiasm he 
 inspires in his traducers is admirably 
 illustrated in some recent statements of 
 a certain Reverend Douglas, of Mon- 
 treal, who lately observed in the course 
 of some disparaging remarks about his 
 144 
 
Newspapers and People 
 
 neighbors : " The society man will lie, 
 he will swindle, he will cheat at cards, he 
 will forge, he will defalcate, he will smile 
 in the face of a man as a friend while 
 he is wrecking his domestic honor, and, 
 as I have known, he will drink the very- 
 wine that charity has donated for his dy- 
 ing wife and fill the bottle with water." 
 
 No ordinary villain could have pro- 
 voked such reprehension as this. Either 
 the society young man is a dangerous 
 foe to humanity, who ought to be shut 
 up, or else he has been maligned. 
 
 Without desiring to incur the dislike 
 of any worthy person by speaking up for 
 such an outcast, it is excusable to admit 
 one's impression that the society young 
 man is not really all Hyde, but has his 
 Jekyll side, like the rest of us. He is 
 young and frivolous, no doubt, but he 
 has good ideas about the use of soap 
 and fair prospects of learning other vir- 
 tues as his experience increases. The 
 censors of public morals ought not to be 
 after him too fiercely because he dances 
 with the girls. He will have finished 
 with that presently. Indeed, he will 
 
 145 
 
IVindfalls of Observation 
 
 have finished in great measure with 
 most of his present amusements, and 
 will either be dead or hard at work try- 
 ing to support his wife and children. 
 Butterfly he is, perhaps, but grub he was 
 and grub he will become again before 
 you know it. Be kinder to him while he 
 lasts, his turn is so very, very brief. 
 
 146 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF LIFE 
 
THE MYSTERIES OF LIFE 
 
 N a world where it is very de- 
 sirable to be entertained, and Cultivate 
 not always easy to find en- teries. 
 tertainment, there is a great 
 deal to be got out of a dis- 
 creet consideration of the mysteries of 
 life. They give one something to the- 
 orize about in odd moments, and to have 
 theories about them gives one an inter- 
 est in whole series and classes of facts 
 which seem to fit in with such theories 
 or to upset them. If the facts won't 
 fit the theory, then there is the theory 
 to change ; and to have one's theory 
 driven into a new shape is the next best 
 thing to having it justified. 
 
 If existence is a little poky, and if you 
 live in a quiet place and cannot afford to 
 own horses enough to completely oc- 
 cupy your leisure, or if you are restless 
 ashore and too poor to have a yacht, or 
 149 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 if you are the uneasy husband of one 
 wife, or the wife of one husband, and 
 think it immoral to flirt, it may pay you 
 to attach yourself to one of these mys- 
 teries. Do it, not necessarily in the ex- 
 pectation of solving your problem, but 
 for the sake of pure cogitation. It is a 
 natural resource of a human being, for 
 to puzzle over the mysteries of life leads 
 to a reaching out after the great centre 
 and solution of all the mysteries, and to 
 the establishment of relations in which, 
 vague and slender as they are, the mind 
 of man finds rest. 
 
 There was a little tale in the news- 
 paper the other day about Mr. Edison, 
 that he held up his finger and bent it, 
 and asked, " What does that ? " Fail- 
 ing to get a satisfactory reply, he said 
 he was trying to find out what is the 
 force that pulls the strings that makes 
 animate creatures move. That is one of 
 the great mysteries — the mystery of mo- 
 tion. It is that, we are told, that Mr. 
 Keely, the motor-man, has been brood- 
 ing over for several decades past. Mr. 
 Keely's experience has not been such as 
 
The Mysteries of Life 
 
 to encourage any poor man to theorize 
 on this subject for a living ; neverthe- 
 less, it is a great subject for a mind to 
 dwell upon in its leisure moments. Sir 
 Isaac was thinking about it when the 
 apple fell and gave him an idea that was 
 of value to him, and has been useful 
 ever since. There is always this advan- 
 tage about having one's mind run on 
 something in particular, that even if it 
 does not bring down what it is aimed at 
 it is more likely to hit something else 
 that is worth while than if it were wan- 
 dering aimlessly. As witness the useful- 
 ness of the alchemists to the science of 
 chemistry. Even if Mr. Edison's mind 
 fails to grasp the force that crooks his 
 finger, it is very possible that he may 
 puzzle out some minor problem that is 
 worth while. Indeed, it is reported al- 
 ready that he has a fascinating theory 
 that attributes an individual will to 
 every atom, and declares that matter is 
 sentient. 
 
 Another mystery of captivating quali- 
 ties is that which shrouds the relation 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 The cure 
 
 of the body to the spirit. It was the 
 mystery whose partial solution led Dr. 
 Henry Jekyll to make the disastrous 
 'mystery. acquaintance of Edward Hyde. De- 
 scribing his speculations on the duality 
 of man and sundry chemical investiga- 
 tions that supplemented them, Dr. Jekyll 
 writes : " A side-light began to shine 
 upon the subject from the laboratory 
 table. I began to perceive more deeply 
 than it has ever yet been stated the 
 trembling immateriality, the mist-like 
 transience of this seemingly so solid 
 body in which we walk attired. . . . 
 I not only recognized my natural body 
 for the mere aura and effulgence of cer- 
 tain of the powers that made up my 
 spirit, but managed to compound a 
 drug," etc. 
 
 One division of this mystery embraces 
 the subject of cures. Once get on the 
 track of that and every newspaper story 
 about faith-cure, or any of the varieties 
 of mental healing, becomes a thing to be 
 weighed, and if it seems to have sub- 
 stance, to be held in mind for considera- 
 tion and future use. All kinds of " mir- 
 
 152 
 
The Mysteries of Life 
 
 acles " bear on this mystery. Hypnotism 
 and hypnotic cures are intimately mixed 
 up with it. Telepathy has to do with 
 it ; apparitions, presentiments, and clair- 
 voyance are more or less allied to it. 
 Doctors, quacks, patent medicines, and 
 all sorts of "healers," regular and other- 
 wise, bear a relation to it that will come 
 constantly under discussion. 
 
 Anyone, for example, who is thorough- 
 ly awake on the subject of the cure mys- 
 tery, must have read with interest the 
 other day that the Board of Health of 
 Massachusetts had recommended to the 
 Legislature of that commonwealth to 
 make a law providing that all persons 
 engaged in the healing art in any form, 
 except dentistry, shall register within a 
 certain time in the office of the clerk of 
 the town where they propose to prac- 
 tice, describing themselves, and giving, £"^'}f"'^''^' 
 under oath, in detail their courses of physicians. 
 instruction in medicine and the names 
 of their colleges ; false entries to be sub- 
 ject to the penalties for perjury, and 
 failure to register, to fines or imprison- 
 ment. It seems that there are too many 
 
 153 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 quacks and irregular healers in Massa- 
 chusetts, and the regular doctors think 
 it time that they were suppressed. 
 
 Without any pretence of faith in any 
 doctor who is not regular, without ig- 
 noring the sound objections to self-con- 
 stituted physicians, and without preju- 
 dice to a sincere intention of calling in 
 a thoroughly instructed and expert prac- 
 titioner whenever occasion demands, it is 
 still permissible to smile amiably at the 
 professional antipathy to quacks. The 
 successful physician, with exceptions 
 which happily are much more numer- 
 ous than they were, is the most intol- 
 erant despot on earth. And we encour- 
 age him to be so. We are vaguely aware 
 of the limitations of his knowledge ; we 
 know that he has to guess first what is 
 the matter with us, and next what will 
 do us good, and that though there are 
 facts his acquaintance with which helps 
 him to guess right, many theories that 
 regulate his professional action are still 
 hypothetical, and may or may not be 
 correct. We know that he has dis- 
 covered that many of the methods his 
 
 154 
 
The Mysteries of Life 
 
 father used were unwise and deleterious, 
 and that the doses his grandfather gave 
 often hastened the result they were in- 
 tended to prevent, and hindered what 
 they were designed to induce. We know 
 not only that he is a man, and therefore 
 fallible, but that his professional science, 
 like his father's and grandfather's, is 
 progressive, and is still very far from 
 being exact. Nevertheless, when any- 
 thing ails us, in spite of all we know of 
 his limitations, we fly to him as though 
 he were all-wise, and do as nearly what 
 he tells us to as our flesh and our pockets 
 permit. For we believe that, erring and 
 inadequate as he is, he knows more than 
 we do, and that his knowledge is, on the 
 whole, the best that is at our command. 
 This childlike trust in our physicians 
 is a phenomenon which is creditable to 
 us and to our doctors, and from which 
 we both get benefit. Experto crede is 
 sound advice, and ninety- something 
 times out of a hundred we take it and 
 do well. The other odd times either we 
 take it and don't do well, or we take it 
 with misgivings, or we don't take it at 
 
 155 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 all. The world's experience has taught 
 that in certain kinds of cases the wisdom 
 that has finally justified itself has been 
 the wisdom of the unlearned. The babes 
 and sucklings of knowledge have hit up- 
 on the truth that the doctors have not 
 been able to see, because their learning 
 has stood in their light. Of course, if a 
 thing isn't so, the more reasons a man fc 
 has for believing that it must be so, the 
 farther he is from the truth, and the less 
 chance there is of its percolating into 
 him. Thus, when bleeding was the great 
 medical cure-all, the worthy physicians 
 who knew exactly why it must be the one 
 indispensable remedy were really in a 
 more hopeless bog of ignorance than 
 people who knew nothing about medi- 
 cine at all, but simply regulated their 
 A weak practice by the light of nature. Every 
 specialists, man to his trade is a maxim that we 
 habitually respect, in that we don't send 
 our horses to a carpenter-shop to be 
 shod, nor employ a gardener to look after 
 the plumbing. The man whom we ex- 
 pect to be conversant with horseshoeing 
 as a contemporary art is the blacksmith, 
 
 156 
 
The Mysteries of Life 
 
 and the person with the requisite skill 
 and appliances for dealing with lead 
 pipes is the plumber. But if the con- 
 temporary art of horseshoeing has a 
 radical flaw in it, the carpenter, whose 
 mind has not been prejudiced by mis- 
 taken instruction nor his natural gump- 
 tion perverted by malpractice, may be a 
 likelier man to detect it than the black- 
 smith. And so the gardener may see 
 that the plumber's pipes are unsafe, the 
 plumber's argument and usage among 
 the best plumbers to the contrary not- 
 withstanding. 
 
 And so, ordinarily sagacious people 
 come to make instinctive allowance for 
 the prejudices of learning, as they do for 
 what the unlearned don't know. A valu- 
 able pocket of knowledge on some par- 
 ticular line of investigation is often ac- 
 quired, like ambergris in whales, at the 
 cost of a considerable degeneration of 
 the rest of the creature. Even so great 
 a man as Darwin had to give up such in- 
 tellectual valuables as his taste for music 
 and his interest in religion in exchange 
 for what he learned about deep-sea fishes 
 
 157 
 
IVindfalls of Observation 
 
 and the habits of earth-worms. Medical 
 specialists, especially, come in for a de- 
 gree of chastened mistrust, and are in 
 danger of being regarded as intellectual 
 cripples whose minds, from too incessant 
 application to one class of phenomena, 
 get a list, as the mariners say, in that 
 direction. 
 
 The point of all of which is, that hu- 
 manity has a rational ground for appeal 
 not only from the medical faculty, but 
 from all high intellectual courts. Not 
 only does perfect wisdom not lie in even 
 the highest learning, but the cultivation 
 of microscopic powers of the intellectual 
 vision has a recognizable tendency to 
 make the cultivator intellectually near- 
 sighted. It is a tendency that is tacitly 
 recognized day by day when we wonder 
 if some person on whose insanity the 
 experts have pronounced is really de- 
 mented or not ; or if there is really vir- 
 tue in a remedy that the doctors say is 
 bogus ; or if there really are ghosts after 
 all, or miraculous cures, though science 
 says there can't be ; or if the doctrine 
 of evolution is a mistaken hypothesis, in 
 
 •58 
 
The Mysteries of Life 
 
 spite of all the wise men who believe 
 in it. 
 
 In every-day practice it is wise for us 
 to listen deferentially to the men of 
 highest learning and to act upon their 
 advice, but it is neither necessary nor 
 even advisable to let the voice of author- 
 ity wholly extinguish our speculations, 
 since great practical benefit has come to 
 the world in time past from the faith of 
 the unlearned, and imaginings which au- 
 thority has ridiculed have finally worked 
 out into marvellously fruitful results. 
 
 Undoubtedly our physicians do us 
 good ; and indeed they ought to, even if 
 they knew less and guessed less fortu- 
 nately than they do, else were faith a 
 
 11 . , . . Extenuat- 
 
 much less potent virtue than it is de- tngpossibii^ 
 clared to be. But it is one thing for us to r'/gu^dJ^"" 
 flock of our own accord to the doctors, ^'''^'"^^ 
 and quite another thing for those profes- 
 sional gentlemen to hold that we shall 
 come to them and to none else, and that 
 we may neither be legitimately born nor 
 die legally, except with their concur- 
 rence. If we, being adults and possibly 
 voters, want to prescribe for our own 
 
 159 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 infirmities, or have our neighbors pre- 
 scribe for us, or try our luck with patent 
 medicines, or have in faith-curers. Chris- 
 tian scientists, mind-curers, hypnotizers, 
 or the representatives of any other 
 school of therapeutic endeavor, does not 
 our constitutional right to the pursuit 
 of happiness warrant us in such experi- 
 ments ? There are many reasons for be- 
 lieving that it is wiser to trust a regu- 
 larly educated physician than one that 
 is irregularly educated or not educated 
 at all, and unless the irregulars are in 
 at the cure reasonably often they need 
 not be much dreaded, for they will not 
 get much custom. 
 
 If it relieves us to turn now and then 
 from the traditional dangers of the reg- 
 ular physician's half-knowledge to the 
 confident ignorance of the quack, is it 
 quite fair to rule that there shall be no 
 quacks for us to turn to ? Every person 
 with a new theory is a quack until the 
 value of the theory is demonstrated, but 
 if all the quacks are arbitrarily sup- 
 pressed how are their theories to be 
 tested ? It is right enough that the 
 1 60 
 
The Mysteries of Life 
 
 medical profession should be a despot- 
 ism, but in the name of much that we 
 know and much more that we hope to 
 know, let Massachusetts hesitate before 
 she forbids it to be a despotism tem- 
 pered by quacks. 
 
 One danger on the other side is that 
 misplaced confidence in " sure cures " 
 or the infallibility of new-found methods 
 r lay cause too-credulous people to ignore Butbecare, 
 t he dictates of common sense. For fear, ^"^ «^?^«>*- 
 for example, that the multiplication of 
 patent processes for the extirpation of 
 the rum habit may cause unwary indi- 
 viduals to suppose that it is no longer 
 a strenuously undesirable habit to ac- 
 quire, this seems a reasonable place to 
 speak a few words on the subject of 
 temperance. Temperance lecturers and 
 foes of the demon rum have spoken 
 exhaustively about the disadvantages 
 of inebriety, but not half enough stress 
 seems to have been laid hitherto on the 
 great inconvenience of being incapacitat- 
 ed to enjoy the reasonable pleasures of 
 drinking. 
 
 i6i 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 There is a pretty general agreement 
 of the authorities that a man who has 
 once thoroughly abused his privileges 
 as a wine-drinking animal, never can 
 regain them. He can stop drinking 
 altogether, but a moderate and whole- 
 some use of wine is something which 
 he may not safely attempt. If he 
 does attempt it, conscientious persons 
 will not like to drink with him, for, of 
 course, there is no pleasure in sharing 
 the cups of a man to whom alcohol, 
 meshed in whatever sunshine, is a poi- 
 son. A reformed drunkard is a great 
 deal better than a drunkard who has not 
 reformed, but, beside a man who has 
 never needed reforming, he is a second- 
 rate thing. One considerable source of 
 legitimate gratification he has used up. 
 There is a weak spot in him, and he 
 must so govern his life as to keep it 
 from undue exposure. He is not to 
 drink the bride's health at the wedding, 
 and even if his long-lost friend whom 
 i^ouliesom. he hasn't seen since he left college hap- 
 %rm7d. peiis into his office he cannot go out and 
 have so much as a cocktail with him. 
 162 
 
The Mysteries of Life 
 
 Of course, cocktails are detestable 
 things to drink at all times, and thrice 
 and four times detestable in office hours, 
 but there are occasions when one's feel- 
 ings seem to demand some reasonable 
 disarrangement of the insides as an aid to 
 expression. Perhaps it is a survival of 
 the old habit of sacrifice that prompts a 
 normal man to celebrate joyous occa- 
 sions by some disturbance of his vital or- 
 gans. At any rate, there is no doubt 
 about the prompting, nor yet that the 
 most feasible and ordinary expression it 
 finds is in taking a drink— which is prob- 
 ably the foundation for Byron's cele- 
 brated aphorism, that 
 
 *' There's naught no doubt so much the spirit calms 
 As rum and true religion. " 
 
 It is a pity about the man who cannot 
 conscientiously take a cocktail whenever 
 a long-lost friend returns. It is a dis- 
 comfort to him not to drink the baby's 
 health at the christening ; not to raise a 
 brimming bumper to the bride at the 
 wedding breakfast; not to roll back a 
 decade or two when he sits down the 
 163 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 night before commencement with the 
 remnant, still considerable, of the band 
 who were young when he was. So far as 
 this disuse of reasonable daily potations 
 goes, the reformed man is no great loser, 
 but possibly even a gainer, since the doc- 
 tors are coming more and more to the 
 opinion that, regarding merely the neces- 
 sities of man's health, little or no alcohol 
 is plenty enough for him. But with the 
 great occasions it is different. There 
 are not many of them. Not often at all 
 does the conscientious workingman hear 
 nunc est bibendum ringing in the familiar 
 tones of his still, small voice. 
 
 To reform is indefinitely better than 
 to be the creature of a perverted thirst, 
 just as amputation is better than to suc- 
 cumb to gangrene ; but the amputated 
 limb is permanently off, and the unde- 
 niable inconvenience of not having it is 
 to be added to the pain of amputation, 
 as an excellent argument in favor of tak- 
 ing good care of it in the first place. 
 
 164 
 
XI 
 
 MISSING SENSES AND 
 NEW ONES 
 
MISSING SENSES AND 
 NEW ONES 
 
 MAN died the other day of 
 whom it was told, in all his 
 obituary notices, that in his 
 physical equipment there was 
 this curious defect, that he 
 could not hear the sound of S, or of the 
 shrill notes. He would be walking in 
 the street with a policeman at night tivo senses 
 sometimes, and would see the officer go ^^ZnlidnH 
 through the motions of blowing a whis- ^"''^'' 
 tie. The whole neighborhood might 
 echo with the shrill noise, but not a 
 sound would reach him. That was bad, 
 but it was a mere bagatelle compared 
 with another thing that was the matter 
 with him. The poor gentleman had the 
 intellectual defect of being unable to 
 see a joke, even when it took form in 
 the newspaper of which he was editor. 
 One day one of his reporters, in de- 
 X67 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 scribing an tgg of extra size, mentioned 
 that it had all been laid by one hen. 
 He sent for that reporter next day and 
 asked him if he really supposed that two 
 hens could lay a single tgg between 
 them. 
 
 That two inabilities so curiously anal- 
 ogous should coexist in the same person 
 furnishes an almost irresistible oppor- 
 tunity for the construction of didactic 
 parallels. It is worth noting that the 
 unfortunate gentleman was at great 
 pains to remedy his physical defect and 
 to obviate its consequences, but his in- 
 tellectual — or would you call it spiritual ? 
 — infirmity he seems not to have at- 
 tempted to cure. It shows how green 
 our civilization still is, and how much 
 the world has to learn, that no treat- 
 ment has been devised to remedy a de- 
 fective sense of humor. The deaf are 
 taught to hear with their eyes, the dumb 
 are taught to speak with their fingers 
 and to talk actually with their vocal 
 organs. If the blind have the least 
 glimmer of light left to them the very 
 utmost is made of it, but the man who 
 
 1 68 
 
Missing Senses and New Ones 
 
 cannot see a joke gets no help at all, and 
 is exceptionally lucky if he even meets 
 with sympathy. Let us hope it will not 
 be so much longer ; but that by hypno- 
 tism, or Christian science, or some un- 
 expected application of electricity, the 
 seat of humor may be reached and 
 quickened. Love is the great sweetener 
 that makes living tolerable and dying a 
 good deal more comfortable than most 
 people think, but after love, is there 
 any other corrective of existence that is 
 fit to compare with humor ? It greases 
 the wheels so ! It makes so many bur- 
 dens endurable that must have been 
 crushing without it ! 
 
 And if the lack of it is detrimental to 
 anyone, it is so above all others to an 
 American. It will not be seriously dis- 
 puted that Americans have the sense of 
 humor more generally developed than 
 any other people (unless it is the Irish) ; 
 but of all people they need it most, for 
 the wear and tear of American life is 
 prodigious, and the best friends of the 
 American climate do not vaunt it as a 
 conservator of energy. Irish humor owes 
 169 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 its development, perhaps, to a protracted 
 scarcity of the means of material enjoy- 
 ment. Where people cannot find pleas- 
 ure in what they possess, or what they 
 consume, it behooves them to have what 
 fun they may with what they think and 
 say. And that the Irish do ; as witness 
 Mr. Frederic's report of a remark of 
 the late Baron Dowse, that it was better 
 to have a small career in Ireland than a 
 great one in England, because in Ire- 
 land when one said funny things people 
 comprehended them, and that made life 
 worth living. 
 
 Of course, when humor overflows its 
 limits, and from being an aid to serious 
 existence becomes its end, it looses its 
 savor and ceases to be of use. It is 
 no longer humor, then, but something 
 coarser and more material. It is not the 
 grease on the wheels any more, but the 
 load on the wagon. It is with humor as 
 it is with piety, it is liable to degenerate 
 into self-worship, and then it is all up 
 with it. " Very great is the difference," 
 severely says Noah Porter, " whether we 
 see through the disguise, the look of 
 170 
 
Missing Senses and New Ones 
 
 which the frivolous Bohemian can never 
 rid himself, or the broad, swimming eyes 
 of love with which Hood always looked 
 through all his fun, or the sad earnest- 
 ness into which Lamb relaxed as soon 
 as he had stammered out his joke or his 
 pun." Very great the difference, truly. 
 The publican may have brought his 
 sense of humor with him when he came 
 out of the temple, but the Pharisee 
 didn't. His was lost. Humor is incon- 
 sistent with his frame of mind. 
 
 Next to the sense of humor, which, 
 after all, is only a branch of sight, the 
 single sense that seems most indispensa- 
 ble to man's enjoyment, though not to ^, 
 
 . •* ■' ' ® The accont- 
 
 his usefulness, is his hearing:. The e^reat j>iishment 
 majority of people can see, hear, smell, deafness. 
 taste, and touch. For the last three 
 senses to be seriously impaired is un- 
 common. Multitudes of people have 
 imperfect vision, but most of them are 
 so helped by eye-glasses that they make 
 out very well. Imperfect hearing is 
 much less common than imperfect sight, 
 but it is a much worse scrape when it 
 
 J7I 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 exists, because so little has been done to 
 help it. If a man has any sight left in 
 him at all, the spectacle-makers can fit 
 him to enjoy the society and share the 
 amusements of his fellows ; but if he is 
 deaf, even in moderation, he may as well 
 make up his mind to be in a considerable 
 measure independent of society. It was 
 a deaf person who was asked in what he 
 took the most pleasure, and replied : " In 
 reading, eating and drinking, the sight 
 of my children, games and sports, and in 
 the prospect of death." It was another 
 deaf man who spoke of the measure of 
 satisfaction he found in talking with a 
 single companion ; but he added, " But 
 hell comes into the room with the third 
 person." 
 
 To be handsomely and agreeably deaf is 
 a very elegant accomplishment, fit to ex- 
 ercise social talents of a high order. The 
 person who aspires to it must check, in a 
 considerable measure, a deaf person's 
 natural tendency to shun society and 
 flock by himself. He must continue to 
 mix with his fellows, and when he does 
 so, must in so far conceal his infirmity 
 172 
 
Missing Senses and New Ones 
 
 as to make it a cause of discomfort to 
 none but himself. However little he 
 hears he must never seem unduly desir- 
 ous to hear more, or yet indifferent to 
 what is being said. However impossible 
 it may be for him to take part in conversa- 
 tion he must neither permit himself to be 
 bored nor to appear so. It is his business 
 always to have the means of entertain- 
 ing himself in his own head, so that 
 while he continues in company his mind 
 may be constantly and agreeably occu- 
 pied, however little he may hear. In al- 
 most any company a deaf man to whom 
 things that have been said have to be 
 repeated is a check to free discourse ; a 
 deaf man who is eager to hear and can- 
 not is a discomforting sight ; a deaf man 
 who is bored and wishes himself else- 
 where is a depressing influence; in 
 either case he had better go elsewhere. 
 The tolerable deaf man is one who, 
 being in congenial company, can give 
 pleasure by his mere presence, as he can 
 take pleasure in merely having his 
 friends about him. His thoughts must 
 run, not on what he cannot hear, but on 
 
 173 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 what he sees and feels, and upon the 
 ideas that come into his own mind. A 
 deaf man who is always able to entertain 
 himself, and who is always glad, and 
 never over-anxious to know what is go- 
 ing on about him, has reasonable grounds 
 for believing that at least he is not an 
 incubus upon society. If to his negative 
 accomplishments he can add the habit of 
 having something worth hearing to say, 
 he can even hope to be considered agree- 
 able, and to have his society as welcome 
 to ordinary selfish people as to the more 
 benevolent. 
 
 Whether general society is worth cul- 
 tivating on these terms is another ques- 
 tion, and the opinion that there is more 
 of self-discipline in it than amusement 
 seems not without some basis. Still, 
 deaf people are bound to keep as much 
 alive as they can, and it does not do for 
 people who want to keep alive to live a 
 life of too much solitude. Therefore, it 
 is a good plan for deaf people to culti- 
 vate a taste for anything that has a 
 social side to it, but to the successful 
 prosecution of which good hearing is not 
 
 174 
 
Missing Senses and New Ones 
 
 essential. Women, on whom deafness 
 doubtless bears more hardly than on 
 men, and who usually bear it with better 
 grace, are likely to find profit in cultivat- 
 ing, for one thing, a taste for dress ; for 
 good clothes look as well on a deaf 
 woman as on another, and give as much 
 pleasure to the wearer as if she could 
 hear. Moreover, the gratification inci- 
 dent to fine raiment being incomplete 
 until it has been shown, the possession 
 of ravishing toilets is a constant and 
 wholesome incentive to their owner to 
 brave the discomforts of her infirmity 
 and go among people who have eyes in 
 their heads. The cultivation of the dress 
 faculty is less important, but not unim- 
 portant, for men. Both men and women 
 who are deaf do well to cultivate a taste 
 for all sorts of games, intellectual and 
 athletic. A deaf man can play whist, or 
 chess, or watch a horse-race. So, too, 
 he can ride a horse, pull an oar, wield 
 a tennis-bat, shoot, bowl, golf, and, with 
 proper coaching, be a useful member of 
 a base-ball nine. 
 
 Deafness tends to the formation of 
 
 175 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 fixed habits of life. It is less exasperat- 
 ing at home than abroad ; among famil- 
 iar scenes and faces than where every 
 sight suggests a question, and reminds 
 the would-be questioner that whatever 
 answer he gets he will not hear it. The 
 traveller needs all his faculties. The 
 more he sees the more questions he 
 wants to ask ; and the more new people 
 he comes across, the more eager he is to 
 test their quality. That is why the fool's 
 paradise has a special snake in it for the 
 deaf man. He can travel, of course, and 
 get pleasure out of it, but he does it at 
 a disadvantage, and will hardly choose it 
 as an amusement exceptionally fit for 
 him to cultivate. 
 
 But if there are some senses a man 
 may lose, we are taught in these days 
 that there are probably whole sets of 
 them which he may hope sometime or 
 other to attain. Some are to be re- 
 gained; others he has never developed 
 yet. A favorite contemporary explana- 
 tion of human abilities that are so far 
 out of common that they seem occult, is 
 176 
 
Missing Senses and New Ones 
 
 the suggestion that they indicate the 
 survival of senses or instincts that be- 
 longed to man in his earlier stages of 
 development, and were lost as he pro- 
 gressed. The signs of such lost faculties, 
 it is averred, are still to be seen in the 
 lower animals, as when the carrier-pigeon 
 shapes its flight without a compass, or a 
 dog comes home a hundred miles across 
 country without asking the way. The 
 reason why such faculties have been lost 
 to humanity is understood to be that 
 men have ceased to need them. The 
 development of language has permitted 
 some to decay, and the decreased haz- 
 ards of human existence have made 
 others unnecessary, and they have dis- 
 appeared through disuse. In their place 
 have come special aptitudes suited to 
 the new conditions of existence, such as 
 the reading faculty, a miracle of optical 
 training, but too common to be won- 
 dered at. That, though, fails a little of 
 being a perfect illustration of these sub- 
 stituted faculties, because it is deliber- 
 ately and methodically acquired. There 
 are other faculties, and the signs and 
 
 177 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 promise of still others, which are more 
 nearly analogous to the lost animal in- 
 stincts in being a sub-conscious develop- 
 ment, incident to the conveniences or 
 the peculiar perils of contemporary hu- 
 man life. One such curious faculty is 
 the familiar ability to awaken at a set 
 time, which is an outgrowth of the mul- 
 tiplication of time-pieces and of the need 
 of acting on the minute. 
 
 The existence of a still newer and 
 more curious faculty was noted the other 
 day by a newspaper correspondent, in a 
 dissertation on contemporary existence 
 as studied in the exceptionally contem- 
 poraneous city of Chicago. He remarks 
 two developments of it, which he calls 
 The cable- the bridge and cable-car instinct. A 
 
 car and *^ 
 
 bridge in- vast amouut of daily local travel in Chi- 
 
 stincts. Ai • T-k • 
 
 cago crosses the Chicago River. But 
 commerce makes constant use of the 
 Chicago River, and the travel across 
 it goes over draw-bridges. The well- 
 known propensity of draw-bridges to be 
 open when you want to cross them is 
 reported to have developed, in some of 
 the inhabitants of Chicago, an instinct 
 
 178 
 
Missing Senses and New Ones 
 
 It 
 
 that admonishes them when a bridge 
 that they are approaching is about to 
 turn, so that they can hurry and cross 
 it in time. What has stimulated the 
 development of the bridge instinct is 
 that in Chicago you must usually cross 
 a bridge to catch a train, and to be 
 " bridged " means usually to miss the 
 train. 
 
 "In the same way," says the corre- 
 spondent, "the man with the cable-car 
 instinct can tell when a cable -car is 
 coming, even when the bell does not 
 ring, and so save his life." Of course 
 there is a suggestion of humor about 
 these cases, but there is nothing scien- 
 tifically amiss about the development 
 they attest. The growth of a cable-car 
 instinct (which in many American cities 
 will be a trolley-car instinct) is likely to 
 be promoted as other instincts are, by 
 the survival of the fittest. Just as the 
 infant monkey who doesn't clutch the 
 limb, falls and is killed, so the American 
 street -babe, whose trolley-car instinct 
 is defective, fails to grow up. Nor is it 
 more to expect of the sub-conscious in- 
 179 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 telligence to take note of passing cars 
 while the conscious mind is otherwise 
 engrossed, than to expect the faculties of 
 a sleeper to measure the lapse of time. 
 
 It is only within the present genera- 
 tion that the inability to see an electric 
 current has been a source of peril to 
 man. Surely we are entitled to look for 
 an instinct that will meet that case too, 
 so that a man may perceive what is 
 going through a stray wire before he 
 tak^s hold of it and gets killed. 
 
 1 80 
 
XII 
 
 A SERIOUS TIME OF LIFE 
 
A SERIOUS TIME OF LIFE 
 
 IHAT is a serious time "of life 
 when you begin to realize 
 that the man you are is not 
 the man you hope to become, 
 but the man you have shown Thata^vk- 
 
 . . . ivardpericd 
 
 yourself to be ; a definite quantity with 'ivhenyou 
 precise limitations, and not a great one. do^ieany-^^ 
 We all compare ourselves at greater or '''""^■''^^• 
 less distances with people in books and in 
 history. There is a time when it is a de- 
 lightful reassurance to learn from the lives 
 of Keats, Pitt, Hamilton, or Henry Clay, 
 th^-t ^e are not too young to be famous, 
 an t' at men no older than we have 
 immcirtalized themselves as poets or as 
 statesmen. Again there comes a time 
 when, we go to books for reassurances of 
 another sort, and pluck up our fainting 
 hopes as we read how Grant, Sherman, 
 Cromwell, and Nathaniel Hawthorne 
 
 183 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 reached our time of life without distin- 
 guishing themselves beyond common, 
 and yet lived to take rank among the im- 
 mortals. There may be hope for us, we 
 feel, for all of our forty odd years. And 
 yet the late -blooming soldiers should 
 not encourage us unduly, for a great 
 soldier is only developed by war, and 
 war, through no fault of his, may be very 
 long in coming. 
 
 The serious time of disquieting reali- 
 zation comes to a man between these 
 other two seasons. He has passed the 
 time when any deficiencies in his work 
 are palliated by his youth. Nobody can 
 speak of him as " promising " any more. 
 His blossoms are no longer a credit to 
 him ; he must show fruit, or admit that 
 he has none to show, recognizing that 
 the natural inference based on experi- 
 ence is that a man of his age who has 
 done nothing that conspicuously justi- 
 fies his existence never will do anything 
 of that sort. A reasonable progress is 
 still possible to him, of course, but in 
 the natural course it is expected to be 
 the continuation and perfection of what 
 184 
 
A Serious Time of Life 
 
 is behind him. A new quality, new 
 phases of character, unsuspected talent, 
 he may develop, but no one expects him 
 to. If he himself expects to, it must be 
 because he knows more about himself 
 than he has disclosed. The story of the 
 friend of William H. Prescott, who re- 
 gretted that that gentleman's abilities 
 were being put to no considerable use is a 
 case in point. Prescott was approaching 
 the serious period without showing any 
 results. The reason was that he was at 
 work on a ten-year task of history writ- 
 ing. Presently the results came all to- 
 gether. 
 
 Ordinarily we do not look for matured 
 fruits of a man's intelligence before he is 
 thirty-five. Before that age he is at lib- 
 erty to be clever. From then to forty 
 is, in most cases, the serious time when 
 he must do something important or else 
 submit to be stamped as ordinary. If 
 he cannot show power before he is forty, 
 no one, except perhaps his wife, is going 
 to believe it is in him. He cannot expect 
 to be rated after that either by his hopes 
 or his aspirations. 
 
 i8S 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 A good many men, conscious of their 
 impending doom, gather their forces 
 during this period for a sink -or -swim 
 struggle to assert themselves, and put 
 their fate to the final touch. Among 
 those who succeed the most usual sort 
 of success is financial. Men who get 
 very rich are apt to make their fortunes 
 late in life. Whatever the sort of success, 
 though, that comes after forty, whether 
 it pertains to art, or literature, or gen- 
 eralship, or statesmanship, or finance, it 
 is but the harvesting of a crop already 
 sown. Men's purpose after the serious 
 time is to reap what they have consci- 
 ously or unconsciously sown, and carry 
 what they have got to the most advan- 
 tageous market. It is the discovery of 
 a fit market rather than the production 
 of different commodities, that has been 
 at the bottom of most of the success that 
 has seemed late-won. 
 
 There are some persons of more than 
 
 the average abilities who will excuse 
 
 themselves for approaching the serious 
 
 time of life without any very noted ac- 
 
 iS6 
 
A Serious Time of Life 
 
 complishment, on the ground that they 
 have always had to drudge, and have 
 never had any spare time. It may be 
 that in some cases the excuse will be 
 valid. There was a man once, as every- 
 one will remember, who expressed him- 
 self as indifferent to the necessaries of 
 life if he could only have its luxuries. It 
 is a mere subdivision of his sentiment to 
 say, " Give us our spare time, and we 
 don't care what becomes of the rest." 
 
 It must seem sometimes to everyone 
 who accomplishes anything, that what- The great 
 ever he does that is really worth while ^andvaiue 
 has to be done in his spare time. It "(im^J'^ 
 seems to be the intention that what a 
 man does in the way of a regular task 
 shall just about keep him alive and en- 
 able him to hold his own ; and that what- 
 ever progress he makes, if he makes any, 
 is to result from his use of his leisure. 
 Of course, there is no particular fun in 
 plodding, every-day task-work, and, of 
 course, there is a great deal that is exhil- 
 arating in progress ; so it is reasonable 
 enough for anyone to value the half- 
 hours he gets ahead in, more than the 
 
 187 
 
U^indfalls of Observation 
 
 hours he spends in merely keeping up. 
 There was an excellent illustration of the 
 superiority of the fruits of leisure in the 
 story that is told of Lowell's grateful re- 
 ply to the young man who thanked him 
 on his seventieth birthday for what he 
 had done as a teacher. " I am glad you 
 said that ; I've been wondering if I 
 hadn't wasted half my life." He might 
 have been sure, though, that his teaching 
 time had not been wasted, even if the 
 taught had made no sign ; for teaching 
 was his task, and without a task there 
 is no such thing as spare time, and the 
 things a man can only do in spare hours 
 never get done at all. 
 
 It was complained at the New York 
 Horse Show last fall, that the horses 
 could not jump properly because there 
 was no chance to warm them up. A 
 horse who has it in him to jump seven 
 feet isn't going to do it off-hand as he 
 comes from his stall. He is more likely 
 to do it after reasonable exercise at five 
 and six feet. The less jumps don't tell in 
 his record, but they do in his legs. Of 
 course, there can be too much of a good 
 1 88 
 
A Serious Time of Life 
 
 thing, and it is possible to get all the 
 jump out of him over four-foot hurdles. 
 In like manner, it is possible for clever 
 people to drudge away their wits. " No 
 task no spare time ; no spare time no 
 progress," is the rule ; but it has to be 
 remembered that, so far as progress is 
 concerned, too much task may prove, at 
 least, as bad as none. 
 
 Of course, being human, we all want 
 the benefits of spare time without the 
 trouble of hoarding it. Most of us 
 grumble about the strength we waste 
 over unprofitable tasks, and think with 
 greed of the enormous progress that we 
 would make if we could afford or dared 
 to put in all our time in doing what was 
 really progressive. Some of us, having 
 the courage of our convictions, do 
 achieve increased leisure, and put it to 
 good use ; but I suspect that most of us 
 need some sort of compulsion to put our 
 machinery in motion, and find that when 
 our other tasks have been abandoned 
 our spare time becomes a task itself and 
 loses its character, so that its products 
 are not the same. A case that is familiar 
 189 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 is that of Charles Lamb, eminent among 
 the conservators of spare time, who 
 longed so ardently for his release from 
 his clerk's desk, and finally found his in- 
 creased leisure so troublesome a boon. 
 
 Novels have been written in the spare 
 time of their authors, but people who get 
 very far into novel-writing are apt to 
 make that their task and find other occu- 
 pation for their leisure. Novel-writing 
 is rather too continuous to be an ideal 
 spare-time employment. It isn't one of 
 those things, like religion, in which peo- 
 ple often seem to make better progress 
 by working odd half-hours than others 
 do who devote their whole time to it. 
 
 A razor doesn't need as much grinding 
 as a broad-axe, and it appears that a very 
 moderate task is sufficient to put some 
 people in perfect condition to use spare 
 time to the greatest advantage ; which 
 amounts to the same as saying that prac- 
 tically all the work of such persons is di- 
 rectly progressive. When a man reaches 
 the point where he requires no tasks, can 
 improve only three or four of his spare 
 hours daily, and can conscientiously loaf 
 190 
 
A Serious Time of Life 
 
 and invite his soul the rest of the time, 
 he has attained an enviable pitch of hu- 
 man felicity. Old men are that way 
 sometimes ; particularly aged poets. 
 There is a theory that the imagination 
 thrives on leisure, and that imaginative 
 writers profit better by being very mod- 
 erate in their daily demands on their 
 wits. A favorite illustration of this the- 
 ory is the reported case of a New Jersey 
 novelist, of high contemporary renown, 
 who writes two hours a day, and has the 
 rest of his time to spare. Nature fur- 
 nishes a parallel case in the geysers of 
 the Yellowstone, some of which take 
 twenty-three hours to get ready and only 
 spout fifteen minutes. 
 
 But spare time, when it comes in such 
 bulk, ceases to be a luxury, and it usually 
 happens that men who have no set tasks 
 make tasks for themselves, and burden 
 themselves with horses, or the care of 
 property, or politics, or yachts, or hunt- 
 ing, or courtship, or flirtation ; being 
 willing to endure some pretence of a 
 regular occupation, for the sake of its 
 blessed intermissions. 
 
 191 
 
XIII 
 
 THE QUESTION OF AN 
 OCCUPATION 
 
THE QUESTION OF AN 
 OCCUPATION 
 
 |NE of the ingenious persons 
 who make interesting para- 
 graphs in the newspapers, 
 put into a Boston paper, the 
 other day, a tale of a well-to- 
 QO gentleman who had a son. For whom, 
 when he came of age and had finished 
 with the customary educational prelimi- 
 naries, his father cast about for an occu- 
 pation ; and himself having no business 
 except to nurse his income, he wrote to 
 twenty-four friends whose industrial ef- 
 forts had resulted successfully, asking 
 each what he thought was a good busi- 
 ness, or profession, for a youth to start ^^"f^y^^^^^ 
 in. The paragrapher's story is that each 
 correspondent, in his reply, complained 
 of his own calling, and advised the in- 
 quirer to try something else. Whereat 
 
 195 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 the father was disconcerted, and at last 
 account the son was still idle. 
 
 The story is reasonable enough to be 
 true. It seems not to lie in the average 
 man who knows what success in his par- 
 ticular line of activity has cost him, to 
 believe easily in another person's ability 
 to pay the necessary price, escape fatal 
 misadventures, and be favored by the in- 
 dispensable lucky chances. Moreover, 
 the thing that he has done looks small 
 to him when he recalls the continuous- 
 ness of the effort that accomplished it. 
 When he makes his estimate of results 
 he usually counts in dollars and cents, 
 and is apt to overlook what every sincere 
 moralist is bound to regard as the most 
 important result of all, the effect of his 
 exertions upon himself. The effort which 
 has made him " successful " in the more 
 limited sense, has developed his strength 
 and his manhood. That was, or should 
 have been, the result that the inquiring 
 Boston parent sought for his son. Recog- 
 nizing that to nurse an income is an old- 
 gentlemanly avocation, and hardly fit to 
 bring out the latent qualities of youth, 
 196 
 
The Question of an Occupation 
 
 he wanted, doubtless, to put his youngster 
 somewhere where burden-bearing would 
 make him sturdy ; but, like the rest of 
 us, he wanted the sturdiness to be inci- 
 dent to the acquisition of satisfactory 
 pecuniary gains. 
 
 Generally speaking, our American con- 
 ception of profitable work is still some- 
 thing that makes direct cash returns. 
 We are perfectly aware that character is 
 valuable, and that hard work is almost 
 indispensable to its growth, yet our im- 
 pulse is to measure the value of labor in 
 coin. Even when we don't need, or 
 really care about, the money our work 
 might bring, we are apt to persist, from 
 mere force of habit, in measuring it 
 primarily by this standard, and second- 
 arily, if at all, by its results in ourselves. 
 The truth is, as the experience of the 
 Boston father illustrates, that there is 
 scarcely any calling the mere money re- 
 turns of which will seem to its successful 
 professors worth the pains they have cost. 
 " I have had to work at this job ; " each 
 of the Boston man's correspondents 
 seems to have said ; " I had no choice, 
 
 197 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 for I had to make a living. But with 
 your son it is different. He can afford 
 to choose something else." 
 
 There is one sort of occupation for 
 the well-to-do which does not get the 
 credit that fairly belongs to it. It is 
 a prevalent sentiment that men who 
 have money enough should get out of 
 business. What is the use, the feeling 
 is, of going on and making more money 
 when you have enough already ? But 
 T/if conven- though a busincss at which money is not 
 
 tenceo/kav- . , , • 
 
 ing: a bust- made is not a good busmess to be m, 
 family. ' thcrc is a great deal more in business 
 than mere money making. A man who 
 buys and sells, or manufactures and sells, 
 is bound to keep in touch with his fellow- 
 beings. He is bound, too, to keep his 
 wits about him and to stay alive ; so long 
 as he has control of important commer- 
 cial interests he has power, and the more 
 complete his control, and the greater the 
 interests subject to it, the greater the 
 power. There is no other high induce- 
 ment for a man of leisure to go into pol- 
 itics, except to acquire power .and use it 
 wisely ; and if he can get more power 
 19S 
 
The Question of an Occupation 
 
 in selling groceries or meat, or making 
 paper or cloth or soap, or running rail- 
 roads or banks, it seems a bootless 
 change for him to abandon those occu- 
 pations, or fail to train his sons in them, 
 merely because they are money-making 
 employments and he has money enough. 
 No family is so rich that it can afford 
 not to work. If its members cannot 
 work at what they wish to, they should 
 do what poorer people have to do, and 
 work at what they can. The American 
 sentiment that everyone ought to have 
 something to do, is a sound sentiment, 
 and the Americans who live up to it are 
 the ones who are the most useful to their 
 country at home and most creditable to 
 it abroad. Accordingly, a family with 
 an hereditary business seems to be in an 
 exceptionally felicitous situation. Such 
 a family not only has possession of an 
 industrial machine that will produce an 
 income, but it has a training-school for 
 its young men, and a constant incen- 
 tive to perpetuate itself and keep up its 
 standard as a family. It is an advantage 
 about a business that it is exacting. A 
 199 
 
IVindfalls of Observation 
 
 family may own townships in the country, 
 or squares in town, or have advantageous 
 collections of securities in the vaults of 
 a bank. Either of these possessions will 
 stand a reasonable amount of neglect 
 without very serious detriment, but a 
 family with a business has got to sit up 
 with it. Such a family can have its full 
 share of play, but it cannot give itself 
 over wholly to the demoralizing pursuit 
 of pleasure. It has responsibilities, neg- 
 lect of which is too perilous to be risked. 
 Fortune has its hostages. It must keep 
 up with the times or be run over. 
 
 To be sure, the brains of the family 
 may run out, or its energies fail ; and in 
 that case the business that has been its 
 feeder may quickly become a drain. If 
 the family has gone hopelessly to seed, 
 of course the sooner it gets out of active 
 life the better. To close out its business 
 then, is common sense. It is quite a 
 different matter to cut loose from it while 
 the family is still strong, and shows no 
 signs of enfeeblement. That is to invite 
 degeneration, to throw away the appa- 
 ratus oy which the family has got its 
 200 
 
The Question of an Occupation 
 
 strength, and wait for sloth to over- 
 whelm it. 
 
 But there are many rich families that 
 got rich out of land or stocks, and have 
 no hereditary family business. Every 
 year the American colleges are turning 
 loose increasing numbers of the scions 
 of such houses with the elements of edu- 
 cation in them, but with ready-made in- 
 comes large enough to live on, and no 
 inherited business obligation, nor any 
 special propensity toward any particular 
 kind of work. A particular field in 
 which all good Americans hope to see 
 
 , .... , Politics 
 
 such young men venture is politics, and might do, 
 especially municipal politics. If the 
 American young man who loves his work 
 for his work's sake, and need not get his 
 bread by it, should elect to take a hand 
 in the government of cities, the result 
 might be comforting to that respectable 
 body of citizens who are tired of being 
 governed by men who are in that busi- 
 ness primarily because they find it a 
 source of income. Of course, when the 
 man who loves his work for his work's 
 
 201 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 sake comes into competition in municipal 
 politics, as elsewhere, with the man who 
 is working for his dinner, his coat must 
 come off, metaphorically speaking, if he 
 is to accomplish anything. That is the 
 beauty of it. It would be hard work ; 
 harder than yacht-racing or even polo ; 
 less vainly amusing, and less cheaply 
 glorious, and fitter, on that account, to 
 satisfy the aspirations of an energetic 
 and devoted spirit. 
 
 But for all that, theoretically, we expect 
 our youth to go into politics and hope 
 they will, it cannot be said for us that we 
 if we hadn't givc them any urgent amount of practical 
 '^ilto^^P encouragement. At the close of a din- 
 f/anf^^^ ner given the other day by the friends of 
 an eminent railroad president, to cele- 
 brate his completion of a quarter of a 
 century of railroad work, the beneficia- 
 ry got on unaccustomed legs and told 
 how it was that he happened to be a 
 railroad man at all. He had been a law- 
 yer, he said, with decided leanings tow- 
 ard political life, and prospects of polit- 
 ical success, when two eminent railroad 
 men, a father and his son, approached 
 
 202 
 
ne Qiiestion of an Occupation 
 
 him. The son said : " We want your ser- 
 vices." The father said : " Politics don't 
 pay. The business of the future in this 
 country is railroading." The upshot of 
 it was that he dropped politics in great 
 measure, and became the attorney for 
 the railroad of which he afterward be- 
 came president. The moral of Mr. De- 
 pew's story seemed to be that he was a 
 brand snatched from the burning, and 
 that Commodore Vanderbilt's word fitly 
 spoken had turned him from certain dis- 
 appointment and sorrow to a success 
 that was worth while. 
 
 The fable teaches, or at least sug- 
 gests, how very much we Americans ex- 
 pect of our politicians. Nine-tenths of 
 us are ready to admit that Commodore 
 Vanderbilt's observation was accurately 
 truthful, and to consider Mr. Depew's 
 present position many times more felici- 
 tous than it could have been if he had 
 not accepted the Commodore's dictum 
 and taken his advice. We, too, believe 
 that politics don't pay, and we do our 
 best to make the facts justify that opin- 
 ion. We take it for granted that if a 
 203 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 man can do anything else, he had better 
 keep out of politics, and that if a man of 
 ability does go into politics he is wasting 
 his opportunities, and is probably some- 
 thing of a rascal as well. We not only 
 believe that our contemporary politics 
 are dirty work, but by our attitude tow- 
 ard them we insist that they shall be 
 dirty work. If there is anything in public 
 life that is worth attaining, we want to see 
 it go to someone who is not a politician. 
 We want our collectors and postmasters 
 to be business men who have proved 
 their competence by sticking close to 
 business. We want our foreign ministers 
 to be gentlemen of polish, skilled in let- 
 ters and languages, and uncontaminated 
 with too much familiarity with election- 
 eering methods. We know that govern- 
 ors and presidents cannot be elected 
 without organization, but we insist that 
 the proper men for those offices are men 
 who are not subject to the sordid influ- 
 ences of a *' machine." Our ideal public 
 officer is a person who reluctantly per- 
 mits himself to be dragged from the con- 
 sideration of his private affairs to serve 
 204 
 
The Question of an Occupation 
 
 the public. Sharing Commodore Van- 
 derbilt's frank opinion that " politics 
 don't pay," we regard a young man who 
 proposes any sacrifice of his pecuniary 
 prospects to the hope of a public career 
 with much the same sort of pitying con- 
 tempt that is accorded to the business 
 man who neglects legitimate sources of 
 emolument for thedisastrous excitements 
 of the bucket-shop. We believe that a 
 system by which the politicians get the 
 offices is a corrupt system, and yet we 
 are aware that the offices and the con- 
 sciousness of duty done are the only re- 
 wards that political industry can honestly 
 attain ; and we know, besides, that po- 
 litical endeavor takes time, and that the 
 consciousness of duty done will not sup- 
 port mundane life. If a man neglects 
 his chances of worldly well-being to carry 
 the Gospel to the unconverted, we think 
 he is a saint ; but if he neglects them to 
 carry the ward, we think he is a fool, or 
 if not, a knave anyhow ; and yet a coun^ 
 try's political salvation is hardly less im- 
 portant than the salvation of its individ- 
 ual citizens, nor should politics be ranked 
 205 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 much behind reUgion in the opportunities 
 they offer to a devoted soul. 
 
 Of course there is some excuse for us. 
 The rapid development of the resources 
 of a great country, with concurrent ac- 
 cumulation of great fortunes and multi- 
 plication of opportunities for money-mak- 
 ing, have thrown the political profession 
 into the shade. It has been found, es- 
 pecially in the cities, that offices as a 
 means of livelihood have had attractions 
 chiefly for second- or third - rate men, 
 who have done much to justify our low 
 opinion of politicians in general. In the 
 country districts, where money-making 
 has been slower, office - holding has 
 charms for a better class of men, and has 
 kept in better repute. But both in and 
 out of cities there is reason to believe 
 that the professional politician does a 
 great deal better by us than we have 
 any title to expect. 
 
 We scorn his avocation, and are al- 
 ways ready to believe that he follows it 
 from the lowest motives. We do not want 
 to do his work ourselves ; that would 
 take too much time and be too much 
 206 
 
The Question of an Occupation 
 
 trouble. We are willing that he should 
 do the work, but if there are any legiti- 
 mate office-holding emoluments of the 
 work done, we want some " respectable 
 person " in whom we have confidence to 
 have them. Verily, the professional pol- 
 itician, when he comes to consider what 
 we think of him, what we expect of him, 
 and what we are willing that he should 
 get, must be amazed at our assurance. 
 
 But perhaps politics will pay better 
 presently ; if not absolutely better, at 
 least relatively, because other things 
 won't pay so well. And of course, when 
 politics pay as well as law, and medicine, 
 and drygoods, and the wholesale grocery 
 business, we shall be able, without self- 
 reproach or a loss of reputation, to take 
 to them ourselves, and drive the poli- 
 ticians out. 
 
 To find a fit occupation for one's work- 
 ing years is in the nature of a timely a provision 
 provision for old age. But there are 
 other provisions of that nature, which 
 should be made in time too, and are 
 hardly less important. 
 207 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 When a man is planning for the com- 
 fort of his mature and declining years, 
 there are some things that he arranges 
 for as matters of course. He will try to 
 plan so that he may have an income pro- 
 portionate to his habits of expenditure 
 as long as he lives, and he will arrange, 
 if possible, to have the income continue 
 just the same to himself or his heirs after 
 he is tired and stops working. He will 
 be apt to try to arrange also to have a 
 wife to grow old with, and to have chil- 
 dren about him, in various convenient 
 stages of development, to keep him in 
 touch with contemporary life. And he 
 will form the whist habit or the habit of 
 reading books, and take reasonable meas- 
 ures not to have gout, or dyspepsia, or 
 any unreasonable affection of the liver. 
 
 Such precautions any prudent man will 
 take as he sees the propriety of them, 
 and many others too ; but there are one 
 or two comforts that he may miss by not 
 appreciating their value until it is too 
 late to provide for them. A particular 
 luxury of this sort, for which a timely 
 arrangement must be made if a man is to 
 208 
 
The Question of an Occupation 
 
 have it at all, is a periodical meeting with 
 the men who were young when he was. 
 In order to secure this enjoyment, it is 
 necessary, in the first place, to be young 
 with a considerable number of persons 
 associated in the pursuit of some common 
 interest, and to form more or less inti- 
 mate relations with them. They must 
 be the right sort of people, too ; people 
 whom it is not only edifying to know 
 while they are young, but who promise a 
 development which will make a fair pro- 
 portion of them good company in their 
 maturity. Having formed such an ac- 
 quaintance betimes, the habit of renew- 
 ing it periodically should be started early 
 and carefully nursed, the periods grow- 
 ing gradually less until they become an- 
 nual. 
 
 The simplest way to accomplish all 
 this is doubtless to go early in life to a 
 good college, and return yearly to its 
 Commencements. But where that has 
 not been feasible, the same end is often 
 otherwise accomplished, as by being a 
 veteran of the war, and meeting one's 
 fellow-veterans annually at a Grand Army 
 209 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 Encampment ; or by being an earnest 
 politician and getting sent pretty regu- 
 larly to conventions. The points that 
 require attention are, that you must meet 
 old friends who were young, or compara- 
 tively young, in your company, and from 
 whom you are ordinarily separated. The 
 old friends whom you meet every day 
 won't do. You talk to them, when you 
 see them, about what happened yester- 
 day and was in the morning paper. The 
 sight of them does not annihilate time 
 for you ; your intercourse with them has 
 been too constantly contemporaneous 
 for that. But the old acquaintances whom 
 you only see once a year carry you back 
 every time to the years when you first 
 knew them. 
 
 It is a valuable refreshment to the 
 spirit to be thus transported, and one 
 which rightly constituted persons prize 
 with increasing appreciation as the years 
 pile up on them. After a man has found 
 his vocation and got into the rut of it, 
 existence comes to smack too much of 
 the tread-mill, and a sensation that is 
 quickening and pervasive, and out of his 
 
The Qjiestion of an Occupation 
 
 every-day experience, is the more wel- 
 come and the more reviving to him in 
 proportion to the increase of the diffi- 
 culty in finding it. 
 
 Therefore, if you intend to be happy 
 though old, form the habit early of regu- 
 lar attendance on some periodical func- 
 tion. Have a taste for something in 
 particular, and stick to it until the other 
 enthusiasts on the subject are old ac- 
 quaintances. Then meet them persist- 
 ently once a year, and presently you will 
 have a habit that will be of real value to 
 you when you have passed the time for 
 making new friends. 
 
 211 
 
XIV 
 WOMEN AND FAMILIES 
 
WOMEN AND FAMILIES 
 
 |R. GRANT ALLEN has been 
 
 averring in the magazines, 
 that we are not giving our 
 young women the right sort 
 of education ; and this not 
 because our educational machinery can- 
 not do what is expected of it, but because 
 the thing that is expected is the wrong 
 thing. He declares that the aim and re- 
 sult of female education in America and 
 England is to make sprightly and intelli- 
 gent spinsters, whereas what ought to be 
 its aim is, not to make spinsters at all, but 
 to educate young women with a view to 
 their becoming wives and mothers. Mr. ^^f^Slf 
 Allen declares that, while it is essential -/''^'"^^^'^''•f- 
 to the best interests of the state that 
 ninety - something women out of every 
 hundred should get married and have 
 not less than four children apiece, and 
 while an overwhelming majority of the 
 
 215 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 women do get married, the whole hun- 
 dred women are educated with a view to 
 the best interests of a half-dozen or less 
 of them, who become old maids. Mr. 
 Allen's blood boils at this, and he says 
 flatly that the women who do not mar- 
 ry, though charming possibly as individ- 
 uals, are socially and politically of no ac- 
 count in comparison with those who do. 
 Mothers are what the country needs, he 
 says, and he calls for them with the 
 energy of a foundling asylum, while he 
 avers that literary women, school-mis- 
 tresses, hospital nurses, and lecturers on 
 cookery are the natural product of our 
 system of education as it is. He does 
 not deny that these are useful products, 
 but he does deny that the system that 
 produces them fits our needs. 
 
 Mr. Allen also records his fears that 
 if the theories of the advanced women 
 are not checked, the invaluable faculty 
 of intuition, which is a distinguishing 
 feminine characteristic, will be educated 
 away, with the direful result that men of 
 genius will cease to be born. For the 
 intuitive faculty pertains to genius as 
 216 
 
Women and Families 
 
 well as to femininity. Genius does not 
 stop to reason. It arrives, by a sudden 
 and immediate process which it inher- 
 ited from its mother. It knows, it 
 knows not how. It only knows that it 
 knows, as women do. 
 
 It would be a dreadful pity to have 
 genius stumbling about in limbo for lack 
 of a woman fit to be a mother to it. Let 
 us hope it will not really come to such 
 a forlorn extreme as that. Would it be 
 inexcusable to derive the impression 
 from Mr. Grant Allen's forebodings, 
 that, learned as he is in natural history, 
 his knowledge of the human female is 
 defective ? To my mind she seems to 
 be constructed of much tougher mater- 
 ials than Mr. Allen imagines, and the 
 influences that tend to make a man of 
 her seem enormously overbalanced by ugfe^^j 
 those whose tendency is to keep her a ^>4«f7''^'««« 
 woman. For my part I am not a bit dotihersex. 
 afraid but that when God made wom- 
 an He endowed her with persistence 
 enough to maintain the characteristics 
 of her sex. Monkeys may have evo- 
 lutionized into Herbert Spencers, but 
 217 
 
IVindfalls of Observation 
 
 have the females of any species ever yet 
 evolutionized into males ? Of course, 
 there are masculine women ; women af- 
 flicted from birth with mannish minds 
 and predisposed to channels of useful- 
 ness which are more commonly navi- 
 gated by men. Such women are not all 
 Sally Brasses either. Some of them 
 even presume to marry and have chil- 
 dren. But they are exceptional creat- 
 ures, and are easily counter-balanced by 
 the feminine men. The average woman 
 is a thorough-going female, and is not 
 to be educated out of it. You may teach 
 her Latin, you may let her operate a 
 type-writer, or teach school, or work in 
 a factory, or dot off language by tele- 
 graph, and become as independent as 
 you please. She is a persistent female 
 still. 
 
 Mr. Allen is so much in the habit of 
 knowing what he is writing about, that it 
 is not safe to enter any general denial 
 of the truth of what he says about the 
 schools, but he seems to blame, for the 
 condition that he condemns, those ex- 
 ceptional and comparatively unimpor- 
 218 
 
Women and Families 
 
 tant spinsters who are supposed to ben- 
 efit by it. A wiser theory appears to be 
 that in this case, as in most others, if 
 there is anything wronsr about women 
 and their concerns it is the fault of the danger, 
 men. So prevalent among women is the 
 amiable wish to please the lords of crea- 
 tion, that it may reasonably be doubted 
 whether they ever do anything amiss the 
 motive for which cannot be traced to this 
 desire. Though Eve ate the forbidden 
 fruit, it is nowhere denied that Adam 
 had twitted her about the comparative 
 unimportance of her attainments, and 
 had bred in her a restless appetite for 
 miscellaneous learning which made her 
 the serpent's easy prey. Is it not so 
 with our female education ? If there is 
 anything wrong with it, are not the men 
 to blame ? Our girls cannot be mothers 
 and have the four children apiece that 
 Mr. Allen calls for until they have first 
 become wives, and, in order that they 
 may become wives, it is important that 
 they shall be educated on such a sys- 
 tem as will produce results such as men 
 most admire. If it is true, as Mr. Allen 
 219 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 says, that the present system produces 
 literary women, school-mistresses, and 
 lecturers on cookery, it will probably be 
 found, on investigation, that it is pre- 
 cisely those species of educated female 
 that the unmarried male most affects. 
 No doubt female education is all wrong 
 if Mr. Allen says it is, but before he 
 sets it right let him consider whether 
 a safer way is not to try and teach a 
 wiser discrimination to his males. To 
 find as the result of an educational ex- 
 periment that he has a lot of young 
 women on his hands when his men are 
 not disposed to marry, would be an aw- 
 ful result ; the more so because his girls, 
 being all educated to be mothers, might 
 lack the special training necessary to 
 spinsterial success. 
 ^^j^ If Mr. Allen will only stir up his 
 
 remedy. malcs, and scc to it that they are com- 
 petent, faithful, good providers, and en- 
 dowed with approved notions as to the 
 selection of mates, he may cease to dis- 
 tress himself. The proportion of the 
 gentler sex who insist upon reasoning 
 by logical processes, and competing with 
 220 
 
IVomen and Families 
 
 men in bread-winning avocations, will 
 not be great enough to afford him legit- 
 imate distress. Take care of your men, 
 Mr, Allen, and your women won't have 
 to take care of themselves. And if they 
 don't have to, they won't do it. The 
 fact that some women who have no one 
 else to take care of them are taught to 
 take care of themselves, seems a remote 
 reason for alarm. A woman even with 
 blunted intuitions is better than a wom- 
 an under six feet of earth. 
 
 Directly in the face of Mr. Grant Al- _ „, 
 
 , . Mr. War- 
 
 len s complamt that culture is monopo- ner also 
 lizing the female, comes the assertion of c^karges, 
 Mr. Charles Dudley Warner that the 
 American female is monopolizing Ameri- 
 can culture. Mr. Warner, who is a liter- 
 ary man and interested in the sale of 
 books, has, possibly, acted from inter- 
 ested motives in letting loose this 
 alarming theory. He has observed the 
 tendency of young females of this gen- 
 eration to aggregate themselves into 
 groups, meeting weekly for the culti- 
 vation of what by the courtesy of the 
 
 221 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 males they are permitted to term their 
 intellectuals. Because young women 
 run to clubs and associations as they 
 do, he would have us believe that 
 they are doing about all the reading 
 that is being done, and are getting the 
 bulk of the culture, bating a few stray 
 spears of it that ministers and pro- 
 fessional literary men pick up in the 
 exercise of their callings. Mr. Warner 
 insinuates that the men occupy their 
 working hours in money-making, and 
 that their conversation in moments of 
 recreation tends to relate to matters 
 connected with business, varied by such 
 topics as " horse " and feeding, and he 
 assumes to have forebodings as to what 
 the contemporary young man's feelings 
 will be when some girl undertakes some 
 time to talk to him about some new 
 book. 
 
 No one can safely tell Mr. Warner 
 that he does not know anything. The 
 Hartford editor is too considerable a 
 gun to be spiked in any such peremp- 
 tory manner. But one may venture to 
 say softly that he ought to know better 
 
 222 
 
Women and Families 
 
 than to be scared at the thought of 
 those clubs. As an expert in feminine 
 traits, he should need no one to tell 
 him that it is the instinct of the aver- 
 age young female to do things collec- 
 tively. He seems to think that she gets 
 up clubs because she likes books. Sim- 
 ple male ! The truth is that she gets 
 up literature because she likes clubs. 
 She will take up with anything, from 
 Browning to working-girls, that gives 
 her occasion to aggregate herself of 
 a morning with other young females 
 and taste the sweets of companion- 
 ship. 
 
 Not that one can blame her ! Far 
 from it. Woman, poor thing, as a rule 
 can't go to an office. Her day's work is 
 an irregular sort of a job that keeps her 
 more or less at home. Her clubs and 
 classes take her out, give her set occu- 
 pation, wake up her faculties and do her 
 good of very much the same sort that 
 a man gets from selling coal or stocks, 
 or discussing measures to keep the 
 moths out of last winter's unsold wool- 
 lens. But the idea that she learns so 
 
 223 
 
IVindfalls of Observation 
 
 much as to make the men uncomfort- 
 able is a mistake. She will impart to 
 some young man, in the first place, every- 
 thing that she gathered in at her club, 
 and he will get the benefit of it. And 
 in the next place, the only people who 
 get hold of book knowledge enough to 
 make anyone uncomfortable are those 
 who read at home to themselves, in 
 their odd minutes and their even hours, 
 because they like it. 
 
 From a professional point of view, it 
 which is is mean for Mr. Warner to go back on 
 S.'* his men. They are his true friends and 
 
 supporters. If a man wants to read a 
 book he buys it, and if he likes it he 
 buys six more copies and gives them 
 (not all the same day, of course) to six 
 women whose intelligence he respects. 
 But if a club of fifteen girls determine to 
 read a book, do they buy fifteen copies ? 
 No. Do they buy five copies ? No. 
 Do they buy — no, they don't buy at all ; 
 they borrow a copy. It doesn't lie in 
 womankind to spend money for books, 
 unless they are meant to be a gift for 
 some man. 
 
 224 
 
Women and Families 
 
 And apropos of literature and petti- 
 coats, an accomplished critic, who re- 
 cently discussed in a contemporary 
 magazine the needs and possibilities of 
 American fiction, declared that the com- 
 ing woman in American novels was the ^min^' 
 married woman. The novel of the fut- >~«"^r 
 ure, this gentleman thinks, will begin '«''''''^''<^-' 
 where the contemporary novel ends, at 
 marriage. He declares that it is vain to 
 hope to make great stories about young 
 maidens whose experience of life is nec- 
 fissarily limited, and whose ideas and 
 emotions are bounded by their experi- 
 ence. Women of maturity, the wives 
 and mothers of humanity, are bound to 
 be a great deal more interesting from 
 their greater experience of life, and are 
 vastly fitter to be the leading figures in 
 the searching and comprehensive fiction 
 soon to come. The married woman, our 
 critic insists, is not only to be the hero- 
 ine of the future American novel, but 
 she is to write it too ; since in the po- 
 lite circles, it seems, where married wom- 
 en have leisure and opportunity to make 
 themselves of interest, women are the 
 225 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 only members in whom are combined the 
 knowledge, taste, and leisure requisite 
 for the task. 
 
 It is undeniable that married women 
 of reasonable maturity have commonly 
 seen more of life, and know more that is 
 worth narrating than the damsels whose 
 wooing forms the staple of modern 
 tales. None the less, as a subject of fic- 
 tion, the maid has several decided ad- 
 vantages over the matron. In stories 
 where the heroine is to scour the Span- 
 ish Main for pirates, or head exciting 
 quests for buried treasure, a previous 
 matrimonial experience is a matter of 
 indifference, and a matron will do at 
 least as well as a maid. But where the 
 substance of the story concerns the de- 
 velopment of affection between a man 
 and a woman, to start with a marriage 
 is apt to make awkward work. Who is 
 the heroine to fall in love with ? Her 
 husband ? No ; that seems not to be 
 the intention. Some other woman's 
 husband ? More than likely ; or, if not, 
 with some single gentleman of means 
 and defective occupation. But for a 
 226 
 
Women and Families 
 
 married woman to have a man in love 
 with her whom she cannot marry is a 
 misfortune, and for her to fall in love 
 with a man not her husband is mis- 
 chievous. Such a predicament may be 
 excusable in an occasional story, as such 
 predicaments are occasionally excusa- 
 ble in real life ; but that the American 
 fiction of the future is to be a record 
 of this type of hazardous experience of 
 women is a gloomy prospect indeed, and 
 one in which I do not believe. If the 
 married woman is to be the heroine of 
 the coming novel, it must turn on some- 
 thing besides love-making. It must be 
 the story of her career ; of her profes- 
 sional or political success ; of her pain- 
 ful accession through toilsome decades 
 to the front rank of the doctors ; of the 
 money she made, and what she did with 
 it. American women are very much 
 alive in these days. There is no spe- 
 cial difficulty about writing interesting 
 books about them without using men at 
 all, except as puppets or lay figures. 
 
 227 
 
XV 
 AS TO DEATH 
 
AS TO DEATH 
 
 [O many people are dying 
 these days, said a writer of 
 a letter of condolence dur- 
 ing a recent epidemic of the 
 grip, " that one feels like 
 apologizing for being alive." " I have 
 lost my confidence in life," said a parent 
 whose fold pneumonia had broken into. 
 " So have I, in a measure," was the re- 
 ply ! " but I find my confidence in death 
 correspondingly strengthened." 
 
 We are very slow about gaining con- 
 fidence in death — curiously slow, con- 
 sidering how familiar our acquaintance 
 with it is. And yet life is an exceeding 
 complicated task, and death, to us who 
 have not tried it, seems wonderfully 
 concise and simple. No complaints 
 come from those who have died, and, 
 what is more to the point, very few 
 shadows of dissatisfaction are seen to 
 231 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 hover over the dying. The dread and 
 discontent with death is in the living. 
 Doctors tell us that the dying rarely 
 fear the change which they feel ap- 
 proaching. Afar-off death is a mon- 
 ster, but brought near to it is usually 
 divested of its horror, and becomes 
 manifest as the natural thing that it is. 
 
 We make far too much ado about it. 
 To have friendship and companionship 
 go out of our lives is a real loss, and our 
 grief for that is a natural feeling which 
 we would not wish, as we need not hope, 
 to be rid of. But the sensation of vague 
 woe which survives all our experience 
 and all our intelligent conceptions of 
 the matter, is something to be recog- 
 nized and overcome. The^ instinctive 
 feeling, that a person who has died is 
 the victim of great misfortune, and that 
 we who survive have unwillingly got 
 the better of him, is a sensation that 
 civilized and religious people ought to 
 get over. " Poor John," we say, "poor 
 Mary," and deck ourselves in black, 
 which nine times out of ten, whatever 
 we may think about it, is the expression 
 232 
 
As to Death 
 
 of our realization that a dreadful thing 
 has happened — not to us, but to some- 
 one whom we love. If we ceased feel- 
 ing sorry for those who are lost to us, 
 and could confine ourselves to mourn- 
 ing for ourselves whose the loss is, we 
 should conduct ourselves much more 
 nearly in accordance with the facts as 
 we know them. 
 
 Nothing that we know about death 
 warrants us in thinking so meanly of it 
 as we do. It is unfortunate for its repu- 
 tation that it is associated with pain, 
 sickness, and the demoralization of our 
 faculties. Inevitably, it shares the repu- 
 tation of the company it keeps. If it 
 were something that we attained as the 
 ultimate triumph of our fullest strength 
 and energy, we should be bound to think 
 better of it. And yet there is no con- 
 ception of death which is tolerable or 
 reasonable, which does not involve the 
 belief that it is promotion. When char- 
 acter seems perfected, and achievement 
 absolute, it is the next step ; when char- 
 acter, still far short of perfection, seems 
 to have ceased to progress, and honor- 
 
 233 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 able achievement from whatever cause 
 seems barred, it is a change which at 
 least gives ground for renewed hope. 
 Of some who die, we are sure that the 
 transition was from one sphere of useful 
 and progressive activity to another. As 
 to others, we feel that, so far as we see, 
 it was a gain for them to be rid of flesh 
 that seemed to clog their spirits, and 
 perhaps to drag them down. Looking 
 at people with open eyes and reasonably 
 full knowledge, and weighing what life 
 brings them with the penalties they 
 have to pay, there will not be so very 
 many of whom we shall feel sure — even 
 with our natural prejudice in favor of 
 a certainty that we know as against a 
 chance that we surmise about — that they 
 possess so much as not to afford to take 
 the chance. 
 
 Effort! is not that the finest thing in 
 life ? Effort that trains the mind, that 
 trains and subjugates the body, that 
 controls and directs the temper, that 
 makes character ! Is life without effort 
 of value ? Is life valuable when effort 
 ceases to be possible ? And yet life that 
 
 234 
 
j4s to Death 
 
 is yoked so to effort surely gets to be a 
 weary business, first or last. " This rest 
 is glorious ! " said John Ericsson, on his 
 death - bed. There was no grumbling 
 there ! Too much hard work had been 
 done to admit of that. 
 
 " Gladly I lived, and gladly I die," 
 was the sentiment of the confident spirit 
 whose epitaph Mr. Stephenson under- 
 took to provide. That is the right feel- 
 ing. We are not half glad enough to be 
 alive, not nearly as pleased as we should 
 be at the prospect of dying. We should 
 form our opinions of death less by its 
 concomitants immediately on this side 
 of the grave, and much more by the 
 splendid company of the brave, the kind, 
 the wise, and the true, who know what 
 we can only guess about its benefits. 
 
 ^35 
 
XVI 
 
 INCLINATIONS AND 
 CHARACTER 
 
INCLINATIONS AND 
 CHARACTER 
 
 |N its eulogy of a famous and 
 beloved American, who died 
 the other day, a contempo- 
 rary newspaper remarked 
 that "he was one of those 
 fortunate creatures who seem never to 
 be compelled to do anything that is con- 
 trary to their inclinations." That Mr. 
 Curtis should have so impressed a coeval 
 observer recalls Lowell's estimate of his 
 friend, 
 
 Whose Wit with Fancy arm in arm, 
 Masks half its muscle in its skill to charm. 
 
 If he seemed to do nothing that he 
 did not wish to do, no doubt it was ^^^.^^^ 
 partly because he brought a gracious tratedin 
 
 ^ 1. 1 . 1 the case of 
 
 performance to even unacceptable tasks; Mr. Curtis, 
 but the other reason may well have been 
 
 239 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 that his incHnations were so uplifted 
 and disciplined that he could afford to 
 follow them, and that in following 
 straightly after duty he had approached 
 that enviable elevation where 
 
 Love is an unerring light, 
 And joy its own security. 
 
 Hardly any better fortune can come 
 to a conscientious man than to find his 
 inclinations fit and feasible to follow. 
 In many cases it happens, through no 
 fault of his, that he cannot do what he 
 wants to. Obligations are laid upon 
 him that he is bound to discharge, and 
 in discharging them he has to turn his 
 face whither he would not choose to go, 
 and do the work that is put before him 
 rather than that his heart is in. But in 
 very many other cases the choice is with- 
 in his reach, if only he has the manhood 
 to make it and the resolution to stick to 
 it. If there are lions in his path he must 
 have grit enough to drive them out of 
 it, even though that is a tedious process. 
 When the choice is a high choice, and 
 240 
 
Inclinations and Character 
 
 the man is a strong man in earnest, the 
 lions have to move out. The average 
 man, of course, prefers to go round 
 them, even though the detour gets him 
 into byways that are not of his choice. 
 
 By far the most potent factor in these 
 days in luring high-minded and able 
 men from doing the work of their 
 choice, is the superior opportunity of 
 money-making in other directions. That 
 avails too often to win born-writers 
 away from letters, and to keep born- 
 statesmen out of politics, and born- 
 preachers out of the pulpit. To most 
 Americans poverty is not absolute but 
 relative ; not a matter involving the 
 necessaries and reasonable comforts of 
 life, but the question of living on an 
 equal scale of luxury with one's asso- 
 ciates. Many men to whom high-think- 
 ing might have been possible, have suf- 
 fered an aversion to plain-living to turn 
 their intellectual energies into more 
 commonplace channels. Many others, 
 who cared little for luxuries for them- 
 selves, have drudged, and humbled their 
 talents, to procure them for their fami- 
 241 
 
iVindfalls of Observation 
 
 lies. It was said not long ago of Bea- 
 consfield, in contrasting him with Salis- 
 bury, that " He possessed nothing, and 
 he did not want to possess anything. 
 He never really owned an acre of land 
 in his life, and if he had just enough 
 money for current expenses he was 
 thankful not to be troubled with more." 
 
 If that w^as truly his disposition, it was 
 a superlatively fortunate endowment for 
 an intellectual man who had no mind to 
 do what was contrary to his inclina« 
 tions. 
 
 Inclinations of so high an order that 
 their fulfilment brings contentment and 
 honor, and of so stanch a quality that 
 they can withstand allurements of 
 wealth, ease, or office bought at any 
 cost of independence, are so essentially 
 a part of the individual who possesses 
 them, that they may be accurately and 
 more succinctly defined as character. 
 Men who have such inclinations are not 
 common, but men who follow them out 
 are rare. If Mr. Curtis followed his, it 
 was up the hill and over it. He even 
 voluntarily placed between himself and 
 242 
 
inclinations and Charactef 
 
 their fulfilment the gratuitous obstacle 
 of a great debt for which he was neither 
 in law nor in equity responsible. They 
 led him away from allies of life-long as- 
 sociation, through much that was haz- 
 ardous, and much that was disagreeable. 
 He followed them with admirable con- 
 stancy. To have possessed such inclina- 
 tions was not an incident but an achieve- 
 ment, and to have followed them out 
 was victory — a victory whose richest 
 fruit was that it gave to American citi- 
 zenship an ideal Independent. 
 
 In some instances lofty inclinations 
 develop into character ; in others they 
 do not. So common among men is the 
 case of inclinations that seem to have 
 no practical force, that a contemporary 
 observer announces, as a result of notice 
 taken, that some men have morals, and 
 others principles. Of course, it happens 
 occasionally that people have both, as 
 others a2:ain have neither ; but, accord- ^ 
 
 '^^ 11- Some men 
 
 ine to the experience of the observer m haveprinci- 
 
 ^ . , 1 J>les, and 
 
 question, such cases are more or less ex- others 
 ceptional. He cites instances of politi- ^''''^'• 
 
 243 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 dans, the most scrupulous in their pri- 
 vate practices, and most unprincipled in 
 their political acts, and contrasts them 
 with other politicians of the severest po- 
 litical morality, but not immaculate in 
 all their personal relations. There are 
 so many cases of eminently moral men 
 who lacked political virtue, and so many 
 more of immoral men who had it, that 
 historical research can easily take such 
 a turn as to leave the seeker wondering 
 whether there is not something about 
 private morality which is incompatible 
 with successful cultivation of state-craft. 
 What is true in that direction is that 
 there is probably something about ordi- 
 nary domestic felicity which is hostile to 
 political success, for the simple reason 
 that a man with a family to live with, 
 and probably to support, can give only a 
 divided attention to politics, and politics 
 is a game which demands the concentra- 
 tion of the whole man. The most suc- 
 cessful politicians of recent times, with 
 some exceptions, have been bachelors, 
 childless married men, and husbands 
 whose homes were not happy. Celibacy 
 244 
 
Inclinations and Character 
 
 is at least as desirable in a politician as 
 in a priest, the main difference being 
 that, whereas it is useful to a priest as 
 long as he is a priest, there may come to 
 a politician a time when the storm and 
 stress period of his career is so distinct- 
 ly over, that he might as well get mar- 
 ried as not. 
 
 Apart from politics and its professors, 
 there are several reasons why principles 
 are more apt to appear as a substitute 
 for morals than to accompany them. 
 For one, a man whose daily walk is dis- 
 creet, and who behaves wisely and knows 
 it, acquires confidence in his instincts, 
 and is reasonably well satisfied that he 
 does about the right thing, and that his 
 conduct in future is likely to be as cor- 
 rect as it has been in the past. A prin- 
 ciple is a fixed opinion, but your moral 
 man, who has confidence in his habits, 
 is apt to be guided very much more by 
 them than by his opinions. A conse- 
 quence of which often is, that his habits 
 gain in strength until they get undesir- 
 ably powerful, and his opinions grow 
 vague for lack of practical demonstra- 
 
 245 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 tion. The more fixed his moral habits 
 become, the more instinctive grows his 
 behavior, and the less occasion he has 
 to reason as to what is right or wrong, 
 or to develop opinions into principles. 
 
 But with the man of no morals it is 
 very different. Realizing his large po- 
 tentiality for loose behavior, recogniz- 
 ing the unreliability of his instincts, and 
 knowing that such habits as he has are 
 mostly bad, he feels the uncertainties of 
 his. anchorages, and the great need of 
 having something sure to tie to. What- 
 ever worse things he may do, he deter- 
 mines that at least he will approve the 
 better. A sinner he may be, but not an 
 unprincipled sinner. He will know right 
 from wrong anyhow, whether he acts 
 upon what he knows or not. Prompted 
 by such necessities, he pays attention to 
 his opinions, taking care to hold those 
 most approved, to hold them continu- 
 ously, and to support them by the best 
 arguments obtainable. The fact that he 
 does not permit his behavior to affect 
 his principles, or vice versa^ frees him 
 from many embarrassments that would 
 246 
 
Inclinations and Character 
 
 be incident to a different system. The 
 consequence is that his principles in- 
 crease in height and splendor, until the 
 man of mere morals, hearing him hold 
 forth, feels his knees knock together at 
 the thought of his own inferiority. 
 
 If anyone doubts that it works this 
 way, a convincing illustration is found 
 in a general comparison of men with 
 women. Women are absurdly superior 
 to men in their morals, but only an ad- 
 venturous disputant would deny that 
 men have stricter and more definite 
 principles. 
 
 247 
 
XVII 
 
 A POET AND NOT 
 ASHAMED 
 
A POET AND NOT 
 ASHAMED. 
 
 |NE characteristic of Tenny- 
 son that looms up large in 
 the figure of him that is left 
 to us, was his ability to take 
 himself seriously as a poet. 
 Since his death a story has been in cir- 
 culation about the experience of a cer- 
 tain exceptionally favored young wom- 
 an, who went off on a yachting trip with 
 a small party of which Lord Tennyson 
 and Mr. Gladstone were members. She 
 said, or at least the newspapers reported ^^^7,^^. 
 her as saying, that though the trip was YJZS 
 delightful it was not entirely free from beingapoet. 
 friction, arising from Mr. Gladstone's 
 propensity to talk in moments in which 
 Lord Tennyson wished to recite verses. 
 Indeed, the lady intimated that the solid 
 day did not seem to Mr. Gladstone too 
 long for him to talk through, or offer to 
 
 251 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 Lord Tennyson an unreasonably pro- 
 tracted space for the recitation of his 
 own poems, and that it sometimes hap- 
 pened that the decks of the yacht were 
 cleared of all the passengers except two, 
 the old statesman at one extremity lost 
 in an impassioned monologue of discus- 
 sion, and the venerable bard rehearsing 
 Tennysonian poetry at the other. 
 
 This may not be a true story at all, 
 and very likely it is exaggerated even if 
 there are facts to it, but whether fact or 
 fiction it illustrates well-known charac- 
 teristics of the two masters that it con- 
 cerns. Tennyson never doubted that 
 his verse was worth imparting. Words- 
 worth believed implicitly in himself as 
 the greatest poet of his day, and sus- 
 pected that his day was the golden age 
 of all poetry. His public disputed his 
 opinion for many years, but finally came 
 two-thirds of the way over to his way of 
 thinking. Tennyson also made up his 
 mind pretty early in life that he was a 
 poet and a great one. The evidence he 
 submitted in support of that conclusion 
 was less conflicting than Wordsworth's, 
 252 
 
A Poet and Not Ashamed 
 
 and the public was quicker in conceding 
 that he was right. And having demon- 
 strated that he was a poet, and chosen 
 poetry for his vocation, he revered his 
 office and stuck to it. He took his work 
 seriously, and himself seriously as the 
 man to whom it was appointed to do the 
 work. Always and everywhere where 
 he went as a man, he went as a poet too. 
 He must have been a poet even to his 
 valet. To him there was nothing more 
 absurd in the figure of himself in a cloak 
 and a slouch hat reciting his own verses 
 on the deck of a yacht than there is in 
 the presence of an archbishop in full 
 canonicals doing his office in the chan- 
 cel of St. Paul's. That a poet should 
 be picturesque and poetical seemed no 
 more a thing to smile at than kingliness 
 in a king. 
 
 And the beauty of it was that he was 
 right. By magnifying his office he dig- 
 nified it, and gained dignity for himself 
 as its fit administrator. His safety lay 
 in his possession of the inestimable 
 treasure of simplicity. He did not as- 
 sume, he developed. He did not pose, 
 
 253 
 
iVindfalls of Observation 
 
 he simply behaved as he felt. His ideals 
 were lofty, his thoughts were trained to 
 clothe themselves in poetical images, 
 and his conduct and bearing were sim- 
 ply the shadow of the inner substance. 
 Neither were absolutely contemporane- 
 ous, but much about both had the im- 
 perishable quality which is never in the 
 fashion and happily never out of it. 
 
 In this land and in these days we are 
 apt to giggle at great offices. To our 
 eyes the divinity that doth hedge a king 
 appears full of holes. Wigs and laced- 
 coats and high-heeled boots possess no 
 illusions for us any longer, and perhaps 
 we are somewhat too prone to extend 
 our humorous disregard for such dis- 
 carded trappings to the substantial su- 
 periority they were once designed to fit. 
 We are so ready to make game of the 
 poetical aspirations of poets generally, 
 that ours are apt to choose to be before- 
 hand with us, and extenuate the possi- 
 ble absurdity of their own aspirations by 
 smiling deprecations before and after. 
 Now that Walt Whitman is dead, no 
 American would dare look and act like 
 
 254 
 
A Poet and Not Ashamed 
 
 a poet even if he felt or wrote like one. 
 Our poets are somewhat too apt to 
 be spruce gentlemen in patent - leather 
 shoes, who make verses in such odd 
 hours as they can spare from the serious 
 concerns of life. And one cause of their 
 being so is the reiterated suggestion of 
 a stiff-necked generation, that a sincere 
 poet who believes in his office and lives 
 up to it is a more or less absurd creat- 
 ure, who owes us all an apology for not 
 doing something more lucrative and 
 really useful. We have talked that way 
 about poets so long that it looks a lit- 
 tle as though ours had finally come to 
 believe us, and put their best energies 
 into other work. It might be better for 
 them, and for us too, if they would shut 
 their eyes to our quirks and giggles, and 
 pattern a little more after Tennyson, 
 who chose to be a poet, and was that 
 and nothing else, all his life, and with- 
 out evasion, apology, or remorse. 
 
 But if the irreverent American humor 
 has not developed without some corrup- 
 tion of precious ideals, it has much to 
 
 255 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 One good 
 mark for 
 A merican 
 irreverence. 
 
 It has 
 
 helped to 
 
 kill 
 code. 
 
 the 
 
 offer in extenuation of itself in the shape 
 of smashed idols with clay feet, whose 
 usefulness, if they ever had any, was 
 long since past. One such fetish that, 
 so far as this country is concerned, has 
 had the foundations laughed quite out 
 from under it, is that curious device for 
 defeating the natural superiority of mind 
 over matter, which was known as " the 
 code." To be sure, " the code " got its 
 death-blow as an American institution 
 as long ago as when Aaron Burr's bullet 
 put a nation in mourning. It has never 
 really flourished since then, though it 
 did linger on fitfully and obscurely until 
 after the civil war. But some of the 
 manners and methods that were origin- 
 ally tributary to it survived it, and it 
 has been left to this generation to laugh 
 them little by little into contemptuous 
 disuse. Men still quarrel and still ex- 
 change blows in anger, but not only the 
 notion that differences between " gentle- 
 men " must be settled on the field of 
 honor has clean gone out ; but behavior 
 which had some appearance of sense 
 while that notion still held has finally 
 256 
 
A Poet and Not Ashamed 
 
 come to be estimated as the archaism 
 that It is. The age of " rotten boroughs, 
 knee-breeches, hair- triggers, and port,'' 
 has not only past, but its works have so 
 far followed it that in America persons 
 who attempt to shape their conduct by 
 the standards of that age merely find 
 that an amused and smiling public cred- 
 its them with " courtly bar-room man- 
 ners," and sniggers at their discomfiture. 
 The " gentleman " who has done another 
 gentleman an injury is not considered 
 any less a blackguard because he offers 
 his victim " any reparation in his power." 
 To run the injured man through the 
 body, or perforate his vitals with lead, 
 is so universally understood to be an in- 
 different justification of an offence, that 
 a culprit who goes out of his way to sug- 
 gest it in any overt dispute finds himself 
 most uncomfortably in contempt of pub- 
 lic opinion. So the public insult, which 
 would once have had to be expunged 
 with blood, has relapsed from its high 
 estate of being a gentlemanly act into a 
 mere loaferish breach of the peace, to 
 be settled for in a police court. 
 
 257 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 The fatal defect in these discarded 
 standards was that they were not demo- 
 cratic. They never promoted, or were 
 intended to promote, the greatest good 
 of the greatest number, but merely con- 
 tributed to the exaltation of the few 
 who aspired to be superior to rules that 
 might be fit for the vulgar. Now and 
 then someone stumbles across the con- 
 temporary stage who, from living too ex- 
 clusively in some narrow club circle in 
 Europe, or even here, has failed to ap- 
 preciate the spirit of the age, and at- 
 tempts in some juncture to shape his 
 conduct according to the notions of gen- 
 tlemanly behavior that obtained in Lon- 
 don clubs as late as the days of George 
 the Fourth. It is only by watching the 
 absurd contortions of such unfortunates 
 that we are able to realize the progress 
 that has been made. Since the theory 
 of justification by combat has been ex- 
 ploded, there seems to be no way in 
 which a gentleman can be sure of keep- 
 ing his sacred honor free from specks 
 except by plain, ordinary, decent beha- 
 vior, and respect for the rights of other 
 258 
 
A Poet and Not Ashamed 
 
 people. If he does wrong he cannot 
 fight his way right. He simply has to 
 repent and apologize, or take his punish- 
 ment quietly according to the rules of 
 the game. If he is injured and the law 
 cannot help him, the best way for him 
 is just to grin and bear it, and let time 
 wreak its own revenges. To be sure, if 
 the injury is desperate, and he resents it 
 in hot blood, the law may excuse him ; 
 but society has come to a point of so- 
 phistication where it is able to recog- 
 nize that a man who endures is usually 
 a stronger and a nobler creature than 
 the man who gives reins to his temper. 
 The notion that one's " honor " can be 
 damaged by the action of another per- 
 son is pretty generally obsolete. Brag 
 is not so good a dog as he was. Bluff 
 will not go so far. The code that reg- 
 ulates in these days the manners of 
 the highest and most influential type of 
 American gentleman is actually to be 
 found in the New Testament. The 
 Christian standard of conduct is respect- 
 ed consciously or unconsciously in the 
 clubs as well as in the churches. To 
 259 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 forgive one's enemies (or at least to let 
 them alone), and to do as one would be 
 done by, have always been good sense, 
 and in these days by some miracle of 
 grace they seem to be getting to be good 
 form too. But perhaps we ought not to 
 wonder at it, since to the discriminating 
 observer the other way is so hopelessly 
 absurd, and this age of publicity is nec- 
 essarily an age of critical discrimination 
 too. 
 
 260 
 
XVIII 
 
 SOME CHRISTMAS 
 SENTIMENTS 
 
idea about 
 receiving. 
 
 SOME CHRISTMAS 
 SENTIMENTS 
 
 jECEIVING is traditionally 
 such a poor thing compared 
 with giving, that there is a 
 prevailing tendency to take 
 a discouraged view of it, and 
 net to make a proper effort to make of it 
 as good a thing as possible. It is capa- The ri^ht 
 ble of development into a very pleasant 
 accomplishment, however better ones 
 there may be ; and this much may be 
 remembered in its favor to start with, 
 that it is the complement of giving, and 
 an indispensable incident thereto, so 
 that if we were wholly out of patience 
 with it on its own account, we must still, 
 out of a reasonable regard for the 
 golden rule, take our turn at it, or else 
 forego the counter-practice. It would 
 be a mean person, certainly, who should 
 seek to gobble up all the blessings that 
 263 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 givers enjoy, and dodge all the pains and 
 difficulties of receivers. 
 
 From the receiver's stand-point all 
 gifts may be divided into things that we 
 want and things that we don't want. It 
 takes no particular skill or grace to re- 
 ceive things that we want ; but as, in 
 times of general giving, like Christmas, 
 the gifts we get are for the most part 
 things that we don't want, that branch 
 of receivership is worth attention. The 
 two ordinary reasons for not wanting 
 things are the vulgar one that they do 
 not strike us as intrinsically desirable, 
 and the more complex reason that we 
 don't want to receive them from the 
 particular giver. A general remedy ap- 
 plicable to reluctances due to either of 
 these causes is, to keep strenuously in 
 the mind the happiness of the giver in 
 giving. Remembering that, you are de- 
 lighted with a trifle from someone you 
 love, because it makes you happy to 
 have been even passively instrumental 
 in procuring him the happiness of giv- 
 ing ; applying the same principle, you 
 can accept ever so costly a gift from 
 264 
 
Some Christmas Sentiments 
 
 someone for whom you care little with- 
 out any irksome sense of obligation, 
 since, of course, the giver had the best 
 of it any way, and it is a great deal 
 kinder and more generous to sacrifice 
 one's personal inclinations and accept, 
 than to refuse. Remember persistently 
 that by receiving with due grace you se- 
 cure to another person a desirable form 
 of happiness. 
 
 The very essence of successful receiv- 
 ing is to rise superior to the sense of 
 obligation. The purpose of a gift, from 
 the giver's point of view, is to make the 
 receiver happy. But obligations are apt 
 to be irksome, and the receiver who suf- 
 fers one to weigh on him, meanly per- 
 mits the giver's intentions to be frus- 
 trated, and the whole value of the trans- 
 action to be destroyed. Appreciation is 
 what is wanted. To appreciate is a 
 generous emotion, pleasurable to the re- 
 ceiver who can experience it, and highly 
 agreeable to the giver. Both are blessed 
 by it, and mutual love is quickened. 
 Contrariwise, over obligations there is 
 the trail of the serpent. Once recog- 
 265 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 nized they have to be paid off, and when 
 recompense comes in, gift degenerates 
 into mere barter, and the true spirit of 
 giving exhales and disappears. Receiv- 
 ership that yields to the impulse to give 
 something back is clumsy and inapt. 
 Giving back is mere retaliation. If it 
 is revengeful, it is neither pious nor 
 philosophical, and the wise receiver will 
 have none of it. But oftentimes it is 
 merely the refuge of the inexperienced. 
 A receiver who knows his business will 
 no more resort to it than an expert 
 horseman will hold on to the pommel 
 of his saddle. The way to receive is to 
 receive, not to retaliate. 
 
 To receive trifles from the rich and 
 be charmed with them is a simple mat- 
 ter. To receive gifts of value from the 
 poor and not be oppressed is a finer art, 
 but on no account to be neglected. If 
 Dives gives you a paper cracker, be as 
 charmed with it as if it came from Laz- 
 arus ; but on no account fail, if Lazarus 
 gives you an heirloom, to receive it with 
 as much gayety and as little remorse as 
 if it came from Dives, and you knew he 
 266 
 
Some Christmas Sentiments 
 
 would not miss it. Nevertheless, don't 
 feel obliged in your heart to undervalue 
 Lazarus's heirloom, but be happy rather 
 that Lazarus has had feelings toward 
 you that have demanded so notable an 
 expression. 
 
 After all, little children do it best. 
 They are the superlative receivers, and 
 it is because they are that we delight 
 to give them things. They are frankly 
 and delightfully appreciative. Obliga- 
 tions sit as lightly on them as air. They 
 value their gifts simply by the pleas- 
 ure they get out of them, and prefer a 
 rag-baby to the deed of a brick house. 
 They take a jumping-jack from Mary, 
 the laundress, and a jewelled pin from 
 Aunt Melinda Croesus, without the least 
 distinction of happy approval. The 
 nearer we get to their guilelessness, the 
 nearer we approach perfection in receiv- 
 ing, and in all the Christmas attributes 
 besides. 
 
 What Christendom wants at Christmas 
 time is simply to be happy. It wants the 
 same thing all the rest of the year, but 
 267 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 when Christmas comes its habit is to 
 make a special effort and gather, if it 
 can, a special harvest of happiness from 
 the plantings of the year. And where 
 it is not used to being happy and does 
 not really know how, it shows a pathetic 
 willingness to learn, and even to assume 
 an appearance of gayety that it does not 
 really feel. Honest effort counts for a 
 good deal in any pursuit, and where 
 millions of people try to be happy and 
 to furnish merriment for one another, a 
 very considerable proportion meet with 
 reasonable success. But in everything 
 where there is a possibility of success 
 there is also a hazard of failure, and it 
 aftel^hlppi- is no disparagement of a virtuous pur- 
 pose to have a merry Christmas, to re- 
 member that effort which is misdirected, 
 or attempts the impossible, or fails for 
 any other reason, increases the bitter- 
 ness of the resulting disappointment. 
 Some good people will not have the 
 heart to attempt any Christmas fun, or 
 will fail in it in spite of all they can do. 
 It is especially for their consideration 
 that these remarks are intended. 
 268 
 
Some Christmas Sentiments 
 
 There was a person once — I dare say 
 it would be nearer the truth to say there 
 were a million people at various times — 
 who, having sought after happiness with 
 earnest and protracted strivings, finally 
 gave up the quest and went about his 
 other business. His conclusion, slowly 
 and automatically derived from long pe- 
 riods of longing and resulting depres- 
 sion, was that he could not get in this 
 world what seemed indispensable to his 
 satisfaction, and that while it was within 
 his powers to live decently and maintain 
 an honest walk and conversation, happy 
 he could never be, and it would not pay 
 him to try any more. So he settled 
 down with the feelings of one who has 
 been unjustly deprived of his own, to go 
 through the motions of living without 
 regard to whether he liked it or not. 
 But his mind, continuing to operate 
 more or less independently, presently 
 evolved the reflection that, while it was 
 incumbent on every man to live his life 
 and to live it as handsomely as he knew 
 how, he was under no sort of obligation 
 to enjoy it, since happiness was a mere 
 269 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 incident of mundane existence, and not 
 at all a necessary condition or an abso- 
 lute right. Now, merely to live decently 
 whether you like it or not, is like walk- 
 ing along the street with your hands in 
 your pockets ; whereas to feel obliged 
 to gather a complete outfit of happiness 
 that you cannot reach, is like running 
 your legs off after an elusive butterfly. 
 So great w^as this person's relief at the 
 conclusion that happiness was not nec- 
 essary, and that as a human being he 
 was under no ethical bonds to secure it, 
 that a weight left his mind and his spir- 
 its presently began to rise ; and though 
 now and then he would lose his head 
 and rush off after an impossible felicity, 
 like a half-broken puppy who flushes an 
 unexpected bird, when circumstances 
 had duly thrashed him back into good 
 behavior, he was able to return, not to 
 his original gloom, but to the compara- 
 tive cheerfulness of the emancipated 
 state. 
 
 It makes a great difference in one's 
 feelings about happiness whether he ac- 
 customs himself to regard it as a luxury, 
 270 
 
Some Christmas Sentiments 
 
 like a million dollars or a yacht, which 
 some men have and more don't ; or as 
 a comparatively indispensable endow- 
 ment, such as a nose, which it is a sort 
 of reproach to a man to be without. 
 The instinctive appetite for it is, like 
 hunger and thirst, a wise provision of 
 nature, and designed to incite a salutary 
 degree of effort ; but it is quite as capa- 
 ble of abuse as the other appetites, and 
 needs the same sort of control ; so that 
 whoever feels that he must have so 
 much happiness every day, whatever 
 happens, has reached a point where a 
 period of total abstention is likely to do 
 him good. 
 
 There are some stars that we cannot 
 see at all when we look straight at them, 
 but which become visible when we look 
 a little to one side. So there are things 
 that we cannot get when we try directly 
 for them, but which presently fall into 
 our laps if only we try hard enough after 
 something else. Everybody knows it 
 is that way with happiness. Make it a 
 primary object and it leads you a doubt- 
 ful chase ; but ignore it in the rational 
 271 
 
IVindfalls of Observation 
 
 pursuit of something else, and presently 
 you may find it has perched unnoticed 
 on your shoulder, like a bird whose tail 
 has felt the traditional influence of salt. 
 So, of course, the very first essential to 
 the achievement of happiness of any 
 durable sort is to rise above the neces- 
 sity of being happy at all. It may be 
 conducive to this sort of achievement to 
 remember that great spirits in all times 
 have found in their own involuntary dis- 
 content a spur to exalted endeavor. Co- 
 lumbus had low spirits. Socrates and 
 the judicious Hooker had Xantippes. 
 Neither Lincoln, nor Balzac, nor Carlyle 
 were happy men, but they put saddle 
 and bridle on their own depression, and 
 rode it under whip and spur into im- 
 mortality. 
 
 But let nothing herein set forth in- 
 duce any person to trifle with or under- 
 value any present happiness of which he 
 may already hold the fee. It is very 
 pleasant to have, and often very whole- 
 some, and as long as it can be kept pure 
 and sweet it is a lamentable blunder 
 not to cherish it. Nor should anything 
 272 
 
Some Christmas Sentiments 
 
 herein dissuade anyone from making a 
 special effort after a particular lot of 
 Christmas happiness. Only, worthy peo- 
 ple who do make that effort are coun- 
 selled to aim a little to one side of the 
 mark, that their chance of a bull's-eye 
 may be the greater. And the practical 
 application of that advice, as everybody 
 knows, is just to aim to make the other 
 people happy, and trust to getting a 
 share incidentally for one's self. 
 
 273 
 
XIX 
 
 FEATHERS OF LOST 
 BIRDS 
 
FEATHERS OF LOST 
 BIRDS 
 
 PROPOS of successful 
 achievement, it has been 
 said that those who succeed 
 are those who go on after 
 they are tired. The obser- 
 vation bears a family Ukeness to the one 
 about genius being the capacity for tak- 
 ing infinite pains, and both amount sim- 
 ply to this, that the people who arrive 
 are those who don't have to stop until 
 they get there. To many of us it hap- 
 pens that there are bits of thought — 
 sometimes they are bits of verse — that 
 come into the mind when it is too tired 
 to follow them up. It can just grasp 
 them and go no farther. Such waifs are 
 like the feathers that enthusiastic little 
 boys who chase chickens on the farm 
 find in their hands when the bird that 
 they have almost run down gets away. 
 277 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 Cuvier, they say, could construct a whole 
 skeleton from a single bone ; but it isn't 
 told even of him that he could fix up a 
 whole chicken from a few tail-feathers. 
 Nevertheless, these intellectual relics 
 are not to be wholly despised. Feathers 
 that do not assume to be complete birds 
 may still have a secondary sort of merit 
 as feathers. 
 
 An odd lot of such strays, that turned 
 up the other day in the corner of a 
 drawer, included some penncB that in 
 hands entirely great might have come to 
 something. One that seems to have 
 been begotten of an inquiry into the 
 grounds of contemporary renown makes 
 such an appearance as this : 
 
 So mixed it is, a body hardly knows 
 If fame is manufactured goods, or grows. 
 Douce man is he whose sense the point imparts 
 Where advertising ends and glory starts. 
 
 Another grasp of plumage, gleaned, it 
 would seem, in another chase after this 
 same bird, disclosed this : 
 
 And here the difference lies, in that, whereas 
 What a man did was measure of his glory 
 
 278 
 
Feathers of Lost Birds 
 
 In those gone days, now gauged by what he has 
 He reads his title clear to rank in story. 
 
 The patriot lives, obscure, without alarms ; 
 
 The poet, critics tell us, smoothly twaddles. 
 The patent-tonic man it is who storms 
 
 The heights of noise, and fame's high rafter 
 straddles ! 
 Soap is the stuff — 
 
 With the rest of that last broken 
 feather the bird in the hand became the 
 bird in the bush. In the next lot : 
 
 No saint's physiognomy goes to my soul 
 Like the features that beam from that brown 
 aureole — 
 
 suggests a quest after some female 
 bird ; and this also seems to belong to 
 the same theme : 
 
 More welcome than shade on a hot summer day 
 Is the shadow she casts when she's coming my 
 
 way. 
 You can see she's a goddess ! Just look at her 
 
 walk ! 
 I own I adore her : there*s bones in her talk ! 
 Defend me from virgins whose talking is tattle, 
 Whose ears are mere trash-bins, whose tongues 
 
 merely rattle ; 
 
 279 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 Whose brains are but mush, and their judgment a 
 
 sieve — 
 Invertebrate discourse is all they can give. 
 What profits mere beauty where intellect fails ? 
 Oh, give me the woman whose mind will hold 
 
 nails ! 
 
 That was quite a grasp of plumage, to 
 be sure. 
 
 When the tennis-ball skims by the fault-finding net 
 
 is an odd feather from some fleet male 
 bird, perhaps, who got easily away. 
 
 Not as dry as vast Sahara, 
 Just a sand-bank in July, 
 
 suggests a parched throat, and seems 
 masculine too ; and so does the sudden 
 terminal curve of 
 
 One cannot be a dying swan 
 OfEhand. 
 
 It seems as if there might still be fun 
 
 enough in some of the birds that shed 
 
 these things to pay for another chase, 
 
 if only one could get sight of them. 
 
 280 
 
Feathers of Lost Birds 
 
 The worst of these fowl, though, is that 
 the best feathers and the longest legs 
 seem to go together. It takes quick 
 steps and a power of endeavor to catch 
 ostriches. 
 
 281 
 
XX 
 
 OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE 
 
OUTRAGEOUS FORTUNE 
 
 |Y brother Mundanus and I, 
 
 having baffled for the mo- ^"/f ""^ 
 ment the penury that habit- 
 ually suppresses our noble 
 rages, dined together the 
 other night at Delmonico's. After we 
 had well eaten and pretty adequately 
 drunken, my brother's emotions being 
 stirred, he lifted his voice in reproachful 
 protest at certain untoward flukes of 
 fortune to which it seemed due that he 
 and I had been barred out from the large 
 possibilities of a life of luxury and pos- 
 sible pride, and restricted to the more 
 meagre chances of laborious virtue. 
 There was our grandfather, that thrifty 
 and sagacious merchant, whose annual 
 accumulations were of such a satisfacto- 
 ry size for so many successive years. If 
 only his talent for investing money had 
 equalled his ability to make it, what an 
 285 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 though vic- 
 tims of a 
 series of ca- 
 liunitous 
 mischances. 
 
 edifying variety of roses would have 
 bordered our pathway through life. 
 Drinking with decorous respect to this 
 gentleman's memory, my brother re- 
 called an incident, to us the most pa- 
 thetic in our grandfather's career. It 
 happened rather more than sixty years 
 ago. A succession of prosperous sea- 
 sons had swelled his bank balance to un- 
 usual proportions. In his quest for an 
 investment he learned of the budding 
 promise of a Western town named Chi- 
 cago. His mind dwelt upon it until he 
 finally converted fifty thousand dollars 
 into portable assets and travelled out 
 to look at the ambitious Western place, 
 determined, if he liked its appearance, 
 to buy himself a collection of its cor- 
 ner lots. Alas ! he found the town was 
 swampy, and he caught cold there, and 
 brought his assets home again, and pres- 
 ently put them with divers others in- 
 to woollen mills, some of which burned 
 down, and others after a time hung fire, 
 and were sold at a grievous valuation just 
 before the war broke out and made the 
 everlasting fortunes of their purchasers. 
 286 
 
Outrageous Fortune 
 
 At this harrowing reminiscence a tear 
 ran down my brother's nose and fell 
 into his champagne ; but restraining his 
 feelings, he went on to recall how one or 
 two decades later, our father, at that 
 time a vigilant young attorney in Go- 
 tham, had formed a favorable opinion 
 of the tract known as Murray Hill, and, 
 borrowing a convenient sum of money, 
 had purchased some acres of land in it, 
 intending to hold them for future possi- 
 bilities. But in a year or two, having a 
 salutary horror of debt, he took counsel 
 of precaution, and sold his land again 
 and bought back the notes he had given 
 for the purchase money. Which of the 
 contemporary Croesi owned the lots now 
 my brother did not know, nor did he 
 care to learn. 
 
 Coming down still another generation, 
 my brother recalled the time when, not 
 many years ago, he and I were solicited 
 to share the ownership and fortunes of 
 a journal whose infant soul was just 
 on the point of fluttering into life. But, 
 mindful of the mortality statistics of in- 
 fant journals, we withheld our hands 
 287 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 and stayed where we were. Alas again ! 
 That infant throve prodigiously, and 
 now its erstwhile anxious owners re- 
 joice in town and country domiciles and 
 invigorate their energies behind fleet 
 quadrupeds on the Riverside drive. But 
 my brother and I still dwell in modest 
 hired tenements, and rely upon the 
 street-cars for our transportation. 
 
 Seeing that these reminiscences 
 seemed to have a depressing effect upon 
 my brother's spirits, I hastened to sug- 
 gest to him such consoling considera- 
 tions as came into my mind. I re- 
 minded him, in the first place, that 
 inasmuch as we and our fathers had 
 lived in times of prodigious industrial 
 development, such opportunities as we 
 and they had missed had been the com- 
 mon lot of their and our contempo- 
 raries, and it was the exception to find 
 a man born to fair possibilities in life 
 who could not recur in his family annals 
 to just such chances of being very rich 
 are con- as hc had recalled. I told him of the 
 7u7^re/er pcrenuial despondency with which my 
 friend Robinson looked back to a day 
 288 
 
Outrageous Fortune 
 
 when a friend of his had come to him 
 with a handful of Dhudeen & Popocata- 
 petl mining stock which he had en- 
 treated him to purchase at eight dollars 
 a share. But Robinson being a prudent 
 man, had declined, and year after year 
 since then had watched the gradual up- 
 rising of that D. & P. stock, until each 
 of those eight-dollar shares was now rep- 
 resented by certificates readily market- 
 able at two thousand dollars. 
 
 I went on to remind him that if our 
 grandfather had bought those corner 
 lots in Chicago, our family, which is 
 large and not of an especially frugal 
 temperament, would have tried very 
 earnestly to live up to the possibilities 
 of life which such a purchase would 
 eventually have opened. One thing I 
 thought worth mentioning was, that if 
 our father had inherited such a great 
 fortune he would not have found time 
 to raise so many children, and my 
 brother and I might never have been 
 born, or might have died in infancy from 
 some costly foreign fever. I reminded 
 him, too, that our sisters would doubtless 
 289 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 have married counts or possibly spend- 
 thrift dukes, and would have lived abroad 
 at great expense to the estate, and our 
 older brother, who has a prejudice 
 against work as it is, would undoubt- 
 edly have enjoyed life in a manner that 
 would have made necessary some heavy 
 mortgages ; so that it was easily possi- 
 ble that we would have found ourselves, 
 at our age, no richer than we are now, 
 and much less capable both of earning a 
 living and of living on such incomes as 
 we could earn. 
 
 My brother demurred gently at my 
 gloomy estimate of the demoralizing 
 tendencies of wealth, but I continued. 
 I admitted that if our father had held 
 on to his Murray Hill lots, the property 
 might have lasted our time ; but I re- 
 minded him that in that case we should 
 now have been middle-aged men who 
 had experienced expensive pleasures 
 and eaten and drunk rather too much 
 for our good for at least twenty years. 
 ia be our- Our charactcrs would have been feebler 
 for lack of most of the effort and self- 
 denial we have practised during that 
 290 
 
 selves as 
 ive are.. 
 
Outrageous Fortune 
 
 period ; the money we had spent would 
 be gone, and we would have detriment 
 rather than benefit to show for it. The 
 pleasure we had had, being past, would 
 be of no value to us at all, and would 
 impair rather than increase our abilities 
 to enjoy in the future. A continuance 
 of the sort of life we had been leading 
 would not be affirmatively pleasurable, 
 but merely a necessary condition of tol- 
 erable existence. If we had had chil- 
 dren, we should be apprehensive of the 
 effect of our examples on their welfare ; 
 but the chances were that we should be 
 childless clubmen, with shining scalps, 
 and just beginning to be disturbed by 
 ominous twinges in our great toes. 
 
 As to that last chance my brother 
 had alluded to, of our gaining a compe- 
 tence by our own sagacity and good 
 luck, that seemed to me to offer a more 
 reasonable opening for regret. Never- 
 theless I explained to him that, even if 
 we had been in easy circumstances for 
 only eight or nine years, we should not rdher than 
 have been quite the same men that we Vav'/S. ' 
 were, nor would our possible gains have 
 291 
 
IVindfalls of Observation 
 
 been unattended with losses. In my 
 own case I was sure, for example, that 
 a lucky stroke ten years ago would have 
 made such a difference in my associates 
 that I never should have fallen in with 
 my present wife. My children, in con- 
 sequence, if I had had any children, 
 would have had different colored eyes 
 and hair, and would have been different 
 children altogether. I could not think 
 with equanimity of myself as married to 
 a person, however estimable, who is to 
 me in fact an entire stranger ; or as the 
 father of a young brood with whom, as 
 things have gone, I have no acquain- 
 tance, and in whom I take only a remote 
 and dispassionate interest. The man I 
 might have been, I said, is as much a 
 stranger to me as the Prince of Wales. 
 The man I am — that I have worked 
 over, and endured, and sat up nights 
 with — is inextricably associated with my 
 most intimate concerns. For better or 
 worse, I would rather go on with him as 
 he is than change him for a richer, or 
 even a better man, developed on differ- 
 ent lines, under different conditions, and 
 292 
 
Outrageous Fortune 
 
 living with a wife and children that be- 
 long, as it is, to somebody else. 
 
 " As for you," I continued, " not be- 
 ing married, you are not affected by all 
 the considerations that influence me. 
 But if you had made a lucky hit ten 
 years ago you probably would have mar- 
 ried ; and when you consider the vari- 
 ous chances of matrimony, including the 
 cost of children's shoes and the pro- 
 pensity of male offspring to go to the 
 dogs, are you sure that you would dare 
 to shift blindfold out of the shoes you 
 occupy now into those of the man you 
 might have been if you had had better 
 luck ? " 
 
 My brother sniffed a little, but very 
 gently. I think my arguments im- 
 pressed him somewhat ; but his philoso- 
 phy is a trifle less ascetic than mine, and 
 it is only on clearer days than common 
 that he can fix his gaze upon the prom- 
 ised land intensely enough to drive the 
 flesh-pots of Egypt out of his head. He 
 may still be mourning in his heart over 
 those corner lots in Chicago. I don't 
 know. But even if my arguments failed 
 
 293 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 to have a convincing effect upon him, 
 there are some hundreds of thousands 
 of other vainly regretful Americans 
 with whom possibly they may find more 
 favor. 
 
 294 
 
XXI 
 
 CERTAIN INDIVIDUAL 
 VIEWS OF MAJOR BRACE 
 
CERTAIN INDIVIDUAL 
 VIEWS OF MAJOR BRACE 
 
 F there is a thing I have set 
 my heart on," observed Ma- 
 jor Brace, at one minute be- 
 fore cocktail time on Satur- 
 day afternoon, " it is that 
 when my last hour begins to strike I 
 shall have a comfortable and interest- 
 ing departure. Under what circum- 
 stances a man shall be born into this 
 world of doubtful compensations, it 
 does not lie with him to determine. 
 He cannot select his parents or his 
 physician, and even his own deport- 
 ment is a thing outside of his volition. 
 But how he shall be married and how he 
 shall die are matters that it should fall 
 to him to regulate. A man ought to be 
 married cheerfully and in good company. 
 However he may feel about it personal- 
 ly, he should remember that marriage is 
 297 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 As io some 
 
 commended by the church, and that the 
 state makes a point of its encourage- 
 ment. Whatever personal misgivings he 
 may have about it he should put aside 
 when it comes to the point, and adorn 
 his brow (figuratively) with garlands and 
 throw just as penetrating a glamour of 
 individual cheerfulness over the scene 
 as it lies in his power to diffuse. A man 
 at his own wedding must just rub out of 
 his mind those texts about man that is 
 born of woman being liable to discom- 
 forts as the sparks fly upward, and as to 
 how all our years over seventy are labor 
 and sorrow and don't pay. Nunc biben- 
 dum and pulsandum tellus are the right 
 sentiments for him, and his frame of 
 mind should correspond with them. For 
 it is his duty to alleviate the terrors of 
 matrimony and so to conduct himself 
 that other youths taking note of his be- 
 havior may find encouragement therein. 
 " Now the terrors of death " (one ! 
 
 possible ter- two ! three ! four ! five ! ping! " Martini 
 ^delth, cocktail, please " ) " are not to be com- 
 
 pared with those of matrimony, and it 
 must be a simpler thing to die hand- 
 298 
 
Individual Views of Major Brace 
 
 somely than to be creditably married. 
 Moreover, though men may need encour- 
 agement to get married they can all be 
 trusted to die, whether anyone shows 
 them how or not. So a dying man's ex- 
 ample is not so important a matter, and 
 it is entirely reasonable for him to hope 
 that in the arrangements that are made 
 for him to expire, his own personal 
 comfort may be the first consideration. 
 I suppose we have all figured on our 
 last feelings and our last words. Of 
 course, if a man falls down an elevator 
 shaft, or is run over by the cars, or 
 dies violently or in severe pain, that 
 spoils it all, and his preliminary ar- 
 rangements are so much wasted time. 
 But if he dies comfortably in bed and in 
 good spirits, it is going to make a dif- 
 ference to him who is there to see him 
 off. Of course no one wants hilarity at 
 such a time, but courage, gumption, and 
 serenity are as pleasant at life's close as 
 at any point in its duration. The great 
 point is that you don't want a lot of 
 people around that you have got to en- 
 tertain. When you cast your lingering 
 299 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 look behind, you want to see only such 
 people as have made it easier for you to 
 live, and not too many of them. They 
 are the sort who will make it easier for 
 you to die. You don't want anyone to be 
 pleased, neither would you have anyone 
 distressed. Above all things you want 
 to be quit of people who are thinking 
 too much about their own behavior to 
 care anything about yours ; of people 
 who want to make formal remarks suit- 
 able to the occasion ; of people of large 
 experience, which, they think, qualifies 
 them to be professional extinguishers ; 
 of all persons, however estimable, whose 
 presence is a constraint upon you ; of 
 people who want to repeat their favorite 
 Bible texts to you, when your mind is al- 
 ready running on your own. 
 
 " For myself such misgivings as I may 
 feel about the nature of my last mo- 
 ments are largely due to my conviction 
 that when my aunt Samantha hears that 
 I am on my last legs, she will take the 
 first train for my bedroom. And from 
 the time she gets there, and sits down 
 on the edge of the bed, all the comfort 
 300 
 
Individual yiews of Major Brace 
 
 will be gone out of the proceedings. 
 She will want to run the entire show, and 
 she will run it as if it were a dime dis- 
 play that went by clock-work. Saman- 
 tha's effect on humor is that of chloride 
 of lime on a smell. It is impossible to 
 talk anything but commonplace where 
 she is in earshot. What my last words 
 
 will be if she is there But she shan't 
 
 be there. I won't tolerate it. If she 
 comes I shall just say, ' Please give me 
 those trowsers.' And I will excuse my- 
 self and come down and die at the club. 
 
 " I think that I could get along," con- 
 tinued the Major, as he twirled again the %tM'give 
 protruding tip of the little bell on the o^^^f'*^*- 
 table at the club, " if it were not for the 
 people who are willing to forgive my 
 past. They are an unremittent source 
 of worriment to me. They are constant- 
 ly at work undermining the standard 
 of worthlessness that I have set for my- 
 self, and loading me up with new pur- 
 poses, the fulfilment of which is utterly 
 beyond any possibility that I contain. 
 If people — (Oh, bring me, etc.) — if peo- 
 301 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 pie only had gumption enough to re- 
 member that a man's past is nine-tenths 
 of all there is to him, and that to for- 
 give his past is only another way of 
 knocking him on the head and prepar- 
 ing his remains for burial, perhaps some 
 of my dear friends would learn to have 
 more compunction about forgiving me. 
 
 " I resent the idea that because I spend 
 only a couple of hours a day in an office, 
 and get up late mornings, and go to bed 
 late nights, and earn no money, and con- 
 sume certain judicious quantities of alco- 
 hol and tobacco every day, my life is a 
 failure, my habits a failure, and my past 
 a thing to be persistently forgiven. Why, 
 bless your heart, I like my past. If it 
 had been different, these simple pleas- 
 ures that make life fairly profitable to 
 me would fail to satisfy me. For ex- 
 ample, if I had formed habits of work I 
 should be a slave to them, like all the 
 other workers. Work gets hold of men 
 as opium does, until the time comes 
 when the amount they must take every 
 day to keep them reasonably contented 
 is more than their strength can stand. 
 302 
 
Individual yiews of Major Brace 
 
 When they reach that point they drop. 
 You read of cases of it every day ; of 
 men upon whom this fierce work-habit 
 grew with all its attendant desires and 
 ambitions, until they fell in their tracks 
 with the harness on them. They had 
 no particular fun ; they were of no par- 
 ticular use to their friends ; they were 
 just the hired men of society whose 
 business it was to earn money to pay 
 for things that people wanted to sell to 
 them. As long as they were short of 
 money it was well enough for them to 
 toil, because, you know, you must have 
 some money in this world if you are to 
 have any comfort. But when once their 
 accumulations were adequate to support 
 them, their past became a hindrance 
 and a burden to them — something really 
 fit to be forgiven, if possible, and got 
 rid of at any cost. For, you see, it was 
 simply a task-master, forbidding them 
 to stop work and threatening them with 
 misery, and even a premature death, if 
 they altered their habits. 
 
 "Why, such a past as mine — (Thank 
 you ; put it there) — is a possession of 
 
 303 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 inestimable value to a man who can af- 
 ford it. It is so easy to live up to, so 
 patient, so forgiving, so encouraging, 
 and exacts so little. A man who has 
 lived at high pressure must go at high 
 pressure till his boiler bursts, but we 
 low-pressure chaps slide along year after 
 year, burning no great amount of fuel, 
 not hauling many cars to be sure, but 
 running so smoothly and with so little 
 fuss that, when we do finally bring up, 
 no one is inconvenienced and we hardly 
 know it ourselves. 
 
 " It is a fact that I have always had 
 serious compunctions about doing very 
 much, particularly for other people, for 
 fear of the monstrous inconvenience so- 
 ciety in general, and my dependents in 
 particular, might be put to when I died. 
 You know how it is ; when one of those 
 hustling gentlemen who habitually crowd 
 ten days' work into every week throws 
 up his hand there is a wail of despair. 
 All his womenfolks are disheartened, 
 and the men look at one another and 
 groan and say : ' My gracious ! I won- 
 der who is going to take up Jones's 
 
 304 
 
Individual Fiews of Major Brace 
 
 job ! ' No one takes any comfort at his 
 funeral. The mourners are ashamed 
 of him for letting up, and twitch their 
 shoulders nervously in dread of the 
 weight of some of his burdens. It is a 
 dreary business all around. 
 
 " But just you wait and see what a 
 pleasant, cheerful episode it will be 
 when I go. There will be — at least I 
 hope there will — just a proper amount 
 of we-could-have-better-spared-a-better- 
 man sort of regret. Men will say : * So 
 Brace is gone. What a worthless old 
 creature he was ; and yet, somehow, he 
 was handy to have about ! ' A good 
 many people will come to the funeral, I 
 think, partly out of an affectionate habit 
 and partly because it will be a pleasant 
 funeral with no broken hearts in it, 
 and no horrid incubus of responsibili- 
 ties perched up on the coffin and peer- 
 ing around among the mourners for a 
 pair of suitable shoulders to shift itself 
 upon. Nothing but my past enables me 
 to look forward to such a funeral as 
 that ; and to forgive my past, you see, 
 is simply to discredit all my future. I 
 
 305 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 wish people might not forgive it any 
 more. 
 
 , , ., " If there is a social function that 
 parties. I dcspisc With embittered animosity, 
 broke out the Major again after a pause 
 of grumbling meditation, " it is the fam- 
 ily party. I hate it not less for what it 
 includes than for what it leaves out. 
 It is a notorious fact that neither con- 
 sanguinity nor ties of marriage afford 
 ground for the imputation of congenial 
 social qualities. That I should feel an 
 interest of a certain sort in the nephew 
 of the aunt of my wife, or the sister-in- 
 law of the mother-in-law of my stepson, 
 may be reasonable. I am ready to go 
 bail for them when they are arrested for 
 crime, to be a witness to their wills, 
 and possibly to go on their bonds in a 
 reasonable amount when that is a condi- 
 tion precedent to their profitable em- 
 ployment. But why I should be huddled 
 together with these worthy people for 
 purposes of festivity I fail to discern. 
 
 " I have been to a wedding. My 
 cousin Sally got married. I like my 
 306 
 
Individual yiews of Major Brace 
 
 cousin Sally a good deal, and I would 
 have been glad to have fun at her wed- 
 ding ; but — good heavens ! — my cousin 
 is wearing black edges on her writing- 
 paper this spring, and it was held that it 
 ought to be a private wedding, with no 
 one but the family. Sally was there ; 
 her father and mother ; her three broth- 
 ers and their wives ; the bridegroom ; 
 his father and mother ; his grandmoth- 
 er ; his three sisters and the husbands 
 of two of them ; the brothers of the 
 two husbands of the groom's sisters and 
 their wives ; the parents-in-law of Sally's 
 brothers and their families ; first and 
 second cousins, uncles, aunts, and step- 
 relatives of the contracting parties. 
 
 " Gracious ! It made me feel as if I 
 had got mixed up with the Mafia, there 
 was such a dreadful sense of conspiracy 
 and a common, dreadful purpose about. 
 There were people enough of merit 
 there, but they were not grouped on a 
 fit system. Nobody's crowd was com- 
 plete. Everyone who had friends in his 
 society gang with whom he liked to con- 
 sort on such an occasion was separated 
 
 307 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 from two-thirds of them, and had rela- 
 tives served up to him instead. I want- 
 ed to drink champagne. I always do at 
 weddings when I have any feeling for 
 the * parties,' but the gloom was so deep 
 on me that I dared not begin. At last 
 I got Jack Robinson off in a corner, 
 away from everybody that we were re- 
 lated to, and we guzzled monotonously 
 and without enthusiasm until it was de- 
 cent to go home. I tell you, family 
 parties are a baneful business ; bad for 
 those who are excluded and worse for 
 those who are not. I cannot think of 
 any end they serve which is important 
 enough to warrant them. 
 
 " I heard of another informal wedding 
 the other day. The bride invited a 
 score of friends to dinner. The groom 
 was of the party, so was the clergyman, 
 and the wedding and the black coffee 
 came about the same time. Now that 
 was something like. 
 
 " There was imparted to me lately, 
 Of gossip, under due exactions of secrecy," the 
 Major went on, as the bell quivered 
 308 
 
Individual Fiews of Major Brace 
 
 once more under his impetuous finger, 
 " a tremendous story, involving facts 
 bearing in a highly interesting manner 
 upon the moral characters of sundry 
 contemporaries. I rarely know any 
 startling gossip except what I am able 
 to glean from the newspapers, and I was 
 not hunting for recondite facts of a per- 
 sonal nature when the tale I speak of 
 came to my knowledge. I was utterly 
 flabbergasted by it. Where I had con- 
 jectured my informant had ascertained ; 
 but her certainty far outran my sus- 
 picions, for where I had read indiscretion 
 her knowledge joined to mine brought 
 out guilt in large exclamatory lettering. 
 I was astonished at the story, and I have 
 been scarcely less astonished at its ef- 
 fect upon my inner consciousness. At 
 first it filled me up to the exclusion of 
 all other thought, and threatened to get 
 itself unreasonably important for the 
 reason that the knowledge of it left me 
 with nothing else to say. Since then 
 there has been some natural shrinkage 
 in it, due to the action of time and the 
 impact of affairs, and with careful discre- 
 
 309 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 tion I have talked scallops out all around 
 the edge of it (much as children nibble 
 around a flat cake of maple sugar), leav- 
 ing untouched the substantial central 
 tale which I am in honor bound not to 
 reveal. 
 
 " The reason I mention it here is not 
 to tantalize any one with the shadow of 
 a story whose substance is locked up, 
 but for the sake of discussing whether 
 it has paid me to know this story at all. 
 There have been inconveniences about 
 it, the wear and tear of keeping it to my- 
 self, and the disagreeable variation in 
 my sentiments toward some of the per- 
 sons whom it concerned. It did not 
 make me think better of any one abso- 
 lutely, though my estimates of one or 
 two persons relatively to one another 
 have shifted. I find, however, that I am 
 ahead on the whole transaction, because, 
 while I am not so closely attached to 
 the victims of the tale as to be distressed 
 by it, it comes near enough to me to 
 make my interest in it very lively and 
 exhilarating. Without the least desire 
 to judge these contemporaries, I find 
 310 
 
Individual Fiews of Major Brace 
 
 myself in a slightly better position to 
 form just opinions as to the merits or 
 faults of their future behavior. Knowl- 
 edge is power, and power is pleasant, 
 even though it is limited in its possibili- 
 ties of good. I have not yet come to 
 the point where I would unknow that 
 tremendous story if I could. 
 
 " Of course, if I could undo the facts 
 of the story I would gladly do that. 
 What disappoints me is the apparent 
 defect in my benevolence, which, the 
 facts being unalterable, makes me prefer 
 to know them, though apparently they 
 cannot in any legitimate fashion promote 
 my happiness. Can I console myself 
 with the pretence that I love truth too 
 much to part with such a piece of it? 
 I fear not. I fear that the love of truth 
 has little to do with the case. I fear I 
 must conclude that unregenerate man 
 takes a real pleasure in being fully 
 abreast of the times in the knowledge of 
 his neighbor's misdeeds, for the reason 
 perhaps (for one reason) that he is con- 
 tinually comparing himself in an auto- 
 matic sort of way with his neighbors, 
 
Windfalls of Observation 
 
 and information that makes him think 
 worse of them makes him think better, 
 by contrast, of himself. * Certain it is,' 
 as Thackeray assures us, * that scan- 
 dal is good brisk talk,' and that * an ac- 
 quaintance grilled, scored, devilled, and 
 served with mustard and cayenne pepper 
 excites the appetite.' Whether it is also 
 true, as he goes on to aver, that * a slice 
 of cold friend, with currant jelly, is but 
 a sickly, unrelishing meat,' is another 
 matter, and I am not going to admit it ; 
 at least not on this drink." 
 
 312 
 
kfH 22 1904 
 

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