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PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 Being Forthright Studies of Men 
 and Books ; With Some Pages 
 From a Man s Inner Life 
 
 By MICHAEL ^lONAHAN 
 
 Author of Benigna Vena, etc.. 
 
 East Orange, N. J. 
 
 THE PAPYRUS PUBLISHING CO. 
 1908 
 
Copyright, 1908, by Michael Monahan 
 
Of this edition Seven Hundred copies were printed and the 
 type distributed. 
 
 This is No. 
 
To FINLEY PETER DUNNE 
 
 The only art I boast is this 
 
 / too have laughed with all the crowd, 
 When the rich wonder of your wit 
 
 Challenged their plaudits loud; 
 
 cAnd then, the jester s role aside , 
 cA finer spirit have I known, 
 
 cA man with sorrow, too, acquaint, 
 cA hrotheryes, mine ofon. 
 
 cA look into the merry eyes 
 
 Lo ! here are tears unshed 
 That do but ask a kindred soul, 
 
 To leave their fountain head. 
 
 For you have more than Falstaff s mirth, 
 Nor less than Hamlet s teen; 
 
 "Wilt weep for Hecuba" and then 
 With laughter shake the scene. 
 
 One of God s players playing out 
 
 With zest a weary part; 
 Teaching the sad world ho*fa> to smile 
 
 C 5y strokes of genial art; 
 
 Launching the scorn that blasts the knaoe, 
 The jest that flays the fool, 
 
 cAnd by the right dfbine of wit 
 Gibing a nation rule. 
 
 Laugh on, laugh on, dear Wit and Sage, 
 The roaring crowds above : 
 
 Yet keep for your o*h?n chosen fe*h> 
 The <Poet of their love. 
 
 &(ew York, 1908. 
 
Che Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Poe Legend I 
 
 In re Colonel Ingersoll 19 
 
 Richard Wagner s Romance 38 
 
 Saint Mark . , 47 
 
 Oscar Wilde s Atonement 54 
 
 Children of the Age 60 
 
 The Black Friar 66 
 
 Lafcadio Hearn 71 
 
 A Fellow to the Rev. Dr. Hyde 76 
 
 Mr. Guppy 82 
 
 A Port of Age 87 
 
 On Letters 96 
 
 The Kings 100 
 
 The Song that is Solomon s 107 
 
 Dining With Schopenhauer no 
 
 In Praise of Life 117 
 
 Pulvis et Umbra 130 
 
 Shadows 136 
 
 Sursum Corda 140 
 
 Seeing the Old Town 143 
 
 A Hearty God 148 
 
 The Better Day 150 
 
 A Modern Heresy 153 
 
 Familiars Philosophy 156 
 
 Epigrams and Aphorisms 164 
 
 Song of the Rain 173 
 
Che poe Legend: 
 
 Hn dticonvcfittotial Ycrafon. 
 
 COMPLIMENT which mediocrity often pays 
 to genius, is to indict it. 
 
 So there is an indictment against Edgar 
 Allan Poe, with a bill of particulars, the effect 
 of which is to make him out the chief Horrible 
 Example of our literary history. 
 
 Most of his critics admit that he was a genius and deny 
 that he was a respectable person. 
 
 A considerable number deny his respectability with 
 warmth and coldly concede to him a certain measure of 
 poetical talent. 
 
 A few embittered ones deny that he was either respectable 
 or a genius. 
 
 No one has ever contended for him that he was both a gen 
 ius and respectable. I do not make this claim, as I should not 
 wish to appear too original; and, besides, I am content with 
 the fact of his genius and care nothing for the question of 
 respectability. Or, yes, I do care something for it, if 
 by respectability is meant that prudent regard for self which 
 would have prevented the suicide of Poe. I m sure if he 
 were living to-day, he would never think of drinking himself 
 to death. His work would be better paid, for one thing, 
 supposing that he could get past the magazine editors, and 
 then we have learned a little how to drink the art was crude 
 and brutal in Poe s day. Perhaps this is the only respect in 
 which we, the children of a later generation, are better ar 
 tists than he. 
 
 The tradition of Poe s drunkenness hangs on so persist- 
 
2 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 ently that many people can think of him only in connection 
 with that still popular melodrama, Ten-Nights-in-a-Bar- 
 room. As a boy I used to fancy that he was cut out for the 
 leading part in it. And in fact I saw a play not long ago 
 in the provinces, of course in which the author of "The 
 Raven" was shown drunk in every act and working up to a 
 brilliant climax of the "horrors." . . . 
 
 When I try to call up before my mind s eye the figure 
 of Poe, the man in his habit as he lived, his daily walks and 
 associates, the picture is at once broken up by an irruption of 
 red and angry faces old John Allan, Burton the Comedian 
 (who could be so tragically in earnest and so damned vir 
 tuous with a poor poet) , White, Griswold, Wilmer, Graham, 
 Briggs, the sweet singer of "Ben Bolt," and others of the 
 queer literati of that day. Each and all declare in staccato, 
 with positive forefinger raised, "We tell you the man was 
 drunk! Then Absalom Willis appears, bowing daintily, 
 and says in mild deprecation, "No, I would not precisely say 
 drunk but do me the honor to read my article on the sub 
 ject in the Home Journal. The saintly Longfellow, 
 evoked from the shades, seems to say, "Not merely drunk, 
 but malignant." And a host of forgotten poetasters loom 
 ing dimly in the background, take up the Psalmist s words 
 and make a refrain of them "Not merely drunk, but ma 
 lignant!" 
 
 Since this is what we get, in lieu of biography, by those 
 who have taken the life of Poe, it is no wonder that the 
 obscure dramatist seizes on the same stuff for his purpose, 
 degrading the most famous of our poets to the level of a 
 bar-room hero. Whether or not it is possible at this late day 
 to separate the fame of Poe from the foul legend of drunk 
 enness and sodden dissipation that has gathered about it, I 
 would not venture to say ; but very sure am I that no one has 
 yet attempted the feat. Even the mild and half apologetic 
 Dr. Woodberry is gravely interested in the number, extent 
 
THE POE LEGEND 3 
 
 and variety of Poe s drunks. Let me not forget one honor 
 able exception, Edmund Clarence Stedman, who has taken 
 his brother poet, "as he was and for what he was." I do not, 
 however, include Mr. Stedman with the biographers of 
 Poe he stands rather at the head of those who have sought 
 to interpret his genius and to safeguard his literary legacy. 
 And though (I think) he brought no great love to the task 
 Poe is hardly a subject to inspire love he has done it fairly 
 and well. 
 
 I may here observe, parenthetically, that in a very kind 
 letter addressed to the author, Mr. Stedman demurs at the 
 suggestion that he brought no great love to his critical labors 
 on behalf of Poe labors that have unquestionably raised 
 the poet s literary status in the view of many, and have as 
 certainly cleared away a mass of prejudice, evil report and 
 misunderstanding attached to his personal character and rep 
 utation. But all I mean to convey is that Mr. Stedman s 
 splendid work was done, as it appears to me, less for the love 
 of Poe than the love of letters. In saying this I imply not 
 the slightest reproach : Poe is a man to be pitied, praised, ad 
 mired, regretted; or, if you please, to be hated, envied, 
 blamed and condemned. But love, such love, say, as 
 Lamb inspired in his friends and still inspires in his readers, 
 is not for the lonely singer of "Israfel." 
 
 I agree with Poe s biographers that he got drunk often, 
 but I am only sorry that he never got any fun out of it the 
 man was essentially unhumorous. I should be glad to hold a 
 brief for Poe s drunkenness, if his tippling ever yielded him 
 any solace; or, better still, if it ever inspired him to any gen 
 uine literary effort. We know well that some great poets have 
 successfully wooed the Muse in their cups, but you can take 
 my word for it, they were cold sober when they worked the 
 thing out. It is true Emerson says (after Milton) that the 
 poet who is to see visions of the gods should drink only 
 water out of a wooden bowl. But Emerson belonged to the 
 
4 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 unjoyous race of New England Brahmins, who were sur 
 prisingly like the snow men children make, in that they 
 lacked natural heat and bowels. We may not forget that a 
 poet who stands for all time as an ideal type of sanity and 
 genius the always contemporary Quintus Horatius Flac- 
 cus has in many places guaranteed mediocrity to the ab 
 staining bard. 
 
 So there was the best poetical warrant for Poe s drinking, 
 if he could only have got any good out of it. But he couldn t 
 and didn t; he was merely, at times frequent enough to 
 justify his enemies, an ordinary dipsomaniac, craving the 
 madness of alcohol; mirthless, darkly sullen, quite insane, 
 though perhaps physically harmless; hardly conscious of his 
 own identity. Of the genial god Booze, who rewards his true 
 devotees with jollity and mirth, with forgetfulness of care 
 and the golden promise of fortune, who makes poets of dull 
 men and gods of poets of this splendid and beneficent deity, 
 Poe knew nothing. That spell from which Horace drew his 
 most charming visions; which inspired Burns with courage 
 to sing amid the hopeless poverty of his lot; which kindled 
 the genius of Byron and allured the fancy of Heine, like his 
 own Lorelei; which is three-fourths of Beranger and one- 
 half of Moore to Poe meant only madness, the sordid kind 
 from which men turn away with horror and disgust, and 
 which too often leads to the clinic and the potter s field. The 
 kindly spirit of wine, that for a brief time at least works an 
 inspiring change in every man, enlarging the sympathies, 
 softening the heart, prompting new and generous impulses, 
 opening the soul shut up to> self to the greater claims and 
 interests of humanity, was, in the case of Poe, turned into a 
 malefic genie, intent only upon the lowest forms of animal 
 gratification and reckless of any and every ill wrought to 
 body and soul. 
 
 In other words for I must not write a conventional essay 
 Poet was the kind of man that never should have touched 
 
THE POE LEGEND 
 
 5 
 
 the cup. For there are some men oh, yes, I know it! to 
 whom the mildest wine ever distilled from grapes kissed by 
 the sun in laughing valleys, is deadly poison, fatal as that 
 draught brewed of old by the Colchian enchantress. And of 
 these was poor Edgar Poe. 
 
 Neither were there for him those negative but still pleas 
 ing virtues which are sometimes credited to a worshiper of 
 the great god Booze perhaps they are mostly fictitious, but 
 this is a fraud at which Virtue herself may connive. I am 
 very sure no one ever called Poe a "good fellow" for all the 
 whiskey he drank; and his biographers also make the same 
 omission. The drunkenness of Burns calls up the laughing 
 genius of a hundred matchless ballads, the dance, the fair 
 and the hot love that followed close upon ; calls up the epic 
 riot of beggars in the ale-house of Poosie Nancy and we 
 see the whole vivid life of Burns was of a piece with his 
 poetry. To wish him less drunken or more sober (if you 
 prefer it) is to wish him less a poet. 
 
 Not so with Poe, as I have already shown. He got nothing 
 from drink, in the way of literary inspiration, though some 
 of his critics think he did, and, being themselves both sober 
 and dull, appear to doubt whether anything so gotten is 
 legitimate. I hate to lay irreverent hands on the popular 
 belief that "The Raven" was composed during or just fol 
 lowing a crisis of drunken delirium the poem is too elabo 
 rately artificial for that, and has not Poe told us how he 
 wrote it, in a confession which, more clearly than all the 
 labored efforts of his biographers, explains the vanity, the 
 weakness and the fatal lack of humor in his make-up? I do 
 not find any suggestions of drink or "dope" in the samples of 
 his prose which I dislike, such as a few of his "Old World 
 Romances." If there be any "dope" in this stuff, it is, in my 
 opinion, the natural dope of faculties when driven against 
 their will to attempt things beyond the writer s province or 
 power. And there is also the "dope" of what could be, at 
 
6 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 times, a fearfully bad style. But I am not writing a literary 
 essay. 
 
 I conclude, then, that in the case of Edgar Allan Poe, 
 drink has no extenuating circumstances, though many might 
 be pleaded for the poet himself. It made enemies for him of 
 those who wanted to be his friends (if you will only believe 
 them) ; it lost him his money deuced little of it ever he 
 had ; it helped to break his health, and it gave him no valua 
 ble literary inspiration. Some solace, I would gladly think, 
 it yielded him, and maybe (who knows?) there was a blessed 
 nepenthe in the peace it brought him at last when, after 
 babbling a while on his cot in that Baltimore hospital, there 
 came to him the only dreamless sleep he was to know. 
 
 |LL his life long Poe dreamed of having a maga 
 zine of his own and never got his desire. He 
 was always writing to his friends and possible 
 patrons about this one darling dream ; but noth 
 ing came of it. The nearest he ever got to his 
 wish was when he succeeded in drawing into his plan one T. 
 C. Clarke, a Philadelphia publisher. Clarke had money, and 
 he put up a certain amount toward the starting of the 
 "Penn," as the magazine was to be called. Some initial steps 
 were taken, and the moment seems to have been the most 
 sanguine in Poe s long battle with adversity. He was full of 
 enthusiasm and wrote to many friends, detailing his literary 
 hopes and projects in connection with the new magazine. 
 Then suddenly, and rather unaccountably, everything was 
 dropped. It seems likely that Clarke took cold in his money 
 at any rate the "Penn" died a-borning. Poe had gone far 
 enough to incur a good-sized debt to Clarke he left in the 
 latter s hands a manuscript as security, which we may sup- 
 
THE POE LEGEND 7 
 
 pose did not raise the temperature of that gentleman s 
 finances. 
 
 Then the planning and the letter-writing and the making 
 of prospectuses, with other architectural projects of the 
 Spanish variety, went on and continued to the end of the 
 chapter good God ! how pathetic and yet grimly humorous 
 it all is to one who has carried the same cross, and knows 
 every inch of that Calvary ! Poe was at least spared the strug 
 gle which comes after possession; but I am aware that this is 
 no consolation to the man who is dying to make his fight. 
 
 Yet once again the chance fluttered into his hands, when 
 he bought the "Broadway Journal" from a man named Bisco 
 with a note of fifty dollars endorsed by Horace Greeley. Not 
 long afterward Horace had the pleasure of paying the note 
 and remained to the end a strong believer in Poe s imagina 
 tive gifts. About the same time that the philosopher parted 
 with his money, Poe gave up his brief possession of the 
 "Journal." But still he went on in the old hopeless, hopeful 
 way, dreaming of that blessed magazine, -which he had now 
 decided to call the "Stylus" instead of the "Penn." And a 
 name only it remained to the last. 
 
 From these and many similar facts in the life of Poe, his 
 biographers to a man conclude that he had no business abil 
 ity. I am not so sure I am only sure that he never had the 
 money. In fact, Poe was never able to raise more than one hun 
 dred dollars at any time in his whole life once when he bor 
 rowed that sum to get married (and the sneerers say, forgot 
 to repay it), and again when he won a like amount with a 
 prize story. Yes, he got a judgment of something over two 
 hundred dollars against his savage foe, Thomas Dunn Eng 
 lish, but I am not aware that it was ever satisfied think of 
 Poe suing a man for literary libel ! His usual salary was Ten 
 Dollars a week Burton, the tragic Comedian, held out a 
 promise of more, but discharged him when the time to make 
 good came round and this after Poe had gained what was 
 
8 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 considered a literary reputation in those days. With such 
 resources, to have started the kind of magazine Poe had 
 always in mind, would have tasked a man of great business 
 ability, with no poetical ideas floating about in his head to 
 divert him from the Main Chance. 
 
 Certainly Poe was not the man for the job I doubt if he 
 could have sold shares in El Dorado. But I do not think his 
 failures, such as they were, justly convict him of a complete 
 lack of that ordinary sense which enables a man to carry his 
 money as far as the corner. There is a popular cant now, 
 based on the success of some fortunate writers, that literary 
 genius of high order is not inconsistent with first-rate business 
 ability. I do not care to go into the discussion especially as 
 this is not a literary essay but I will say that in most 
 instances cited to prove the point, the money sense is a good 
 deal more obvious than the literary genius. 
 
 To make what is called a business success in this world, a 
 man is required to do homage before many gods. But though 
 he pay the most devoted worship to the divinities of Thrift, 
 Enterprise, Courage, Energy, Foresight, Calculation, he will 
 still fail should he omit his tribute to a greater god than 
 these Expediency ! 
 
 In his poetical way Edgar Allan Poe went a-questing 
 after many strange worships, and he was learned in all that 
 mystic lore as far back as the Chaldeans. But he seems never 
 to have got an inkling of that one universal religion in which 
 all men believe, which settles all earthly things the relent 
 less but impassive Divinity of Affairs, already named, by 
 which success or failure is determined for every man that 
 cometh into the world. 
 
I O WARD the close of Poe s life a horde of female 
 poets rushed upon his trail. His relations with 
 them were not wholly "free from blame," to 
 quote his biographers they seem to have been, 
 at any rate, platonic. A poetess who is always 
 studying her own emotions for "copy" is not to be taken un 
 awares. I think Poe was in more danger of being led astray 
 than any of the ladies whom he distinguished with his atten 
 tions. It is to be noted that they invariably speak of him as 
 a "perfect gentleman," even after he had ceased to honor 
 them with his affections. To me there is something rather 
 literary than womanly in such angelic charity and forgive 
 ness tis too sugary sweet. Have we not heard that lovers 
 estranged make the worst enemies ? At any rate the lover of 
 "Ligeia," "Eleonora" and similar abstractions was not a 
 man to be feared by a poetess of well-seasoned virtue. 
 
 Yes, I am sure they only wanted to get copy out of him 
 and to link their names with his. They were mostly widows, 
 too which makes the thing even more suspicious. One of 
 them that one to whom he addressed his finest lyric was 
 forty-five. Lord, Lord ! what liars these poets are ! I give 
 you my word that until very lately I believed those perfect 
 lines "To Helen" idealized some youthful love of Poe s. 
 Ah! Psyche, from the regions which 
 Are fairy land. 
 
 Psyche lived in Providence, which is in the State of Rhode 
 Island. She was, as I have said, forty-five, an age that should 
 be above tempting or temptation. She wrote verses, now for 
 gotten, and her passion for Poe was of the most literary 
 character. After a two-days courtship he proposed to her 
 and was accepted, on condition, however, that he amend his 
 breath which is to say, his habits. Poe seems to have 
 
io PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 regretted his rashness, for he at once started on a bat (these 
 remarks are not literary), as if the prospect of his joy was 
 too much for him. Still Helen would not reject him; she 
 merely wrote him more poetry and the poet again turned 
 to drink as if to drown a great sorrow. A day was set for 
 the wedding, and he began celebrating at the hotel bar long 
 before the hour appointed for the ceremony. Helen heard 
 of his early start, and, knowing what he could do in a long 
 day with such an advantage, she sent for him and broke off 
 the engagement. This is the only instance I know of in Poe s 
 entire career where his drinking had the least appearance of 
 sanity. 
 
 Before this, and indeed during the lifetime of Mrs. Poe, 
 he had broken with Mrs. Ellet, a lady who made feeble 
 verse, but whose ability for scandal and mischief was out of 
 the ordinary. It was through this daughter of the Muses 
 that the poet became estranged from Mrs. Osgood, and 
 there was a beautiful women s row, in which Margaret Ful 
 ler took a hand. Mrs. Osgood was a gushing person, fero 
 ciously intent on "copy," but of mature age and quite capable 
 of taking care of herself. She declares and asseverates that 
 Poe chased her to Providence that fatal Providence ! and 
 to Albany, imploring her to love him. I wonder where he 
 got the money for these journeys about this time he was 
 lecturing on the "Cosmogony of the Universe," in order to 
 raise funds for his eternally projected magazine. The very 
 popular nature of the subject and his own qualities as a ly- 
 ceum entertainer, which never would have commended him 
 to the late Major Pond incline me to the belief that Poe 
 was not at that time burning much money in trips to Provi 
 dence and Albany. 
 
 At any rate Mrs. Osgood cut him out, though on her 
 death-bed, with a last effort of the ruling passion (or literary 
 motive) she very handsomely forgave him and pronounced 
 a touching eulogy on his moral character. 
 
THE POE LEGEND 1 1 
 
 Then there was "Annie," a married woman living near 
 Boston, to whom Poe addressed a sincere and beautiful poem. 
 The exigencies of her case rather strain the platonic theory, 
 but I do not give up my brief, mind you. I suspect that Annie 
 was behind the breaking off with Helen, but, of course, he 
 couldn t marry Annie for the reason that she had a husband 
 already (of whom we know no more) , and divorces were not 
 then negotiated in record time. Annie was therefore obliged 
 to be content with the sweet satisfaction of foiling a hated 
 rival and to a woman s heart we know this is the next best 
 thing to landing the man. Annie, by the way, was not a liter 
 ary person : she wanted love from Poe, not copy ; and she 
 seems to have sincerely, if not very sensibly, loved the poet 
 for himself. 
 
 Remains the last of these queer attachments which throw 
 a kind of grotesque romance over the closing years of Poe. 
 Mrs. Shelton was of unimpeached maturity, like the rest, and 
 like all the rest but one, a widow. She lived in Richmond, 
 Virginia, and had been a boyish flame of Poe s. She was 
 neither beautiful nor literary, and she had attained the ripe 
 age of fifty years. But she was rich, and though Poe was not 
 a business man, I dare say he felt the money would be no 
 great inconvenience and then there was always the maga 
 zine to be started, dear me ! Still he made love to her as if he 
 was half afraid she would take him at his word and he kept 
 writing to Annie ! But Mrs. Shelton was of sterner stuff 
 than the poetic Helen. She had made up her mind to marry 
 Poe for reasons sufficient unto herself, and she would have 
 done it had not fate intervened. She made her preparations 
 like a thorough business woman, and strongmindedly led the 
 way toward the altar. The wedding ring was bought (I can 
 hardly believe with Poe s money), and all things were in 
 readiness for the happy event, when the poet wandered away 
 on that luckless journey whose end was in another world. 
 
12 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 Mrs. Shelton wore mourning for him, and all her women 
 friends told her it was wonderfully becoming. ... I 
 think Annie s crape was at the heart. 
 
 Edgar Allan Poe was a child in the hands of women, and 
 that s the whole truth a loving, weak, vain and irresponsi 
 ble child. This count in the indictment is the weakest of all. 
 I should not have referred to it had I been writing a conven 
 tional essay. 
 
 HE notion that Poe was mad has within late years 
 received a quasi-scientific confirmation at 
 least the doctors have settled the matter to their 
 own satisfaction. I therefore advert to it in 
 order to dispose of the Poe indictment in full. 
 My learned friend, Dr. William Lee Howard, of Balti 
 more (a town forever memorable to the lovers of the poet), 
 sets out to prove that Edgar Allan Poe was not a drunkard in 
 the ordinary sense (which is ordinarily believed), but was 
 rather what the medical experts are now calling a psychopath; 
 in plain words, a madman. "He belongs," says the doctor, "to 
 that class of psychopaths too long blamed and accused of 
 vicious habits that are really symptoms of disease a disease 
 now recognized by neurologists as psychic epilepsy." The 
 doctor fortifies his thesis with much learning of the same 
 kind, and in conclusion he says: "The psychologist readily 
 understands the reason for Poe s intensity, for his cosmic ter 
 ror and his constant dwelling upon the aspects of physical 
 decay. He lived alternately a life of obsession and lucidity, 
 and this duality is the explanation of his being so shamefully 
 misunderstood so highly praised, so cruelly blamed. In 
 most of his weird and fantastic tales we can see the patient 
 emerging from oblivion. We find in his case many of the 
 primary symptoms of the psychopath a disordered and dis- 
 
THE POE LEGEND 13 
 
 turbed comprehension of concepts, suspicion, and exagger 
 ated ideas of persecution. " 
 
 These be words horrendous and mouth-filling, but surely 
 I need not remind the erudite Dr. Howard that 
 
 When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter, 
 And proved it twas no matter what he said. 
 
 And I suspect Dr. Howard in coming, as he thinks, to the 
 defence of Poe s reputation, has done the poet an ill service, 
 though I doubt if he will influence any right-judging minds. 
 Nor am I in sympathy with the doctor s ingenious argument 
 that the most strongly marked products of Poe s genius are 
 to be referred to a diseased mental and nervous condition; 
 which is simply Nordau s contention that all genius is disease. 
 According to this view, all men of great intellectual power 
 e. g., Nordau himself and Dr. William Lee Howard are 
 insane; and yet it is a fact that the madhouses are chiefly 
 peopled with the average sort of human beings. 
 
 No, the first of American poets was not mad because he 
 wrote "The Raven," and The House of Usher," and "Li- 
 geia," and u The Red Death." These masterpieces indeed 
 prove that he was at certain fortunate times in possession of 
 that highest and most potential sanity, that mens divinior, 
 from which true artistic creation results always the rarest 
 and most beautiful phenomenon in the world. 
 
 Mad! I guess not! but no doubt he was thought to be 
 cracked by the half of his acquaintance, for that is the trib 
 ute which mediocrity ever pays to genius. The small grocer 
 folk and their kind about Fordham, a well as some more pre 
 tentious respectabilities, looked askance at the poor poet 
 struggling with his burden and his vision; fighting his un 
 equal battle with fate and fortune. In much the same way, 
 though with deeper aversion and contempt, he was regarded 
 by the successful literary cliques of the day, especially the 
 "New England School" of his detestation those thrifty, 
 cold-blooded, sagacious persons who made so much of their 
 
14 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 very moderate talents. Mr. W. D. Howells, the leading in 
 heritor of their spirit, has a poor notion of Poe. In short, 
 our poet was that scandal and contradiction in his own day 
 a true genius ; and he remains an enigma to ours. 
 
 But I do not think he was any more a psychopath or a 
 madman than bless me! Dr. William Lee Howard him 
 self though I will grant that, as we are now saying, several 
 things got constantly on his nerves. And among these : 
 
 Chronic poverty. 
 
 Rejection of his literary claims. 
 
 Success of his inferiors. 
 
 The insolence of publishers. 
 
 Humiliation of spirit. 
 
 And I must grant it the agony induced by his occa 
 sional excesses and his forfeiture of self-respect. 
 
 I do not argue that the misfortunes prove the genius, even 
 though in Poe s case they seem to have been the penalty an 
 nexed to his extraordinary gifts the curse of the malignant 
 fairy. But with due respect to the learned authority several 
 times referred to, and in spite of all the Bedlam science in the 
 world, I hold to my faith that true genius is not the negation, 
 but the affirmation of sanity. 
 
 As for the literary smugs, to whom Poe is anathema be 
 cause he was a genius and also a scandal, according to their 
 moral code: is it not enough, gentlemen, that you are pros 
 perous, and respectable and utterly unlike Poe ? 
 
EXT to the subject of Poe s drinking habits, 
 which you have to follow like a strong breath 
 through every account of him that I have seen 
 his faithful biographers give most attention to 
 his borrowings. Hence the typical Poe biog 
 raphy reads, as already suggested, like an indictment. 
 
 Now, the fact is, poor Poe was as bad a borrower as he 
 was a drinker he meant well and heaven knows he tried 
 hard enough in each capacity, but neither part fitted him, 
 and in both he failed to rise to the dignity of the artist. He 
 was truly a bum borrower (this is not a literary essay). He 
 never executed a "touch" with grace or finesse. Instead of 
 going to his friends with endearing assurance, smiling like a 
 May-day at the honor and pleasure he designed them, he 
 put on his hat with the deep black band and went like an 
 undertaker to conduct his own funeral. No wonder they 
 threw him down ! But in truth he rarely had the courage to 
 face his man, and so he sent that poor devoted Mrs. Clemm 
 that paragon of mothers-in-law for a poet ! or else weak 
 ly relied on his powers of literary persuasion and courted cer 
 tain refusal by penning his modest request. Call this man a 
 borrower! Why, he was a parody of Charles Lamb s idea 
 that your true borrower, Alcibiades or Brinsley Sheridan, 
 belongs to a superior kind of humanity, the Great Race 
 born to rule the rest. He never realized the greatness of the 
 borrowing profession never rose to it, to take a metaphor 
 from the stage, but remained a mumping, fearful, calamity- 
 inviting, graceless and hopeless, make-believe borrower to 
 the last. 
 
 For this his biographers are ashamed of him, as for his 
 sprees, and this also has passed into the popular legend con 
 cerning Poe, of which the obscure dramatist (already re- 
 
1 6 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 ferred to) has availed himself. Neither the unknown drama 
 tist nor his biographers have deemed it worth while to ex 
 plain this phase of Poe s life these are the facts and here 
 are the letters to Kennedy, Griswold, White, Thomas, Gra 
 ham, Clarke, Simms, Willis, et al. Can you make anything 
 else of them? And another count of the indictment in re 
 Edgar Allan Poe is proven. 
 
 I am not writing a literary essay, but I must again lay 
 stress on one thing, in extenuation of Poe s inveterate offence 
 of borrowing from his friends he did it very badly, so 
 badly that this fact alone should excuse him in the eyes of 
 the charitable. Let us also try to bear in mind that the most 
 he could earn, after giving oath-bound guarantees as to so 
 briety, etc., was Ten Dollars a week this was the sum for 
 which Burton (the tragic Comedian) hired him and from 
 which in a very short time the same Burton ruthlessly sepa 
 rated him. The joke being that this same fat-headed Burton 
 carried on the affair with a high show of regard for the dig 
 nity of the Literary Profession, outraged by Poe ! Ten Dol 
 lars a week! Why, do you know that our most popular 
 author, Mr. Success G. Smith, is believed to earn about fifty 
 thousand a year with his pen? That Mr. Calcium Give- 
 emfitts, the fearless exposer of corruption in high places, is 
 worrying along on a beggarly stipend of, say, thirty-five 
 thousand? That the famous society novelist, Mrs. Tuxedo 
 Jones, barely contrives to make ends meet on the same hard 
 terms; and that a score of others might be named whose in 
 comes do not fall below twenty-five thousand ? 
 
 But, you say, does each and every one of these gifted and 
 fortunate individuals make literature in the sense that Poe 
 made it? My dear sir, these persons are all my intimate 
 friends. I admire their works next to my own, though I con 
 fess I do not read them so often. Therefore, to single out 
 one of these distinguished and successful authors for praise 
 would be invidious, and, besides I am not writing a literary 
 essay. 
 
LAST word as to Poe s enemies those whom he 
 made for himself and those who were called 
 into being by his literary triumphs. Here again 
 I think Poe failed to hit it off, as he might have 
 done. Though he labored at the gentle art of 
 making enemies with much diligence, he never utilized them 
 with brilliant success in a literary way (most of the criticism 
 which procured him his enemies is hack-writing, not litera 
 ture) . For example, he did not make his enemies serve both 
 his wit and reputation, as Heine so well knew how to do. 
 The latter turned his foes into copy; throughout his life they 
 were his chief literary asset, and I have no doubt that he 
 almost loved them for the literature they enabled him to 
 make. This is the most exquisite revenge upon a literary 
 rival to make him your pot-boiler and bread-winner as well 
 as a feeder to your fame and glory. It was beyond Poe, and, 
 therefore, the chronicle of his grudges has hardly more 
 piquancy than the tale of his borrowings. 
 
 But his biographers weary us with it, as if the matter were 
 of real importance. Nonsense ! Our literary manners are 
 doubtless improved since Poe s day; the brethren are surely 
 not so hungry, and there is more fodder to go round ( I have 
 said this is not a literary effort). Still the civility is rather 
 assumed than real; there is much spiteful kicking of shins 
 under the table; and private lampoons take the place of the 
 old public personalities, I grant that authors are more gen 
 erous in their attitude toward one another than formerly, and 
 the fact cannot be disputed that they are fervently sincere in 
 their praise of the dead ones. 
 
 No, we shall not condemn Poe for the enemies he made. 
 The printed word breeds hostility and aversion that the 
 writer wots not of yea, his dearest friends, scanning his 
 
i8 
 
 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 page with jealous eye, shall take rancor from his most guile 
 less words and cherish it in their bosoms against him. Write, 
 and your friends will love you till they hate you ; for there is 
 no fear and jealousy in the world like those that lurk in the 
 printed word. Write then, write deeply enough, down to 
 the truth of your own soul, below the shams of phrase and 
 convention, below your insincerities of self and you shall 
 have enemies to your heart s desire. The man who could 
 print much and still make no enemies, has never yet appeared 
 on this planet. Certainly it was not he who struggled des 
 perately for the poorest living in and about New York some 
 fifty years ago; who saw his young wife die in want and 
 misery, with the horror of officious charity at the door ; who 
 not long afterward and in a kindly dream (as I must think 
 it) left all this coil of trouble and sorrow behind him, be 
 queathing to immortality the fame of Edgar Poe. 
 
In Re Colonel 
 
 N THIS country freedom is a legal fiction; there 
 are varying degrees of toleration, but no liberty 
 in the true sense. 
 
 In England and Prussia, both countries ruled 
 by divine right, there is more personal liberty 
 than in this Republic, which was founded upon the ironical 
 premise that all men are born free and equal. 
 
 The battle for freedom goes on eternally when we stop 
 fighting we slide back into servitude. 
 
 In many States of the Union there are laws on the statute 
 books that penalize liberty of thought and speech. 
 
 These statutes are mostly derived from Colonial times and 
 the barbarous intolerance of the Old World. They are an 
 organic link between us and the British tyranny from which 
 our patriot fathers appealed to the sword. No statesman or 
 legislator has the courage to demand that they be wiped 
 from the statute-books. It is supposed that the moral sense 
 of the people is somehow concerned in their being kept there 
 like theology, which no one is able to define, but which 
 many people take to be the highest and most valuable kind 
 of knowledge. 
 
 So these cruel old laws are not disturbed by pious legis 
 lators, who would make no bones at all of trading in public 
 franchises, or of acting on any proposition with the "immoral 
 majority." Hypocrisy and fraud respect in these shameful 
 statutes the "wisdom" of our ancestors, and still affect to see 
 in them a safeguard for religion. Hypocrisy and fraud unite 
 to keep them on the law-books where they lie, asleep it may 
 be, but ready-fanged and poisoned should they be invoked 
 at any time to do their ancient office. Many people would be 
 
20 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 glad to have these infamous laws erased from the statute- 
 books, but they do nothing about it. The public sense of 
 hypocrisy stands in the way. Legislators fear the protest of 
 what is called "organized religion." Liberty continues to be 
 disgraced in the house of her friends. 
 
 New Jersey has laws of this kind. Eighteen years ago one 
 of them was waked from its long sleep in order to punish a 
 man who had exercised the right of free speech. By a strange 
 contradiction the result of yoking the Era of Liberty with 
 the Age of Oppression this right of free speech is guaran 
 teed in the Constitution of New Jersey, under which the old 
 cruel Colonial law is allowed to operate. That is to say, the 
 Constitution both guarantees and penalizes the same privi 
 lege a beautiful example of consistency arising from respect 
 for the "wisdom of our ancestors." 
 
 The trial attracted universal attention because the bravest 
 and ablest advocate of free speech in our time appeared for 
 the defense. Outside of the great principle involved, there 
 was little in the case to engage the interest or sympathies of 
 Colonel Ingersoll. The defendant was an obscure ex-min 
 ister named Reynolds, who had gone over to infidelity. Re 
 ligion, it must be granted, lost less than Reynolds, who seems 
 to have been unable to maintain himself as a preacher of lib 
 eral doctrine. No doubt many ministers have profited by his 
 example and stayed where they were the free thought 
 standard of ability is a good deal higher than the evangelical. 
 This Reynolds printed and circulated some literature about 
 the Bible. It was merely puerile and foolish, but some people 
 who looked upon Reynolds as a nuisance (which I fear he 
 was) and wanted to punish him, thought it a good case for 
 the old Colonial statute against blasphemy. Accordingly 
 they invoked it, and hence the trial. 
 
 The result of this now famous trial for blasphemy proves 
 that a law on the statute-book, no matter how antiquated, 
 bigoted and absurd and this was all three in the superlative 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 21 
 
 degree outweighs with a jury the utmost logic and elo 
 quence of the ablest advocate. Such is the superstition of 
 law and such the desirability of having on our statute-books 
 these bequests from the blind and tyrannous bigotry of the 
 Old World. 
 
 We need not condemn the twelve Jersey jurymen for sin 
 ning against light darkness was there in the law and de 
 manded judgment at their hands. Of course, they enjoyed 
 the Colonel s eloquence; his marvelous pleading; his logic 
 that built up and buttressed a whole structure of argument, 
 while his oratory ravished them ; his flashes of wit that dis 
 armed every prejudice ; his persuasive power that almost con 
 vinced them they were free men with no slightest obliga 
 tion to the servile past. Yes, it must have been like a wonder 
 ful play to these simple Jerseymen. No doubt they congrat 
 ulated themselves that they were privileged spectators, see 
 ing and hearing it for nothing; and they talked or will talk 
 of it to their dying day. I think myself it was one of the 
 most effective and powerful addresses ever made to a jury 
 one of the finest appeals ever uttered on behalf of liberty 
 and it will be honored as it deserves when this nation shall be 
 truly free. 
 
 I daresay some of these Jerseymen were wavering when 
 the Colonel sat down at last how could they help it? But 
 the prosecutor reminded them (without any eloquence) of 
 their obligations to city, county and State. Above all, there 
 is the Law what are you going to do about that, gentle 
 men? No matter whether it was passed some two hundred 
 years ago and carried over from Oppression to Liberty no 
 matter whether it was made for a state of civilization, or 
 barbarism, if you please, which we have outgrown there it 
 stands, the Law which safeguards the Church and the Home 
 the law which you are sworn to maintain. 
 
 Something like this, no doubt, the prosecutor must have 
 
22 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 said, but his remarks were few he did not care to invite a 
 comparison. Besides, he knew his jurymen. 
 
 Colonel Ingersoll had made a speech that will live forever. 
 
 He lost his case. 
 
 New Jersey lost an opportunity. 
 
 GREAT many people contend that we now enjoy 
 in this country as much liberty (or toleration) 
 as is good for us. To aim at the full measure 
 which Colonel Ingersoll advocated is, in the 
 
 opinion of these people, to advance the standard 
 of Anarchy. 
 
 By this reasoning a man who is only half or three-quar 
 ters well is better off than one in perfect health. 
 
 Complete freedom is complete well-being. 
 
 Colonel Ingersoll was the foremost champion in our time 
 of the rights of the human spirit. 
 
 It has been urged that he spent the best part of his life 
 threshing out old theological straw, fighting battles that had 
 been thoroughly fought out long before his day. Singularly 
 enough, this position is usually taken by persons attached to 
 the theological system against which Ingersoll waged a 
 truceless war. There may be some virtue in the argument, 
 but it surely is not that of consistency. 
 
 Let us be fair. Ingersoll was no mere echo and imitator of 
 the great liberals who preceded him. He had a message of 
 his own to his own generation. He was the best-equipped, 
 most formidable and persistent advocate of the liberal prin 
 ciple which this country, at least, has ever known; and it is 
 extremely doubtful if his equal as a popular propagandist 
 was to be found anywhere. 
 
 He took new ground. He carried the flag farther than 
 any of his predecessors. He fought without compromise, 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 23 
 
 neither seeking nor giving quarter. He believed in the sa- 
 credness of his cause the holy cause of liberty. His was no 
 tepid devotion, no Laodicean fervor, no timid acquiescence 
 dictated by reason and half denied by fear. 
 
 That uncertain allegiance of the soul which Macaulay 
 describes as the "paradise of cold hearts," was not for him. 
 The temper of his zeal for liberty can be likened only to a 
 consuming flame; it burned with ever increasing ardor 
 through all the years of his long life; it was active up to the 
 very moment when jealous Death touched his eloquent lips 
 with silence. 
 
 It was a grand passion, and, like every grand passion, it 
 had grand results. 
 
 Heine has said that no man becomes greatly famous with 
 out passion ; that it is the mark by which we know the inspired 
 man from the mere servant or spectator of events. 
 
 I see this mark in Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg 
 speech, in the Proclamation and some of the Messages. The 
 divine passion that announces a man with a mission and a 
 destiny beyond his fellows. 
 
 I see this mark in Robert G. Ingersoll. I have lately read 
 the greater part of his work lectures, speeches, controver 
 sial writings and the cumulative sense I take from it is that 
 of wonder at the passion of the man. Perhaps it never found 
 better, never attained higher expression than in these words: 
 
 "I plead for light, for air, for opportunity. I plead for 
 individual independence. I plead for the rights of labor and 
 of thought. I plead for a chainless future. Let the ghosts 
 go justice remains. Let them disappear men and women 
 and children are left. Let the monsters fade away the world 
 is here with its hills and seas and plains, with its seasons of 
 smiles and frowns, its spring of leaf and bud, its summer of 
 shade and flower and murmuring stream, its autumn with the 
 laden boughs, when the withered banners of the corn are 
 still and gathered fields are growing strangely wan; while 
 
24 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 death, poetic death, with hands that color what they touch, 
 weaves in the autumn wood her tapestries of gold and brown. 
 
 "The world remains with its winters and homes and fire 
 sides, where grow and bloom the virtues of our race. Let 
 the ghosts go we will worship them no more. 
 
 "Man is greater than these phantoms. Humanity is grand 
 er than all the creeds, than all the books. Humanity is the 
 great sea, and these creeds, and books, and religions are but 
 the waves of a day. Humanity is the sky, and these religions 
 and dogmas and theories are but the mists and clouds chang 
 ing continually, destined finally to melt away. 
 
 "That which is founded on slavery, and fear, and ignor 
 ance cannot endure." 
 
 T IS agreed by persons who make it a virtue 
 never to say what they really think, that Colonel 
 Ingersoll was without influence upon the intelli 
 gent thought of the day by which intelligent 
 thought they mean themselves. 
 
 If this be true, we lack an explanation of the fact that his 
 books and lectures are selling by the thousands, both in this 
 country and in England. If the testimony of the book-stalls 
 amounts to anything, then the great Agnostic did not cast 
 his "seed of perdition" upon barren ground. Whether for 
 right or wrong, whether for good or evil, his word is march 
 ing on. 
 
 From the Silence that comes to all men he has gained a 
 higher claim upon our attention, a more valid right to plead. 
 We remember that he was faithful unto death. With the 
 cessation of that defiant personality, about which so long 
 raged the din of controversy, men have leave to study his 
 best thought in the dry light of reason. He that is dead over- 
 cometh. 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 25 
 
 During his life Colonel Ingersoll gave and took many 
 hard blows that is, he fought his adversaries with the 
 weapons of their choice. 
 
 Often it seemed to those who were in sympathy with 
 much that he said, with much that he contended for, that he 
 might have used softer words ; that he might have dealt less 
 brutally with inherited beliefs and prejudices ; in short, that 
 he might have employed rosewater instead of vitriol. 
 
 The answer to this is, Colonel Ingersoll fought without 
 compromise. From his first public utterance he made his 
 position plain. He never faltered, shuffled or equivocated. 
 He knew that mutual compliments cloud the issue; he asked 
 none, gave none. 
 
 But the fact really is, he was far kinder and more char 
 itable toward his adversaries than they were toward him. 
 Besides, they had a great advantage in unkindness : they were 
 always sending him to their hell and he had no hell to send 
 them to! 
 
 However, I do not believe that Colonel Ingersoll would 
 have fared much better at the hands of the clergy had he, 
 while professing infidelity, made his declaration of unfaith in 
 the mildest and most colorless terms. Euphemism would not 
 have saved the Colonel, and this he well knew, having one of 
 the most logical minds in the world. 
 
 No infidel was ever so tender toward the sensibilities of 
 the orthodox as Ernest Renan, who, though he left the altar, 
 yet (as Ingersoll shrewdly said) carried the incense a great 
 part of his journey with him. 
 
 Kenan s attitude toward the old faith which he had re 
 nounced was that of a sentimental iconoclast but an icono 
 clast, for all that. He wrote his "Life of Jesus" with a kind 
 of pious infidelity, coloring it with such euphemism, handling 
 it with such precaution, that some persons took it for an 
 orthodox account. He discloses his motive in the prefaces 
 but almost suppresses it in the body of the book. His criti- 
 
26 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 cism is the best in the world, his romance no better than 
 Chateaubriand s a woman said that the "Life of Jesus" 
 read as if it was going to end with a marriage ! In my poor 
 opinion one or two chapters of Kenan s "Recollections" is 
 worth the "Life of Jesus." 
 
 Renan loved the grand old Church which had educated 
 him, as his "dearest foe." His mind had been formed by 
 contact with her at a hundred points. The poetry of her 
 ritual, the pomp of her service, the grandeur of her titles, 
 the majesty of her spiritual dominion, never quite lost their 
 power to impress his soul even when he was prophesying 
 that the days of her greatness were numbered. He spoke of 
 the clergy always with respect, often with compliment, de 
 claring in his latest book that he had never known a bad 
 priest. He abhorred all coarseness, all invective, all vulgar 
 ity, all violence. Nothing common, low or brutal was ever 
 suffered to mar the translucent mirror of his perfect style. 
 In theory a democrat, he had the mental manners which are 
 fostered by a clerical aristocracy. Every faculty of his mind 
 paid homage to the Church, except his reason. 
 
 Renan never lost his feeling of reverence for the sacred 
 mysteries of the faith in which his youth was cradled but 
 he wrote the "Prayer on the Acropolis." He rebuked Strauss 
 and Feuerbach for the ruthless way in which they attacked 
 the Christian legend he pleaded for tenderness in demol 
 ishing a religion which had been the hope of the world. He 
 confessed that he never could wholly put off the cassock, and 
 he seemed like an unfrocked bishop on the heights of science. 
 If ever an infidel deserved charity at the hands of the clergy, 
 that infidel was Renan. 
 
 Did he get it? not even Voltaire was assailed with a 
 greater virulence of ecclesiastical rancor, the most infernal 
 malice ever planted in the heart of man. 
 
 The ecclesiastical spirit is the same in all ages. It crucified 
 Jesus of Nazareth, it burned Giordano Bruno. When Serve- 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 27 
 
 tus writhed at the stake in his death agony, Calvin, his mur 
 derer, drew near, saluted him as the son of the devil and 
 piously committed his soul to hell. 
 
 Renan was cursed and slandered with that special ingenu 
 ity which has always belonged to the Church, and the priests 
 whom he was in the habit of complimenting, with great fer 
 vor saluted him as the Anti-Christ ! 
 
 Colonel Ingersoll s reasoning was good. Compliments are 
 vain in an irreconcilable conflict. 
 
 |OST speeches are not literature they do not read 
 as they were heard, as they were spoken. Lack 
 ing the living voice, the speaking eye, the per 
 sonality from which they derived their force, 
 they seem cold, inanimate, without that vital 
 principle which is the product of genius and art. 
 
 The orator s triumphs are usually short-lived, like those 
 of the actor. They are the children of the time, not of the 
 eternities. 
 
 But there are exceptions, though rare, and among these we 
 may reckon the best speeches of Colonel Ingersoll. 
 
 Our American literature has nothing better of their kind 
 than the Decoration Day Oration, the lectures on Ghosts, 
 Orthodoxy, Superstition, Individuality, Liberty for Man, 
 Woman and Child, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Humboldt, 
 Thomas Paine, and some others. 
 
 These are so vital, so charged with intellectual power, so 
 instinct with a passionate love of truth and justice, so elo 
 quent and logical, so clear and convincing above all, so 
 readable that they can afford to dispense with the living 
 voice; that is, they are in a true sense literature. 
 
 I doubt if this enviable distinction belongs in equal meas 
 ure to any other American orator. 
 
28 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 The explanation is that Colonel Ingersoll was an artist as 
 well as an orator : he knew that without the preserving touch 
 of art, the most impassioned oratory soon goes back to com 
 mon air. He was one of the great masters of our English 
 speech, never seeking the abstruse or the obsolete, believing 
 that the tongue of Shakespeare was adequate to every neces 
 sity of argument, every excursion of fancy, every sentiment 
 of poetry, every demand of oratory. 
 
 His skill in construction, in antithesis, in balancing pe 
 riods, in leading up to the lofty climax whicch crowned the 
 whole, was that of a wizard of speech. He never fell short 
 or came tardy off his means were always adequate to his 
 ends; and the close of every speech was like a strain of 
 music. Rich as his mind was, immense his intellectual re 
 sources, undaunted the bravery of his spirit, there was yet 
 manifest in all his work the wise husbandry of genius. His 
 power never ran to excess; never dwindled to impotence. 
 
 Nature, too, is economical and dislikes to double her gifts : 
 yet this man was a great poet as well as a great orator. I 
 have quoted above a paragraph from one of his orations, 
 which is the fine gold of sterling poetry. 
 
 Charles Lamb tells us that "Prose hath her harmonies no 
 less than Verse," and we know that the speech of every true 
 orator is rhythmic. It was eminently so with Colonel Inger 
 soll, who, like Dickens, often fell unconsciously into blank 
 verse. Here are a few examples taken at random ; and first 
 this bit of what we are now calling "nature poetry:" 
 
 "The rise and set of sun, 
 The birth and death of day, 
 The dawns of silver and the dusks of gold, 
 The wonders of the rain and snow, 
 The shroud of winter and 
 The many-colored robes of spring; 
 The lonely moon with nightly loss or gain, 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 29 
 
 The serpent lightning and the thunder s voice, 
 The tempest s fury and the breath of morn, 
 The threat of storm and promise of the bow." 
 
 Nothing could excel in beauty and metrical grace this de 
 scription of the old classic myths : 
 
 "They thrilled the veins of Spring with tremulous desire; 
 Made tawny Summer s billowed breast the throne and home 
 
 of Love; 
 Filled Autumn s arms with sun-kissed grapes and gathered 
 
 sheaves ; 
 
 And pictured Winter as a weak old king 
 Who felt, like Lear, upon his withered face, 
 Cordelia s tears." 
 
 This on Shakespeare, reveals the poet in the orator: 
 
 "He knew the thrills and ecstasies of love, 
 The savage joys of hatred and revenge. 
 He heard the hiss of envy s snakes 
 And watched the eagles of ambition soar. 
 There was no hope that did not put its star above his 
 
 head 
 
 No fear he had not felt 
 No joy that had not shed its sunshine on his face." 
 
 The critics, I am aware, make this kind of writing a fault 
 in prose, but we should be glad to get real poetry, wherever 
 we may find it. Colonel Ingersoll s greatest distinction as a 
 poet is, that he never fails to interest us the regular metre- 
 mongers may well envy him. 
 
LIKE his distinct literary style the style of his 
 miscellanies, of his controversial papers, of his 
 occasional bits of wisdom and fancy and criti 
 cism. Perhaps the thoroughly human side of 
 the man is best seen in these unrelated efforts 
 these vagrant children of his mind. You know that this man 
 thought before he took the pen in hand. He writes without 
 pretence, without the vices of the literary habit, without arti 
 fice or evasion, clearly, frankly, as a gentleman should 
 speak. In written controversy he was relentless in his logic, 
 pressing the point home, but unfailing in courtesy. As 
 he himself would have said, his mental manners were good 
 they were at any rate "sweetness and light" compared 
 with those of his adversaries. 
 
 He did not profess to love his enemies, yet he treated 
 them more humanely than many who made that profession. 
 
 We are never to forget that the chief article of his of 
 fending was, that he made war upon the dogma of an ever 
 lasting hell. 
 
 In his controversies he was never worsted and his vic 
 tories seem not less due to his own fairness in argument and 
 tenacity of logic than to the weakness and confusion of his 
 opponents. The natural and the supernatural can not main 
 tain a profitable argument. They can never agree and, strict 
 ly speaking, one can not overcome the other they occupy 
 separate realms. 
 
 It is useless for a man who believes in miracles to argue 
 with a man who does not a miracle and a fact are in the na 
 ture of things irreconcilable. 
 
 Renan said to the theologians, "Come, gentlemen, let us 
 have one miracle here before the savants in Paris that will 
 end the dispute forever." He asked in vain miracles are 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 31 
 
 no longer granted for the conversion of infidels, and if they 
 occur at all, it is before witnesses whose faith predisposes 
 them to belief. It may be hazarded that no one ever believed 
 in a miracle who did not wish to believe in it. 
 
 From a human standpoint we really don t know of any 
 other the honors of controversy usually fell to Colonel In- 
 gersoll. His apparent victories were, of course, easily waived 
 by those who believed that they had miraculous truth on 
 their side. Yet they must have regretted that the supernat 
 ural can be so ill defended. That all the advantage of rea 
 son would seem to be with the enemy of light. That one 
 who can make himself understood should prevail over the 
 champion of Divine truth, which is in its nature incompre 
 hensible. That it should be so hard to square reason with 
 revelation, fact with fable, method with miracle, dreams 
 with demonstrations. 
 
 Of all these tourneys of skill and wit and logic, Colonel 
 Ingersoll is seen at his best in his reply to Gladstone. Per 
 haps nothing that he ever did more thoroughly certifies the 
 power and keenness of his mind, the bed-rock of his convic 
 tions. He was like an athlete rejoicing in his strength; mer 
 ciful to his adversary, as feeling that the victory was sure; 
 always conscious of his power, but ruling himself with per 
 fect poise. The one touch of malice that he allowed himself 
 was when he quoted for Mr. Gladstone s benefit the saying of 
 Aristotle, that "clearness is the virtue of style:" this ar 
 row pierced the heart of the British behemoth. 
 
 In truth, Mr. Gladstone, the man of many languages, 
 the world-famed orator, the "most learned layman in Eu 
 rope," appeared at a ludicrous disadvantage in his duel with 
 the American. He tried to write in the bishop s voice, to 
 overawe his adversary with Greek and Latin quotations, 
 omitting to give the English equivalent. He begged the 
 question, floundered about it, did everything but argue it, 
 and finally took refuge behind the "exuberance of his own 
 
32 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 verbosity." Colonel Ingersoll, cool, relentless, urbane, in 
 flexible, asked only for the facts : Mr. Gladstone, flustered, 
 irritated, conscious of his weakness, had none to give and 
 raised a cloud of words. In this world Mr. Gladstone 
 never answered Colonel Ingersoll s reply perhaps he is oc 
 cupying himself with a rejoinder in the next. 
 
 OLONEL Ingersoll has been so slandered and de 
 famed by the friends of orthodox religion that 
 many people have no just idea of the man or of 
 the principles for which he contended. Slander 
 is too often the favorite weapon of those who 
 love their enemies as themselves. It was used so effectively 
 against Voltaire that even at this late day many liberal Chris 
 tians are afraid to read him. 
 
 Let us see. Did Ingersoll say there is no God? 
 
 No; he said he did not know. 
 
 What did he deny as to God? 
 
 He denied the existence of the personal Jewish God the 
 Jehovah of the Hebrew Scriptures. 
 
 He denied and repudiated the dogma of an eternal hell, 
 said to have been made by this Jehovah in order to gratify 
 his revenge upon the great majority of the human race. 
 
 Did he attack Christianity? 
 
 He attacked only the evil part of it, in so far as it justified 
 and continued the curses of the Old Testament. He made a 
 distinction between the real and the theological Christ; the 
 first he honored as a great moral teacher and a martyr of 
 freedom, killed by the orthodox priests of his day; the sec 
 ond he denied and repudiated as a creation of men. 
 
 Did he believe in a Hereafter? 
 
 He believed that no one could know whether there is or is 
 not a future life of the soul. But he was not without the 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 33 
 
 hope of immortality which has in all ages cheered and forti 
 fied the heart of man. 
 
 It follows from all this that he did not accept the Revela 
 tion of the Hebrew Bible, its cosmogony, geology or moral 
 ity ; nor the New Testament with its Scheme of Atonement 
 and threat of Eternal Damnation God suffering in his own 
 person for the sins of the world, yet condemning the far 
 greater number of his children to everlasting pain. 
 
 What positive effect had his example and teaching? 
 
 It liberalized the creeds in spite of themselves. 
 
 It made the preaching of hell unpopular. 
 
 It made for sanity in religion and enlarged the province 
 of honest doubt. 
 
 It caused men to think more of the simple human virtues 
 and less of the theological ones. 
 
 There is no doubt at all that it saved many from the mad 
 house who might have accused themselves of committing the 
 Unpardonable Sin. 
 
 It helped to make better husbands, kinder fathers, more 
 loyal and loving sons. 
 
 It was a great step toward freedom and light. It enlarged 
 the horizon of hope it advanced the standard of liberty. 
 
 Was his teaching in any degree or sense offensive? 
 
 Only to those who were committed to one or other of the 
 creeds derived from the Jewish Bible. Still, he did them 
 good, though they would not admit it. 
 
 Colonel Ingersoll was a free man, talking in a country 
 where all are presumed to be free, yet his courage, more than 
 the laws, protected him. 
 
 He upheld public and private morality and was himself an 
 exemplar of both. 
 
 He loved only one woman as his wife and lived with her 
 in perfect honor and fidelity. He loved his children and was 
 idolized by them. 
 
 His abilities and services reflected honor upon the state. 
 
34 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 It is agreed that but for his religious views, he might have 
 reached the greatest honor in the nation s gift. As it is, he 
 has gained a place in the Republic of Intellect to which few 
 of o-ur Presidents may aspire. 
 
 His crime was, that he had elected to exercise his reason^ 
 had interrogated Revelation, put Moses in the witness-box 
 and asked for the facts. 
 
 OLONEL Ingersoll belongs with the select com 
 pany of the great Americans. 
 
 He is of the fellowship of Jefferson and 
 Franklin, of Lincoln and Sumner. His patriot 
 ism was second only to his passion for universal 
 liberty. He loved his country beyond everything except free 
 dom. He was not a fireside patriot the temper of his devo 
 tion had been proved in the baptism of battle. His patriotic 
 speeches rank with the best in our literature: the Vision of 
 War is as high an utterance as Lincoln s Gettysburg Speech 
 and as surely immortal. 
 
 He was a great American, loving liberty, fraternity, equal 
 ity. He hated the spirit of Caste which he saw rising among 
 our people, and he struck at it with all the force of his hon 
 est anger. 
 
 He despised the worship of titles among the rich, their 
 tuft-hunting, aping of aristocratic airs and mean prostration 
 before the self-styled nobility of the Old World. To him 
 the most loathsome object in the world was an American 
 ashamed of his country. 
 
 He urged that the representatives of republics should have 
 precedence at Washington. He condemned the flummery of 
 our diplomatic etiquette, the foolish kow-towing designed to 
 flatter the ambassadors of servile nations. 
 
 His patriotism was purer than that of our Christian states- 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 35 
 
 men who wish to subjugate in the name of liberty to ex 
 pand in territory and contract in honor. 
 
 He was an individualist, believing that equal rights and 
 equal opportunities hold the solution of every social problem. 
 
 He saw no evil in wealth, save the abuse of it, and he did 
 not think it a virtue to be poor. 
 
 He believed that everyone was entitled to comfort, well- 
 being, happiness in this world. He denied that God has pur 
 posely divided his children into rich and poor; he saw in this 
 the teaching of a false religious system which has sanctioned 
 every oppression and injustice, and has cursed the earth with 
 misery. 
 
 He regarded pauperism not as a proof of the special favor 
 of God, but as an indictment of man. 
 
 He was a lover of justice, of mercy, of humanity. He 
 was a true friend of the toiling millions and in their behalf 
 pleaded for a working day of eight hours. Christianity had 
 long suffered it, but he was unwilling that a single over-bur 
 dened creature should "curse God and die." 
 
 He pleaded for the abolition of the death penalty, that 
 relic of savagery. He hated all forms of cruelty and vio 
 lence, but especially those that claim the sanction of law. He 
 denounced the whipping post in Delaware and Delaware 
 replied by a threat to indict him for blasphemy. 
 
 He pleaded for the abolition of poverty and drunkenness, 
 for the fullest liberation of woman, for the rights of the 
 child. 
 
 His great heart went out in sympathy to every thing that 
 suffers to the dumb animals, beaten and over-laden; to the 
 feathered victims of caprice and cruelty. 
 
 The circle of this man s philanthropy was complete. He 
 filled the measure of patriotism, of civic duty, of the sacred 
 relations of husband and father, of generosity and kindness 
 toward his fellow men. But he had committed treason 
 against the Unknown, and this, in spite of the fame and 
 
36 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 success which his talents commanded, made of him a social 
 Pariah. The herd admired and envied his freedom, but for 
 the most part, they gave him the road and went by on the 
 other side. 
 
 This country is freer and better for the life of Colonel 
 Ingersoll. 
 
 There is more light, more air in the prison-house of the 
 ology. 
 
 God may be a guess, but man is a certainty; men are think 
 ing more of their obligations toward those about them the 
 weak, the helpless, the fallen, and less about securing for 
 themselves a halo and a harp in the New Jerusalem. 
 
 Ingersoll s great lesson that men can not love one another 
 if they believe in a God of hate, is bearing fruit. 
 
 The hypocrite shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 Truth will yet compel all the churches to cease libeling 
 God and to honor humanity. . . . 
 
 The great man whose worth and work I have barely 
 glanced at in these pages, said bravely, that he cared less for 
 the freedom of religion than for the Religion of Freedom. 
 When that larger light shall flood the world and not until 
 then his services to the cause of Truth, of Liberty and Hu 
 manity will be fitly honored. 
 
 As for his literary testament, I find it easy to believe that 
 many a noble sentence winged with the utmost felicity of 
 speech, many a fine sentiment, the fruit of his kindlier 
 thought, many a tender word spoken to alleviate the sorrow 
 of death, will long remain. Even the professed critics who 
 make so small ado of the Colonel s literary merits, may well 
 envy him the noble essay on Shakespeare, the more powerful 
 one on Voltaire, or the beautiful memorial tribute to Walt 
 Whitman. And it may that "so long as love kisses the lips 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 
 
 37 
 
 of death," so long shall men and women, in the nighted 
 hour of grief and loss, bless the name of him who touched 
 the great heart of humanity in that high and unmatched de 
 liverance at his brother s grave. . . . 
 
 From a sunken Syrian tomb long antedating the Christian 
 era, Ernest Renan brushed away the dust and found in 
 scribed thereon the single word, 
 
 "Courage!" 
 
Richard CHagncr s Romance. 
 
 HE story of the man of genius who finds inspir 
 ation in another man s wife is not a new one, 
 and it may even be called trite, but it is one to 
 which the world always lends a willing ear. 
 
 This is the story revealed in the recently pub 
 lished English version of the letters of Richard Wagner to 
 Mathilde Wesendonck. In Germany, sweet land of senti 
 ment, the book has reached the twentieth edition and is gen 
 erally acclaimed as a true classic. In Germany, also, the al 
 leged Platonic motive of the letters, elsewhere looked at 
 askance, is easily admitted, since, as is well known to the 
 nightingales and the lindens, a German lover will pursue an 
 ardent courtship through a dozen years without daring once 
 to put an arm around his divinity s waist. Art and love are 
 a great patience in Germany. 
 
 They were surely so in the case of Richard Wagner; and 
 it is characteristic of the Teuton, that he has left the world 
 in doubt as to whether his patience was ever rewarded. 
 
 The doubt is indeed the chief provocation of these letters 
 (outside of Germany), and furnishes the artistic motive by 
 which they will endure. 
 
 Or, to put the matter plainly, the other man s wife sup 
 plies the interest of this book. As of many others in the 
 biography of greatness. 
 
 Think you had these letters been addressed to Frau Wag 
 ner, that all the chaste nightingales of Germany would now 
 be tuning in their praise? Or that our own sentimentalists, 
 with the unsexed Corybantes of music, would be swelling 
 such a chorus of acclaim? Would the world be eager to 
 identify Frau Wagner with the conception of "Isolde," and 
 
RICHARD WAGNER S ROMANCE 39 
 
 should we be hearing all this patter about ideal union of 
 souls, spiritual passion, etc., etc.? Not so! the world will 
 not tolerate the indecency of a man of genius loving his wife 
 and personifying her in the creations of his art. 
 
 There is not a single truly famous book in the world s lit 
 erature, of letters written by a man of genius to his wife. 
 
 The letters are always written to> some other woman and, 
 preferably, some other man s wife. Why this should be so, 
 only the good Lord knows who made us as we are. 
 
 Poor Penelope keeps house, often red-eyed and sad, during 
 the excursions of genius; she treasures up with a brokenr 
 hearted care and stores away in a lavender-scented drawer 
 with the early love-letters (of which the genius is now 
 ashamed) curt messages on postal cards hurry-up requests 
 for clean linen or an extra "nighty" ; express tags speaking 
 eloquently of some cheap gift by which the great man dis 
 charged the obligation of writing ( preserved by the simple 
 soul because he had scrawled her name upon, them) ; and 
 perhaps a small packet of letters that deal wholly with his 
 ideas of domestic government, usually couched in a peevish 
 tone and with a hard selfishness of intention that strangely 
 contrasts with the man s meditated, public revelation of self 
 not a flower of the heart in them all, as poor Penelope, 
 starving for a word of love, sees through her dropping tears. 
 
 Now these things have some value to a neglected wife, but 
 they can not usefully be worked up in the biography of a man 
 of genius. 
 
 What wonder that Penelope takes into her tender bosom 
 the subtle demon of jealously, becomes a shrew and a scold, 
 and presently goaded by the man s cold and steady refusal 
 to satisfy her by giving her the love which she knows with 
 a woman s sure instinct is being secretly lavished upon anoth 
 er what wonder, I say, that Penelope under such madden 
 ing provocation, finding herself a cheated and unloved wife, 
 
40 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 becomes that favorite handiwork of the Devil on this earth 
 a good woman turned into a Fury ! 
 
 And the beauty of it is that at this moment she sets out to 
 justify, in the wrong-headed fashion of a woman who knows 
 that she can take her marriage certificate to Heaven with 
 her, the infidelity of her husband. 
 
 He, being a man of genius, easily gets the sympathy of the 
 world especially of all good and virtuous women, every 
 one of whom feels that she would have been able to satisfy 
 the gifted person and keep him properly straight. And the 
 great man adds to the laurel of fame the crown of domestic 
 martyrdom. 
 
 Of course, the injured wife might have played her game 
 better, but it was not in the cards for her to win, having 
 married a genius. 
 
 So it has come to be an axiom that the artistic tempera 
 ment disqualifies a man for the sober state of matrimony; 
 and many are the cases cited to prove it, from the wife of 
 Socrates to Jane Welsh Carlyle or Frau Wagner. The woes 
 of the unhappily mated genius clamor down the ages like 
 the harsh echoes of a family row before the policeman 
 reaches the corner. Also they make a large figure in what is 
 called polite literature, especially as the sorely tried genius 
 finds in the sorrows of his hearth a strong incentive to the 
 production of copy. Hence the thing is not without its com 
 pensations, and the lovers of gossip, who are always the 
 chief patrons of literature, do not seek their food in vain. 
 
 I suspect that the matter of vanity has much to do with 
 cooking the domestic troubles his word is "tragedy" ! of 
 the genius. It is very hard to domesticate the species, and 
 wonderful is the arrogance which the -notion of genius will 
 breed in the homeliest man, causing him to look with easy 
 contempt on the beautiful woman who perhaps married him 
 
RICHARD WAGNER S ROMANCE 41 
 
 out of pity. The artist is the peacock among husbands his 
 lofty soul, his majestic port, his rainbow plumage and even, 
 as he thinks, the beauty of his voice that top note especial 
 ly! move him to a measureless disdain of the annoyingly 
 constant, unvaried and tiresome hero-worship of his plain 
 little mate it is quite curious how after a time he can not 
 see her beauty. To be sure, she has her home uses, and very 
 convenient at times they are, even to the most glorious of 
 peacocks ; but he is for the Cosmos and must not limit his re 
 splendency to a narrow poultry-yard go to, woman! And 
 there you are. 
 
 Then, of course, the artist must be always in quest of new 
 sensations, in other words, must feed his genius, to which 
 satiety is death; and it seems to be agreed that such sensa 
 tions and experiences are only to be had from other women, 
 or at least, some other woman and how are you going to 
 get away from that? 
 
 I have heard of a certain man, of coarse fibre, who would 
 have given his soul to be thought an artist; who plotted 
 asleep and awake, during long years, to get rid of his law 
 ful wife and take on a woman he believed to be his affinity. 
 The man s passionate desire to work this wrong gave him 
 a kind of power and eloquence which, strange to say, failed 
 him when at last he had succeeded in carrying out his pur 
 pose. And then, so the gossip ran, he wished to win the old 
 love back again (coupled in his memory with both unrest 
 and power), but that, of course, was hopeless; so that verily 
 the last state of this man was worse than the first. 
 
 All of which is not without bearing upon the story of Rich 
 ard Wagner and Mathilde Wesendonck. 
 
 I am not concerned to upset the Platonic theory, so dear 
 to German sentimentalists, of the love-affair between the 
 great Wagner and the wife of Herr Wesendonck. People 
 will judge according to the evidence and their private feel 
 ings. It must be allowed that there are expressions in the 
 
42 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 letters that would go far toward establishing a crim. con. in 
 the case of any but a German like Wagner and a master 
 sentimentalist at that. Such a passage as this for example: 
 
 "Once more, that thou couldst hurl thyself on every con 
 ceivable sorrow of the world to say to me, I love thee, re 
 deemed me and won for me that solemn pause whence my 
 life has gained another meaning. 
 
 "But that state divine indeed was only to be won at cost 
 of all the griefs and pains of love we have drunk them to 
 their very dregs! And now, after suffering every sorrow, be 
 ing spared no grief, now must the quick of that higher life 
 show clear what we have won through all the agony of those 
 birth-throes." 
 
 I repeat, only a German sentimentalist could hold such 
 language without compelling an obvious conclusion. The 
 fact that in the face of this and similarly passionate avowals, 
 public opinion in Germany absolves the lovers of any posi 
 tive guilt in their relations, is a high tribute to that national 
 virtue which was anciently celebrated by Tacitus and more 
 recently by Heinrich Heine. 
 
 It is the greater pity that the English translation should 
 have been made by a gushing, lymphatic person, one W. 
 Ashton Ellis, who instead of suffering the letters to speak 
 for themselves, writes me a sloppy preface wherein he seeks 
 to clear Frau Wesendonck s character, in advance, and there 
 by naturally awakens the reader s doubts. I protest but for 
 this marplot fellow I should have set it all down to< the ac 
 count of German sentimentalism and have laid the book 
 aside without hearing anything worse than the nightingale in 
 the linden, pouring forth his soul in the enchanted moonlight 
 of German poesy. But now it is spoiled for me by such 
 twaddle as this : 
 
 "This placid, sweet Madonna, the perfect emblem of a 
 pearl, not opal, her eyes still dreaming of Nirvana, no! em 
 phatically no ! she could not once have been swayed by car- 
 
RICHARD WAGNER S ROMANCE 43 
 
 nal passion. In these letters all is pure and spiritual, a Dante 
 and a Beatrice; so must it have been in their intercourse." 
 
 This illustrates how the defense is so often fatal in mat 
 ters of literary biography. And yet I have not heard of a 
 literary man wise enough to ask that neither his memory nor 
 his acts should ever be defended. 
 
 Many a small person contrives to attract a moment s no 
 tice by defending the silent great. 
 
 Fame has no more subtle irony. 
 
 Richard Wagner met Mathilde Wesendonck in 1852 
 when he was forty years old and she twenty-four. He had al 
 ready written "Rienzi," u The Flying Dutchman," "Tann- 
 hauser" and "Lohengrin." Nobody has ever dreamed of at 
 tributing the inspiration of any of these works to his wife 
 Minna. 
 
 It is seldom indeed that a woman is credited with inspiring 
 a man of genius after she has married him. As a literary 
 theory the thing is not popular. 
 
 Wagner s wife had been an opera singer. It is admitted 
 even by the great man s jealous biographers, that she was of 
 more than ordinary beauty, that she shared bravely his early 
 hardships and that she was a pure and loyal wife. 
 
 But it seems certain that she did not inspire the great man. 
 In his later life he was wont to say that his wedlock had been 
 nothing but a trial of his patience and pity; perhaps he was 
 indebted for this to his vanity rather than his recollection. 
 
 Mathilde, on the contrary, was Wagner s inspiration, for 
 has he not told us so ? though to be sure we may credit her 
 with inspiring only one opera, "Tristan and Isolde." Un 
 fortunately, she was the wife of another man, but again fort 
 unately, her husband was of a truly Germanic simplicity and 
 child-like trust. 
 
 Herr Wesendonck was also a man of means and could 
 
44 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 give his wife the indulgence of many luxuries and whims, 
 which must have added to her attractiveness in the eyes of 
 the struggling man of genius. Money has never been known 
 to cheapen the charms of a really desirable woman. 
 
 Portraits of Mathilde show a Madonna-like face of pure 
 and delicate outline, with eyes of haunting tenderness and a 
 mouth of sensitive appeal such lips, so sweet yet sad, so in 
 viting yet so free from sensual suggestion, are seen only 
 among the higher types of German beauty. Not, I grant 
 you, a face indicating carnal passion, but what then? many 
 a woman who looked like a Madonna has loved not wisely 
 but too well, and some have been known to bear children in 
 the human fashion. 
 
 I have never seen a portrait of Herr Wesendonck. 
 
 Truly he deserves one for consenting to the romance which 
 has immortalized his name. Wagner seems to have felt this 
 when he once wrote Herr Wesendonck that the latter should 
 have a place with him in the history of art. In this letter 
 Wagner says nothing of the fine set of horns which (outside 
 of Germany) an evil-minded generation has freely awarded 
 his generous friend. 
 
 Mark here again the gushing Ellis: 
 
 "It is as a knightly figure that he (Herr Wesendonck) will 
 ever abide in the memory of all who met him, and surely tru 
 er knightliness than he displayed in a singularly difficult con 
 juncture, can nowhere have been found outside King Ar 
 thur s court. Undoubtedly it was he who was the greatest 
 sufferer for several years, by no means Minna, years of 
 perpetual heart-burnings bravely borne." 
 
 Herr Wesendonck was indeed a pattern husband for a 
 young woman of romantic yearnings. 
 
 He shared her admiration for Wagner s genius and for a 
 long time refused to see that his wife was actuated by any 
 other motive. 
 
 He gave Wagner financial aid and finally offered him, 
 
RICHARD WAGNER S ROMANCE 45 
 
 with Minna, a home in a pretty cottage on his estate at Zu 
 rich. 
 
 He tolerated the connection even after it had become the 
 occasion of bitter quarrels on his domestic hearth. 
 
 On the whole, I am persuaded that a figure of like chival 
 ry is not to be found outside of Germany, nor perhaps any 
 where since the noble Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance. 
 
 Mathilde s few letters tell us nothing her soul is never 
 unveiled she compels us to take Wagner s word for the 
 whole of the romance. Her attitude in this correspondence 
 if such it may be called puts the great man in a dubious 
 light. We may not think the less of the artist, but the man 
 loses nobility; Herr Wesendonck gets his revenge. 
 
 But at last Minna intercepted one of Wagner s letters to 
 Mathilde (which is not given in this collection), and deliv 
 ered it herself, with words suiting the occasion. Naturally, 
 this broke up the arrangements at Zurich; Wagner sent his 
 wife back to her parents and betook himself to Venice. Herr 
 Wesendonck s conduct in the circumstances was without a 
 flaw : this admirable man seems truly worthy both of Ger 
 many and Spain. 
 
 There is a harmless mania for identifying particular per 
 sons with poetic creations, and with such hints as Wagner 
 constantly threw out during the period of their attachment, it 
 was impossible that Mathilde should escape. 
 
 "With thee I can do all things," he says, "without thee, 
 nothing!" 
 
 This was not strictly true, however, and must be taken as 
 a poetic license, since he wrote several operas before meet 
 ing her and did some of his greatest work long after the 
 parting. 
 
 But let me not discourage the sentimentalists. It is true 
 
46 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 that he said, "For having written the Tristan 7 I thank you 
 from my deepest soul to all eternity." 
 
 It is also certain that he used to write his music with a gold 
 pen that Mathilde had given him, and that in exile he re 
 ceived from her a package of his favorite zwieback with 
 tears of joy. For these and other reasons I would not deny 
 her title to be regarded as the original inspiration of "Tris 
 tan and Isolde." 
 
 Still, we have all heard of another enamored young person 
 who, when her lover had got himself somewhat desperately 
 out of the way 
 
 "Went on eating bread and butter." 
 
 Absence, it appears, had some effect in cooling the roman 
 tic fervors of Mathilde. Some half-dozen years after the rup 
 ture at Zurich, "Tristan and Isolde," that "child of our sor 
 rows," as Wagner lovingly wrote her and to which her name 
 for good or evil is now linked forever, was produced for the 
 first time in Munich. 
 
 Mathilde had the earliest invitation, with the composer s 
 own compliments; but she did not attend, and the heart of 
 Minna was not harrowed by seeing her name "among those 
 present." 
 
 It is no reproach to the nightingales of Germany that they 
 sang longer in the heart of her lover. . . . 
 
 And the lindens bloom on immortally. 
 
Saint JYLarh, 
 
 E-ENTER the Sieur de Conte ! . . 
 
 Our gallant old friend makes as knightly a 
 show as of yore when first he rode into the lists 
 and pledged his fealty to the stainless Maid. 
 But alas ! his hair that rivaled the raven s wing 
 for blackness, is now white as carded wool. Yet has that 
 eye lost nothing of its old fire and the years have but fetched 
 new strength and cunning to his hand. And methinks the 
 Sieur fights with a tempered skill and a wary shrewdness 
 that were not always his in the old days by my halidom, I 
 would not care to be the Holy Council at Rome with such 
 a champion pitted against me! For indeed the Holy Council 
 may pow-wow as long or as short as may please their holi- 
 nesses the world at the challenge of the Sieur de Conte, 
 has awarded the crown of saintship to Joan of Arc. The 
 living voice, the magic pen of the Sieur de Conte are worth 
 all their musty raking from the past; are more than worth 
 their pretended authority to decide the question. If the Holy 
 Fathers have dropped the matter for the nonce, as rumor 
 now declares, they have but done the thing that might have 
 been expected of them. The Ch if *ch is ever too wise to in 
 vite defeat, too politic to issue a ..sad-letter, too strong in 
 its divine right to surrender on heretic compulsion. Besides, 
 it is here to stay forever; and shall it be moved for a chit of a 
 girl who has been dead only a matter of five hundred years ? 
 -Tut, tut, there is always plenty of time ! 
 
 The Sieur de Conte (otherwise Mark Twain) in all that 
 he has written on the subject, has failed to point out one ex 
 traordinary fact with regard to Joan of Arc. I am glad that 
 he has left it to me. It is this: Since that fearful day in 
 
48 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 Rouen when she was led to her martyrdom by fire, she has 
 been the glory of the faith and the shame of the Church. 
 That is why she has waited so long for the formal warrant 
 of saintship. That is why the Devil s Advocate has so far 
 prevailed to deny her on earth the crown she wears in Heav 
 en. That is why the Church, unless moved to it by political 
 reasons, will not canonize her. 
 
 Do not think this a musty old question which interests 
 only a few droning priests sitting in a back room of the Vat 
 ican, and here and there a poetic idealist like the Sieur de 
 Conte. By no means ! it is a question as vital as the fame 
 of the Maid herself, calling forth champions and antagonists 
 in every age. It is a plague-sore in the side of the Church 
 put your finger there ! It never has been settled because it 
 never could and never can be settled to the credit of the 
 Church. Also I believe it is bound up with the eternal ques 
 tion of liberty, in whose holy cause the Maid fought and suf 
 fered. 
 
 Joan of Arc was done to death by the priests and theolo 
 gians of the day, urged on by the civil power in the hands of 
 her French and English enemies. I am aware that her 
 death is not chargeable, in a direct sense, to the Church, 
 and it is deemed likely by Lamartine that she would have 
 been saved had she known enough to appeal directly to 
 Rome. I am aware that, short of canonization, the Church 
 has done what it could to make amends to the memory of 
 Joan of Arc. To give h :he crown of saintship now, would 
 not restore the credit of the Church, but would rather irre 
 parably damage it in the eyes of the world. For the two or 
 three hundred priests and theologians who judged the Maid, 
 as well as the godly men of the Inquisition of Paris who 
 damned her as a child of the Devil, were in loyal communion 
 with the Church and were, in fact, part of its machinery. 
 Still, it is certain that the Church, in its true representative 
 and executive character, did not incur the guilt and odium of 
 
SAINT MARK 49 
 
 Joan s death. But the whole system arrogating divine pow 
 ers and claiming the right to draw supernatural warrants, 
 was involved in the trial and murder of the Maid; was 
 judged by the measure with which it meted to her; and is 
 now of a truth dead forever to the more enlightened part of 
 mankind. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of liberty ! 
 
 A certain set of apologists on behalf of the Church try to 
 cast all the blame of Joan s persecution and death on the 
 English. To be sure, the English had the best right to hate 
 her and to seek her destruction, for had she not beaten them 
 in many battles and all but driven them out of the fair land 
 of France, which they had come to regard as their own ? But 
 let us be fair; her own countrymen shared to the full in the 
 guilt and the shame of her death nothing can clear them of 
 that! Besides, we are not to forget that both French and 
 English were in that day of the same religious faith. Not a 
 single heretic took part in the proceedings against Joan, 
 from the holy clerics of the Inquisition of Paris who pro- 
 nounced anathema upon her, to Bishop Cauchon, that zeal 
 ous prototype of Fouquier Tinville, who sought her blood 
 openly and thirsted for it with an eager relish that shocked 
 even his fellow judges ; or the rude soldiers who* kept guard 
 within her cell and probably caused her as much anguish, 
 at times, as the threat of the fire. They were all children of 
 the One True Faith, and the stain of her innocent blood is 
 upon every one of them, French and English. Make no mis 
 take about that ! 
 
 Indeed, we can not go astray as to the facts, and these 
 themselves can not be twisted to the purpose of special 
 pleading; for the whole plan of the murder of Joan of Arc, 
 the carefully marked steps by which it was relentlessly car 
 ried out, the heroic but ineffectual struggles of the victim, 
 the unspeakable devices resorted to, in order to circumvent 
 and destroy her, the pitiless, unhalting purpose of her pros 
 ecutors, marked as with a pencil of red, are laid bare to us, 
 
50 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 by the sworn testimony of eye-witnesses, with a fulness of 
 detail and a veracity of statement which leave hardly a ques 
 tion to be asked or a doubt to be solved. It is all there the 
 conspiracy of power, learning and holiness (God save the 
 mark!) against one helpless, ignorant, innocent girl. We see 
 the suavely ferocious Cauchon pressing her with both his 
 holy hands toward the scaffold he was excommunicated 
 some years afterward, but it didn t save the Church s credit. 
 We see that formidable array of priests setting the utmost 
 skill of their wits, the deepest resources of their cunning, 
 against a simple country girl who could neither read or 
 write a name which is now one of the best known on the 
 earth; trying by every art of casuistry to wrest or surprise 
 from her an admission that should send her to the flames. 
 
 Let us be just: they were not all equally guilty, not all 
 equally intent on the slaughter of the innocent lamb before 
 them. Not one was as bad as the monster Cauchon, and 
 to be strictly fair even to that consecrated beast, not one had 
 Cauchon s motive but the fact does not save the Church s 
 credit. Some of these priests had kind hearts and would 
 gladly have sent the child home to her mother; but they 
 lacked the power. Besides, they were captives themselves, 
 bound hand and foot with the fetters of superstition and 
 devil-born lunacy, misnamed religious fervor; daunted by 
 monstrous ignorance, and mythic fears of hell and darkness, 
 chrisomed and holy-watered into a pretence of light and 
 knowledge aye, they were cowering slaves, branded and 
 obedient to the lash, and she standing free and enfranchised 
 in her chains ! 
 
 Though I am the first to call attention to the matter, there 
 are many points of likeness between the trial of Jesus Christ 
 and the trial of Joan of Art. They were both sold for a 
 price of silver. Both were martyrs of liberty. Both perished 
 through a combination of forces political and priestly. 
 Christ had Caiaphas; Joan had Cauchon, something the 
 
SAINT MARK 51 
 
 worst of it. The chief accusers, the head prosecutors of each 
 were priests, and as the Jews cried out at the trial of Jesus, 
 "His blood be upon us and upon our children!" so might 
 the priests have cried out at the condemnation of Joan, "Her 
 blood be upon us and upon the Church!" It is there yet 
 the excommunication of Cauchon and the reversal of the 
 Judgment have not removed it. Something more will have to 
 be done ere that Great Wrong can be righted. 
 
 But having shown the great similarity marking the trials of 
 Jesus Christ and Joan of Arc, I now wish to call attention to 
 a most striking point of unlikeness, which is even more sug 
 gestive than the resemblance shown. It is this : among the 
 judges of Joan of Arc priests as they were or deemed them 
 selves to be, of the Christ of love and mercy there was none 
 so merciful as Pontius Pilate, whose memory is not held in 
 much honor by the Christian world; not one had the cour 
 age or the humanity to wash his hands of the intended 
 murder. Some desired it out of their blind ignorance and 
 cruel fanaticism ; many no doubt regretted it, as a severe but 
 salutary act of faith ; all consented to it ! The responsibility 
 is thus landed squarely where it belongs, on the official reli 
 gion which was then in league with the secular arm. If there 
 had been the least available doubt as to that if the damning 
 record were not in black and white, attested by the solemn 
 oaths of so many witnesses of or participants in the trial 
 the Church would long ago, for her own credit, have granted 
 the saintship of Joan of Arc, and to-day the altars of the 
 Maid of Orleans would flame in a hundred lands. But 
 perhaps, since the Eternal Church does not count years as 
 men count them, it is yet some ages too soon to raise an 
 altar to the Second Great Martyr of Liberty. And maybe 
 this is a fortunate thing for Liberty and the Maid, for on 
 the day that the church makes Joan of Arc wholly her own, 
 on that day she will step down from the unexampled place 
 she has so long held in the love and pity and worship of 
 
52 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 mankind. Such a consummation would not, I am sure, be 
 agreeable to her leal knight and devoted champion, the Sieur 
 de Conte Mark Twain. 
 
 In the wide court of Heaven, on any of these fine days, you 
 may see if God has given you sight above your eyes a 
 Maid who has been a maiden now during full five hundred 
 years. Her hair is the color of the corn-silk at harvest time 
 and her eyes of the early forget-me-not. She is slender as 
 of old when, clad in shining armor and mounted on her milk 
 white steed, she led the long dispirited warriors of France 
 to victory or upheld her wondrous standard at the corona 
 tion of her King. Ofter she may be seen leaning over the 
 crystal battlements, chin on hand and looking down with 
 pensive gaze on France, and Orleans, and Domremy and 
 Rouen whence her soul, like a white dove, ascended in the 
 flame of her country s cruel ingratitude. 
 
 But sometimes she turns her glance from scenes like these, 
 charged with sweet and terrible memories, and looks down 
 with loving intentness toward a certain spot on earth where 
 an old white-haired man raises eyes of love and almost wor 
 ship to hers. They see and salute each other oh, be sure of 
 that ! The old man was many years younger when they first 
 became acquainted, but the Maid is always the same age, for 
 they grow no older in Heaven. Who shall explain the spell 
 (since the Sieur de Conte will not confess his dreams) , that 
 has joined in a perfect love and understanding these two 
 children of Nature, separated by the difference of race and 
 the shoreless gulf of five hundred years? Who can but won 
 der at the enchanting touch of a white hand from out the 
 past which has turned the bold scoffer and jeerer, the wild 
 man of the river and the mining camps, into such a knight 
 as was rarely seen in the most gracious days of chivalry? 
 And to see him now, when he should be taking the rest he 
 has so gloriously earned, still eager to battle in her cause, 
 daring the world to the onset, fighting for her with the pas- 
 
SAINT MARK 53 
 
 sionate heart of youth, pleading for her with a burning zeal, 
 as if in the five centuries that have rolled away since her 
 death no other cause worthy to be named with hers has ap 
 pealed to the award of sword or pen to see this rightly and 
 with eyes cleared for the perception of that Truth which is 
 the only thing really precious in the world, is to rejoice at the 
 finest spectacle that has been given to the wondering eyes of 
 men in our day. 
 
 Whether the brave old knight will yet win the whole world 
 over to her side, I can not say, though I think he will, if he be 
 given time enough; but, at any rate, he has already made 
 sure of all kind and feeling hearts. I believe his devotion to 
 Joan of Arc is the finest and most ideal poem of our age 
 an age, to be sure, which has known too little poetry and 
 which has never thought of looking to the Sieur de Conte 
 to supply it. And I believe, further, that the Book of the 
 Ideal contains the story of no love more pure and beautiful 
 than this which unites the Old Man and the Maid. 
 
Oscar CCZitdc 9 Htonetmnt. 
 
 T HARDLY seems a decade since the disgrace, 
 the trial and sentence of Oscar Wilde. His death 
 followed so close upon his punishment as to give 
 the deepest tragic value to the lesson of his fall. 
 There was in truth nothing left him to do but 
 die, after he had penned the most poignantly pathetic poem 
 and the most strangely moving confession (which is yet a 
 subtle vindication) that have been given to the world since 
 the noon of Byron s fame. 
 
 Until the present hour the world has withheld its pity from 
 that tragedy, as complete in all its features as the Greek con 
 science would have exacted, and Oscar Wilde has stood be 
 yond the pale of human sympathy. Only seemed to stand, 
 however, for there are many signs of the reaction, the better 
 judgment which never delays long behind the severest con 
 demnation of the public voice when, as in this case, the cir 
 cumstances justify an appeal to the higher mercy and human 
 ity. 
 
 Socially, Oscar Wilde was executed, and for a brief time it 
 seemed as if his name would stand only in the calendar of 
 the infamous. But men presently remembered that he was a 
 genius, a literary artist of almost unique distinction among 
 English writers, a wit whose talent for paradox and deli 
 cately perverse fancy had yielded the world a pure treasure 
 of delight. In the first hue and cry of his disgrace, the 
 British public and to a large extent, the American public 
 also had taken up moral cudgels not merely against the man 
 himself, but against the writer, a piece of ingratitude for 
 which God will surely punish the stupid English. His plays 
 were withdrawn from the theatres, his writings from the libra- 
 
OSCAR WILDE S ATONEMENT 55 
 
 ries and book stalls, and his name was anathema wherever 
 British respectability wields its leaden mace. But though you 
 can pass sentence of social death upon a man, you can not 
 execute a Book! You can not lay your hangman s hands 
 upon an Idea, and all the edicts of Philistinism are powerless 
 against it. For true genius is the rarest and most precious 
 thing in the world, and God has wisely ordained that the 
 malice or stupidity of men shall not destroy it. And this the 
 world sees to be just, when it has had time to weigh the mat 
 ter, as in the present instance. 
 
 Oscar Wilde went to his prison with the burden of such 
 shame and reprobation as has never been laid upon a literary 
 man of equal eminence. Not a voice was raised for him 
 the starkness of his guilt silenced even his closest friends and 
 warmest admirers. The world at large approved of his pun 
 ishment. That small portion of the world which is loth to 
 see the suffering of any sinner, was revolted by the nature 
 of his offense and turned away without a word; the sin of 
 Oscar Wilde claimed no charity and permitted of no discus 
 sion. Had his crime been murder itself, his fame and genius 
 would have raised up defenders on every hand. As it was, 
 all mouths were stopped and the man went broken-hearted 
 to his doom. 
 
 But while his body lay in prison, the children of his mind 
 pleaded for him, and such is the invincible appeal of genius, 
 the heart of the world began to be troubled in despite of it 
 self. His books came slowly forth from their hiding-places; 
 his name was restored here and there to a catalogue; 
 a little emotion of pity was awakened in his favor. Then 
 from his prison cell rose a cry of soul-anguish, of utter pathos, 
 of supreme expiation, which stirred the heart of pity to its 
 depths. The feigner was at last believed when the world 
 had made sure of the accents of his agony and could put its 
 finger in each of his wounds. Society had sentenced this 
 poet: the poet both sentenced and forgave society, in the 
 
56 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 "Ballad of Reading Gaol/ thus achieving the most original 
 paradox of his fantastic genius and throwing about his shame 
 something of the halo of martyrdom. He did more than this, 
 in the judgment of his fellow artists he purchased his re 
 demption and snatched his name from the mire of infamy 
 into which it had been cast. Strange how the world ap 
 plauded the triumphant genius which only a little while be 
 fore it had condemned to ignominy and silence ! 
 
 The utter and incredible completeness of Wilde s disgrace 
 satisfies the artistic sense, which is never content with half- 
 results. We know that it afforded this kind of satisfaction 
 to the victim himself, exigent of artistic effects even in his 
 catastrophe and the proof of it is "De Profundis." 
 
 I may here remark that the virtuous publishers, both in 
 England and America, who are quick to take their cue from 
 the many-headed beast, are now making amends to the mem 
 ory of poor Wilde in their fashion ; that is, they are turning 
 a pretty penny by the sale of his books, most of which cost 
 them nothing. The rage of contumely is changed into a 
 furore of admiration and a crescendo of regret. To some of 
 us the pawing over of Wilde s literary remains by the vulgar 
 mob and the present indecent enterprise of the publishers, 
 are not less disgusting than the conduct of both parties in 
 the hour of the man s calamity. 
 
 u De Profundis" will take rank with the really memorable 
 human documents. It is a true cry of the heart, a sincere 
 utterance of the spiritual depths of this man s nature, when 
 the angels of sorrow had troubled the pool. The only thing 
 that seems to militate against its acceptance as such, is the 
 unfailing presence of that consummate literary art, too con 
 scious of itself, which, as in all the author s work save the 
 "Ballad of Reading Gaol," draws us constantly from the 
 substance to the form. Many persons of critical acumen say 
 they can not see the penitent for the artist. The texture of 
 the sackcloth is too exquisitely wrought and is too mani- 
 
OSCAR WILDE S ATONEMENT 57 
 
 festly of the loom that gave us "Dorian Gray," "Salome," 
 and the rest. How could a man stricken unto death with 
 grief and shame so occupy himself with the vanity of style, 
 a dilettante even in the hourwhen fatewas crushing him with 
 its heaviest blows? Does not this wonderful piece of work, 
 lambent with all the rays of his lawless genius, show the arti 
 ficial core of the man as nothing that even he ever did before? 
 And what is the spiritual value of a "confession" which is so 
 obviously a literary tour de force; in which the plain and the 
 simple are avoided with the anxious care of a prince of 
 decadents ? 
 
 So say, or seem to say, the critics. For myself, I can ac 
 cept as authentic Wilde s testament of sorrow, even though 
 it be written in a style which often dazzles with beauty, sur 
 prises with paradox, and sometimes intoxicates with the rap 
 ture of the inevitable artist. He could not teach his hand to 
 unlearn its cunning, strive as he might. Like Narcissus won 
 dering at his own beauty in the fountain, no sooner had he 
 begun to tell the tale of his sorrow than the loveliness of his 
 words seized upon him, and the sorrow that found such ex 
 pression seemed a thing almost to be desired. 
 
 So when Oscar Wilde took up the pen in his prison solitude 
 to make men weep, he did that indeed, but too soon he de 
 lighted them as of yore. Art, his adored mistress, whispered 
 her thrilling consolations to the poor castaway they had 
 taken all from him, liberty, honor, wealth, fame, mother, 
 wife, children, and shut him up in an iron hell, but by God! 
 they should not take her! With this little pen in hand they 
 were all under his feet, solemn judge, stolid jury, the beast 
 of many heads and the whited British Philistia. Let them 
 come on now! but soft, the poet s anger is gone in a mo 
 ment, for beauty, faithful to one who had loved her t other 
 side o madness, comes and fills his narrow cell with her ador 
 able presence, bringing the glory of the sweet world he has 
 lost, the breath of dawn, the scented hush of summer nights, 
 
58 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 the peace of April rains, the pageant of the autumn lands, 
 the changeful wonder of the sea. Imagination brushes away 
 his bounds of stone and steel to give him all her largess of 
 the past; gracious figures of poesy and romance known and 
 loved from his sinless youth (the man is always an artist, 
 but you see! he can weep) ; the elect company of classic ages 
 to whom his soul does reverence and who seem not to scorn 
 him ; the fair heroines of immortal story who in the old days, 
 as his dreams so often told him, had deemed him worthy of 
 their love he would kneel at their white feet now, but their 
 sweet glances carry no rebuke; the kind poets, his beloved 
 masters in Apollo, who bend upon him no alienated gaze; 
 the heroes, the sages who had inspired his boyish heart, the 
 sceptred and mighty sons of genius who had roused in him 
 a passion for fame all come thronging at the summons of 
 memory and fancy a far dearer and better world than that 
 which had denied, cursed and condemned him, and which he 
 was to know no more. 
 
 Then last of all, when these fair and noble guests were 
 gone and the glow of their visitation had died out into the 
 old bitter loneliness and sorrow, there came One whose smile 
 had the brightness, of the sun and the seven stars. And the 
 poor prisoner of sin cast himself down at the feet of the 
 Presence as unworthy to look upon that divine radiancy, and 
 the fountains of his heart were broken up as never before. 
 Yet in his weeping he heard a Voice which said, "Thy sin 
 and sorrow are equal and thou hast still but a little way to 
 go. Come!" 
 
 Then rose up the sinner and fared forth of the spirit with 
 Christ to Emmaus. 
 
 And men will yet say that the words which the sinner 
 wrote of that Vision have saved his soul (that soon thereafter 
 was demanded of him) and sweetened his fame forever. But 
 the critics who forget the adjuration, "Judge not lest ye be 
 
OSCAR WILDE S ATONEMENT 
 
 59 
 
 judged," cry out that the sinner is never to be trusted in 
 these matters, because he writes so well ! God, however, is 
 kinder than men or critics. He will forgive the poor poet 
 in spite of his beautiful style. 
 
Children of the Hge. 
 
 HAVE been reading the "Last Letters of Aubrey 
 Beardsley." A strange book, full of a sort of 
 macabre interest. Not really a book, and yet 
 peculiarly suggestive as an end-of-the-century 
 document. The soul of Beardsley here exposed 
 with a kind of abnormal frankness that somehow recalls the 
 very style of art by which he shocked and captured the 
 world s regard. And the obvious purpose of it all, to show 
 how he attained peace of the spirit and a quiet grave in his 
 early manhood. 
 
 Poor Beardsley was bitten deep with the malady of his age 
 he ranks with the most interesting, though not, of course, 
 the greatest of its victims. He died under thirty and his 
 name is known to thousands who know nothing of his art nor 
 perhaps of any art whatever. To very many his name stands 
 as a symbol of degeneracy. There is an intimate legend 
 which attaints him with the scarlet sins of the newer hedonism. 
 He is closely associated in the public mind with the most trag 
 ically disgraced literary man of modern times. In art he 
 was a lawless genius, but a genius for all that, else the world 
 would not have heard so much of him. The fact that counts 
 is, that in a very brief life he did much striking work and for 
 a time at least gave his name to a school of imitators. 
 Whether his artistic influence was for good or evil, does not 
 matter in this view of him let the professors haggle about 
 that. What does matter is the fact and sum of his accom 
 plishment, which justifies the continued interest in his name. 
 One naturally associates with Beardsley other ill-fated vic 
 tims of the age, such as Maupassant, Bastien Lepage, Marie 
 Bashkirtseff, Oscar Wilde, Ernest Dowson, to cite no more. 
 
CHILDREN OF THE AGE 61 
 
 They were all martyrs of their own talent, and martyrs also 
 of that ravaging malady of the heart, that devouring casuis 
 try, so peculiar to the last quarter of the nineteenth century, 
 We may be sure the disease was not confined to a few persons 
 of extraordinary talent of them we heard only because of 
 their position in the public mind, and also* because, as artists, 
 they were bound to reveal their sufferings. Nay, we were 
 the more keenly interested in their painful confessions, know 
 ing that they spoke for many condemned to bear their agon 
 ies in silence. For the world will soon turn away from an 
 isolated sufferer, as from a freak on the operating table 
 let it fear or recognize the disease for its own and it will 
 never weary of seeing and hearing. This commonplace truth 
 explains, I think, the great and continuing interest which the 
 persons above named have excited. 
 
 All of these were unusually gifted, whether as artists or 
 writers, and all strove to fulfill their talents with a suicidal 
 fury of application. It seemed as if each had a prescience 
 of early death and labored with fatal devotion that the 
 world might not lose the fruit which was his to give. Gen 
 erous sacrifice, which never fails to mark the rarest type of 
 genius. Maupassant, perhaps the most gifted, the most terri 
 bly in earnest of all, went to work like a demoniac, pouring 
 forth a whole literature of plays, poems, stories, romances, all 
 in the space of ten years. Such fecundity, coupled with an 
 artistic practice so admirable and a literary conscience so 
 exacting, was never before witnessed in the same writer. But 
 the world presently learned a greater wonder still that this 
 unwearied artist had in those ten years of apparently unre 
 mitting labor, lived a life that was not less full of romance, 
 of passion, of variety and excitement than the creations of his 
 brain. He had accomplished a two-fold suicide in life and 
 in art. 
 
 Maupassant died mad, his brain worn out by constant pro 
 duction, his heart torn by the malady of his age, which we 
 
62 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 can trace in so many pages of his work. But at least he 
 died without disgrace, and in this respect his fate was far 
 happier than that of Oscar Wilde, his contemporary and 
 equal in genius, whose brilliant career closed in the darkest in 
 famy. Poor Wilde sinned greatly no doubt, the English 
 courts settled that, though his atonement was of a piece 
 with his offending. The man dies but the artist lives; and 
 Wilde has work to his credit which will surely survive the 
 memory of his tragic shame. 
 
 In his last wretched days Wilde turned for consolation to 
 the Catholic Church, which, with a deeper knowledge of 
 human nature than her rivals can understand, still makes the 
 worst sinner, if repentant, her peculiar care. Wilde became 
 a Catholic and he recorded that had he but done so years 
 before, the world would not have been shocked by the story 
 of his disgrace. This is less a truism than a confession. At 
 any rate, one is not sorry to know that the poor, broken 
 hearted wretch found sanctuary at the last and died peace 
 fully in that divine hope which he has voiced in the noblest 
 of his poems. 
 
 Like Wilde, Beardsley became a Catholic at the last when 
 he was under sentence of death from consumption, and the 
 "Letters" are addressed to a worthy Catholic priest who 
 instructed him in the faith. Beardsley was not in any sense 
 a writer, and these letters were obviously written in perfect 
 candor and with no thought of their ever meeting any eyes 
 save the good priest s for which they- were intended. All the 
 same they are, as I have already said, curiously interesting, 
 and they do not lack touches of genuine insight and emotion. 
 The fantastic artist grew very sober in the shadow of death, 
 and the riot of sensuality in which his genius had formerly 
 delighted, was clean wiped from his brain. Wilde himself, 
 in his last days of grace, might have penned this sentence : 
 
 "If Heine is the great warning, Pascal is the great example 
 to all artists and thinkers. He understood that to become a 
 
CHILDREN OF THE AGE 63 
 
 Christian the man of letters must sacrifice his gifts, just as 
 Magdalen sacrificed her beauty." 
 
 Strange language, this, from an end-of-the-century deca 
 dent, whose achievement in art was that he had carried 
 one step farther the suggestions of the wildest sensualism. 
 But perhaps it was not the same Beardsley who made the 
 pictures to "Salome" and who, through the most original, 
 creative part of his career, worked like a man in the frenzy 
 of satyriasis. No, it was not the same Beardsley the sentence 
 of premature death had turned Pan into 1 a St. Anthony. 
 
 Not long after penning the words I have quoted, Beards- 
 ley made a sacrifice of his gifts and was received into the 
 Catholic Church. Within a year thereafter he died. There 
 is nothing to mar the moral of his conversion and edifying 
 change of heart, except the reflection that, like so many other 
 eleventh-hour penitents, he put off making a sacrifice of his 
 gifts until he had no further use for them. And at the last, 
 one can t help thinking that if Beardsley had not made some 
 fearfully immoral pictures, this book, with the highly moral 
 story of his conversion, would not have been put before the 
 world. . . . 
 
 I have mentioned Ernest Dowson, a minor poet, the singer 
 of a few exquisite songs. Less talented than the others, yet a 
 true child of the age and stricken at the heart with the same 
 malady, Dowson owes his fame more to the memorial written 
 by his friend and brother poet, Arthur Symons, than to his 
 own work, which in bulk is of the slightest. His short life 
 was frightfully dissolute Symons speaks of his drunken 
 ness with a kind of awe. It was not an occasional over-indul 
 gence with comrades of his own stamp, passing the bottle 
 too often when their heads grew hot and their tongues loos 
 ened ; it was not the solitary, sodden boozing to which many 
 hopeless drunkards are addicted. For weeks at a stretch 
 Dowson would give himself up to a debauch with the refuse 
 of the London slums, and during that time he would seem 
 
64 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 an utterly different being, with scarcely a hint of his normal 
 self. I wish some one would explain how this brutal sottish- 
 ness can co-exist with the most delicate intellectual sensibility, 
 with the poet-soul. We have had many explanations of the 
 puzzle, and they have only one fault they do not explain. 
 
 Dowson left us little, not because he drank much, but 
 because he could rarely satisfy his own taste, which kept him 
 as unhappy in a literary sense as his conscience did in a 
 religious one. He wrote some fine sonnets to a young woman 
 whose mother kept a cheap eating-house: she married the 
 waiter. The genius of Beardsley could alone have done jus 
 tice to this grotesque romance. 
 
 Like Beardsley, Dowson died a Catholic he had barely 
 passed thirty but unlike Beardsley, he had expected to do so 
 all his life, for he was born in the faith. Yet the faith had 
 not saved him from le mal du siecle, nor had it kept him 
 from the foul pit of debauchery. What it did and this was 
 much was to give him a hope at the end. . . . 
 
 Oh, sad children of the age, why wait so long before com 
 ing to your Mother, the ancient Church ? She alone can heal 
 your cruel wounds, self-inflicted, and bind up your bleeding 
 hearts; she alone can succor you; she alone can give your 
 troubled spirit rest and quiet those restless brains that would 
 be asking, asking unto madness. See ! she has balsam and 
 wine for your wayfaring in this world and something that 
 will fortify you for a longer journey. Hear ye the bells call 
 ing the happy faithful who have never known the hell of 
 doubt; hear ye the organ pealing forth its jubilation over the 
 Eternal Sacrifice ! Come into the great House of God, found 
 ed in the faith, strong with the strength, sanctified by the 
 prayer and warm with the hope of twothousand years. Come, 
 make here at the altar a sacrifice of your poor human gifts 
 and exchange them for undying treasures. Painter, for your 
 bits of canvas, the glories of heaven; poet, for your best 
 
CHILDREN OF THE AGE 65 
 
 rhyme the songs of the saved. Come, though it be not until 
 the last hour yet come, corne, even then ! 
 
 Whether the old Church can really give what she promises, 
 I know not, but sure am I that men will go on believing to the 
 ,end. For faith is ever more attractive than unfaith, and 
 human nature craves a comfortable heaven; and, after all, it 
 takes more courage to die in the new scientific theory of things 
 than in the simple belief of the saints. And alas! the cold 
 affirmations of science can not cure nor genius itself satisfy 
 the stricken children of the age. 
 
Che Black friar. 
 
 Beware ! beware ! of the Black Friar 
 
 Who sitteth by Norman stone, 
 For he mutters his prayer in the midnight air, 
 
 And his mass of the days that are gone. 
 
 ******* 
 
 And whether for good or whether for ill 
 
 It is not mine to say, 
 But still to the house of Amundeville 
 
 He abideth night and day. 
 
 DON JUAN. 
 
 NE may wonder what my Lord Byron in the 
 shades thinks of his noble grandson s perform 
 ance in summoning the obscene Furies to a final 
 desecration of his grave. Surely the ghouls of 
 scandal that find their congenial food in the 
 shrouds of the illustrious dead, have never had richer quarry. 
 True, they have already had their noses at the scent (through 
 the sweet offices of an American authoress), and have even 
 picked a little at the carrion ; but the full body-of-death was 
 never before delivered to them. 
 
 This point has been clouded over in the public discussion of 
 the infamy. It should be made clear in order that the Earl of 
 Lovelace may receive his due credit. Mrs. Harriet Beecher 
 Stowe s revelations were, of course, to the same purport, 
 but they were based on the unsupported word of Lady Byron 
 and some very free readings of certain passages in the poet s 
 works. Everybody was shocked, nobody convinced. Mrs. 
 Stowe s book was damned by universal consent and with 
 drawn from public sale. 
 
THE BLACK FRIAR 67 
 
 Lord Lovelace has about the same story to tell, and his 
 revival of the horrid scandal would go for nought, were it 
 not that he is himself a kind of witness against the dead. It 
 would be foolish to deny that many people will as such accept 
 him. There is nobody now living to share or dispute his 
 preeminence in shame. Lord Lovelace should have a por 
 tion, at least, of the burden of Orestes. . . . 
 
 Yes, there are terrible things in this darkly perplexed 
 drama of the house of Byron, which make it seem like a mod 
 ern version of the old Greek tragedy. Look at the figures in 
 it. A great poet among the very greatest of his race 
 beautiful as a god, born to the highest place, the spoiled 
 darling of nature and of fortune, dazzling the world with 
 his gifts, drunk himself with excess of power, crowding such 
 emotion and enthusiasm, such vitality and passion, such 
 adventure and achievement, such a fulness of productive 
 power within the short span of a life cut off in its prime, as 
 have never marked the career of another human being. 
 Never have men s eyes wonderingly followed so splendid and 
 lawless a comet in the sky of fame. Never was man loved 
 more passionately, hated more bitterly, admired more extrav 
 agantly, praised more wildly, damned more deeply. His 
 quarrel divided the world into armed camps which still main 
 tain their hostile lines. He was the Napoleon of the intel 
 lectual world and bulked as large as the Corsican, with whom 
 indeed he shared the conquest of Europe. And by Europe 
 he was acclaimed and almost deified when England had first 
 exiled and later denied him a place in the pantheon of her 
 great. 
 
 Never, too, were great faults redeemed by grander vir 
 tues, worthy of his towering genius virtues to which the 
 eyes of those who loved him still turned with shining hope 
 after each brief eclipse of his nobler self, as when the sudden 
 summer storm has passed over, men seek the sun. Virtues 
 
68 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 which drew the hatred of his race and caste and have left his 
 name as a sword and a burning brand in the world. 
 
 Such is the chief actor in this terrible and sinister drama 
 which has lately been unveiled by the perfidy of the heir of his 
 blood the son of that "Ada" whom his verse has immortal 
 ized. The remaining characters are few, which is also fatally 
 in accordance with the rules of Greek tragedy. For the 
 most tremendous dramas of the flesh and the spirit do not 
 ask a crowd of performers ; two or three persons will suffice 
 and the eternal elements of love and hate. 
 
 So here we have, besides the poet, only the unloved and 
 unloving wife, who meekly discharged her bosom of its long- 
 festering rancor ere she left the world; the beloved perhaps 
 too wildly beloved half-sister of the poet, whose memory 
 (in spite of the hideous calumny laid upon her) is like a 
 springing fountain of bright water in the hot desert of his 
 life; and, lastly, the evil grandson in whom the ancestral 
 curses of the house of Byron have found a terribly fit medium 
 of execution and vengeance. It seems a circumstance of 
 added horror that this parricidal slanderer should be a hoary 
 old man, while the world can not imagine Byron save as he 
 died, in the glory and beauty of youth. 
 
 What madness possessed the man? Was it perhaps the 
 hoarded rage and bitterness of many years, that he should 
 have been compelled to live his long life without fame or 
 notice, in the shadow of a mighty name? A wild enough 
 theory, but such extraordinary madness as my Lord Love 
 lace s will not allow of sane conjecture. One does not pick 
 and choose his hypotheses in Bedlam. 
 
 That my Lord Lovelace is mad doth sufficiently, indeed 
 overwhelmingly, appear from his part in this shameful and 
 damnable business ; but as often happens in cases of reasoning 
 dementia, the truth comes out rather in some petty detail 
 than in the general conduct. Thus, at the outset, he orders 
 his charges very well and maintains a semblance of dignity 
 
THE BLACK FRIAR 69 
 
 that would befit a worthier matter. One is, passingly, almost 
 tempted to believe that the noble lord has been moved to 
 the shocking enterprise by a compelling sense of moral and 
 even filial obligation. He seems to speak more in sorrow 
 than in anger and comes near to winning our sympathy, if not 
 our approval. This at the threshold of his plea. But his 
 malignity soon reveals itself, horrifying and disgusting us, 
 and suddenly the detail crops up the little thing for which 
 intelligent alienists are always on the alert and losing all 
 control, he abandons himself to the utter freedom of his 
 hatred and his madness. I refer now to the atrocious passage 
 in his book in which he exults over the alleged fact revealed 
 by the post-mortem examination of Byron s remains that 
 the poet s heart was found to be partly petrified or turned 
 into stone! 
 
 A pretty bauble this to play with ! There are saner men 
 than my Lord Lovelace trying to seize the moon through 
 their grated windows, and coming very near to doing it 
 oh, very near! 
 
 But I should like to have a look at my Lord Lovelace s 
 heart! . . . 
 
 Lovers of Byron s fame may be glad, at least, that the 
 worst has now been said and calumny can not touch the great 
 poet further. Ever since his death more than eighty years ago, 
 the hyenas of scandal have wrangled over his grave, shock 
 ing the world in their hunt for uncleanness. All the name 
 less things that delight to- see greatness brought low, genius 
 disgraced, the sanctuary of honor defiled and the virtue of 
 humanity trampled in the dirt, were bidden to the feast. 
 Those obscene orgies have lasted a long time : they are now 
 at an end. The unclean have taken away the uncleanness, if 
 such there was, and are dispersed with their foul kindred 
 in the wilderness. The clean remains and all that was truly 
 vital and imperishable of Byron the legacy of his genius, 
 
70 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 the inspiration of his example in the cause of liberty, the 
 deathless testimony of his spirit for that supreme cause, and 
 his flame-hearted protest against the enthroned Sham, Mean 
 ness and Oppression which still rule the world. These 
 precious bequests of Byron we have immortal and secure. As 
 for the rest 
 
 Glory without end 
 
 Scattered the clouds away, and on that name attend 
 
 The tears and praises of all time ! 
 
Lafcadio Ream. 
 
 AS the Silence fallen upon thee, O Lafcadio, in 
 that far Eastern land of strange flowers, strange 
 gods and myths, where thou, grown, weary of a 
 world whence the spirit of romance had flown, 
 didst fix thy later home ? Art thou indeed gone 
 forever from us, who loved thee, being of thy brave faith in 
 the divinity of the human spirit, and art thou gathered to a 
 strange Valhalla of thy wiser choice, naturalized now, as 
 we may of a truth believe, among the elect and heroic shades 
 of old Japan? Is that voice stilled which had not its peer 
 in these last lamentable days, sounding the gamut of beauty 
 and joy that had almost ceased to thrill the souls of men? 
 Child of Hellas and Erin, are those half-veiled eyes, that yet 
 saw so deeply into the spiritual Mystery that enfolds our sen 
 suous life, forever closed to this earthly scene? Hath Beauty 
 lost her chief witness and the Lyre of Prose her anointed 
 bard and sacerdos? Shall we no more hearken to the 
 cadences of that perfect speech which was thy birthright, 
 sprung as thou wert from the poesy of two immemorial lands, 
 sacred to eloquence and song ? 
 
 Ill shall we bear thy loss, O Lafcadio, given over as we 
 are to the rule and worship of leaden gods. Th ou wert for 
 us a witness against the iron Law that crushed, and ever 
 crushes, our lives; against the man-made superstition which 
 impudently seeks to limit the Ideal. From beyond the violet 
 seas, in thy flower-crowned retreat, thou didst raise the joyous 
 paean of the Enfranchised. Plunged deep into mystic lore 
 hidden from us, exploring a whole realm of myths and wor 
 ships of which our vain science knows nothing, thou wouldst 
 smile with gentle scorn at the monstrous treadmill of creeds 
 
72 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 and cultures gods and words where we are forever 
 doomed to toil without fruit or respite. 
 
 We hearkened to thy wondrous tales of a land whose 
 babes have more of the spirit of Art than the teachers of our 
 own; where love is free yet honored and decency does not 
 consist in doing that privately which publicly no man dare 
 avow; where religion, in our brutal sense, does not exist; and 
 where crime, again in our brutal sense, is all but unknown. 
 We heard thee tell, with evermore wonder, how this people 
 of Japan has gone on for hundreds, nay, thousands of years, 
 producing the humblest as well as the highest virtues without 
 the aid of an officious religion ; how these Japanese folk have 
 the wisdom of age and the simplicity of childhood, being 
 simple and happy, loving peace, contented with little, respect 
 ful toward the old, tender toward the young, merciful toward 
 women, submissive under just authority, and loving their 
 beautiful country with a fervor of patriotism which we may 
 not conceive. 
 
 All this and more thou didst teach us, Lafcadio, in the way 
 of thy gracious art, with many an exquisite fancy caught from 
 the legendary love of ancient Nippon and with the ripe ful 
 ness of thy strangely blended genius. So we listened as to a 
 far-brought strain of music, and were glad to hear, hailing 
 thee Master a title thou hadst proudly earned. Yet even 
 as we sat at thy feet drinking in the tones of thy voice, there 
 came One who touched thee quickly on the lips and we 
 knew the rest was Silence. 
 
 Peace to thee, Lafcadio, child of Erin and Hellas, adopted 
 son and poet of Nippon. Thy immortality is a ceaseless day- 
 spring; for thou sleepest in the Land of the Sunrise . . . 
 and Nippon, who has never learned to forget, watches over 
 thy fame. 
 
 Lafcadio Hearn was a poet working in prose, as all true 
 poets now inevitably are, a literary artist of original motive 
 
LAFCADIO HEARN 73 
 
 and distinction among the rabble of contemporary scribblers. 
 For these two things a man is not easily forgiven or forgotten 
 when he has passed the Styx. 
 
 Half Irish, half Greek, the flower of this man s genius 
 took unwonted hue and fragrance from his strangely blended 
 paternity ; the hybrid acquired a beauty new and surprising in 
 a world that looks only for the stereotype. Despairing of the 
 tame effects produced by regularity, Nature herself seems to 
 have set an example of lawlessness. 
 
 Lafcadio Hearn took care to avoid the conventional in the 
 ordering of his life as sedulously as in the products of his 
 brain. For this, the man being now dead and silent, the con 
 ventional takes a familiar revenge upon his memory. 
 
 The conventional lest we forget is the consensus of 
 smug souls, the taboo uttered by mediocrity, the Latin in- 
 vidia whereat Flaccus flickered, with all his assurance. It has 
 much the same voice in every age. 
 
 So we are hearing that one of the very few men who both 
 made and honored literature in our time was, in his daily life 
 and his principles of conduct, a moral monstrosity ; a sort of 
 intellectual Caliban, delighting in the abnormal and the per 
 verse, especially in the sexually abnormal and the racially per 
 verse. Through the frankness of certain persons, mostly 
 journalists who refrained from speaking while Hearn might 
 have contradicted them, we learn that while in this country he 
 made a cult of miscegenation, as it presents itself at New 
 Orleans and other places in the South, consorted with ne- 
 gresses of the lowest type, and devoted himself to the unclean 
 mysteries of voodooism. 
 
 These facts are cheerfully, even emulously, borne witness 
 to by journalists who worked with Hearn and who shared his 
 friendship and confidence. That they should make copy of 
 their acquaintance (alleged )with the dead man is not, per 
 haps, of itself a censurable thing. That they may have black 
 ened him in their report is not, unluckily, without precedent 
 
74 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 in the ways of journalism. There is, to be sure, a fine sense 
 of honor among journalists and an utter freedom from the 
 basest of all vices, envy but that is not the present subiect. 
 
 We learn from the same source that Hearn s final mar 
 riage with a Japanese woman was strictly in keeping with the 
 innate perversity which moved him to loathe and shun his 
 own race. (She bore him children who survive their father, 
 but not the less nobly did we refuse to spare their feelings.) 
 Descriptions of Hearn s physical appearance to suit the pic 
 ture of moral depravity above outlined, are frankly and min 
 utely supplied. God forgive them ! the libel is such as to 
 burn the heart of every man who loves and honors true 
 genius. 
 
 How such a monster could have produced the miracles of 
 thought and style and fancy which are everywhere scattered 
 like seed pearl in the writings of Lafcadio Hearn, your can 
 did journalists do not attempt to explain the thing is beyond 
 their quality. But the other thing the legend of the man s 
 debasement they know devilish well, and they tell of it 
 right pertly, so that faith is easily induced in the story. And 
 the wings of the press carry the foul tale to many a quarter 
 where no word of contradiction will ever find its way. For 
 this is the justice of journalism. 
 
 Notwithstanding, one plain fact, avouched by all human 
 experience, may reassure the wide-scattered fraternity of 
 those who prize the work and cherish the memory of Laf 
 cadio Hearn. It is this : No man ever succeeded in writing 
 himself down better or worse than he really was. You may 
 write, but the condition is that you make a faithful likeness 
 of yourself nothing extenuate nor set down aught in malice. 
 
 The true Lafcadio Hearn, the shy, pitiably myopic genius 
 nursed on tears, the dreamer of strange dreams, the prose 
 poet of a new dower of fancy, the weaver of hitherto un- 
 wrought cadences for the inner ear, the latest brave worship- 
 
LAFCADIO HEARN 
 
 75 
 
 er of truth and beauty, where shall we look for him but in 
 his enduring work? soul and man to the essential life ! 
 
 As for the horrid changeling of the journalists, it is 
 already, with the consent of all kind hearts, rejected and 
 ground up with the refuse of yesterday s editions. 
 
H fellow to the Rev. 2)r, fiyde. 
 
 N literature the fable of the living ass and the 
 dead lion is constantly repeating itself. I have 
 just chanced upon an instance in which the ass 
 displays more than his usual temerity. 
 
 A person all unknown to fame, one Rev. 
 Frederic Rowland Marvin, makes a tuppenny bid for notice 
 by impeaching the integrity of Robert Louis Stevenson s 
 motives in writing the celebrated Letter on Father Damien. 
 
 Needless to recall, the Letter was addressed to the Rev. 
 Dr. Hyde, of Honolulu, who had cast some very gross and 
 unmerited aspersions upon the martyr priest. 
 
 Damien, as all the world knows, was a Belgian missionary 
 priest who had devoted himself to the service of the lepers at 
 Molokai, and, at the height of his vigorous ministry, con 
 tracting the disease, died among them. The question of his 
 saintship cannot be taken up by the Church until a hundred 
 years after his death. Meantime many people of different 
 religions, and some of none at all, regard Damien as the only 
 authentic saint of modern times. Robert Louis Stevenson 
 was unquestionably of this opinion. 
 
 The Rev. Dr. Hyde, of Honolulu, in a letter to a brother 
 parson (the Rev. H. B. Gage) made the hideous charge that 
 Damien had become infected with leprosy through sexual 
 intercourse with the women lepers of Molokai ; characterized 
 him as "a coarse, dirty man, headstrong and bigoted," and 
 sneered at the chorus of praise which his heroic death had 
 evoked. All of which was extensively circulated by religious 
 papers of the Hyde denomination. 
 
 This precious testimony came under the eye of Robert 
 Louis Stevenson, who had himself visited the leper colony 
 
A FELLOW TO THE REV. DR. HYDE 77 
 
 when Damien was u in his resting grave," and had collected 
 the whole truth regarding him from the witnesses of his life 
 and death. By an useful coincidence, the author had likewise 
 seen the reverend slanderer Hyde and held converse with 
 him at his "fine house in Beretania street" (Honolulu). 
 
 The posthumous attack upon Damien by a rival but 
 recreant missioner, breathing a sectarian malignity rare in our 
 time, touched that fiery intrepid soul to an utterance which 
 ranks with the highest proofs of his genius and the best fruits 
 of the liberal spirit. His Letter on Father Damien is, in truth, 
 the quintessence of Stevenson, the choice extract of his pas 
 sion and power, his deep-hearted hatred of injustice, his 
 princelike contempt of meanness, his loathing scorn of re 
 ligious bigotry, his tenderness, delicacy and chivalry, all 
 conveyed in a flawless triumph of literary art. Not vainly 
 did he boast: 
 
 "If I have at all learned the trade of using words to con 
 vey truth and to arouse emotion, you have at last furnished 
 me with a subject." And again: "I conceive you as a man 
 quite beyond and below the reticences of civility; with what 
 measure you mete, with that it shall be measured to you 
 again; with you, at last, I rejoice to feel the button off the 
 foil and to plunge home." 
 
 I can never read the Letter to Hyde without seeing a flame 
 run between the lines; I never lay it down that I do not 
 at once bless and damn the Rev. Dr. Hyde. But not being 
 myself parson-led, I wish the gentleman no worse damnation 
 than is assured to him in Tusitala s honest tribute. 
 
 Well, this is the piece of work which Dr. Marvin he is, 
 it appears, a parson like the eternally disgraced Hyde seeks 
 to disparage by attainting the integrity of the knightliest fig 
 ure of modern letters. Let us see how this bold parson 
 achieves the asinine exploit of kicking the dead lion and be 
 traying his folly to the world. 
 
 After stating the extraordinary assumption that Steven- 
 
78 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 son s Letter on Father Damien "was never regarded as any 
 thing more than a striking exhibition of literary pyrotechny," 
 Dr. Marvin proceeds to judgment as follows : 
 
 "Stevenson s letter was, I am fully persuaded, more the 
 work of the rhetorician than of the man. He was carried 
 away by the opportunity of making a rhetorical flourish and 
 impression, and so went further than his own judgment ap 
 proved. Stevenson was a man of many noble qualities, and 
 conscience was not wanting as an element of power in his 
 life, but his letter to Dr. Hyde was not honest, nor had it for 
 any length of time the approval of his own inner sense of 
 right and justice. He did not really believe what he wrote, 
 neither did he intend to write what he did. The temptation 
 from a literary point of view was great, and the writer got 
 the better of the man." 
 
 Here the parson speaks in no uncertain tone a mere lit 
 erary man would not so frame his indictment. But what a 
 gorgeous piece of impudence ! 
 
 I would not take the Rev. Marvin too seriously, but lest 
 any person with the wit of three asses should be deceived by 
 his shallow effrontery, I am bound to notice it. And since the 
 Rev. Marvin has of his own free will made himself yoke 
 fellow with the infamous Hyde, it is but just that he be 
 clothed with the full dignity of his election. 
 
 To discuss the foolish question which he has raised con 
 cerning Stevenson s honesty of motive in writing the Letter 
 to Dr. Hyde, would shame any man not a parson of com 
 mon sense. Nor is it needful in any case, the Rev. Marvin 
 sufficiently putting himself out of terms in these words : "The 
 temptation from a literary point of view was great, and the 
 writer got the better of the man." 
 
 Now the lovers of Stevenson have no need to be reminded 
 that such was his passionate care to avoid the slightest doubt 
 of his sincerity in writing as he did upon Damien and to repel 
 the stock literary imputation here uttered by a worthy cham- 
 
A FELLOW TO THE REV. DR. HYDE 79 
 
 pion of Hyde, that the Letter was printed originally for pri 
 vate distribution only, the public demand for it soon becoming 
 irresistible; and that Stevenson always refused to touch a 
 penny from the publication. In 1890 he wrote to a London 
 publisher who wished to bring out an edition : "The Letter 
 to Dr. Hyde is yours or any man s. I will never touch a 
 penny of remuneration. I do not stick at murder: I draw 
 the line at cannibalism. I could not eat a penny roll that piece 
 of bludgeoning had gained for me." . . 
 
 "If the world at all remember you" (said the Letter to 
 Hyde) "on the day when Damien of Molokai shall be 
 named saint, it will be in virtue of one work : your letter to 
 the Reverend H. B. Gage." 
 
 Was ever such a sight vouchsafed to gods or men as this 
 of the Rev. Dr. Marvin struggling belatedly to win for him 
 self a small title in that infamous remembrance to snatch 
 a rag from the garment of shame which the great artist 
 fitted upon Dr. Hyde in his character of Devil s Advocate 
 against Damien? 
 
 The defense of Damien remains one of the cherished doc 
 uments of the free spirit. I thank Dr. Marvin for having 
 given me an occasion of re-reading it, and I cheerfully ac 
 cord him the grace of having moved me to perform this 
 religious duty twice instead of (my usual practice) once in 
 the year. I can but wonder what manner of man is he that it 
 should have done him so little good; yet I know I shall love 
 it the more that its truth is thus again proven by the futile 
 attacks of a spiritual fellow to Hyde. 
 
 Yes, I re-read as, please God, often I shall re-read that 
 true story of Damien s martyrdom, bare and tragic as Molo 
 kai itself, traced by the hand of one who had no sympathy of 
 religious faith with him but only the common kinship of 
 humanity "that noble brother of mine and of all frail clay." 
 I read again, with quickened pulse, of the lowly peasant 
 priest, who, in obedience to the Master s call, "shut to with 
 
8o PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 his own hand the doors of his own sepulchre!" I saw once 
 more that woeful picture of the lepers island, surrounded by 
 a great waste of sea, which to those condemned wretches 
 spells the black despair of infinity: in its midst the hill with 
 the dead crater, the hopeless front of precipice, the desolation 
 there prepared by nature for death too hideous for men to 
 look upon. Again I made that melancholy voyage to Moh> 
 kai and wept with Tusitala as he sat in the boat with the two 
 sisters, "bidding farewell, in humble imitation of Damien, to 
 the lights and joys of human life." I shuddered to mark the 
 fearful deformations of humanity that awaited us on the 
 shore the population of a nightmare every other face a 
 blot on the landscape. I saw that the place was an unspeak 
 able hell even with the hospital and other improvements, 
 lacking when Damien came there and "slept that first night 
 under a tree amidst his rotting brethren." I visited the 
 Bishop-Home, whose every cup and towel had been washed 
 by the hand of "dirty Damien." I saw everywhere the tokens 
 of his passage who "by one striking act of martyrdom had 
 directed all men s eyes on that distressful country who at a 
 blow and the price of his life had made the place illustrious 
 and public." I thought upon that great and simple renuncia 
 tion, daunting the mind with its sheer sacrifice which, better 
 far than all the loud-tongued creeds, brought the living Christ 
 within sight and touch and understanding. And these won 
 derful lines of Browning came into my mind with a sudden 
 vividly realized meaning and pathos : 
 
 Remember what a martyr said 
 
 On the rude tablet overhead : 
 
 "I was born sickly, poor and mean, 
 
 "A slave no misery could screen 
 
 "The holders of the pearl of price 
 
 "From Caesar s envy; therefore twice 
 
 "I fought with beasts, three times I saw 
 
A FELLOW TO THE REV. DR. HYDE 8r 
 
 u My children suffer by his law; 
 "At last my own release was earned ; 
 "I was some time in being burned, 
 "But at the close a Hand came through 
 "The fire above my head, and drew 
 "My soul to Christ, whom now I see. 
 "Sergius, a brother, writes for me 
 "This testimony on the wall 
 "For me, I have forgot it all." 
 
JMr, Guppy* 
 
 HERE was once, according to Mr. Dickens, a 
 young man named Guppy, of umble circum 
 stances, who became wildly smitten with Igh 
 Life, as reflected in the newspapers. He read 
 the Court Circular assiduously, he cut out and 
 framed the portraits of Social Celebrities; he lived in fancy 
 amid the splendid scenes of his desire. Mr. Guppy special 
 ized on the Haristocracy, the most sacred institution of his 
 country; the names of dukes, lords, duchesses, countesses, 
 came trippingly to his tongue. The poor young man fancied 
 himself in familiar habits with all those grand people, and 
 this harmless delusion occasionally made him suffer, as when 
 once he reproached himself with having entered into a liaison 
 with a countess (Her name, sir! never would the lips of 
 Guppy reveal it). In the main, however, Mr. Guppy was 
 happy in his illusions, as the mildly mad usually are. He 
 knew that he could never put his ambitions to the proof, 
 owing to the sacredly exclusive character of Igh Society; and 
 so he was spared trials which might have soured his sweetly 
 hopeful spirit. 
 
 I shall not deny that Mr. Guppy was a snob he would 
 have gloried in the title as identifying him, by implication, 
 with the great ; but I submit he was one over whom Chanty 
 may well drop a tear. Nay, if the word snob covered only 
 such virtues and failings as those of the lamented Guppy, it 
 might well be worn as a decoration of honor. 
 
 In the pages of Dickens Mr. Guppy seldom wins more 
 than a careless smile the gloom of the surrounding tragedy 
 crocks off, so to speak, upon the joyousness of Guppy. Yet 
 
MR. GUPPY 83 
 
 the Master has given us nothing that better denotes his hand; 
 Mr. Guppy certifies the genius of his creator in little. 
 
 If you think this far-fetched, look at the figure Mr. 
 Guppy makes in the world to-day. See him editing the "so^ 
 ciety pages" of the great New York newspapers. See his 
 honest efforts to foster the spirit of caste in this country 
 honest because he is himself shut out from the heaven which 
 he depicts, and would sell his soul to get a card for his wife 
 or daughter. See him sometimes, on another page, elo 
 quently denouncing the perils of a society of wealth, at the 
 same time kissing and biting the hand of fortune. See him in 
 the weeklies, those shining mirrors of public taste, which are 
 entirely consecrate to the ideals of Mr. Guppy and fairly 
 reek of him in editorial, picture and story. See him exalted 
 to the Nth splendor in Philadelphia, where they name him 
 Bok. See him in the magazines, that world which from the 
 heaven above to the earth underneath declares the greatness 
 of Guppy. See there in all its perfect flower the rank Ameri 
 can quintessence of Guppy the subtle flattery of picture, the 
 fawning, lick-spittle worship of the text, the hundred sur 
 faces of the Social Lie, glossed and pumiced and polished for 
 those who believe themselves to form a superior class, and as 
 a lure for the eyes of envy and desire. 
 
 Note the phraseology of the American Guppy his easy 
 air of superiority, quite like the inherited article, his jaunty 
 attempt to connect and identify the aristocracy of the Old 
 World with the aristocracy of the New ; his patter of names 
 and titles and pedigrees ; his calm ignoring of that negligible 
 quantity, "the people;" his absolute conviction that the few 
 hundreds or thousands for whom he speaks are alone worth 
 considering and that all the millions only want to hear about 
 them. Can it be that we are being led by Mr. Guppy, as a 
 child would lead us? And unto what issues? . . . 
 
 Mrs. Atherton, a woman of talent, has made a study of the 
 inexhaustible Guppy. She naturalizes him in this country, 
 
84 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 gives him the soul of a would-be American snob, with the 
 same kind of food upon which the original Guppy fed, and 
 sets him to work. The results are what the critics call "har 
 rowing" they are also good entertainment and good art; 
 and the telling of the story involves an exquisite satire on the 
 American social idea. One sees, too, that Mrs. Atherton is 
 not herself free from the bitterness with which she engulfs 
 her hero: the Marah of Guppy is over us all I 
 
 Mrs. Atherton s Guppy is first baited by the newspapers, 
 and loses his soul in the description of social grandeurs writ 
 ten and printed by men who can not for their lives break into 
 society. Then he falls heir to a little money and sets out to 
 make a regular campaign at Newport. He is good-looking, 
 dresses well, and his intelligence does not amount to a crime. 
 Everything then seems to be in his favor, but let me not 
 spoil a story which Mrs. Atherton alone has the right 
 to tell. Read it, and you will get a more acute sense of the 
 great American comedy now enacting, a bit of which is here 
 etched with delicious malice ; you will also agree with me as 
 to the importance of Mr. Guppy. 
 
 I find much, very much, of Mr. Guppy in the palaver of 
 the literary press. He is at the same time an eulogist, with 
 out measure, and a depredator, without justice, of American 
 literary effort. Now he vaunts the vigor of our Western lit 
 erary spirit, free from the shackles of tradition, and now he 
 prostrates himself before the wooden gods of the British 
 Philistia. To-day he will rank Woodrow Wilson with Hal- 
 lam or Lecky, and exalt Howells above Thackeray; to-mor 
 row he will confess that we have no historian or novelist 
 worthy to be named with those of the second British rank. 
 The editor of a leading American review can see no hope for 
 American literature, and deplores the badness of the books 
 which his paper advertises by the broadside. This is called 
 the literary conscience it is really the hand of Mr. Guppy. 
 
 The truth is, the curse of trying to seem the thing we are 
 
MR. GUPPY 85 
 
 not the essence of Guppy is upon our literature and our 
 sorry excuse for criticism as upon our social life. We are the 
 most unreal people in the world, because we don t know what 
 we are nor what God wants to make of us. Of course, I speak 
 only of the infinitesimal, self-conscious minority the great 
 mass of our people are all right, but they are not the artistic 
 concern of Mr. Guppy. The literature that pretends in this 
 country is always aimed at the minority, and then, through 
 the collusion of the Guppys of the press with the publishing 
 trade, it is worked off upon the public. This happy result 
 having been achieved, Mr. Guppy exclaims against the bad 
 ness and futility of the stuff which he has helped to foist on 
 the literary market. 
 
 Now and then, God knows how, a vigorous book with the 
 red corpuscle, gets written and past the line which the care 
 of Mr. Guppy has established. Instantly a hue and cry is 
 raised that the book is without style or literary merit and 
 that the success of such a work simply argues the low level 
 of taste in this country. On such rare occasions Mr. Guppy 
 is not ashamed to show us his tears and he is never so terri 
 bly humorous as then. 
 
 The other day a man died who had written a book which 
 was and remains one of the greatest successes of our time. 
 It has been read by thousands and thousands of people, both 
 in this country and in Europe. It was a book that emphatic 
 ally made for good. To many it brought a sense of the 
 divine beauty of the Christian legend which they would not 
 otherwise have gained. It was to them and will be to thou 
 sands of others unborn, "tidings of great joy." At the very 
 least, it planted in their lives a little shrub of grace and heal 
 ing which casts its perfume across the years. I am myself, if 
 Mr. Guppy will allow me, indifferent literary ; I like a style 
 as well as a story, and I believe that a good story always finds 
 a style. Well, I have read a-many books in divers tongues 
 and among the most precious pictures stored up therefrom 
 
86 
 
 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 in my memory, is the meeting of Ben-Hur with the young 
 Son of Joseph, who gave him to drink. I was a boy when I 
 read the book, and the boyish love I lavished upon it was, I 
 am sure, worth far more than the critical apparatus I could 
 now bring to the judging of it. I did not ask then if it was 
 Art : I do not ask now. 
 
 Oh, Mr. Guppy, if you could give me back those young 
 feelings of joy, of pity and wonder, such as no book could 
 now excite, I would almost pardon the cheap sneers which 
 you and your kind fling upon that honored grave. 
 
H port of 
 
 EADER, when for you as for me the wild heyday 
 of youth is past, and the heart of adventure 
 all but pulseless, there is yet remaining to us a 
 wonderful, untried, and, especially, untrodden, 
 realm of romance. When churlish Time shall 
 think to retire us from the heat and zest of life, classing us, 
 too prematurely, as u old boys," there is still a trick we may 
 turn to his discomfiture. When the younkers club their fool 
 ish wits for a poor joke at our expense what is so utterly 
 inane to maturity as juvenile humor, green-cheese pleasan 
 try, pithless, fledgeling conceits? we who are wise know 
 that the best of the game is still for us ; nor would we change 
 with the reckless spendthrifts who mock us from the vanity 
 of twenty year. 
 
 It s ho for candles, a book and bed ! 
 
 For candles, the modern equivalent, of course. I prefer a 
 strong, well-shaded lamp to electric light or gas; the rocke 
 feller burns with a steady flame, does not sputter, or dwin 
 dle, or go out entirely, leaving you in a sulphuric darkness. 
 But the wick should be trimmed by the hand of her who loves 
 you best in the world ; by her, too, must the reading table be 
 adjusted cosily at the head of the bed, so that the incidence of 
 the gently burning flame may be just right the more 
 or less in these matters is of infinite significance; by her must 
 the books and, above all, The Book, be disposed ready to the 
 discriminating hand of the Sovereign Lector. 
 
 Oh! and, of course, the pipes or cigars. No smokeless 
 person hath any rights in this kingdom ; he cometh falsely by 
 his investiture; he is a Bezonian without choice; a marplot 
 and spy out with him ! . . . 
 
88 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 As to the time of going to bed, I would say eight o clock, 
 or half after eight; not earlier nor later, though the point need 
 not be strained to a finical nicety. But one can not con 
 veniently go to bed amid the daylight business of the house, 
 nor before supper, nor too soon after it. I knew a man who 
 perversely insisted upon going to bed at five o clock; he 
 never rose to the dignity of a true bed-reader, and that which 
 is, properly used, the most delightful of indulgences, became 
 in the end, to this person, a formidable dissipation. Like a 
 bad mariner, he was constantly out of his reckoning and at 
 last came to grief: the fact that he was a non-smoker aided 
 the catastrophe. 
 
 But assuming that all the unities have been fulfilled, that 
 the Book, the Reader and the Bed are in the most fortuitous 
 ly fortunate conjunction, will you tell me that the world has 
 a sweeter pleasure to bestow, a more profoundly satisfying, 
 yet not enervating, luxury of indulgence ? 
 
 Recall an instant that first delicious thrill of relaxed ease, 
 of blissful security, of complete physical well-being every 
 nerve telegraphing its congratulations and your spinal column 
 intoning a grand sweet song of peace ! You are now between 
 the snowy sheets and the Elect Lady is looking tenderly to 
 the pillows, etc., while you are tasting the most exquisite of 
 sensations in the back of your calves. This is the veritable 
 nunc dimittis moment of the experience; you are prepared, 
 soothed and dulcified for what the Greeks called euthanasy; 
 could that old classic idea of dissolution afford you a sweeter 
 pang? . . . 
 
 But, man, you re not dying like a rose in aromatic pain 
 you re simply going to bed to read. And here the Elect Lady, 
 giving a final pat to the pillows, leans over, kisses you fondly 
 and says, "All right now, dear?" 
 
 To which you reply (dissembling an internal satisfaction 
 violent enough to alarm the police) "All right now, dar 
 ling, thank you but just push the cigars a bit nearer there. 
 
A PORT OF AGE 89 
 
 And be sure you tell Mary to keep the children quiet. And, 
 of course, you won t forget to bring it up later with a good 
 bit of ice; so soothing after the mental excitement of a strong 
 author. Thank you, dear." 
 
 These details will often be varied the unwedded reader 
 is not, I think, steeped in such felicity, and of course there be 
 instances where the married lector does not come at his desire 
 so featly but the outline remains the same. And the result 
 arrives, as the French say: that is, my gentleman comes to 
 book and bed. 
 
 Then truly is he in that happy state described by the 
 poet, 
 
 "The world forgetting, by the world forgot;" 
 raised to the Nirvana of the mind ; close-wrapped in the eider 
 down security of his little kingdom that knoweth no treasons, 
 stratagems or insurrections ; in the world and yet not of it, as 
 truly though in a different sense from the Apostolic one; 
 tasting the pure pleasures of the intellect with a delicious 
 feeling of mental detachment and at the same time a caressing 
 consciousness of bodily ease; no other troubling imperium in 
 his imperio no thief in his candle no fly in his ointment 
 nothing but the Book and his Absoluteship ! 
 
 It is, Socratically considered, the only rational method of 
 reading the most universally abused of all the liberal arts. 
 Are there not persons who make a foolish pretence of reading 
 on railway trains, or in public restaurants, or in hotel lobbies, 
 or even in theatres between the acts nay, sometimes, by a 
 piece of intolerable coxcombry, during the play itself? Whip 
 me such barren pretenders! there is not a reader among 
 them all. 
 
 I am not sure that there is higher praise (for the intel 
 lectuals) than to be called a good reader, which is to say, a 
 bed-reader. For the true reader (lector in sponda) is only 
 less rare than the genuine writer; his genius no less a native 
 and unacquired attribute ; his setting apart from the common 
 
90 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 herd as clearly defined. To be a reader in this, the only 
 true sense, is to belong to the Aristocracy of Intellect and to 
 be assured of a philosophy which brings to age a crown of 
 delight. 
 
 No man should take up the noble habit of reading abed 
 before the age of discretion, that is to say, the fortieth year. 
 For at the eighth lustrum comes the dry light of reason, 
 which is the true essential flame of the bed-reader, and, lack 
 ing which, he hath as little profit of his vocation as the owl at 
 noonday. 
 
 As to what he may read abed, we shall perhaps have some 
 thing to say another time. 
 
 ******* 
 
 Some numbers back I wrote in these pages a brief essay 
 on the pleasures of reading abed. Many appreciative letters 
 called forth by this article seem to prove that the most de 
 lightful of intellectual pastimes is in no likelihood of falling 
 into neglect. This, too, in spite of the fact that the habit of 
 smoking at the same time a necessary concomitant, as I have 
 shown makes of the indulgence a "fearful joy" and occa 
 sionally creates a little business for the insurance companies. 
 
 But there is scarcely an act of our daily life that does not 
 involve some risk or peril, and the stout bed-reader (and 
 smoker) will not suffer himself to be daunted by a slight acci 
 dent or so, or even a hurry call from the fire department. 
 Besides, in my former article, I pointed out some precaution 
 ary measures which elderly gentlemen (in particular) might 
 take in order to combine the two delicious habits of reading 
 and smoking abed with reasonable safety. I would not have 
 them feel too safe, however, for as stolen pleasures are 
 known to be sweetest, so in this matter the bed-reader s grati 
 fication is heightened and dulcified by a titillant sense of lurk 
 ing danger. Indeed, I make no doubt that a spark now and 
 then dropping on the bedclothes, or in the folds of the read 
 er s nighty, or in his whiskers (should he haply be valanced) 
 
A PORT OF AGE 91 
 
 and discovered before any great damage is done or profanity 
 released, adds appreciably to the pleasure of the indulgence 
 and is not a thing to be sedulously guarded against. How 
 ever, this is all a matter of taste, for we know, without refer 
 ence to theology, that some persons can stand more fire than 
 others. 
 
 This point being settled, I am asked to give a list of books 
 or authors suitable to the requirements of the mature bed- 
 reader (there are no others) . I do not much relish the task, 
 as I can not bear to have my own reading selected for me, and 
 the priggish effrontery of those lettered persons who are con 
 stantly proposing lists of "best books" (in their estimation, 
 forsooth!) moves my spleen not less than the purgatorial in 
 dustry of the Holy Office. But perhaps I may indirectly 
 oblige my friends by glancing slightly at the preferences, or 
 mere crotchets, if you will, of an irreclaimable bed-reader, 
 who, being entirely quit of the vanities of careless youth, has 
 now reached that mellowed philosophic age when he would 
 rather lie snugly abed with a bright lamp at his pillow and a 
 genial author to talk to him than do anything else in the 
 world. Oh, by my faith ! 
 
 In the first place, then, I would put books of a meditative, 
 personal cast, such as have the privilege of addressing them 
 selves to the reader s intimate consciousness and of beguiling 
 him into the illusion that their written thoughts and confes 
 sions are his very own. Of such favored books, beloved and 
 cherished of the true bed-reader, are the great essayists or lay 
 preachers, Montaigne, Bacon, Swift, Addison, Voltaire, 
 Rousseau, Rochefoucauld, Macaulay, Lamb, Emerson, Car- 
 lyle, Thackeray (in his Lectures and Roundabouts), Renan, 
 Amiel but I am resolved not to catalogue. These and such 
 as these are emphatically thinking books, fit for the quiet 
 commerce of the midnight pillow; trusted confessors of the 
 soul, through whom it arrives the more perfectly to know 
 itself; faithful pilots in the perplexed voyage of life; wise and 
 
92 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 loving friends whose fidelity is never suspect or shaken; 
 solemn and tender counselors who give us their mighty hearts 
 to read ; august nuncios that deliver the messages of the high 
 gods. 
 
 I would bar all modern fiction, books of the hour that 
 swarm of summer flies all trumpery love stories founded on 
 the longings of puberty and green-sickness, all works on 
 theology (except St. Augustine), political histories, cyclope 
 dias, scientific treatises, the whole accursed tribe of world s 
 condensed or canned literatures and such like compilations, 
 the books of Hall Caine, Marie Corelli and Andrew Car 
 negie, newspapers that fell brood of time-devourers and 
 magazines those pictured inanities. 
 
 After this summary clearing of the field, the task of selec 
 tion should not be difficult ; but even at this stage the prudent 
 bed-reader can not afford to go it blind. 
 
 I would not advise books of a violently humorous charac 
 ter more recent than Rabelais, Don Quixote or Gil Bias, even 
 though I may here seem to utter treason against my beloved 
 Mark Twain. But I must be honest with my readers bed- 
 readers, of course and truth compels me to say that a re 
 cumbent position is not favorable to much exercise of the dia 
 phragm, which such reading calls for. I took Huck Finn to 
 bed with me once when I lay down for a long illness, and 
 hung to him in spite of the doctor and the nurse, until the 
 happy meeting with Tom Sawyer, when I wandered off into a 
 fantastic world where fictions and realities were one. The 
 doctor afterward said I might have died laughing at any time, 
 and now I sometimes think that it wouldn t have been such a 
 bad thing nay, I even believe that one couldn t be struck 
 with a happier kind of death. . . . 
 
 However, I must insist that my friends shall sit up to Huck 
 Finn, the Innocents and all that glorious family connection, as 
 also to their co-sharers in a smiling immortality, Mr. Pick 
 wick and Sam Weller. Nor let me forget another genial fig- 
 
A PORT OF AGE 
 
 93 
 
 ure who has taken a tribute of harmless mirth scarcely infe 
 rior to theirs from thousands of hearts and whom they 
 would welcome to their benign fellowship I strongly urge 
 the reader who would have a care of his health, not to go to 
 bed with Mr. Dooley. 
 
 Next to the great essayists mentioned above, the poets 
 offer the best reading for night and the bed indeed I am not 
 sure but that it is the only way to read certain poets. 
 
 I am equally fond of the prose and the poetry of Heine, 
 and think he furnishes a variety of entertainment which, on 
 several counts, is unmatched by any writer. But Heine gives 
 no rest, and one is soon overborne by the charges of his wit 
 and the unceasing attacks of his terrible raillery. 
 
 In the most intimate sense Horace is (of course) without 
 a rival as a companion and comforter of the nightly pillow. 
 This charming Pagan has confessed and will always confess 
 the best minds of the Christian world. I know one person 
 who owes his dearest mental joys, his best nocturnal consola 
 tions and the very spring of hope itself to the little great man 
 of Rome. But he must be read in the original a condition 
 which unfortunately disqualifies too many readers. The songs 
 of Horace, being written in the immortal tongue of Rome, 
 can never become antiquated. Though the Pontifex and the 
 Virgin ceased hundreds of years agoi to climb the Capitolian 
 hill, though the name of Anfidus is lost where its brawling 
 current hurries down, still that treasure of genius endures, 
 more lasting than brazen column, a joy and a refreshment 
 ever to the jaded souls of men. 
 
 Horace has the supreme and almost unique fortune to ap 
 pear always modern, his genius being of the finest quality 
 ever known and happily preserved in an unchanging tongue. 
 He is, for instance, far more modern than Dante and dis 
 tinctly nearer to us than the Elizabethans. Alone, he consti 
 tutes a sufficient reason for the admirable, though sometimes 
 foolishly censured, practice of reading abed. 
 
94 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 I do not care to read the plays of Shakespeare betwixt the 
 sheets it seems a piece of coxcombry to coolly degust the 
 accumulated horrors of Macbeth and Lear while lolling on 
 your back and sybaritically exploring the softest places in 
 your downy kingdom truly a case of what s Hecuba to him 
 or he to Hecuba ? But I find it quite different with the Poems, 
 which (I may remark) are too frequently overlooked even by 
 those who pride themselves on knowing their Shakespeare. 
 Lately, through the kindness of Dr. Rolfe, I so re-read 
 Shakespeare s Sonnets and for the first time arrived at some 
 thing like a true sense and appreciation of their deep organ 
 melodies, and at least a partial understanding of the terrible 
 lawless passion which inspired those lavish outpourings of 
 guilty love and remorse that witness forever the glory and 
 the shame of Shakespeare. 
 
 No doubt, the learned Dr. Rolfe had to sit up to write his 
 invaluable commentary, with a thorny desk at his breast; 
 how much more fortunate I to digest it with unlabored impar 
 tiality, now and then calmly approving or, it may be, contro 
 verting the Doctor, but without heat ; reclining at my ease, in 
 a silence and abstraction so perfect that fancy could almost 
 hear the living voices of the actors in this strange, repellant 
 drama of the greatest of poets stranger and more darkly 
 perplexed than any which his genius gave to the stage and 
 the mind overleaped three full centuries to that memorable 
 English 
 
 "Spring 
 
 When proud-pied April dress d in all his trim 
 Did put a spirit of youth in every thing 
 That heavy Saturn laugh d and leap d with him !" 
 
 Will Dr. Rolfe prepare more of these pleasant books? I 
 profess myself only too desirous of going to bed to read 
 them. . 
 
 Letters of memorable men and women are among the 
 pleasantest and most profitable reading for the bed. There is 
 
A PORT OF AGE 95 
 
 so great a plenty of such books that I need not be at pains to 
 specify. I may say, however, that to my humor Lamb s let 
 ters are the rarest delidae deliciarum, the most enjoyable 
 reading, for this purpose in the world. 
 
 Dickens s letters are valuable beyond those of most later 
 English moderns for their brave and hopeful spirit. 
 
 Books of autobiography are good, so that they be not too 
 veracious, like Franklin s a defect which pertaineth not to 
 the far preferable Messer Cellini. Memoirs and personal 
 chronicles I would not forbid, though the Pepysian hunt has 
 been run to death, out of compliment to the modern fashion 
 of glorifying the Indecent Past, and is too often the mark of 
 snobbery and a vulgar soul. A man shall not leave the empy 
 rean of the poets to put his eye to chamber keyholes and his 
 nose to chamber pots with Samuel Pepys. . . . 
 
 Still, I would not deny that there be some engaging scoun 
 drels, like Cagliostro and the before mentioned Cellini, with 
 whom one may have profitable commerce in bed a thing 
 that during the lives of these worthies never chanced to any 
 man or, more especially, any woman. 
 
 But enough for the present. 
 
On Letters. 
 
 HE pleasantest thing in the world to receive is a 
 good letter. 
 
 Our dearest literary joys are not to be weighed 
 in comparison; indeed they are not at all of the 
 argument, for we share them with many. But a 
 letter a true letter I would say belongs to us in an inti 
 mate and peculiar sense; something in ourselves has sum 
 moned it, and perhaps the deepest source of our pleasure is, 
 that it could not have been written to another. 
 
 For it takes two to make a true letter one to inspire and 
 one to write it ; one to summon and one to send. 
 
 Such a letter is the child of love, and we rightly hold our 
 selves blessed for it. A few such letters none of us can ex 
 pect many make shining epochs in our lives. 
 
 But these letters are of the rarest, and I would now speak 
 rather of such as we may not too uncommonly hope to re 
 ceive, supposing (egotistically) we have that in us which has 
 grace to summon them. 
 
 A genuine letter is the best gift and proof of friendship. 
 No man can write it who is only half or three-quarters your 
 friend ; he might give you money this he could not give. 
 
 I have sometimes been convinced that a man was heartily 
 my friend until I received a letter from him which showed 
 me my error. Not indeed that such was his desire, nor could 
 I point out the word or phrase that enlightened me. I knew 
 that was all. 
 
 This will, perhaps, seem the very opposite of the truth to 
 persons who have never considered the matter deeply and 
 who think nothing is so easily given and obtained as a letter. 
 But I am writing for those who understand. 
 
ON LETTERS 97 
 
 If you have ever been deceived in your dreams of friend 
 ship, look now over those old letters you kept, and you will 
 wonder how you could have cheated yourself; the truth you 
 were once blind to, stares out from every written page. It 
 was there always, but your self-love would not see. 
 
 Into every real letter the soul of the writer passes. It is 
 this that gives a fabulous value to the letters of great and 
 famous persons concerning whom the world is ever curious 
 makers of history, poets, warriors, kings and criminals, 
 queens and courtesans, all who for good or evil cause have 
 gained a lasting renown. The collectors are justified by a 
 psychology which few of them can penetrate. 
 
 The letters of some persons who have lived and of whom 
 we possess not a scrap of writing, would be absolutely price 
 less. 
 
 Is there, for example, enough worth in money to estimate 
 the value of a letter written by the hand of JESUS ? Can you 
 imagine anything that would so thrill the world ? . . . 
 
 Or, to take a lower and more probable instance: A First 
 Folio of Shakespeare is worth several thousand dollars, and 
 the owner of one never has to haggle for his price the book 
 itself is the ready money. The number of copies in the world 
 is accurately known, as well as the fortunate owners. Some 
 rich men are content with the distinction of possessing this 
 rare volume and they would like to have the fact mentioned 
 on their tombstone. Well, a genuine letter of Shakespeare s 
 say to "Mr. W. H.," for example would probably be 
 worth more than all the First Folios in existence. True, the 
 poet had hardly a thought or sentiment or idea that he did 
 not express somewhere in his plays or poems. No matter 
 these were of public note, in the way of his calling; what the 
 world wants is a look into the innermost soul of the man 
 Shakespeare, who has escaped amid the glory of the poet. A 
 letter ! a letter ! 
 
 Charles Lamb offers a notable proof of the superiority of 
 
98 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 genuine letters over mere literary compositions. He wrote 
 many letters to his friends from his high stool in Leadenhall 
 street; letters that have never been equaled for quaint humor, 
 shrewd-glancing observation, kindly comment on men and 
 manners, and, above all, the intimate revelation of one of 
 the most charming personalities ever known. Being thrifty 
 in a literary sense, and by no means a ready writer he speaks 
 of composing with "slow pain" it was his habit to make his 
 personal letters do a double service by turning them into 
 essays for the press and, generally, spoiling them. At any 
 rate, I prefer the letters. 
 
 The truth behind this matter is, that if a man be capable, 
 and make a practice of, writing many good letters, he will 
 surely fall off in other lines of literary effort. Renan discov 
 ered this early in his career and was very sparing of letters 
 which took anything out of him in a literary way. One 
 might call this sort of economy, keeping the honey for the 
 hive. It is not a bad plan in a thrifty sense, but this article 
 can not sympathize with it, as it makes for the poverty of 
 letters. 
 
 Still, the fact doesn t matter so much, as literary people of 
 the professional sort are generally bad letter-writers, for the 
 reason that they bring to letter-writing the dregs of their 
 minds saving their spirit, grace, naturalness and sincerity 
 for the shop. I have been astonished by the inept, spiritless 
 letters of two or three authors of my acquaintance who are 
 famous for their wit and brilliancy. One of them tells me 
 that it is easier for him to write an article of two thousand 
 words than a letter of two hundred. The assured audience 
 and the certain compensation draw his power, but the letter 
 doesn t seem worth while and isn t when he s done with it. 
 
 Still, there are exceptions, even among literary persons, and 
 especially among women who, literary or unliterary, write 
 the best letters in the world. Bless their kind hearts and busy 
 fertile minds ! Should I ever be able to acknowledge the debt 
 
ON LETTERS 99 
 
 I owe them ? To pay it were not possible, even in dreams. 
 There is dear U E. W. W.", who came, a late blessing into my 
 life, just when I sorely needed such a friend, and who sends 
 me frequently of her rich store of wisdom and sweetness and 
 strength, though her pen knows no rest and the publishers will 
 not be denied. Strange! I find in these gracious letters, 
 alive with the breath of her spirit, something that even she is 
 unable to express in her public writings or is it the vitality 
 of the personal note, the instant flow from mind to mind, that 
 makes me think so? ... There is charming "T. G.", more 
 beautiful even than her poetry, who writes too seldom, 
 (thriftiest she of the daughters of the Muse!), but each of 
 whose joyous letters fills with light the happy week of its 
 arrival. And "D. H.", who was not long ago "D. M." 
 what pleasure have I not received from her demure gayety 
 and the sweet cordial note of her letters ! . . . And "E. 
 R.", who was even more recently "E. H." (ah, happy he who 
 won her gracious youth ! ) in what book shall I find a hint 
 of her tricksy humor and bewitching pertness? . . . And 
 "B. A.", whose pensive spirit ever seeking the Unknown, 
 often startles me with its clear divinations the privilege of 
 the white-souled. . . . And "T. S.", whose prattling pen 
 has given me cheer when weary and cast down, and who is so 
 near to me in faith and sympathy, though I have never looked 
 into her candid eyes. And "S. B.", the sweet silent Quakeress, 
 who too rarely writes, and the thought of whom often lies 
 like a sinless peace upon me. But let me cite no more lest I 
 tempt the envious fates by a rash disclosure of my joys. 
 
 All these most fragrant friendships, enriching my else 
 flowerless life with beauty and grace and precious consola 
 tion, giving me indeed the rarer life of the spirit, do I, 
 though undeserving, hold . . . through letters. 
 
Cbe Kings. 
 
 T IS still summer with the kings, God save them ! 
 a summer that has lasted for many of them 
 over a thousand years. They make as brave a 
 show to-day as ever in the past. It is said they 
 are neither loved nor feared so much as of old, 
 and I know not how that may be ; but of this I am sure, that 
 the glory of kings is the envy of the world. The sunlight 
 gilds their palaces and royal capitals and strikes through the 
 many-hued windows of their cathedrals in which they deign 
 to accept a homage second only to that paid to Divinity itself. 
 God is in His heaven, and they are on their hundred thrones. 
 And these thrones are quite as safe to-day as in the olden 
 time when few or none doubted that the kings were set upon 
 them by Divine Will. Thousands of armed men watch day 
 and night to guard their peace. Cannon flank the entrances 
 to their castles and palaces. The life of the king is the chief 
 care and preoccupation of every people many starve that he 
 may live as befits his royal state many die in battle that his 
 throne may be secure. Yet it is true, as in the olden time, that 
 a king falls now and then under the assassin s hand ; and the 
 wisdom of man has never rightly explained this seeming fail 
 ure of the providence of God. But there is a lot for kings as 
 for common men, and accidents prove nothing. Kingship is 
 still the best job in the world and there are no resignations. 
 Once in a while, it is true, an abdication has to be declared 
 on account of the imbecility of some crowned head but 
 think how long kings have been breeding kings ! What won 
 der that the distemper should now and then break out in the 
 royal stud? 
 
 It is summer with the kings. They have never been a cost- 
 
THE KINGS 101 
 
 Her luxury than they are to-day, except that they are not suf 
 fered to make war so often. Yet the world continues to pay 
 the price of kings with gladness, and though we have heard so 
 much of the rising tide of democracy, it has not wet the foot 
 of a single throne in our time. No doubt it will sweep over 
 them all some day, but our children s children shall not see it. 
 There is hardly a king in Europe whose tenure is not quite as 
 good as that of our glorious Republic. Kingship is even a 
 better risk than when Canute set his chair in the sands of the 
 shore. Wrap it up in what shape of mortality you please let 
 it look out boldly from the eyes of a real king, as rarely hap 
 pens ; let it peer from under the broken forehead of a fool or 
 ogle in the glances of a hoary old Silenus, it is still the one 
 thing in the world which absolutely compels reverence. Other 
 forms of authority are discounted more and more; the Pope 
 who once had rule over kings, sees his sovereignty dwindled 
 to a garden s breadth; the chiefs of republics wield a preca 
 rious power, often without respect: the glory that hedges a 
 king remains undiminished and unaltered. The kings owe 
 much to God, and God owes something to the kings when 
 the world shall have seen the last of these, it will perhaps dis 
 card the old idea of Divinity. But, as I have said already, 
 that will take a long, long time so long that it is quite use 
 less to form theories on the subject. 
 
 It is summer with the kings. Nowhere such radiant, golden 
 summer as in royalty-loving Germany. There big thrones and 
 little thrones such a lot of them ! are all sound and safe 
 sounder and safer than some of the royal heads that peer out 
 from them. There the play of kingship has been played with 
 the best success to an audience that seldom criticizes and never 
 gets tired nor steals away between the acts. If the good God 
 composed this play, as so many people piously believe, 
 then He must hold the honest Germans in special favor as 
 an author He can not but be flattered. That he does so hold 
 
102 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 them is evident from his permitting them to triumph over 
 those incomparably better actors, the French. 
 
 This charming, prosaic, joyous, antiquated, picturesque, 
 yet somewhat dull pageant of royalty goes on in Germany 
 forever. If it ever came to a stop for but one day, we may be 
 sure the honest sun that has beamed approvingly upon it for 
 centuries would do likewise. The people fully believe that 
 God wrote the play, and they cling the more fondly to the 
 belief for the reason aforesaid that it is, like themselves, a 
 little dull. And what matters the sameness of the plot or the 
 occasional incapacity of the leading actors, since the proper 
 ties are as rich as ever and the stage-setting worthy of the 
 best representations of the past? 
 
 God is the favorite playwright of the German people. And 
 never has He given them a prettier interlude than the mar 
 riage t other day of the Crown Prince and the Duchess Ce 
 celia. This charming spectacle moved the admiration of the 
 world and the envy of republics. It was a gala show of roy 
 alties and nobilities. At the grand performance in the Royal 
 Opera House in Berlin, seventy princes and princesses sur 
 rounded the imperial family German highnesses are reso 
 lutely opposed to race-suicide and even take unnecessary mor 
 ganatic precautions against it. The display of diamonds and 
 jewels, of exquisite laces and gorgeous millinery, by the royal 
 and noble ladies, out-tongued the praise of a hundred pens. 
 Finer birds, more beautiful plumage, have not been seen since 
 the last days of Versailles. The Empress Augusta Victoria, 
 we read, wore a necklace of fabulous gems (it is whispered 
 that she is grown too fat for the War Lord s taste). The 
 princesses vied with each other in exhibiting the wealth of 
 their caskets. But the royal bride was unadorned, says the 
 report, u save by her personal graces." What a pity that these 
 graces were not the first to kindle the heart of the Crown 
 Prince, who is known to have had a passion or two of the 
 theatre ! 
 
THE KINGS 103 
 
 At the wedding in the palace chapel and the after-festivi 
 ties in the White Hall, there was such a crush of royalties, 
 highnesses, nobilities and excellencies, that the minute eti 
 quette of precedence was preserved only with the greatest 
 difficulty. It is recorded, however, that nothing occurred to 
 scandalize the Hohenzollern traditions or the Kingdom of 
 Heaven. 
 
 The gifts to these young persons (who have had the great 
 kindness to be born) beggared all description. They poured 
 in from all the Prussian provinces, from all the potentates of 
 Europe, from the tattooed and savage sovereigns of the 
 South Seas, from the long-skulled monarchs of the Melane- 
 sian archipelago, from kings whose royal councils are punc 
 tuated by the jabber of apes. Japan, at the very moment 
 when she was conquering a foremost place among nations, 
 sent, with exquisite taste, a pair of antique silver flower 
 bowls. The Sick Man of Europe begged to be remembered 
 by the great and good friend who has nursed him through 
 some bad dreams. Even the Pope, who sees in that mar 
 riage and all connected with it the triumph of Luther and 
 the work of the Devil, failed not of his devoir to a brother 
 sovereign. 
 
 Still, these foreign tributes were but as a drop to the deep 
 sea of German loyalty and love. For while one part of the 
 nation worships a Roman Catholic God and the other a 
 Protestant God, both agree in paying homage to the throne 
 which supports each altar. So honest Hans sweated to express 
 the fulness of his joy and duty. Substantial were his gifts. A 
 hundred loyal cities joined to offer a bridal gift of a silver 
 service of a thousand pieces Hans will sweat three years in 
 the making -of it and longer maybe in paying for it. No mat 
 ter payment is the proof of loyalty. When was there ever a 
 king or a god that was not in constant need of money ? . . . 
 
 Yes, it is summer with the kings and never have they 
 seemed safer on their hundred thrones. But now as ever in 
 
104 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 the long story of kingship, their safety lies not so much in 
 their castles and forts, their armies and sentinels, their myriad 
 spies and their hundred-handed police. Not so much in these 
 things as in the sufferance of the patient people and also their 
 childlike enjoyment of the old play. 
 
 Is God the author of this play? Many a man believes it in 
 Germany whose ears are not longer than they should be. 
 And it seems certain that the reputation of God as a play 
 wright will last longer in Germany than elsewhere. The 
 royal and noble claque is thoroughly organized and never 
 misses its cue. Besides, many small but worthy people 
 prompters, scene-shifters, stage carpenters, costumers, supers 
 and other gens du theatre draw their living from the great 
 comedy and would speedily come to grief if by any chance the 
 public should tire of it. So the good God is concerned for 
 these honest people as much as for his literary repute and 
 the show goes on. From time to time the end of the play is 
 predicted, but it has had a famous run and it will surely keep 
 the boards while there is summer with the kings. 
 
 Some time ago I wrote that it was summer with the kings, 
 but wondrous is the change wrought within a few short 
 months. Now instead of golden summer, with the courtier 
 sun gilding their palaces and domes and towers, and all the 
 world eager to win a smile of them, a ray of royal favor, 
 there is winter, black with dread, lurid with rebellion, and 
 sinister with every threat of treason and anarchy. 
 
 Though the kings yet hold some show of sovereignty, they 
 are as prisoners in their own strong places, beleaguered by the 
 victorious people and feeling no trust in the very guards of 
 their person. The grand palaces are closed up and deserted, 
 and the splendid cathedrals, in which so often the Te Deum 
 has been raised in celebration of some royal victory, are now 
 dark and silent, save for the threnody of mourning bells. 
 
THE KINGS 105 
 
 Yes, it is winter with the kings. Panic, terror and wild- 
 eyed unrest hold the place of that mailed security which has 
 sate at scornful ease there during a thousand years. The 
 kings look fearfully forth from their strong towers and cas 
 tles, marking the flames of revolution that creep steadily 
 nearer and hearing the distant shouts of the advancing army 
 of rebellion. No heart of grace do the kings find in the thick 
 ness of the encompassing walls or the yet unbroken ranks of 
 their soldiery. For every wind is now the courier of some 
 new treason or blow at their power. Fealty is become a snare 
 that watches its chance to kill or betray he that rides forth 
 with the royal command shall turn traitor ere yet he hath 
 passed the shadow of the towers. It is marvelous how loy 
 alty deserts a falling king ! 
 
 Come now the priests in their most gorgeous vestments 
 and bearing their most sacred images to cheer and console 
 the dejected monarch. Of their fidelity he is at least assured, 
 for to him and him alone they owe the grandeur of their 
 state. But alas ! what are priests to a king who has lost his 
 people? nay, they but remind him in his bitter despair of 
 that Power which "hath put down the mighty from their 
 seat and hath exalted them of low degree." Idly as he had 
 often marked the solemn words, they come back to him now 
 with a terrible weight of meaning. Almost he could bring 
 himself to spit upon these fawning priests who had ever 
 feared to show him the naked purport of the accusing text 
 that now pierces his heart like a sword. And he turns away 
 from their mummeries lest he should cry out against the 
 treachery of their God and his who has thus abandoned him 
 in his need. 
 
 It is winter with the kings. That old habit of loyalty and 
 obedience which held their thrones as if mortised and ten 
 oned in granite, has vanished in an hour. Oh, the kings can 
 not see how long it took to mine and shatter their rock of 
 sovereignty, and they blindly regard as the madness of a 
 
106 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 moment what has been the patient labor of centuries. Do 
 not flout them in their fallen state by telling them that no 
 hands wrought so busily at the work of destruction as their 
 own. Have pity on the humbled kings ! 
 
 But wait ! all can not yet be lost. Call in the leaders of 
 the people and let us pledge our kingly word anew to grant 
 the things they ask. Tis but a moment s humiliation and 
 the fools will be content and huzza themselves back into our 
 royal favor. Think you we do not know the cattle? Ho, 
 there ! let the varlets be brought into our presence. 
 
 Alas, Sire ! it is now too late. Hard though it be to credit, 
 the besotted people pardon, Sire, for reporting the accursed 
 heresy have at last abandoned that to which they fondly 
 clung in anguish and misery and trial, against even the evi 
 dence and reason of their brute minds, and in spite of all that 
 your royal ancestors could do to alienate and destroy their 
 faith in kings ! 
 
 But this is madness ! it can not be. What will the infat 
 uate, misguided wretches do without their sovereign? An 
 swer us that ! 
 
 Craving your gracious pardon, Sire, they will do as well as 
 they can. And from what we, your humble councillors, can 
 learn, they expect to make shift with a saucy jade wear 
 ing a Phrygian cap, whom they name Liberty ! 
 
 It is winter with the kings, but summer with the peoples 
 who have waited long enough for their turn. Lustily are 
 they girded up and made ready for the gleaning. Boldly and 
 unitedly they march upon the ripe and waiting fields which, 
 so often sowed with their blood and sweat, they now claim 
 for their own. God grant they may bring the harvest home f 
 
Cbc Song Chat is Solomon s. 
 
 | HERE is always a Jewish renaissance and that is 
 why we have lately been talking about the beau 
 ty of the Jewess. 
 
 It is a great theme and there is none other in 
 the world charged with more sweet and terrible 
 poetry. 
 
 The beauty of the Jewish women is the eternal witness of 
 the great epic of the Bible. If that divine Book were to be 
 lost in some unthinkable catastrophe, it could be re-written 
 wholly from the lips and eyes of Jewish beauty. 
 
 In no long time we should have again the complete stories 
 of Sarah and the daughters of Lot (those forward but prov 
 ident young persons) ; of tender-eyed Leah, of Rebekah and 
 Rachel, sweet rivals in love; of Deborah and Hagar and 
 Jael ; of Ruth, that pensive figure whom so many generations 
 have strained to see, "standing breast-high amid the corn; 1 
 of Rahab the wise harlot and Jezebel the furious ; of Tamar 
 who played her father-in-law Judah so shrewdly wanton a 
 trick; of Esther who fired the heart of the Persic king, saving 
 honest Mordecai a painful ascension and much slaughter of 
 the Chosen People ; of Susanna, whom the elders surprised in 
 her bath, not the first nor the last instance of the folly of old 
 men : of the nameless wife of Uriah, the lust for whose per 
 fect body drove the holy king David to blood-guiltiness; of 
 the Shulamite (also lacking a name) whom Solomon, son of 
 David, has sung to the world s ravishment; lastly why not? 
 of her who has glorified Israel among the Gentiles and 
 hath honor beyond all the daughters of the earth, Mary of 
 Bethlehem. 
 
 In this way, I repeat, the Bible could easily be put together 
 
io8 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 again it can never perish while a Jewish woman remains 
 on the earth. 
 
 There never was a book written (worthy of the name) 
 but that was more or less directly inspired by a woman. 
 Cherchez la femme is the true theory of literary origins. 
 
 This is eminently true of the Bible with which women 
 have had (and still have) more to do than with any other 
 book in the history of the world. 
 
 The beauty of Jewish women is a wine that needs no 
 bush ; it is the sacred treasure that kept alive the hope of the 
 race during the weary ages of shame and bondage. But for 
 that jealously guarded talisman, the Jew would long ago 
 have lost both place and name upon the earth. 
 
 Much of the old, consecrated, fatidic character attaches to 
 the Jewish woman of the better class, even in this faithless 
 day. She is honored above the wife of the Gentile and she 
 is conscious of a mission which fills her with the pride of an 
 immemorial race. One fancies that no other woman either 
 inspires or returns love in such measure as the Jewess; that 
 she has some profound joys to give whose secret she alone 
 possesses. The Jew has found in his home compensations for 
 all the cruelty and ignominy which he has had to suffer from 
 the world. 
 
 I admire true Jewish beauty so much that I would make a 
 slight discrimination. Not all the Grecian women were 
 Helens and it need not be said that the highest type of beauty 
 among Jewish women is less often seen than praised. In 
 truth, the rule holds good here, that great beauty and great 
 ugliness are found side by side. 
 
 One reason for this is, undoubtedly, the bad taste of the 
 average Jew, who can not have his women fat enough and 
 who, therefore, encourages such departures from the ideal 
 standard as serve to caricature the natural beauty and comeli 
 ness of Hebrew women. I believe there are Jews who would 
 like to grow their women in a tub, according to the mediaeval 
 
THE SONG THAT IS SOLOMON S 109 
 
 method of producing monstrosities. This bad taste the Jew 
 comes by as a part of his Oriental inheritance the Turk 
 similarly fattens his women with all kinds of sweetmeats and 
 suets. On account of this vicious taste among too many 
 Jews, one often sees women of hideous corpulence at thirty 
 who were types of ideal beauty at sixteen. Flesh is a good 
 thing, but the Jew should not seek to suffocate himself in it, 
 like Clarence in his Malmsey butt. And pus is not pulchri 
 tude. 
 
 Let the Jewish woman, therefore, vigilantly cherish the 
 wonderful beauty which has come down to her from those 
 historic sisters of her race whom kings desired with a pas 
 sion that kindled the land to war, whom prophets and sages 
 glorified, with whom heroes and martyrs walked and con 
 cerning whom God Himself has written many of the best 
 pages in His own Book. Let her keep as near as she can to 
 the ideal of loveliness which the great king, drunk with 
 beauty and rapture, pictured thousands of years ago in the 
 lineaments of his Beloved: 
 
 Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet and thy speech is 
 comely; thy temples are like a piece of pomegranate within 
 thy locks. 
 
 Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins 
 which feed among the lilies. 
 
 Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honey comb; honey 
 and milk are under thy tongue and the smell of thy garments 
 is as the smell of Lebanon. 
 
 Thy neck is like a tower of ivory. Thine head upon thee 
 is like Carmel, and the hair of thine head like purple : the 
 king is held in the galleries. How fair and how pleasant art 
 thou, O love, for delights ! 
 
Dining with Schopenhauer. 
 
 
 WAS dining lately at Mouquin s, alone. You 
 had better not so dine there, unless you have 
 reached that melancholy climacteric, u a certain 
 age"- (I do not plead guilty myself). It is 
 not good for men to dine alone at Mouquin s 
 
 and it is even worse for Mouquin s. All here is planned for 
 sociability and the sexes the menu is a paean of sex as 
 frankly declarative as a poem of Walt Whitman s; the 
 wines, the suave, lightfooted French waiters (really French), 
 seeing all and nothing, the softly refulgent electric bulbs, 
 the very genius of the place, all bespeak that potent instinct 
 which harks back to the morning of the world. One sees 
 it in the smallest matters of detail and arrangement. Else 
 where there is room and entertainment for the selfish male, 
 but here go to! The tables are not adapted for solitary 
 dining; at the very tiniest of them there is room for two. 
 An arrangement that would have moved the irony of Schop 
 enhauer and signalizes the grand talent of Monsieur Mou- 
 quin. To conclude, a solitary diner is an embarrassment, a 
 reproach, a fly in the ointment of Monsieur Mouquin. I was 
 all three to him lately, but I make him my most profound 
 apologies it shall not occur again. Why, I am now to tell. 
 I was dining at Mouquin s alone, and it seemed as if the 
 spirit of Schopenhauer suddenly descended upon me, who had 
 been there so often, joyous and joyously companioned. The 
 waiter took my order with a veiled hint of disapproval in 
 his manner. He forgot, too, that he was of Mouquin s and 
 therefore, anteriorly of Paris he spoke English far too 
 well for the credit of the house. At Mouquin s, you know, 
 the wines and the waiters are alike imported. I knew what 
 
DINING WITH SCHOPENHAUER in 
 
 the waiter was thinking about I felt and understood his 
 subtly insinuated reproach: I was alone. There was no 
 person of the opposite sex with me to double or treble the bill 
 and to obey whose slightest hinted wish the garcon would fly 
 with winged feet, a la Mercure. Decidedly it is a violence 
 to the Parisian waiter to dine alone at Mouquin s, for it robs 
 him of that pleasing incentive which is essential to the per 
 fect exhibition of his art. I do not qualify the phrase the 
 French waiter at Mouquin s is an artist, and never more so 
 than, when he rebukes me, wordlessly and without offence, 
 for dining alone. 
 
 However, I was a good deal worse than being alone or in 
 company, for have I not said that Schopenhauer was with 
 me? Do you know Schopenhauer? Is he anything more 
 than a name to you, that giant sacker of dreams, that deadly 
 dissector of illusions, that pitiless puncturer of the poetry of 
 the sexes, that daring exposer of Nature s most tenderly 
 cherished and vigilantly guarded secrets, whose thought still 
 lies like a blight upon the world? Do you know his beautiful 
 theory of love which is as simple as the process of digestion 
 and indeed very similar to it. Once in Berlin an enthusiast 
 spoke in Schopenhauer s presence of the "immortal passion." 
 The Master turned upon him with his frightful sneer and 
 asked him if his bowels were immortal ! 
 
 When Actaeon surprised the chaste Diana at her bath, he 
 was" merely torn to pieces by his own hounds. Schopenhauer s 
 punishment for betraying the deepest arcana of nature was 
 worse, yet not worse than the crime merited he was com 
 pelled to eat his own heart! . . . Not, I grant you, a 
 cheerful table-mate for a dinner at Mouquin s, when the 
 lights glow charmingly and the bustling waiters, the incoming 
 guests, the rustling of skirts, the low laughter indicative of 
 expectancy, and the confused yet agreeable murmur of voices 
 the bass or baritone of the men mingled with the lighter 
 tones of the women announce a joyous evening. Charming 
 
1 1 2 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 fugue, in which a delicate ear may detect every note of appe 
 tite and passion, though the players use the surd with the 
 most artistic precaution. (Mouquin s is the most discreet 
 and admirably regulated of cafes). Polite overture to the 
 orgasm of the Belly-God and perhaps to the satisfaction of 
 certain allied divinities whom I may not specialize. Admir 
 able convention, by which men and women come in sacri 
 ficial garments, or evening attire, to worship at the shrine of 
 the Flesh. 
 
 But why drag in Schopenhauer ? do not some guests come 
 unbidden to every banquet, and is it within our power to 
 decline their company? Let us be thankful if at least we do 
 not have to 1 take them to bed with us. 
 
 The climacteric, perhaps? My dear sir, when I tip the 
 waiter to-night, I can get him to say easily that I am not a 
 day over thirty. 
 
 Throughout the large room (we are upstairs, gentle 
 reader) the tables are filling rapidly with well-dressed men 
 and women. Nothing in their appearance, generally, to 
 challenge remark ; a conventional crowd of male and female 
 New Yorkers, intent on a good dinner and subsidiary enjoy 
 ments. For the first time, perhaps, I notice how pleasant 
 it is to observe everything at leisure, without having to talk 
 to any one you really can not see things in a detached, 
 philosophic manner when you have to jabber to a pretty 
 woman. 
 
 A clerical-looking gentleman with a severe forehead, is 
 one of my near neighbors. His companion is a handsome 
 young woman, rather highly colored, who seems more at 
 home than the forehead. A couple take the table next to 
 mine; the young fellow is well-looking enough, the girl has 
 the short, colorless, indeterminate, American face, with its 
 pert resolve to be pretty ; both are young and have eyes only 
 for each other that s the point. They sit down to the 
 
DINING WITH SCHOPENHAUER 113 
 
 table as if preparing for the event of their lives ; this eager 
 young expectancy is smilingly noted by others than myself. 
 
 A large man convoying three heavy matronly women who 
 yet do not look like mothers you know that familiar New 
 York type takes a favorable station against the wall where 
 there is much room for eating and whence the outlook is com 
 manding. The large one perjures himself fearfully in ex 
 plaining how he had it specially reserved. I know him for a 
 genial liar, and maybe the ladies do, too. These four have 
 evidently come to eat and drink their fill, and to look on: 
 Schopenhauer is no concern of theirs, nor they of his. 
 
 Not so this elderly man with the dashing young woman on 
 his arm the man is too handsome to be called old, in spite 
 of his white hair. The young woman has that look of com 
 plete self-possession and easy tolerance which such young 
 women commonly manifest toward their elderly admirers 
 this is not romance, but what is generically termed the "sure 
 thing." Schopenhauer is but faintly interested, and my eyes 
 wander toward the little American type. She has had her 
 second glass of wine by this time and it has hoisted a tiny 
 flag in her cheek. A little more and she will succeed in her 
 determination to be pretty the dinner is only half under 
 way. Schopenhauer bids me note that she eats now with 
 undisguised appetite, and that she fixes a steadier gaze upon 
 her young man than he can always meet. Both young heads 
 are together and they eat as fast as they talk but youth 
 atones for all. These two continue to draw the gaze of 
 most persons in their vicinity. 
 
 There have been one or two mild selections by the orches 
 tra, but they passed unnoticed in the first stern business of 
 eating. It is a pity that artists should be subjected to such 
 an indignity, but it can not well be avoided by artists who 
 play for hungry people. The leader of Mouquin s orches 
 tra perhaps I should say the orchestra at Mouquin s is a 
 young man with a high forehead and long hair. I am not a 
 
1 14 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 critic of music, like my friend James Huneker, and I am 
 unhappy in the difficult vocabulary which that gifted writer 
 employs. But it seems to me the conductor and first violin 
 ist at Mouquin s is an artist. A veritable artist ! No doubt 
 I shall be laughed at for this I have said that I am ignorant 
 of the technique of criticism. 
 
 When the orgasm of eating had in a degree subsided, 
 Schopenhauer nudged me to observe how the company began 
 to give some attention to the music and even to applaud a lit 
 tle. Ah, it was then the young leader seemed grand and 
 inspired, to me. He looked as if he did not eat much him 
 self; and his music something from Tannhauser fell on 
 my ears like a high rebuke to these guzzling men and women. 
 I do not know for sure what the "motif of it was (this 
 word is from Mr. Huneker), but the refrain sounded to me 
 like, u Do not be swine! Do not be swine!" 
 
 The swine were in no way abashed perhaps they did not 
 understand the personal allusion. I have read somewhere in 
 Mr. Huneker that the Wagnerian "motif" is often very dif 
 ficult to follow. 
 
 We had reached the coffee, that psychic moment when the 
 world is belted with happiness; when all our desires seem 
 attainable ; when with facile assurance we discount the most 
 precious favors of love or fortune. 
 
 "You will now observe," whispered my invisible guest, 
 "that with these animals the present is the acute or critical 
 moment of digestion, from which result many unclaimed 
 children and much folly in the world. The edge of appetite 
 has been dulled, but there is still a desire to eat, and the stage 
 of repletion is yet to be reached. These animals now think 
 themselves in a happy condition for the aesthetic enjoyment 
 of art and even for the raptures of love. They have been 
 fed." 
 
 The terrible irony of the tone, more than the words, 
 caused me to turn apprehensively; but no one was listening, 
 
DINING WITH SCHOPENHAUER 115 
 
 and my hat and coat occupied the chair where should have 
 sat my vis-a-vis. 
 
 With the coming of the cordials and the lighting of cigar 
 ettes, the music changed to gayer measures. The young 
 maestro s head was thrown back and in his eye flamed the 
 fire of what I must call inspiration, in default of the proper 
 phrase or hunekerism ; while his bow executed the most vivid 
 lightning of melody. This was the moment of his nightly 
 triumph, when his artist soul was in some degree compen 
 sated for the base milieu in which his genius had been set by 
 an evil destiny. He now saw before him an alert, apprecia 
 tive audience, instead of an assembly of feeding men and 
 women. For the moment he would not have changed places 
 with a conductor of grand opera. 
 
 "Note that foolish fellow s delusion," said Schopenhauer. 
 "I have exposed it a hundred times. He thinks he is playing 
 to the souls, the emotions of all these people, and he plumes 
 himself upon his paltry art. They also are a party to his 
 cheat. He is really playing to their stomachs, and their 
 applause, their appreciation, is purely sensual. Yet I will 
 not deny that he is doing them a service in assisting the pro 
 cess of digestion; but it is purely physiological, sheerly ani 
 mal. The question of art does not enter at all, any more than 
 the question of love does in the mind of yonder old gentle 
 man who has ate and drunk too well and is now doting with 
 senile desire upon that young woman." 
 
 I noticed indeed that the elderly gentleman had become 
 gay and amorously confidential, while his companion smiled 
 often with affected carelessness, yet seemed to be curiously 
 observant of his every word and gesture. But their affair 
 was no matter for speculation. 
 
 I glanced toward the clerical gentleman with the severe 
 forehead. Both he and the forehead had relaxed perceptibly 
 and there was evident that singular change which takes place 
 when a man doffs the conventional mask of self. His lady 
 
1 1 6 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 friend seemed disposed to lead him further. No romance 
 
 here "It is the stuff of all romances," snarled 
 
 Schopenhauer. 
 
 The heavy women waddled out once or twice to the retir 
 ing room and came back to drink anew. No man looked at 
 them, save in idle curiosity they were beyond tempt 
 ing or temptation. "These represent the consummate 
 flowers of ithe sexual or passional instinct," remarked 
 the sage. "Gross as they now seem, they were once 
 young and what is called desirable. They yielded fully 
 to their animal requirements they ate, drank and loved, or 
 to speak more correctly, digested with such results as we 
 
 now see." 
 
 I shuddered . . . but the large women were in 
 dubitably enjoying themselves. 
 
 There was more music the guests applauded ever the 
 more generously. The leader now condescended like a verit 
 able artist a bas le cafe! 
 
 I noticed that my little American beauty left the room 
 (without her wraps) a bit unsteadily, and came back pres 
 ently, very high in color. A drink was waiting for her, and 
 she began talking with her young man as if she and he were 
 alone in the world. I noticed also that the young man carried 
 his liquor rather better and seemed to shrink a little under the 
 eyes attracted by the girl s condition. In my ear I heard the 
 sardonic whisper of Schopenhauer: 
 
 "They call this love!" . . . 
 
 I would rather dine with a pretty woman at Mouquin s or 
 elsewhere, than with any philosopher, living or dead. Espe 
 cially Schopenhauer: a bas the climacteric! 
 
In praise of Life. 
 
 HAVE to thank the many loyal friends who 
 
 ^ ave me t ^ le ^ r s y m P atn y an d support during an 
 iU nes s that cut nearly three months out of my 
 working calendar and suspended two issues of 
 THE PAPYRUS. To have learned that there 
 is such a stock of pure kindness in the world, is worth even 
 the price I paid for it. 
 
 The desire of life prolongs it, say the doctors. Tis true, 
 and when the wish for life gets its force from the strong 
 motive of doing one s chosen work in the only world we 
 surely know, then is Death driven back and to Life goes the 
 victory. 
 
 Oh ! Life, Life, how much better art thou than the shad 
 owy hope of an existence beyond the grave ! I can hold thee, 
 taste thee, drink thee, wrap myself in thee thou art a most 
 dear reality and not a shadow. I kneel before thee and pro 
 claim myself more than ever thy true lover, believer and 
 worshiper. Let me still be a joyous living pagan and I 
 will not change with all the saints that have spurned thee 
 and gone their pale way to Nothingness. I breathe thy 
 warm, perfumed air as one newly escaped from the ante 
 chamber of Death. It is the last week of May sweet May, 
 I had thought never to see thee again ! and the whole 
 world is fragrant with lilac. It is an efflorescence of life 
 and hope and joy, Nature s largess after the dearth and 
 desolation of winter. My soul is inundated with the golden 
 waves of light and warmth and melody. Something of the 
 sweetness and vague longing of adolescence revives in my 
 breast. My heart trembles with a sudden memory of old 
 loves, a memory called up by the sunshine and lilac scents 
 
1 1 8 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 and bird music with which the glad world is running over. 
 Youth smiles a sly challenge at me and love holds forth his 
 ineffable promise. I am drunk with the rapture of May 
 for I live I live I live I 
 
 Henley the brave, who not long ago captained his soul out 
 into the Infinite, was moved by his experiences in hospital to 
 write some of his most striking poems. No doubt there is 
 matter enough for a poignant sort of poetry in the House of 
 Sickness. But literary inspiration fails a man when both his 
 mind and body are disintegrating. I have brought nothing 
 from my white nights in the hospital, but I left there a good 
 deal of myself corporeally and something as I am ad 
 monished by a present difficulty in writing of my admirable 
 literary style. I think with pain and shame of the utter 
 weakness to which I was then reduced, and I wince at the 
 recollection of some concessions wrung from dismantled na 
 ture. I do not care to reflect upon the long blank hours, or 
 days, or weeks, during which I kept my bed in passive en 
 durance, or upon one terrible night when I waited for what 
 seemed to be the End with such courage as I could command. 
 According to the Christian precept, I should have seen in all 
 this the hand of chastening and meekly accepted the portion 
 dealt out to me. But had I yielded to this comfortable sort 
 of spiritual cowardice, I should probably not be alive to tell 
 the story. Many good Christians are thus soothed out of 
 this weary life into a better world, for a mental attitude of 
 pious resignation is the hardest condition with which the doc 
 tor has to contend and an unrivaled f attener of graveyards. 
 
 In the next room to mine was a fine young man who had 
 undergone an operation for appendicitis. The nurses told 
 me there was no hope for him, as he had been brought in too 
 late the nurses never contradict the doctors. Poor fellow, 
 I could hear his every sigh and groan in the vain but heroic 
 
IN PRAISE OF LIFE 119 
 
 struggle he was making for life. Presently a stout clean 
 shaven man in clerical garb passed my door. It was the 
 minister. He remained about ten minutes with the young 
 man, who was a member of his church. When he left I 
 watched from my window and saw him mount his bicycle and 
 ride away. He did not return. The young man died next 
 day. I made up my mind more decidedly that I would get 
 
 better. 
 
 ***** 
 
 As a boy I used to read in my prayer book the supplication 
 against the u evil of sudden death." In this is contained the 
 very essence of the Christian idea, since death being synony 
 mous with judgment, must needs appear terrible to the soul 
 unprepared. Indeed a sudden death in the case of an ir 
 religious person is always hailed as a judgment by people of 
 strict piety. On the other hand, the favor of heaven is 
 shown by the grace of a long sickness with its leisure for re 
 pentance and spiritual amendment. No picture is so edify 
 ing in a religious sense as that of the repentant sinner, over 
 whom we are told there is more rejoicing in heaven than is 
 called forth by the triumph of the just. Especially if the 
 sinner have repented barely in time to be saved that is the 
 crucial point. If he should make his peace too soon, or if 
 his repentance should come tardy off, it is not difficult to 
 fancy the angels cheated of their due excitement. Such a 
 blunderer would, I imagine, get more celestial kicks than 
 compliments. God help us ! I fear me these deathbed re 
 pentances are the sorriest farce acted in the sight of heaven. 
 
 Yet farcical as they are, religion owes to them a great 
 part of its dominion over the conscience of men. The Catho 
 lic faith, in particular, has invested the final repentance and 
 absolution with a potency of appeal which few indeed are 
 able to withstand. That is the meaning of the phrase, "Once 
 a Catholic, always a Catholic." And there is doubtless a 
 grandeur subduing the imagination in the proud position of 
 
120 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 the Church, that no soul need be lost which has ever known 
 her sacraments. Whatever the cold reason may make of this 
 assumption, we may not forget how much it has contributed 
 to the peace and consolation of humanity. 
 
 As for myself, having had two long and desperate sick 
 nesses in the course of a half-dozen years, having been so 
 near the Veil which hides the Unknown that I could have 
 touched it, my prayer now and forever shall be : Lord, 
 deny us not the blessing of sudden death. Even as quickly 
 
 as Thou pleasest, call us hence, oh Lord ! 
 
 ***** 
 
 To be at home once more in mine own place, to sit under 
 the cheerful lamp with pipe and book, to taste the small 
 honors of domestic sovereignty, to look forward with a quiet 
 hope to the morrow s task, to watch the happy faces of the 
 children in whom my youth renews itself, and to share the 
 peace of her who has so long partnered my poor account of 
 joy and sorrow all this is a blessedness which I feel none 
 the less that I do not weary a benign Providence with ful 
 some praise. 
 
 Many pious works have been written on the incomparable 
 advantage of being dead, that is, on the superior felicity 
 of the life to come. The most eloquent and convincing of 
 these macabre essays were composed by a set of men who had 
 resigned nearly all that makes life dear to humanity. It is 
 enough to say that they knew not love, the most powerful 
 tie that attaches us to life. On this account their valuable 
 works no longer enjoy the great popularity which they had 
 in a simpler time. Indeed, the decline of this religious Cult 
 of Death is one of the marks of an advancing civilization. 
 No doubt it served a humane purpose in those dark ages 
 which we call the Ages of Faith, when life was far more 
 cruel than it now is for the mass of mankind. Amid constant 
 wars, bloodshed, oppression, famine and their attendant 
 evils, from which only a privileged few were exempt, what 
 
IN PRAISE OF LIFE 121 
 
 wonder that men turned eagerly to a gospel which to us 
 seems charged with despair? So the ages of history during 
 which hell was most completely and perfectly realized on 
 this earth, were also those in which faith in heaven and the 
 Church was universal. But with the slow growth of liberty 
 and the partial emancipation of the human conscience during 
 the past three centuries, there has gradually been formed a 
 truer and better appreciation of life. The Cult of Death 
 has lost its hold upon the masses, with the dissolution of the 
 old terrible dogma of eternal punishment. Men are more in 
 love with life at this day than ever in the past with life, 
 and love, and happiness, and freedom, all of which were 
 more or less limited and tabooed in the blessed Ages of Faith. 
 As Heine said, "Men will no longer be put off with promis 
 sory notes upon Heaven they demand their share of this 
 earth, God s beautiful garden." . . . 
 Let us have life and ever more life ! 
 
 ALZAC somewhere shrewdly observes the per 
 sistence of the vital spark in the sick in the 
 crowded quarters of a great city where the 
 strong current of human life rises to the full. 
 It is a good thought and a cheering one. Life 
 begets life and the desire of living : human companionship is 
 almost the condition of existence. The hermits who have 
 lived long in their solitude are memorable instances be 
 cause there have been so few hermits. Secular age and health 
 pass without comment in the immense human hives where 
 they are too familiar to excite remark. The common notion 
 that people live longer in the country than in the city, is 
 wrong, like so many other received ideas : the truth is, they 
 die earlier and faster in the country, and the earlier and the 
 faster in direct ratio to the lack of companionship. Solitude 
 
122 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 is the best known aid to the madhouse and the cemetery 
 even the solitude of open fields and healthful skies. On the 
 other hand, there are in the densely populated ghettos of 
 Vienna, of London and of New York, surrounded by condi 
 tions that would seem to make health impossible, persons so 
 old that time appears to have passed them by. 
 
 Do you want to live and live long? then be where men 
 and women are living, loving and propagating life. Borrow 
 from the universal vital force. Draw on the common fund 
 of health and energy. Drink from the full-flowing stream of 
 life. Deep calls unto deep and heart unto heart. With a 
 million hearts around you, with a million pulses challenging 
 and inciting your own, how can you fail to keep time to the 
 great rhythmic harmony ? Fom all these you derive strength 
 and hope and encouragement; every throb of every one of 
 them all is a summons to live to live to live ! 
 
 Now of this hear a proof. It seemed to me, as in an evil 
 dream, that I had long been sad and dejected, brooding over 
 uncertain health and poisoning my blood with the black vip 
 er-doubts that strike into the very heart of life; believing my 
 heritage of length of days to be forfeited; shunning the 
 cheerful society of my fellows; keeping alone with a swarm 
 of morbid fears and fancies; looking on life with the lost 
 gaze of one who divines everywhere an unseen but exultant 
 and implacable enemy. 
 
 Then, at last, I yielded to the bidding of a kinder spirit. I 
 threw off the nightmare and mingled again with my kind. I 
 went where men and women were merry with feast and 
 dance, with wine and music and song. I looked for the joy 
 of the human face and did not look in vain. I recovered in a 
 moment my old birthright of hope and happiness. My heart, 
 so long drooping, rose at the compelling summons of life 
 about me : the old desire to live and love sprung up anew in 
 me to hail the red flag in a woman s cheek and the bright 
 challenge of her eyes. I filled my glass and at the bidding 
 
IN PRAISE OF LIFE 123 
 
 of b.eauty and joy devoted my ancient sick fears to perdition. 
 I was merry with the rest, aye, merry with the maddest; 
 and since that hour I live ... I live ... I 
 live ! 
 
 AM asked if, in my opinion, suicide is ever justi 
 fiable. 
 
 The question is one for the individual con 
 science. Men and women are answering it with 
 a dreadful yea, yea, every day, casting away 
 life as they might reject a worn-out garment. 
 
 By social consent, founded on religious feeling, suicide is 
 a crime against God. It is also held to be a crime against so 
 ciety. Persons attempting suicide and failing in the act are 
 subject to the rigor of the law. No legal punishment is (of 
 course) provided for those who succeed, but they do not 
 escape in the next world the churches take care of that: 
 all theologians agree that the suicide is eternally reprobate 
 and damned. 
 
 I dissent utterly from this inhuman teaching, while I can 
 conceive of no circumstances that would make suicide justi 
 fiable for myself. For so dissenting I shall be told that I 
 render myself liable to damnation. Is it not strange that a 
 man should be damned for holding too favorable an opinion 
 of God? 
 
 But it may not be so bad as that we have only some 
 men s word for it. 
 
 We are told that hardly a soul comes into the world but 
 at some time or other thinks of voluntarily quitting it, and is 
 only restrained by the fear of eternal punishment. 
 
 I would change this I would make life here, present, 
 hopeful and abundant, the restraining influence. I would pit 
 Life against Death and turn my back on the kingdom of 
 shadows. 
 
i2 4 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 I do not defend suicide, but I plead for the many upon 
 whom fate imposes this bitter destiny. 
 
 For myself I believe that life at the very worst is too pre 
 cious a gift to throw away. Steep me in shame and sorrow 
 to the very lips, exile me from the charity of my kind, pile 
 on my bare head all the abuses and humiliations which hu 
 man nature is capable of inflicting or enduring my cry shall 
 still and ever be for life, more life ! 
 
 Though the wife of my youth should betray me again and 
 again, though my children prove false and dishonor my gray 
 ? hairs, though my oldest, truest friends abandon me and I be 
 come a "fixed figure for the hand of scorn to point his slow 
 unmoving finger at," still shall I cling to this boon of life 
 lifelife ! 
 
 For now I tell you, heart-burdened, weary and despairing 
 ones, if only you will be patient a little longer and wait, life 
 itself shall heal your every sorrow. 
 
 I give you this Gospel of Hope, this water of refreshing 
 in the arid desert of your despair- 
 Life is the Healer, Life the Consoler, Life the Reconciler. 
 
 In earlier years I used to hear the most eloquent sermons 
 on the blessedness of death, which always left me cold and 
 unpersuaded. To such gloomy homilies is perhaps due the 
 aversion I now feel toward most preaching. No! talk not 
 to me of death, that ironic Phantom, that grisly Sophist by 
 whose aid religion maintains the unworthiest part of her con 
 quest. I hate and abominate from my deepest soul this plau- 
 sive, solemn, unctuous, lying cant of darkness and the grave. 
 He that preaches fears it as much as he that hears and will 
 move heaven and earth to escape the inevitable doom. Away 
 with such mummery ! 
 
 Death in the ripe course of nature is beautiful and seemly, 
 but death by disease, or violence, or accident, is horrible, for 
 no man should be cheated or cheat himself of his due share of 
 life. And this which is now an empty axiom shall one day be 
 
IN PRAISE OF LIFE 125 
 
 the highest law of a better state of society than we yet dream 
 of, wherein disease shall be unknown and death by violence, 
 public, private, or judicial, a thing without precedent. 
 
 My cry is for life more life ! 
 
 Look, ye impatient ones ! I, too, have been down, down, 
 down in those abysmal depths where hope is a mockery and 
 the mercy of God despaired of; I have tasted the bitterness 
 of betrayal by those most sacredly pledged to keep faith with 
 me ; I have known the uttermost treason of the heart ; I have 
 been made to feel that there was not one soul in all the living 
 world joined to me by any true or lasting bond; I have seen 
 the destruction of my own house of life, that temple of the 
 soul, losing which a man is homeless on the earth. 
 
 And yet I rose out of this lowest hell of desolation, borne 
 as I must believe by some late-succoring, strong-winged Angel 
 of Hope and blessed God to see again the cheerful face of 
 life! 
 
 Little children, little children, the end of all will come only 
 too soon: why hasten it? The Master of Life has bidden 
 you wait His summons. By my soul ! I do not believe that 
 He would harshly reprove you or turn away His face should 
 you, under the goad of sorrows too* great for endurance, 
 come suddenly, unbidden, before Him. Yet were it better to 
 
 stand firm like good soldiers and abide your call. 
 
 ******* 
 
 It is most strange that while men have killed other men, 
 believing themselves to be inspired of God, no man has ever 
 been credited with the same belief in killing himself. The 
 courts of heaven, it would seem, are thronged with murder 
 ers who have been washed clean in the blood of the Lamb; 
 but you shall see no suicide there. 
 
 Is not this a monstrous conception one that dishonors 
 God? 
 
 Why should the sinless suicide be damned to a rayless 
 Hell while some bloody Alva or cruel Calvin is crowned 
 
126 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 with the salvation of the just? Why should there be hope for 
 the slayer of age, the ravager of innocence, the despoiler of 
 the widow and the orphan, and none at all for him who 
 strikes only at his own life? Does God indeed choose His 
 saints with so little care, or have we not here one of those per 
 versions that harden the hearts of men and "sweet religion 
 make a rhapsody of words"? Let us deny this monstrous 
 teaching of narrow-hearted men who presume to speak for 
 God let us say to all such in the words of Hamlet over the 
 self-drowned Ophelia : 
 
 "I tell thee, churlish priest, 
 A ministering angel shall my sister be 
 When thou liest howling!" 
 
 Again I say, you are not to take your life on any terms: 
 in other words, you are not to accept defeat. It is not that I 
 would brand as coward the man who boldly pushes his way 
 into the Unknown the courage of that act is so appalling 
 that men have named it madness. But it is a higher courage 
 to resist the fates. 
 
 Yet whisper ! I do not find it hard to believe that often 
 God in His mercy shows this only way, this via dolorosa, to 
 some poor lost soul, some victim of man s inhumanity, un 
 able to struggle longer in the coils of fate. 
 
 To me the most awfully pathetic figure in a world sown 
 with tragedy is the man or woman, broken on the cruel rack 
 of life, who makes a desperate choice to find his or her way 
 alone to God. Though you plant no cross and raise no stone 
 upon that grave, though you hide it away from the sight of 
 men, I for one shall not deem it a grave of shame. I shall 
 kneel there in spite of priestly anathemas; I shall pray for 
 this poor child of earth sainted by suffering; my tears shall 
 fall on the despised grave where rests, oh, rests well at last, 
 one of the uncounted martyrs of humanity. Yes! I see in 
 
IN PRAISE OF LIFE 127 
 
 that nameless grave huddled away in the potter s field a sym 
 bol of the tragedy of this life whereunto we are called with 
 out our will and whence we must not depart save in the pro 
 cess of nature. And I will believe that God rejects the poor 
 defeated one lying there when I, a mere human father, feel 
 my heart turned to stone against the weakest and most erring 
 of my children. 
 
 AVE you ever really thought upon the beauty of 
 this world which is passing away before your 
 eyes? You have read the words, "The eye is 
 not satisfied with seeing nor the ear with hear 
 ing, " but have you ever thought that they might 
 bear another sense than the Holy Book gives them. 
 
 For my part, when I come to die I know what my chief 
 regret will be. Not for my poor human sins, which have 
 really hurt nobody save myself and most of which I will have 
 forgotten. Not because I have missed the laurel which was 
 the darling dream of my youth. Not because I have always 
 fallen short of my ideal and, still worse, betrayed my own 
 dearest hopes. Not for the selfish reason that I have never 
 been able to gain that position of independence and security 
 which would enable me to work with a free mind. Not for 
 having failed to score in any one particular what the world 
 calls a success. Not for these nor any other of the vain de 
 sires that mock the human heart in its last agony. 
 
 No ; I shall simply be sorry that I failed to enjoy so much 
 of the beauty of this dear earth and sky, or even to mark it 
 in my hurry through the days, my reckless pleasures, my stu 
 pid tasks that yielded me nothing. I shall think with utter 
 bitterness of the time out of all the time given me I might 
 have passed in profitably looking at the moon. Or in mark- 
 
128 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 ing with an eye faithful to every sign, the advance of the 
 bannered host of Summer unto the scattered and whistling 
 disarray of Autumn. How many of those wonderful cam 
 paigns have I really seen ? alas ! I know too well how many 
 I have numbered. 
 
 There was a rapture of flowing water that always I was 
 promising myself I should one day explore to the full; and 
 now I am to die without knowing it. There were days and 
 weeks and months of the universe in all its glory bidding for 
 my admiration ; yet I saw nothing of it all. My baser senses 
 solicited me beyond the cosmic marvels. I lost in hours of 
 sleep, or foolish pleasure, or useless labor, spectacles of 
 beauty which the world had been storing up for millions of 
 ages perhaps had not been able to produce before my brief 
 day. I regret even the first years of life when the universe 
 seemed only a pleasant garden to play in and the firmament 
 a second roof for my father s house. Grown older but no 
 wiser,! planned to watch the sky from dawn to sunset and, 
 on another occasion, from sunset to dawn ; but my courage or 
 patience failed me for even this poor enterprise. I was a 
 beggar at a feast of incomparable riches, and something 
 always detained me from putting forth my hand; or I left 
 the table which the high gods had spread and went eating 
 husks with swine. And now I am to die hungry, self-robbed 
 of my share at the banquet of immortal beauty can Chris 
 tian penitence find anything to equal the poignancy of such a 
 regret? . . . 
 
 Yet even as I write I am cheating myself in the old bank 
 rupt fashion, for the day outside my window is like a tremu 
 lous golden fire and the world overflows with a torrent of 
 green life life that runs down from the fervid heaven and 
 suspires through the pregnant earth. It is the first of June, 
 when Nature, like a goddess wild with the pangs of delivery, 
 moves the whole earth with her travail, filling every bosom 
 with the sweet and cruel pain of desire. Now she takes ac- 
 
IN PRAISE OF LIFE 129 
 
 count of nothing that does not fecundate, conceive or pro 
 duce, intent only upon securing her own immortal life. And 
 though she has done this a million and a million ages, yet is 
 she as keen of zest as ever; as avid for the full sum of her 
 desire as when she first felt the hunger of love and life; as 
 unwearied as on the morning of Creation. 
 
 "Put away your foolish task," she seems to say. "Yet a 
 few days and it and you will both be ended and forgotten. 
 Come out of doors and live while the chance is left you. 
 Come and learn the secret of the vital sap that is no less a 
 marvel in the tiniest plant than in the race of man. If you 
 can not learn that, I will teach you something else of value 
 the better that you ask me naught. Leave your silly books 
 and come into the great green out-of-doors, swept clean by 
 the elemental airs. Here shall you find the answer to your 
 foolish question, What do we live for? Life . . . 
 life life!" 
 
puhns et dtnbra. 
 
 O sadder message comes to a writer in the course 
 of a year than the news of some friendly though 
 unknown reader s death. Often you learn it 
 only through the return of the magazine, with 
 the single word "Deceased" written across the 
 wrapper. It is a word to give one pause, however engrossing 
 the present occupation, Here was a man or woman who, 
 though personally unknown to you, was yet, it may be, in 
 spiritual touch with oyu perhaps the best friendship of all. 
 For him or her you wrote your thoughts since all writing is 
 to an unseen but familiar audience ; for him or her you told 
 the story of your own mind and heart, sure of a kindly under 
 standing and sympathy without this assurance, believe me, 
 there would be little enough writing in the world. Every 
 writer s message is conditioned I would almost say dictated 
 by this invisible but closely judging auditory. You get to 
 know what your readers expect, and this in the main you try 
 to give them, though often failing the mark. So the act of 
 writing is a kind of tacit covenant and cooperation between 
 the writer and his public. Indeed, it is not I but you who 
 hold the pen ; or rather it is I who hold it but you who speak 
 through it and through me. 
 
 This relation being understood, it is but natural that a 
 writer should feel a sense of grief and loss on hearing of the 
 death of some one who held him to this communion of 
 thought and spirit. I am not sure that this grief would be 
 more genuine had he personally known the lost one our 
 finest friendships, like the old classic divinities, veil them 
 selves in a cloud. We wear ourselves out trying to maintain 
 the common friendships of the house and street, and it is like 
 
PULVIS ET UMBRA 131 
 
 matching faces with Proteus: in the end we become indiffer 
 ent or wise. 
 
 But here was one whom you never saw who lived half 
 the length of the continent from you, or perhaps in the next 
 town no matter, you two had never met in the body. Your 
 word did, however, come to him and called forth a genial 
 response ; he let you know that so far as you went he set foot 
 with you. Thenceforward you marched the more boldly, 
 getting grace and courage and authority from this one s silent 
 friendship and approval. You figured him as one who stood 
 afar off too far for you to see his face and waved you a 
 cheery salute; your soul hailed a fellow pilgrim. Now comes 
 the word that he can go no further with you rather, indeed, 
 that he has outstripped your laggard pace and gone forward 
 on the great Journey. You learn of his departure in the 
 chance way I have mentioned not being a friend in the con 
 ventional sense, the family do not think to send you any 
 message or mourning card. You have but to feel that you 
 are poorer by a friendship of the soul than you were yester 
 day ; that you are going on, in a sense, alone and unsupported, 
 for this friend was a host; that you are not to look ever 
 again for his written word of praise, which brought such 
 gladness to your heart, or his delicate counsel that often 
 helped you to a clearer vision of things. The silent compact 
 is dissolved. 
 
 I set these lines here in loving and grateful memory of a 
 few such friends of mine who died to this life during the past 
 year. May they live on to higher purpose ! 
 
 Life is a blessing, and death is no less. 
 That which we call the common lot is the rarest lot. Love 
 and loss and grief are for all. 
 
 Of two men, one who loves and one who has loved and 
 
132 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 lost, the second is the richer: God has given him the better 
 part he holds both of earth and Heaven. 
 
 The love that has known no loss is wholly selfish and 
 human. Death alone sanctifies. 
 
 Who has not lain down at night saying unto himself, 
 "Now is the solemn hour when my own shall come back to 
 me/ has not sounded the shoreless sea of love. 
 
 I believe in life and I believe not less profoundly in death. 
 
 I believe in a resurrection and a restoration we can not 
 lose our own. 
 
 No man has ever yet found tongue to tell the things that 
 death has taught him. No man dare reveal them fully tis 
 a covenant with Silence. 
 
 A power that strikes us to our knees with infinite sorrow 
 and a yearning that would reach beyond the grave, must be 
 a Power Benign. 
 
 Life divides and estranges : Death reunites and reconciles : 
 Blessed be Death! 
 
 "Your friend is dead!" they told me, but I did not believe 
 nor understand. 
 
 Then they led me to a darkened room, hushed and solemn 
 amid the roar of New York, where I saw him lying in a 
 strange yet beautiful serenity. 
 
 No disfigurement of his manly comeliness; no trace of a 
 struggle that had convulsed the watchers with pain only less 
 than his. 
 
 Roses on his manly breast roses rich and lush as the 
 young life that had sunk into a sleep so sudden, so unlocked 
 for. 
 
 Nothing to shock, nothing to appal in this worldless 
 greeting to the friends of his heart. As ever in life, his per 
 sonality took and held us in its strong toil of grace yes, 
 more than ever held us now closely his own. 
 
PULVIS ET UMBRA 133 
 
 Could this indeed be death? 
 
 Ah, many a time had I hastened with joyous anticipation 
 to meet him, but never had we kept a tryst like this. 
 
 I clasped that hand whose touch so often had thrilled me 
 with its kindness oh, hand so strong and gentle of my best- 
 loved friend! It was not cold as I feared it would be, and 
 surely a pulse answered to mine he knew, oh, yes ! he knew 
 that I was there. 
 
 I kissed his calm forehead and felt no chill of death no 
 terror at the heart. He seemed but to lie in a breathless 
 sleep that yet held a profound consciousness of our presence. 
 
 Still they said he was dead, he so tranquil, almost smiling 
 and inscrutably attentive! and the grief of women chal 
 lenged my own tears to flow. 
 
 Yet, with my emotions tense as a bow drawn to the head, 
 I could not weep ; so was I held by this wonder and majesty 
 they called death. And it seemed that he did not ask my 
 tears in the ineffable peace of our last meeting no, not my 
 tears. But there was a gathering up of the heart which I had 
 never known before, a bringing together by Memory, the 
 faithful warder, of all that had made or ministered to our 
 friendship, kind looks and tones, trifles light as air mingled 
 with graver matters, a country walk, a sea voyage, books 
 that we had read together, snatches of talk, mutual pleasures, 
 mutual interests, a hundred proofs of brotherly affection and 
 sympathy, so Memory ran searching the years till the sum 
 of my love and my loss lay before me. 
 
 Did he know did he feel ? Scarcely I dared to ask myself 
 when the Silence breathed Yes ! . . . 
 
 Here at my elbow is the telephone into which I could 
 summon his pleasant voice at will. It was but now we were 
 talking and making happy plans together I had no plans 
 without him. 
 
 Then there was a blank, and a strange voice, vibrant with 
 pain, called me up and said . . . 
 
134 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 Oh God ! It can not be true ! He a giant in his youth and 
 strength; he with his vast enjoyment of life, every nerve and 
 muscle of him trained to the fullest energy; he struck down 
 without a note of warning in the vigor of his triumphant 
 manhood, while the old, the sickly and the imperfect live on ? 
 No, no this were not death, but sacrifice. 
 
 Why, it was but yesterday I felt the vital grasp of his 
 hand; listened to his brave talk, so genial a reflex of his mind 
 and spirit; basked in the brightness of his frank smile, 
 debtor as ever I was to his flowing kindness; drank the cor 
 dial of his living presence, and took no thought of fate. 
 
 And now they tell me he is dead that from our account 
 of life, this long sum of days and hours so dreary without 
 him, he is gone forever! Over and over must I say this, or 
 hear the dull refrain from others ; yet the truth will not press 
 home. 
 
 For, in spite of the dread certainty, I am not always with 
 out hope of seeing him again in the pleasant ways of life 
 where often we met together; where never we parted but 
 with a joyous promise soon to meet again. 
 
 This hope would be stronger, I now feel, had I not looked 
 upon him in that strange peacefulness that was yet so com 
 pelling; and sometimes I wish they had not led me there. 
 
 So hard is it to break with the dear habit of life so reluc 
 tant the heart to believe that the silver cord has been loosed 
 which bound it to another. 
 
 Oh, my lost friend! 
 
 The watchers told me that they had never seen so brave a 
 struggle for life. Time and again he grappled with the De 
 stroyer, like the strong athlete he was yes, and often it 
 seemed that his dauntless heart would prevail. But alas ! the 
 fates willed otherwise. 
 
 Then at last, when hope was gone, as he read in the tear 
 ful eyes of those about him, he threw up his right hand with 
 a lamentable gesture, saying, "That s all!" 
 
PULVIS ET UMBRA 
 
 135 
 
 Not all, brave and true heart, for love can not lose its own, 
 and thy defeat was still a victory. Thou livest now more than 
 ever in the memory of those who gave thee love for love, 
 yet ever lacked of thy abounding measure; to them shalt 
 thou ever appear as when thou didst fall asleep in the glory 
 of thy youth and strength ; age can not lay its cold hand upon 
 thee, and thy beloved, dying old mayhap, shall again find 
 thee young. 
 
 In that sweet hope, dear Friend of my heart, and until 
 then farewell, farewell ! 
 
Shadows* 
 
 E are shadows all and shadows we pursue. This 
 business of life which we make-believe to take 
 so earnestly, what is it but a moth-chase or the 
 play of grotesques in a child s magic lantern? 
 A sudden helter-skelter of light and shade, a 
 comic jumble of figures thrown for a moment on the screen, 
 and then darkness ! 
 
 Children of the shadow, to that Shadow we return at last; 
 but the very essence of our life is fluid, evanishing always. 
 The minute, the day, the hour, the year, who can lay hands 
 on them? and yet in our humorous fashion we speak of 
 these as fixed and stable things, subject to our control. Mean 
 time and all time, dream delivers us unto dream, while life 
 lends to its most tangible aspects something shadowy and 
 spectral, as the vapors clothe the horizon with mystery. The 
 things we call realities, in our vain phrase, that enter most 
 deeply into the warp of our lives, these are also dreamstuff, 
 kindred of the Shadow. Our consciousness from which we 
 dare to apprehend immortality, can only look backward into 
 the realm of dream and shadow, or forward into the realm 
 of shadow and dream. I am at this moment more stricken at 
 the heart with the sorrow of a song that my mother crooned 
 to me, a child, in the firelight many years ago, than with all 
 the griefs I have since known. Shadows, all shadows ! With 
 my house full of romping, laughing children, there falls now 
 upon my heart the tiny shadow of a lost babe and I beat 
 helpless hands against the iron mystery of death. . . . 
 
 But the living, too, are shadows, not less pitiable than they 
 whom death has taken from our sight. Nay, it is more sad 
 
SHADOWS 137 
 
 to be the shadow of a shadow than to clasp the final dark 
 ness. 
 
 Tell me, oh dear love, where now is the face that once 
 showed me all the heaven I cared to know, the form that 
 made the rapture of my youth, the spell which filled my 
 breast with delicious pain, the lips whose touch so coy, so 
 rarely gained, was honey and myrrh and wine ? Oh, say not 
 that she, too, is of the Shadow ! 
 
 Nay, she is here at thy side and has never left thee, but is 
 in all things the same look again ! Alas ! this is not the face 
 that charmed my youth, this is not the form that filled my 
 dreams and her eyes were clear as the well-springs of Para 
 dise. But oh, for pity of it, let not my poor love know that 
 her dear enrapturing self, with our precious dream in which 
 we drew down heaven to earth, is gone forever into the 
 Shadow. . . . 
 
 We are shadows all, living ghosts, so slight of memory 
 and consciousness that we seem to die many deaths ere the 
 final one. This illusion we name life is intermittent hardly 
 can we recall what happened day before yesterday. Even the 
 great events of life (as we phrase them) do but feebly stamp 
 our weak consciousness. By a fiction which everyone knows 
 to be false, we make a pretence of feeling much and deeply. 
 Tis a handsome compliment to our common nature, but the 
 truth is we rarely feel our substance is too thin and ghost 
 like. 
 
 As shadows we fly each other and are never really in con 
 tact. This is the profound deception of love, the pathos of 
 the human tragedy. The forms we would clasp make them 
 selves thin air; we strain at a vacuum and a shade aye, in 
 the most sacred embraces of love we hold nothing. Less 
 hard is it to scale the walls of heaven than to compass our 
 desire. But now at last we are to be satisfied, to have our fill 
 of this dear presence which spells for us the yearning and 
 
138 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 mystery of love : in the very rapture of possession we feel 
 the eternal cheat. 
 
 Yet while we lament ever that we can not lay hands on 
 those we love, shadows that we are, no more sure are we of 
 ourselves. This shadow of me eludes even myself as I am 
 eluded by .the shadows of others in the great phantasmal 
 show around me. I know this shadow of me, volatile, uncer 
 tain, ever escaping from under the hand, and if I were not so 
 busy chasing my own shadow the evanescent me I should 
 have more leisure for hunting other moths and shadows. 
 The old Greeks figured this change and fugacity in the 
 mythic Proteus; but they missed the deeper sense of it. 
 
 There was a shadow of me last year that I had some cause 
 of quarrel with and we parted unkindly. Where is it? gone 
 forever. Wiser now, I would gladly make peace with that 
 shadow it meant honestly, I must confess, though often it 
 sinned and blundered but never more will it walk the earth. 
 Other shadows of me have likewise escaped, leaving similar 
 accounts unsettled (they never do put their affairs in order) 
 not to be settled now, I dare say, until the Great Audit. 
 
 I would not care to recall all those shadows of myself, 
 even had I the power, as I would not wish to live my life 
 over again, without leave to change it (He is a fool or a liar 
 who says otherwise) . But I may confess a weakness for One 
 that vanished long ago, leaving me too soon : a shadow of 
 youthful hope and high purpose that could do much to 1 re 
 fresh this jaded heart, dared I but look upon it. Oh, kind 
 Master of the Show, grant me once more to see that shadow 
 on the screen ! Unworthy as I am, let me look on it again and 
 strive to gather new hope from its imperishable store. I 
 know it dreamed of a holier love than I have realized; of 
 nobler aims than I have had strength to reach; of crowns 
 and triumphs that I shall never claim. It believed only in 
 good (God knows!) and since it left me, without any cause 
 that I can remember, I have known much evil. Yet it is still 
 
SHADOWS 
 
 139 
 
 the essential me, soul of my soul, and so must it be through 
 the eternities. I can not be separated from that Brightness, 
 that Innocency, that Hopefulness which once was I call it 
 back for but an instant to give peace to my soul ! 
 
 Vain appeal! A shadow calling unto the Shadow. 
 
Sursum Corda. 
 
 [HERE is a brief Latin saying which holds in two 
 words the best philosophy of the human race. 
 It is, Sursum cor da lift up your hearts ! 
 
 Why despair of this world? All the joy you 
 have ever known has been here. It is true there 
 may be better beyond, but as Thoreau said, u One world at 
 a time!" 
 
 And now let us reason a little. Are you sure you have 
 given the world a fair trial or rather have you let it give 
 you a fair trial? Softly now: the first words will not do to 
 answer this question remember it is not I who interrogate, 
 but your fate. 
 
 Can you expect anything but failure when you lie down 
 and accept defeat in advance? Anything but sorrow when 
 you set your house for mourning? Anything but rejection 
 when you carry dismay in your face, telling all the world of 
 your hope forlorn? 
 
 I went to my friend asking cheerily and confidently for a 
 thing that seemed hopeless: smiling and without a second 
 thought, he gave me what I asked. Again I went to my 
 friend asking humbly and with little heart of grace for a 
 thing that I yet knew was hopeful: frowning he denied my 
 prayer. With what brow thou askest shalt thou be answered. 
 
 Lift up your hearts ! 
 
 A word in your ear: Have you ever had a trouble or a 
 sorrow that would for a moment weigh with the sure knowl 
 edge that you were to die next week, next month, next year ? 
 Be honest now ! . . . 
 
 A little while ago I was very ill, and it seemed to me that 
 if only I could get up from my bed, nothing ever would 
 
SURSUM CORDA 14 1 
 
 trouble me again. Well, in time I was able to get up, and 
 then the old worries came sneaking back, one after another. 
 Even as I write, they are grinning and mowing at my elbow, 
 telling me that my work is futile. I know I am happy and 
 well now, but they are always trying to persuade me to the 
 contrary. I know that my hope was never so reasoned and 
 strong, the future never so gravely alluring; but they will 
 have it that I am an utter bankrupt in my hopes and the way 
 onward closed to me. I know my friends my real friends - 
 were never more true and fond and faithful than they are to 
 day they whisper darkly of broken faith, evil suspicion and 
 the treason of the soul. 
 
 Out upon the liars ! It is I that am in fault to give them a 
 moment s hearing. The broken faith, the treason, the dis 
 trust if any such there be are mine alone ; for in my own 
 breast were these serpents hatched and the poison I drink is 
 of my own brewing. 
 
 Lift up your hearts ! 
 
 Hast thou no cause to be happy? look well now. Thou 
 wast sick and thou art now whole. Weary, thou didst lay 
 down a beloved task, not hoping ever to take it up again : yet 
 see ! it is in thy hands. Is not the wife of thy youth ever with 
 thee, still fair and kind and blooming? Thou dreamest a 
 haggard dream of poverty, while thy house is filled with the 
 divine riches of love and ringing with the joyous mirth of 
 thy children. The musicians of hope pipe to thee and thou 
 wilt not dance; victory smiles on thee anear and thou wilt 
 think only of defeat. Look ! it is but a little way and thou 
 droopest with the long wished-for haven in sight. . . . 
 
 Lift up your hearts ! 
 
 Yesterday the aeolian harp was silent all day in the win 
 dow, not a fugitive air wooing it to music. To-day it is wild 
 with melody from every wind of the world. So shall the 
 brave music of thy hopes be renewed. 
 
 Have no care of the silent, barren yesterdays they are 
 
142 
 
 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 only good to carry away all your mistakes, all your maimed 
 purposes, all your vain brooding, all your weak irresolution, 
 all your cowardice. Concentrate on To-day and your soul 
 shall be strong to meet To-morrow. Hope, Courage, En 
 ergy and You ! against whatever odds. . . . 
 Lift up your hearts ! 
 
Seeing the Old Cown. 
 
 VE been back seeing the old town. The old town 
 where I served the first years of my hard ap 
 prenticeship to life alas! not yet completed. 
 The old town where, as a boy, I dreamed those 
 bright early dreams whose fading into gray fu 
 tility makes the dull burden of every man s regret. 
 
 It may be that my dreams were more varied and fantastic 
 than those of the average younker, for I was the fool o fancy 
 with a poet s wild heart in my breast. God knows what I 
 promised myself in that long vanished time of youth which 
 yet was instantly vivified and present to me as I trod the 
 streets of the old town. I felt like one about to see a ghost 
 the ghost of my young self; and I shrank consciously from 
 meeting it with this bitter-sweet pang of disillusion at my 
 heart. I could not more sensibly have feared a living pres 
 ence. Alas, what one of us all is worthy, after the heavy 
 account of years, to confront the ghost of his candid youth? 
 what one but must bow the head before that pitying yet 
 reproachful Memory? 
 
 This feeling took such strong hold upon me that soon I 
 hastened away from the too-familiar squares and corners, so 
 poignantly reminiscent of that other Me, and went to the 
 hotel facing Main street. But even here, seated at a window 
 and elbowed by a group of story-swapping drummers, I 
 could not free myself from the spell of old memories. Youth 
 with its hundred voices cried to me ; the past and the present 
 became at once strangely confused yet separable; and I was 
 set to the painful task of tracing and identifying my younger 
 self in the crowd of passers-by. 
 
 And I did find that boy again oh yes ! I did find him in 
 
144 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 spite of the lapse of many changing years and all that Time 
 has wrought within and without me since he and I were one. 
 I found him, though he was long shy and hesitated to come 
 out of the shadows ; holding back timidly and looking on me 
 with tender yet doubtful eyes ah God ! I knew whence the 
 doubt. But at last he came fully, careless of the roaring 
 drummers or knowing himself to be unseen; and I held his 
 hand in mine, while a sweet sorrow beat against my heart in 
 the thought of what might have been and now could never 
 be. And after the kind relief of tears, we talked in whispers 
 a long time there by the window, no one noticing us ; and ere 
 he went back into the shadow he touched my forehead lightly 
 with his lips, leaving me as one whom God has assoiled. . . . 
 
 The old town was but little changed, only it seemed 
 smaller, like all places we have known in our youth and been 
 long absent from. The Main street, where the working boys 
 and girls flirt and promenade in an endless chain, still 
 slouched the whole length of the town, with the railroad be 
 tween it and the river; no different except that it was better 
 paved than in my time, and the clanging trolleys ran instead 
 of the ancient bob-tailed horse-cars. There were a few new 
 shops or strange names over the old ones no other changes 
 of consequence. The same old town ! the boy of twenty 
 years ago would not have been phased in the least. 
 
 But I was, and the fact was due to the changes which Time 
 had written upon so many faces I had known; fair young 
 girls turned into full-blown matrons, vaunting their offspring 
 with no lack of words, or withered old maids looking ask 
 ance and shrinking from recognition; striplings who had 
 shot up into solid manhood, and whom you were puzzled to 
 place; broken old men whom you recalled in their vigorous 
 prime ; all the varied human derelicts of the storm and stress 
 of twenty years. Oh, it makes a man think to look things 
 over every five years or so in the old town. 
 
 Certainly, if you wish to get a true line on yourself, go 
 
SEEING THE OLD TOWN 145 
 
 back to the old town. Nothing else will do the trick. Your 
 glass is a liar leagued with your vanity. Your wife a loving 
 flatterer who says the thing that is not. Your children will 
 never tell you how old you are beginning to look. Your daily 
 intimates and coevals are concerned to keep up the same illu 
 sion for themselves. You deceive yourself, know it and are 
 happy in the deception. There is only one way for you to 
 learn the u bitter, wholesome truth," or, in other words, to 
 get a fair look at the clock go back to the old town ! 
 
 There is some humor, too, in going back, as I find from 
 my visits at an interval of five or six years. Always I am most 
 heartily and noisily greeted by men who have no use for me 
 except to "knock" me, whom the sight or sound of my name 
 exasperates, to whom my tiny bit of success is poison, and 
 who struggle on bravely with the hope of seeing me finally 
 land where I deserve to be and am, as they fervently believe, 
 irretrievably headed. We do each other good, for if I were 
 to die, these men would lose one of the sweetest motives of 
 their existence; and I, knowing this, am eager to live on and 
 disappoint them. 
 
 Last time I went back I saw one of those friendly fellows 
 at a distance of a block, and he kept his glad hand out at the 
 risk of paralysis, until we came together. Then how he 
 laughed with pleasure and what a grip he gave me ! I had to 
 laugh with him and return his grip, so far as my feeble 
 strength would allow. In an acquaintance of over twenty 
 years this fellow had never offered me the slightest proof of 
 his friendship, save, as I have said, to "knock" me; and now 
 a dear friend of mine hung modestly back while he crushed 
 me in his iron embrace. When I was going away at the end 
 of my visit, this terrible enemy came to the nine o clock train 
 to see me off and spoiled the leave-taking of my real friends. 
 There is irony of the same brand elsewhere, but you will not 
 see it to such naked advantage as in the old town. . . . 
 
 The saddest experience one can have in revisiting the old 
 
146 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 town is to hear suddenly of the death of some friend of one s 
 youth, who though separated from one by long years of 
 absence, must ever share in the romance of that enchanted 
 period. I was so to learn of the loss of a friend who had 
 been very dear to me in the old days. Together we had 
 trudged the Main street of the old town, by night and by 
 day, making plans for the future, few of which were realized 
 either for him or for me. 
 
 The friendships of youth are sacred. Mature life has noth 
 ing to offer in their place. Men agree to like each other for 
 social or business reasons; often because they fear each 
 other. The heart is not touched in this hollow alliance it is 
 a pact of interest and selfishness. Youth and trust, age and 
 cynicism thus are they paired. 
 
 I know well that one or two young friendships or frank 
 elections of the heart have yielded me much of the pain and 
 thrill and rapture of that sentiment between the sexes which 
 we call love. I know that I was several years older ere the 
 voice of a girl had leave to thrill me like the tone of this dear 
 lost friend; that I suffered as keenly during an occasional 
 boyish miff with him as in my first genuine love quarrels; 
 that I would have risked life and limb to please him, and 
 could conceive of nothing sweeter than his praise; that I can 
 not think of him even now without a pain at the heart which 
 I have not the skill to analyze. And though I saw little of 
 him for many years and there was no attempt to follow up 
 our ancient friendship our paths lying wide apart in every 
 sense and though he died a man of middle age, I can but 
 think of him, taking no note at all of the years that lie 
 between, as a bright-haired, laughing youth; and so mourn 
 him with a sorrow of the heart which proves a silent witness 
 there during all the years to the truth o>f our early affection. 
 
 There is somthing divine, though we but dimly glimpse it, 
 in the una vowed, almost unconscious persistence of these sacred 
 ties of our youth, these precious legacies from the days that 
 
SEEING THE OLD TOWN 147 
 
 are no more, whose light shines with a white lustre that be 
 longs to them alone. 
 
 Sleep well, my friend ! 
 
 I was not sorry to have seen the old town again, though it 
 gave me but a sad pleasure at best and I was glad when my 
 short leave was up. And yet that singular thrill of walking 
 where once you knew and were known of everybody, and 
 where still, because of some slight rumors from the great 
 outlying world, a quenchless village curiosity attends you, is 
 worth going a long journey to feel. 
 
 To say nothing of your joyous enemy who hails you with 
 stentorian shout and glad hand extended, on your arrival, and 
 likewise dismisses you on your departure with curses not loud 
 but deep. And the many things you see and hear and feel 
 which, without compliment, certify you to yourself as you 
 are! 
 
H Rearty 6od 
 
 JET us believe in George Meredith s "God of 
 hearty humor." He would, I am sure, be very 
 different from the Jewish God, that terrible 
 Being who was never known to smile, and in 
 whose awful shadow the children of men have 
 mourned and done penance during weary ages. We should 
 turn away from that lurid history in which there is no inno 
 cent mirth, whose triumphs are often stained with the blood 
 of the guiltless and from whose pages men have wrested a 
 warrant for their blackest crimes. We should forget it ut 
 terly its blighting and cursing, its groveling worship, its 
 denial of humanity in the name of a self-styled God of 
 Mercy, its craven prostration before the jealous Egotist of 
 the heavens. 
 
 Our God of hearty humor is one who would not lie in 
 wait, nursing His malice against us poor human mites, spy 
 ing upon us constantly, and rejoicing in His enormous power 
 of mischief. Who would not punish the children for the sins 
 of the fathers. Who would not play favorites and set one 
 race to destroy another. Who would not have an insatiable 
 appetite for foolish incense and mumbled praise. Who would 
 not be a mean God for mean people, preferring those made 
 in His own image and likeness. Who would hate to see the 
 spiritual distortions that are now practised before the Other, 
 in the name of religion. Who would have nothing to do with 
 an Atonement of cruelty and blood. Who would be a kind 
 human God for human beings and not a mythical monster 
 belonging to a remote age of nightmare and darkness. Who 
 would get tired sometimes of His majesty up there and come 
 down and visit with us. Having His laugh with us ah, then 
 
A HEARTY GOD 149 
 
 to be witty would no longer be sinful and sanctified dulness 
 would lose its crown. Shouldn t we enjoy the humor of God, 
 especially the immense joke that we quite mistook His char 
 acter during ages and ages? stupendous hoax! Hearing 
 our complaints with kind indulgence and disproving that old 
 libel that one may not see God and live. Being, in short, a 
 hearty God whom a plain man could talk to without the help 
 of bell, book or candle, and who would care for us, His little 
 ones, as tenderly as we care for our own. What a re-writing 
 there would be of the legend of God ! What a discrediting of 
 the old fables! What a tearing down of the old hideous 
 idols before which the world has prostrated itself for a thou 
 sand and a thousand years ! for there should be no lifeless 
 images to the Living God. What an abandonment of the 
 churches ! for this God would meet us naturally anywhere, 
 at home or abroad in the fields. What a wiping out of the 
 creeds! knowing Him face to face, we should not have to 
 set down our belief in a book, lest we forget it over night. 
 What a wholesale dismissal of His self-appointed agents and 
 intermediaries ! no one should stand between this God and 
 the humblest of his children. What a new heaven, what a new 
 earth in the sure presence of a kind, hearty God, who would 
 manifest Himself equally to all His people ! . . . 
 
 Perhaps it is not so hard to believe that such a God is with 
 us even now . . . if we will only stop thinking of the 
 Other! 
 
Che Better Day. 
 
 OMETIMES I see as in a vision a fairer and bet 
 ter world than this in which man is still the 
 prey of man and the race still travails under the 
 primal curse. A fairer and better world and yet 
 the same. 
 
 The same green plains and rolling rivers, the same ban 
 nered forests and flower-decked meadows, the same happy 
 orchards and smiling fields, the same succession of seed-time 
 and harvest, the same processional of the seasons, with the 
 blue sky over all. 
 
 But not the same faces and forms of men and women 
 and children not the same their life in the thronged cities 
 where labor, wolf-like, feeds on labor, poverty devours pov 
 erty, and the many toil hopelessly for the few not the same 
 in the meagre villages where the strong man pines in his 
 unfruitful strength and old age is a mendicant, nor in the 
 wide country, rich with corn and wheat, whose wealth is not 
 for the tillers : not the same wherever human destiny is cast. 
 
 I look, and lo ! I see beautiful and ordered cities occupying 
 larger spaces, with homes of comfort and beauty for all the 
 dwellers therein. I mark no divisions of rich and poor, of 
 proud and humble, of vicious and virtuous, of law-abiding 
 and disorderly. I see no gallows for the felon, no jail for the 
 criminal, no court for crime, no brothel for the prostitute, 
 no workhouse for poverty, no hospital for disease none of 
 all the nameless refuges into which society casts the rejected, 
 the fallen and the despised. 
 
 Instead of these terrible and familiar things, I see health 
 universal as the air, virtue that needs no policeman, honesty 
 that goes unwatched and unsuspect, content and competency 
 
THE BETTER DAY 151 
 
 for all. I see many and noble schools, some in spacious build 
 ings, others in the open parks and pleasure places, the teach 
 ers mingling freely with the eager, happy children; and I 
 note with joy that there is an end of the old instruction of 
 constraint and fear. 
 
 I see with greater joy and thankfulness that among all 
 these children of the Better Day there is no defect of mind, 
 no deformity of body; that they were conceived and begot 
 ten in the love that can not libel itself. And I rejoice that 
 there should be an end of that old blasphemy declaring the 
 idiot, the halt and the blind, the wen, the hare-lip and the 
 ulcer to have been made in the image of God. 
 
 I see churches of a more liberal and humane religion, 
 temples of a higher art, theatres of a nobler drama, orpheons 
 of a grander music, recreations of a better and more elevat 
 ing kind, open to all the people. I am stricken with wonder 
 at the demeanor of these worthy citizens, at their sage and 
 just observations, their unerring sense of artistic beauty and 
 fitness, the culture and largeness of view, common to all, 
 which accompany their better lot. 
 
 I see on every hand unhurried, skillful industry that seems 
 to me superior to much of the so-called art of our own day. 
 I mark the fine proportions of the private dwellings, the 
 heroic symmetry of the public structures, the true harmony 
 in which all are coordinated. I see carpenters and house- 
 smiths working with the dignity of sculptors, mechanics 
 proud of their artizanry, a new honor in all the trades. I see 
 labor unforced, erect, independent everywhere. I hear no 
 brutal commands, I see no servile or sullen obedience. I per 
 ceive only the will of free men in voluntary action, delighting 
 to serve and adorn the city of their homes. And in all these 
 grand cities I see no pampered idleness, no uesless hands, no 
 listless slaves of luxury, no swollen drones absorbing the 
 riches of the hive, no parasites whose ease is purchased by 
 
1 5 2 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 the blood and sweat of thousands. But I see that there is la 
 bor and leisure enough for all. 
 
 Now looking to the country, I see as it were a vast and 
 variegated garden made up of multitudes of smiling farms, 
 with every acre yielding its due produce, every rood under 
 tillage, and labor here as in the cities, content, calm and 
 self-sustaining. I see that at last the city and the country 
 live for, not to prey upon or devour, each other. I look 
 upon such a population as the world has never seen, filling 
 the earth with joy and mirth, with love and useful labor, 
 with the blessings of peace, the trophies of art, the achieve 
 ments of industry. I see no idle, menacing armies, no hosts 
 of men withdrawn from the pursuits of peace, no cannoneers 
 waiting with match and fuse, no quarrel broached on sea or 
 land, no priests arrayed to bless and sanction slaughter, no 
 sword unsheathed, no whip upraised, no cowering tortured 
 form, no people bowed beneath oppression, no despot defiant 
 of justice nothing to mar the universal brotherhood under 
 the smile of God ! . . . 
 
 Oh, call it not a foolish vision, crudely as I have here 
 sought to put it into words, for it has been the consoling 
 dream of the noblest souls that have ever worn the vesture 
 of humanity. It was this which inspired the martyrs of free 
 dom, and filled with light the dungeons of the brave; this 
 which robbed the rack of pain, took away the sting of the 
 most cruel death, and welcomed the stern trial of the fire. Be 
 it ours to pray for it, to watch for it, to struggle for it with 
 patient loyalty, to bring up our children in the holy faith of 
 it, to consecrate and dedicate to it the best purpose of our 
 lives. 
 
 So shall those who come after bless us in the light of that 
 Better Day, paying to our dust the homage of their praise 
 and tears; lamenting that we can not share in the glorious 
 fruition. So shall we be sure that we have not lived in vain ! 
 
H JVIodern Reresy. 
 
 N THE beginning we are told the good God or 
 dained that some of His human children should 
 play and more of them should labor. So it has 
 continued to this day, to the entire satisfaction 
 of the playing children. 
 
 These latter were never so numerous in the world as they 
 are in the present year of grace. They were never so rich 
 and they never had so many beautiful and ingenious play 
 things the world is literally a doll s house to them. It is for 
 them to sing : 
 
 The world is so full of all manner of things, 
 I think we should all be as happy as kings. 
 
 I say they were never so numerous, because the labor of 
 the children who toil is ever creating new wealth, the ma 
 terial of pleasure, and this increases the number of the chil 
 dren who play. Mark you, without really diminishing the 
 great host of working children. 
 
 Of course, these are often discontented with their lot, and 
 sometimes they even threaten to knock off work entirely and 
 go> in for play themselves. But it never quite comes to this, 
 for law and authority, the forces of organized society, are 
 always on the side of the playing children. And when the 
 laboring children actually leave the work-bench, the forge, 
 the mine, the factory, proposing foolishly to themselves to 
 imitate their betters, then the thing is called a Strike, the sol 
 diers are brought out to terrify the unwilling workers, often 
 many of these are killed in the violence that is sure to follow, 
 and presently all is again as before : the laboring children la- 
 
154 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 bor and the playing children play. If a strike were to last 
 very long, that is, long enough to inconvenience the playing 
 children, then it would be called Anarchy and there would 
 surely be War. But that dreadful thing has seldom hap 
 pened, and so the playing children have small fear of it. 
 
 It is very hard to break down an ordinance of the good 
 God. And yet this one regulating the division of labor and 
 play, has stood so long, not perhaps so much through the will 
 of the playing children and those in authority, as through 
 the patient submission of the working children themselves, 
 who for the most part love and believe in God, and especially 
 believe that the Son of God while upon this earth was like 
 unto themselves. So they have been patient, very patient, 
 and I think will be so to the very end the end that shall 
 give them at last their due portion of play. 
 
 Yes, there were never so many playing children and never 
 SO much play in the world. And it really is a beautiful world 
 to play in, if only one had the time for it, and the money! 
 But money and time, the two chief requisites of play, can 
 not be for any man, except through the labor of others. 
 Herein is seen the wisdom of the good God without the 
 children who labor there would be no children who play ! 
 
 To be sure, there are certain men called Anarchists and 
 Socialists by those in authority, who propose that all shall 
 labor and all shall play, on equal terms. In other words, that 
 there shall be no longer a distinct division of the children 
 who labor and the children who play. But this plan is re 
 garded by the churches as an impiety there is no warrant 
 for it in the Bible, they say, and it clearly was not the in 
 tention of the good God. Has He not always played favor 
 ites, according to the Book which is called His Word; set 
 ting some of His children to rob and slaughter others, equal 
 ly His children ; wiping out the guiltless and taking their in 
 heritance; filling whole regions of the earth with needless 
 suffering, and blood, and tears? It is true the meaning of the 
 
A MODERN HERESY 155 
 
 Holy Book seems often obscure in the light of common 
 sense and has to be interpreted by an Authority which prac 
 tically stopped guessing about it over a thousand years ago ! 
 
 In the past the efforts of men to understand the Bible dif 
 ferently from the teachings of Authority, often led to bloody 
 wars. But if you will hearken to the churches, there has 
 never been a heresy so dangerous to Sacred Truth or one 
 that carried so formidable a menace to the divinely appoint 
 ed system of things, as this of the men called Socialists and 
 Anarchists namely, that the human race, all children of 
 God, should not be divided into two groups, enormously 
 unequal, of those that labor and those that play. Many of 
 the playing children are at bitter odds as to the meaning of 
 the Bible in various texts and places nay, to a considerable 
 number of them the Holy Book seems a very dull joke and 
 their lives are often a mockery of its precepts. But on the 
 point that they and their kind shall be suffered to play for 
 ever, they are all in perfect accord and as one mind. The 
 forces of law and authority are on the same side and also 
 the weight of that immense legacy of traditional ignorance, 
 superstition, brutality and injustice which is misnamed civil 
 ization. 
 
 So it is bound to take a long time, a very long time yet; but 
 I believe the Plan will be tried one day. And if it shall suc 
 ceed (which I believe also) then the good God will be wor 
 shipped in this beautiful world of His as He never was 
 through the cruel ages when He turned one face to the chil 
 dren of labor and another to the children of play. 
 
familiar philosophy. 
 
 Rope. 
 
 AST ever been in Hell, dear child of God ? Hast 
 fallen down down down to those rayless 
 depths where thou couldst no longer feel the sup 
 porting hand of God and where thou didst seem 
 to taste the agony of the last abandonment? 
 Hast known that terrible remorse wherein the soul executes 
 judgment on herself true image it may be of the Last 
 Judgment that night of the spirit whence hope and blessed 
 ness seem to have utterly departed? Hast known all this, 
 dear child of God, not once but many times? nay, livest 
 thou in a constant dread expectation of knowing this again 
 and again, so long as thy soul liveth? Then, be of good 
 hope, for thou art indeed a Child of God ! 
 
 There be many ways of winning Heaven, dear heart, but 
 this is of the surest to know and feel Hell in this world. 
 And the more terribly thou comest to realize in thy spirit 
 the horror and desolation of Hell here, the better approved 
 is thy heirship in the Kingdom. For when thy feet take 
 hold on Hell, then of a truth thy hope is high as Heaven. 
 
 This too, forget not, is the trial and test of all fine souls 
 saints of God, martyrs of humanity, the great mystics 
 and dreamers, the chosen of our race, whose names partake 
 of the eternal life and glory of the stars. Wouldst thou 
 be of a better company ? All these great and victorious souls 
 had known Hell to its uttermost depths, had tasted its most 
 bitter anguish, had suffered its most fearful agonies, had 
 drunk the cup of its awful despair, and had cried out under 
 the burthen of doom, like Him on the Cross, that their God 
 
FAMILIAR PHILOSOPHY 157 
 
 had forsaken them. Yet all were sons of God and proved 
 their titles by conquering Hell in this world. 
 
 Even as they fought the good fight and prevailed, so shalt 
 thou, brave heart. Be glad and rejoice that thou art called 
 upon to endure the same great trial, as being worthy of their 
 fellowship. Thy deep-dwelling sorrows, thine agonies of 
 spirit, nay, thy wrestling with Powers of Darkness and all 
 the supra-mortal venture of thy soul which thou deemest 
 laid upon thee as a curse, do but seal and stamp thee God s 
 darling. For none can reach the heights who has not known 
 the depths, and though the Kingdom of Heaven be not of 
 this world, most surely is the Kingdom of Hell. 
 
 Courage, dear child of God ! 
 
 Jl <H jl 
 
 Low* 
 
 OVE is for the loving. 
 
 There is but one well in the world that grows 
 ever the richer and sweeter and more plenteous 
 by giving. 
 
 That well is the human heart and its living 
 waters are those of love. 
 
 Yet herein is the wonder of it, that the man who thinks 
 he hath need of it but seldom shall not at his desire get more 
 than a scanty draught, and the sweet water will turn bitter in 
 his mouth. 
 
 Ye have heard it said, to him that hath shall be given : this 
 is the meaning thereof. 
 
 Spend yourself in loving that you may be often athirst 
 for the life-giving water. But count not to drink unto re 
 freshing unless you come weary and blessed from the service 
 of love. Then, ah then, the sweetness of the draught ! . . . 
 Love is for the loving. 
 
1 5 8 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 I spake some harsh words to my dear love, thinking my 
 self in the right and forgetting the Law of Kindness. Then, 
 as I was turning away in anger, the sight of her pale face, 
 with its mute reproach, smote me to the heart. I took her 
 in my arms and we wept the most precious tears together. 
 O divine moment, in that sacred hush, with her heart beat 
 ing against mine, I seemed to be conscious of angels listening. 
 
 Sympathy ! Sympathy ! More and more I tell myself this is 
 the master word. 
 
 We; are constantly seeking our own in darkness and light, 
 awake or adream ; reaching out our longing arms toward the 
 Infinite; sending forth our filaments of thought; summoning 
 the One who shall know and feel, with a passion of desire; 
 praying for that rare response which crowns the chief ex 
 pectancy of life. Not always do our arms fall empty; not al 
 ways do our thoughts return to mock our vain quest; not 
 always are our prayers unanswered and our hearts left void 
 and cold. 
 
 I hold this to be of the true divinity of life, this kinship of 
 the spirit which will leave no man or woman at rest but ever 
 insists upon working out its exigent yet benign destiny, form 
 ing those sweet and consoling relations which are our best 
 joy here and may be our eternal satisfaction. 
 
 For the expectancy of love and sympathy, that is to say, 
 understanding is one that never dies in the human heart. I 
 may be sad, or dull, or cold, or out of touch with reality; I 
 may persuade myself that there is no longer any pith in my 
 mystery, that the years have left me bankrupt in the essen 
 tial stuff of life; that there is no remaining use for me under 
 the sun. But let my heart be apprised, in the faintest whis 
 per, of the advent or imminence of a new friend, and lo ! the 
 world is fresh-made, the heavens constellated with hope and 
 joy and wonder as on the first day. 
 
FAMILIAR PHILOSOPHY 159 
 
 Life is truly measured only by such love or expectancy; 
 when that fails it is the same story for king and beggar. 
 
 Love is the summoner, love is the seeker, love the expec 
 tancy and love the fulfilment. Blessed be Love ! 
 
 I have said that we can not lose our own and are always 
 seeking them by various means. Let me cite a familiar in 
 stance which many readers will easily parallel from their 
 own experience. But it is the familiar instance that really 
 proves. 
 
 A year or so ago I was deeply moved by the wretched fate 
 of a man of genius whom I had loved for his mind and ad 
 mired for his art and pitied for his terrible misfortunes. I 
 said my say on the matter, with sincerity at least, and those 
 words of mine brought me precious letters of praise and sym 
 pathy from unknown friends in foreign lands, who had also 
 been friends of the fallen man of genius. Then, some time 
 afterward, I read in an American journal a letter on the same 
 subject by a man whose name was unknown to me, but whose 
 quickened expression of my own feelings pity for the dead, 
 thanks for his rare gifts of which art has the immortal usu 
 fruct, charity for his errors and scorn for the Pharisaic spirit 
 that exulted in an orgy of reprobation over the obscure 
 grave where he had at last found peace and a safe refuge 
 from the hunters called the tears to my eyes and the blood 
 to my heart. I tried to learn the writer s address in order to 
 thank him for the emotion he had given me, but failed for 
 reasons which I need not explain. Months passed away, 
 during which I thought of the writer often, with a certain 
 motiveless feeling, too, that I could afford to wait; and then 
 one day there fluttered into my hand a letter from him ! Just 
 such a letter as I should have expected from one whose mind 
 and heart were an open book to me; artless and cordial, as a 
 man should write to his friend. He, too, had been seeking 
 me, having somehow learned of the strong tie of sympathy 
 
160 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 between us ; and the thing harassed him, as he frankly con 
 fessed, until he had found me. 
 
 Oh, I do not claim that there is anything extraordinary in 
 this little coincidence, for I am not a believer in the extra 
 ordinary the ordinary keeping my curiosity and sense of 
 wonder fully occupied. But surely it establishes something 
 for the kinship of sympathy and the intuitive mutual quest of 
 related spirits. 
 
 My prayer to the Infinite is that I may be suffered to go on 
 to the end, seeking . . . seeking. For I say again, 
 Love is the summoner, Love is the seeker, Love the expec 
 tancy and Love the fulfilment. Blessed be Love ! 
 
 Yes, dear, do you go on sending me those sweet messages 
 full of praise, and hope, and inspiration, holding always be 
 fore me the Ideal, keeping me to the plane of my better self. 
 I may not feel that I deserve a tenth part of your faith in 
 me no matter, some day I may be worthy of your praise. 
 And even though I should never reach the summit of your ap 
 preciation, still the glory will be yours of having urged me to 
 the endeavor. You are the height and I am the depth; you 
 are the star shining in the Infinite and I the poor vainly as 
 piring worm on the earth below : yet in some fortunate hour 
 I may be lifted to you. 
 
 For we do not make the supreme effort of our souls for 
 the many, but for the few, nay, oftenest of all, for the 
 One ! When I am at my best, you know well that I am writ 
 ing for you alone; when I am at my worst, it is because I 
 can not rise to the thought of you. Even so my soul is often 
 silent for days, giving me no message from the Infinite, no 
 hint of its kinship to the stars, no whisper of the life it led 
 before this life and the life it shall lead after this. I some 
 times think you are my soul ! 
 
 But help me help me always, no matter how often and 
 
FAMILIAR PHILOSOPHY 161 
 
 how far I may fall below your hope of me. Still reach me 
 your kind hand which has power to save me from the last 
 gulf; still say those words of grace and cheer for which I 
 hunger the more, the more that I feel my unworthiness. I 
 will read them over and over until I make myself believe 
 that I really deserve them. Some day, be sure, I will utterly 
 free myself from my baser self and live only for you. I will 
 be your Sir Galahad and my strength of soul shall be as the 
 strength of ten. I will dedicate every thought to you and I 
 will write for you alone then must I at last be worthy of 
 your praise in which the few or the many will have no part. 
 I will no longer give out my truth to hire, or shame the Di 
 vinity in my breast, or care only to move the laughter of the 
 crowd. I will write a book only for you, and you shall be 
 here, as now, looking over my shoulder as I write, and giving 
 me fresh inspiration whenever my thought fails. Neither 
 the few nor the many shall see this book it will be for you 
 and me alone. We shall love it greatly for having written it 
 together and because it will be forever sacred to us two. I 
 have already thought of a title for this book we shall call 
 it the "Story of a Man who Lost but afterward Found his 
 Soul." 
 
 Turn now your dear face to the light for my lamp wanes 
 and I have sat far into the night that I may see the look 
 of praise upon it that has cheered so many a task of mine; 
 that I may renew my worn spirit in the eternal peace of those 
 calm eyes. 
 
 Tell me, oh, tell me the truth, I beseech you, are you 
 my soul! 
 
 Love is akin to hate how trite that is and how true! I 
 sometimes wonder is either quality to be found unmixed with 
 the other? Can we have love without hate or hate without 
 love? The only glimpse of hatred I have ever had that quite 
 
1 62 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 appalled me was from one who loved me very much. Ah, 
 happy they who neither love nor hate ! 
 
 In love we must bleed and the wounds we receive are very 
 cruel. Still it seems we can never have enough of them, for 
 love has power to heal the wounds which it inflicts and so 
 we go on loving and bleeding to the end. 
 
 There is one thing of which I have never had my fill and 
 for which my soul hungers always love ! And always I am 
 promising to myself that some day I shall be satisfied. 
 
 When I was younger there was nothing for me but a wo 
 man between the heavens and the earth. Now I perceive 
 there are a few other things. Yet I am not old, as age is 
 counted. 
 
 The only man who has a right to despair of the world is 
 he who neither loves nor is loved. 
 
 There is but one thing more interesting than a woman s 
 love her hate. 
 
 Love is a combat and friendship a duel. Strife is the law 
 of existence. 
 
 I should never be weary learning of women. I have long 
 since tired learning of men. 
 
 Look back now over the long way and see if it be not 
 Love that has led you so far ! 
 
 Love is the one dream that does not forsake us as we de 
 scend into the Valley, but is potent to bring joy or misery 
 to the last. 
 
FAMILIAR PHILOSOPHY 
 
 163 
 
 Woman is the weaker animal, but she wins every battle 
 with man even when he thinks himself the victor. 
 
 To find the One who could love and feel and understand 
 this is the dream of some who yet remain faithful to their 
 bonds. 
 
 What is more terrible than the face of one who once loved 
 and now hates you, seen in a dream ! 
 
epigrams and Hpborisms. 
 
 HE wise gods when they contrived this tragic 
 comedy of life which we have been such a weary 
 time a-playing, mixed up a little humor with the 
 serious business. He alone plays his part well 
 who finds the jest the lath for the sword, the 
 mask of Harlequin for the frozen face of Medusa. Those 
 who have best solved the exquisite humor of the gods are 
 called great by the generalvoice of mankind, and some dozen 
 of them have lived since the world, or the play, began. Unlike 
 these supremely gifted players, the vast majority of men get 
 only the merest inkling of the gods merry intent, but it suf 
 fices to save their lives from utter misery. Some devote them 
 selves to solving the riddle with terrible seriousness, and the 
 laughing god underneath always escapes them, leaving them 
 empty-handed and ever the more tragically serious. These 
 and they are no small number die in madhouses or religion, 
 or write books which increase the sorrow of the world : what 
 ever their fate, life remains for them a tragedy to the end. 
 
 There came a Soul before the Judgment seat. And God 
 said: Need there is none that We judge this man, for he 
 hath given all his days to Evil; from his childhood he hath 
 turned his back upon the City of Peace and none hath ever 
 cleaved more to the sweetness of sin. Let him pronounce his 
 own judgment and avow that he hath deserved the Evil 
 Place. 
 
 Then the Soul cried out : It is true I have merited Hell by 
 my iniquity, but this is not thy justice. 
 
 And God said: What more canst thou ask, seeing that 
 thou hast wrought judgment against thyself? 
 
EPIGRAMS AND APHORISMS 165 
 
 Then the Soul made answer : Send me to Heaven for the 
 good I would have done ! 
 
 Laugh at Death and the chances are that he will give you 
 a meaning salute and pass by. Get into a panic and chase 
 after Dr. Cure-all you will presently have a surer physician 
 on your trail. When the Fear is really at hand, as once 
 occurred to me, when though I called to it, it went away, 
 you will learn that it is no fear at all. For it is much easier 
 to die than to live, and at the last Nature helps us to play our 
 part. Indeed I believe few of us know what true courage 
 is until we come to die, though we talk of it so loosely. 
 
 The fear of death is largely a growth of superstition, and 
 it has especially been fostered by the Christian faith, with its 
 terribly uncertain award in the Hereafter. To the ancients 
 it was utterly unknown in this dreadful aspect, and it was 
 indeed accepted with a natural firmness and resignation which 
 "makes cowards of us all." But the last thing to be said is, 
 that our modern fear of death is as foolish as futile and 
 makes a mock of itself. For why cling so desperately to this 
 uneasy life which you are yet ever wishing an end of, by dis 
 content with the present or idle anticipation of the future? 
 Do you remember when it was thrust upon you? I doubt 
 that you will be more conscious when it is at last taken away. 
 
 Some one has defined genius as "inspired common sense." 
 I would beg to amend this by dropping "common," for a 
 genius may have inspired sense at any age, but common 
 sense does not come to him much before he is thirty- 
 five. For about the seventh lustrum a man begins 
 to see the true value of life and to hold a serious ac 
 counting with himself. The spendthrift desires and ardors of 
 passion are past the riot and the rapture of mere physical 
 enjoyment gone by. Henceforth a man is no longer the fool 
 of his senses unless he be a fool from his mother s womb. 
 
1 66 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 The universe has steadied itself in his gaze; men cease to 
 appear unto him as "trees walking;" the eternal questions, 
 Wherefore? Whither? recur with a persistence that will 
 not be laid to sleep. 
 
 Now does the man begin to set his affairs in order and to 
 take stock of his life-experience. What have the years 
 brought him or taken away? the gravity of this thought 
 strikes him with a novel force. He finds, in truth, that he is 
 poorer than he believed; that the mountains which once 
 seemed to melt before the daring of his spirit are still there 
 and now, alas! impassably high; that he is less in knowledge 
 and will and power than he had assured himself; that time 
 has stripped him of not a few illusions which once seemed to 
 him the very stuff of life. 
 
 While the fit lasts I take my opinions very seriously and 
 labor hard to pass them on to others ; not, if I know myself, 
 as a matter of vanity, but simply that other persons may be 
 benefited by partaking of the immense wisdom and knowl 
 edge which I do not care to monopolize. I am even eager to 
 do battle for my opinions, and make myself quite wretched 
 should they fail of a candid hearing. And it is likely enough 
 that in my fiery, foolish zeal I may unwittingly cause pain to 
 some tender hearts for which I now and at all times ask 
 forgiveness. But presently the wind shifts round to another 
 corner of the compass, and I am a sane, good-humored man 
 again, laughing cheerfully at my own and others opinions. 
 
 Most of us inherit our opinions. I inherited mine, and they 
 were of the sort that are branded into the soul by old, un 
 happy, far-off memories of persecution endured for their 
 sake; committed as a sacred heritage of race and blood; con 
 firmed by voices that plead the more potently across the 
 silence of death; and finally stamped by a course of training 
 that picked them out in letters of fire. 
 
 Well, I carried these opinions for the better part of my 
 
EPIGRAMS AND APHORISMS 167 
 
 life, the joyous and hopeful part, and then I threw them 
 away perhaps to my loss and sorrow, for in these matters 
 my heart is often a rebel against my head. 
 
 Cultivate joy in your life and in your work. For indeed 
 when you think of it, over-seriousness is the bane of art as 
 of life. Nothing in art was ever done well that was not a 
 joy in its conception. Travail the artist must, but in gladness. 
 So of the perfect lyrist, we read that his song is a rapture 
 poured forth from a heart that can never grow old. 
 
 Alexander Dumas, the greatest master of narrative fiction 
 that has ever lived, toiled all day and every day, laughing 
 like Gargantua at the birth of his son ; and sometimes weep 
 ing, too, over his own pathos. Ah, what would one not have 
 given for the privilege of climbing the stairs stealthily to 
 watch the merry giant at his task ! Do you wonder that this 
 rejoicing faculty furnished for many years the chief entertain 
 ment of Europe? I should not care much for a writer in 
 capable of being moved as Dumas was moved. 
 
 Posterity is the hectic dream of the weak it does not dis 
 turb the calm slumber of the strong. The man who works 
 with his whole soul in the present, who possesses and is pos 
 sessed by the time that has been allotted him out of all eter 
 nity, that man may miss the prize as well as another. But 
 he is headed the right way to capture the award of posterity. 
 
 Shakespeare erred in assigning only seven ages to man 
 there are at least seventy. Often we live through several in 
 a single day it all depends upon the kind of experience. 
 
 Who has not written it over and over again and then torn 
 it up in despair and still renewed the effort with prayers and 
 tears, he knows you not, ye Heavenly Powers ! 
 
1 68 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 Remember that the true struggle of life is not to achieve 
 what the world calls success, but to hold that Essential Self 
 inviolate which was given you to mark your identity from all 
 other souls. Against this precious possession this Veriest 
 You all winds blow, all storms rage, all malign powers 
 contend. As you hold to this or suffer it to be marred or 
 taken from you, so shall be your victory or defeat. 
 
 O Memory ! thou leadest me back over the years and show- 
 est me many a place where once I would have lingered for 
 ever, but now thou canst not show me one of all Where I 
 would tarry again; my Soul knoweth that not a single step 
 can be retraced and that she is of the Infinite to be. 
 
 Why do we write for the world the things we would not 
 say to the individual ? Why do we send on every wandering 
 wind the secrets we would not whisper in the ear of our 
 chosen friend? 
 
 Men are always talking about truth, but there is really so 
 little of it in common use that it might be classed with ra 
 dium. Perhaps we should not know it if we saw it, for our 
 experience deals almost wholly with substitutes. 
 
 In making up the character of God, the old theologians 
 failed to mention that He is of an infinite cheerfulness. The 
 omission has cost the world much tribulation. 
 
 The only man that ever lived who understood and par 
 doned sin was Christ. And for this men have made him God. 
 
 If you seek to command by fear, yours will be the barren 
 service that is given without the loyalty of the heart. 
 
EPIGRAMS AND APHORISMS 169 
 
 Beginning as children, we walk away from God, and as 
 old men we strive to totter back again. 
 
 Grieve not that you desire always and vainly life without 
 desire is very near unto death. 
 
 Nature has no sorrows perhaps that is why she is immor 
 tal. 
 
 The better is enemy of the good, said William Morris. 
 Do your stint to-day and let it go for what it is worth. All 
 days are ranked equal in God s fair time. You can not steal 
 from to-day to give unto to-morrow, nor play at loaded dice 
 with the fates. 
 
 I have come nearly to forty year, and have bothered my 
 head much with books, yet I am as ignorant of many simple 
 things as when a child. Still we are ready to fight and die for 
 beliefs or opinions picked up at random in the space of a 
 few years. Truly spoke the Preacher, all is vanity ! 
 
 I am not the man I was ten years ago. I should not know 
 the boy I was were I to meet him in the street. Time is ever 
 stealing our outworn wardrobes of the flesh and spirit. 
 
 Life is never simple to the divining spirit every mo 
 ment of the common day is charged with mystery and revela 
 tion. 
 
 To have nothing to say and to say it at all hazards, passes 
 for much that is called achievement in literature. 
 
 A man may boast that he can judge himself as harshly as 
 another, but he makes no mistake in passing sentence. 
 
i7o PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 It is easier to make enemies than friends, but fail not to 
 remember that an effort is required in either case. 
 
 When I come to die I know my keenest regret will be that 
 I suffered myself to be annoyed by a lot of small people and 
 picayune worries, wasting God s good time with both. 
 
 The strongest writer smiles at the praise of his strength- 
 he alone knows how weak he can be. 
 
 The very meanest man I know believes for sure that God 
 is made in his particular image and likeness. 
 
 The mystery of the Hereafter is very great indeed, but we 
 may take courage in reflecting that we have left some of it 
 behind us. 
 
 The wounds of self bleed always and will not be forgiven. 
 
 I need not write to my dear friend, for my heart talks to 
 him every day over the miles. In this way, too, I tell him 
 only the things I wish to tell him and so have nothing to 
 change or recall after the letter is sealed and sent. I was not 
 always so wise. 
 
 Among persons whose lives touch at every point, there is 
 often no communion of the soul for months and years. Were 
 we to live only by the active life of the soul, our term would 
 be as brief as that of the ephemera. 
 
 Men are damned not for what they believe but for what 
 they make-believe. 
 
 Almost every friendship holds a degree of disappointment, 
 
EPIGRAMS AND APHORISMS 171 
 
 yet friendship is still the best thing in the world and the con 
 stant dream of the finer souls. 
 
 Sane persons will not expect to find absolute perfection in 
 Heaven there as here the charm of a little discontent, the 
 satisfaction of turning up a small grievance, will not be de 
 nied us. 
 
 The vice of the Pharisee is in believing that he is not like 
 unto other men. The virtue of a man who knows himself a 
 sinner is in believing that other men are not like unto himself. 
 
 That which was lately power is now impotence, but wait 
 it will soon be power again. 
 
 It is something to have lived for the things of the mind, 
 even though we have missed what the world calls wealth or 
 success those at least shall not be taken from us. 
 
 Revise and revise and revise the best thought will still 
 come after the printer has snatched away the copy. 
 
 Balzac laid the world under the greatest obligation of any 
 modern man of letters and was driven into an untimely grave 
 by the spectre of debt. The highest service is always martyr 
 dom. 
 
 A learned young German philosopher, Dr. Otto Weinin- 
 ger, pronounced the most acute mind since Kant, recently 
 solved the great problem of sex and then killed himself. 
 What else was there for him to do ? 
 
 Every little while it is announced that some scientist has 
 pinned down the secret of life, but always the learned man 
 
172 PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 has fooled himself. God will not be put into a chemical for 
 mula. 
 
 Thou art eager to be in company and delightest in the 
 conversation of thy friends, yet thou hast a better friend 
 than any of these who constantly solicits thee and whom thou 
 wilt seldom hear thy soul! 
 
Song of the Rain. 
 
 ONG time I lay in my bed listening to the rain. 
 
 In the hushed quiet of night, in the solemn 
 darkness, my heart ceased its beatings to listen. 
 There was naught in the world but my heart 
 and the rain. 
 
 My soul awoke at the song of the rain, drenching through 
 the trees, pattering on the roof, filling my chamber with cool 
 ness and the sense of a mystic presence. My soul awoke and 
 deemed that it was the pause before the End. 
 
 Long I lay still in the darkness, hearing the song of the 
 rain; feeling upon me and throughout me the balm and 
 blessing of the rain ; telling myself that if this were the End, 
 it could not better be. My soul was all attention, eager to 
 catch the word of its fate, my heart ceased its throbbing to 
 listen there was naught in the world but the rain and my 
 heart. 
 
 What was the burden of the song of the rain that I heard 
 as I lay still in my bed, wrapt in the solemn darkness, feel 
 ing as I shall feel in the pause before the End? What was 
 the burden of the song of the rain which my soul awoke to 
 hear and for which my heart stopped its beating ? 
 
 Peace was the burden of the song of the rain that I heard 
 in the deep of night when my soul thrilled like a wind-harp 
 in the breath of God. Peace was the burden of the song of 
 the rain. 
 
 Now have I put away all strife and anger and unrest since 
 there came this wondrous message of the rain, the night and 
 the silence: Now do I bear a quiet heart since my soul 
 trembled like a wind-harp in the breath of God. 
 
 Peace for all the days that yet are mine when often I shall 
 
PALMS OF PAPYRUS 
 
 lie awake in the night silence, listening to the song of the 
 rain. 
 
 Peace forevermore when my soul shall be drawn into the 
 breath of God and my body shall be mingled at last with the 
 balm and blessing of the rain. 
 
 Peace forevermore ! 
 
 Finis. 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY