fi 
 
BY HENRY VAN DYKE 
 
 The Valley of Vision 
 Fighting for Peace 
 The Unknown Quantity 
 The Ruling Passion 
 The Blue Flower 
 
 Camp-Fires and Guide-Posts 
 Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land 
 Days Off 
 Little Rivers 
 Fisherman s Luck 
 
 Poems, Collection in one volume 
 
 Golden Stars 
 
 The Red Flower 
 
 The Grand Canyon, and Other Poems 
 
 The White Bees, and Other Poems 
 
 The Builders, and Other Poems 
 
 Music, and Other Poems 
 
 The Toiling of Felix, and Other Poems 
 
 The House of Rimmon 
 
 Studies in Tennyson 
 Poems of Tennyson 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 AND GUIDE-POSTS 
 
From a photograph by Mathilde Well. 
 
 The bird-bath iti the garden. 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 AND GUIDE-POSTS 
 
 A BOOK OF 
 ESSAYS AND EXCURSIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY VAN DYKE 
 
 " When Paradise was lost I thought everything was tnde 
 But it was only begun." 
 
 SOLOMON SINGLEWITZ: The Life of Adam. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 1921 
 
Copyright, 1920, 19$1, by Charles Scribner s Sons 
 Published April, 
 
 9s L 
 
 THE SCRIBNER PRESS 
 
TO 
 
 MY DAUGHTER AND CHUM 
 
 PAULA VAN DYKE CHAPIN 
 
 OTHERWISE CALLED 
 
 LITTLE FUJI-SAN 
 
PREFACE 
 
 SOME of the chapters in this book were written 
 as a series of monthly papers in Scribner s Maga 
 zine in the years 1920-21. I have ventured to add 
 a few things, interludes, you may call them, 
 which may be taken as talks by the camp-fire. At 
 the end I have included four little chapters of re 
 membrance, memories posita, tributes to four be 
 loved fellow-travellers. 
 
 HENRY VAN DYKE. 
 
 AVALON, February 22, 1921. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Camp-Fires and Guide-Posts 3 
 
 II. A Certain Insularity of Islanders 19 
 
 III. A Basket of Chips 37 
 
 IV. Self, Neighbor, and Company 41 
 V. Sympathetic Antipathies 59 
 
 VI. Publicomania 77 
 
 VII. Moving Day 83 
 
 VIII. Firelight Views 100 
 
 IX. Fishing in Strange Waters 120 
 
 X. The Pathless Profession 142 
 
 XI. A Mid-Pacific Pageant 152 
 
 XII. Japonica 174 
 
 XIII. Interludes on the Koto 198 
 
 XIV. Suicidal Tendencies in Democracy 203 
 XV. A Bundle of Letters 228 
 
 XVI. Christmas Greens 233 
 
 XVII. On Saying Good-Eye 251 
 
 ix 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 FELLOW-TRAVELLERS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XVIII. An Old-Style American 271 
 
 XIX. Interpreter s House 290 
 
 XX. The Healing Gift 300 
 
 XXI. A Traveller from Altruria 310 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The bird-bath in the garden Frontispiece 
 
 Facing page 
 
 The round stone tower 20 
 
 Is not moving day marked in all our calen 
 dars? 96 
 
 In andirons I would admit a little fancy 106 
 
 The ancient, apostolic, consolatory art of 
 angling 140 
 
 A house with broad lanai -and long pergola 160 
 
 The temple-garden where the iris blooms 
 
 around the pond 188 
 
 Camp-fires beneath the trees 
 
1AMP-FIRES AND GUIDE- 
 POSTS 
 
CAMP-FIRES AND GUIDE-POSTS 
 
 THE title of these rambling essays is taken from 
 two things that are pleasant and useful on the 
 common ways of life. 
 
 Let me confess at the outset that by camp-fires 
 and guide-posts I intend more than the literal mean 
 ing of the words. I use them for their significance. 
 
 The camp-fire is the conservative symbol. It 
 invites to rest and fellowship and friendly council, 
 not unmixed with that good cheer which is suggested 
 when we call a conference of wits a "symposium." 
 There is no denying the fact that man s best dis 
 course has always been at a common meal, whether 
 spread on the green grass or on a mahogany table. 
 Of the elders of Israel in the Exodus, it is recorded 
 that "they saw God and did eat and drink." This 
 is a gentle hint that however soulful a man s soul 
 may be, in his present mixed estate the body had 
 its claims, which it is both lawful and necessary 
 to satisfy, in order that the spiritual part may not 
 be hampered and disordered. Hunger, thirst, and 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 in^igestion^are unfavorable alike to clear thought 
 and calm devotion. 
 
 The guide-post is the progressive sign. It calls 
 us to continue our journey, and gives information 
 in regard to direction and distance, which (if cor- 
 rect) has considerable value to the traveller. 
 
 Every social theory, every moral maxim, every 
 appeal of preacher or political orator, every bit of 
 propaganda printed or spoken, yes, even every 
 advertisement in the newspapers or on the bill 
 boards, whether false or true, is of the nature of a 
 guide-post. 
 
 Every place where men rest and repose with 
 warmth to cheer them the hollow in the woods 
 where pilgrims or tramps gather about the blazing 
 sticks, the snug cottage where the kettle simmers 
 on the hearth, the royal castle where an ancient 
 coat-of-arms is carved on the mantelpiece, the vast 
 palatial hotel where sovereign democracy flaunts 
 its new-found wealth and commercial travellers 
 bask in the heat of concealed steam-radiators 
 every one of these is nothing more nor less than a 
 camp-fire. 
 
 No human progress is unbroken and continuous. 
 No human resting-place is permanent. Where are 
 
 4 
 
 . 
 
AND GUIDE-POSTS 
 
 Pharaoh s Palace, and Solomon s Temple, and the 
 House of Caesar, and Cioero-V-TuseuUim, and 
 Horace s Sabine farm? 
 
 I remember what General William Tecumseh 
 Sherman fine old campaigner said to me when 
 he first came to New York to live in his own house. 
 "" I ve made a new camp. Plenty of wood and water. 
 Come 
 
 We might get more comfort out of this sane and 
 wholesome philosophy of life, if it were not for the 
 violent extremists of the Right and the Left, who 
 revile and buffet us alternately when we try to push 
 ahead and when we stop to think. I have good 
 friends on both sides, but at times they treat me 
 vilely as an enemy. 
 
 The trouble with the Radicals is that they are 
 always urging us to travel somewhither, anywhither, 
 ignoring the past, condemning the present, and 
 hurling ourselves blindfold into the future. 
 
 The trouble with the Conservatives is that they 
 are always lulling us to stay where we are, to be 
 content with our present comforts, and to look 
 with optimistic eyes on the bright side of our neigh 
 bors* discomforts. 
 
 Neither pessimism nor optimism pleases me. I 
 5 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 am a meliorist, to use the word which Doctor John 
 Brown of Edinburgh coined in 1858. 
 
 Therefore I refuse to engage in the metaphysical 
 triangular conflict between the past, the present, 
 and the future. It means nothing to me. Yester 
 day is a memory. To-morrow is a hope. To-day 
 is the fact. But tell me, would the fact be what 
 it is without the memory and the hope? Are not 
 all three equally real? 
 
 I grant you there is a distinction between the 
 actual and the imaginary. But it is not a difference 
 in essence. It is only a difference in origin and 
 form. What we call the actual has its origin in a 
 fact outside of us. What we call the imaginary 
 has its origin in a fact within us. 
 
 A burned finger and a burning indignation are 
 equally real. 
 
 Memory is simply imagination looking back: 
 hope, looking forward. 
 
 The imaginary is not non-existent. It exists in 
 the mind the very same place where every per 
 ception through the senses has its present and only 
 being. 
 
 When I was a boy I cut my hand with my first 
 pocket-knife. But the physical scar of that actual 
 
 6 
 
AND GUIDE-POSTS 
 
 accident, now almost invisible, is less vivid than 
 the memory of the failure of my ambition to be 
 come a great orator. In that collegiate contest, 
 fifty years ago, the well-prepared phrase fled from 
 my paralyzed brain, 
 
 "voxfaucibus haesit" 
 
 and I sat down feeling that life was ended. But 
 it was not. 
 
 You remember, as of yesterday, those pleasant 
 afternoon walks on Fifth Avenue from Madison 
 Square to Central Park, in the last quarter of the 
 Nineteenth Century, when the air was clean and 
 bright, the sky-line low, and on every block you 
 had greetings from good friends. To-day, if duty 
 compels, you plunge through that same mile-and- 
 a-half , shut in by man-made cliffs of varying degrees 
 of ugliness, stifled by fumes of gasolene from the 
 conglomerate motor-cars, and worming your way 
 through malodorous or highly perfumed throngs of 
 "Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, dwellers in Meso 
 potamia and Judaea, Cappadocia, Pontus, and 
 Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and strangers of 
 Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Ara 
 bians." Few indeed are the native Americans you 
 
 7 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 meet, struggling like yourself among the conflicting 
 tides, 
 
 "ran nantes in gurgite vasto" 
 
 Yet, even on such a walk, if you think serenely, 
 you have a hope of something better in the long 
 to-morrow: a modern city in which the curse of 
 crowding shall be mitigated by wiser dispositions 
 of traffic, transportation, and housing: a city in 
 which there shall be room for homes and play 
 grounds, as well as for temples and court-houses: 
 a city in which the rights of property shall be safe 
 guarded chiefly as essential to the supreme right 
 of life. 
 
 The memory, the fact, the hope, are equally real. 
 But tell me, brother, can we really make sure of 
 our guide-posts unless we take counsel together 
 beside our camp-fires? 
 
 The secret of perpetual motion has not yet been 
 discovered. Human nature demands intervals of 
 rest and relaxation as the unexempt condition of 
 our mortal frailty. 
 
 Here is where I find my stance for a drive. Go 
 forward we must, unless we are willing to slip back 
 ward. But we cannot know that we are going for- 
 
 Q 
 
AND GUIDE-POSTS 
 
 ward, without stopping to talk over our common 
 concerns beside the camp-fire. 
 
 Good humor is one of the prerequisites of sound 
 judgment. 
 
 I have seen needful work done by men in excite 
 ment and an ill temper, but never truth discovered 
 nor creative things accomplished. My old gar 
 dener used to swear horribly when he was rooting 
 out poison-ivy. But when he was studying how 
 to make flowers or vegetables grow better, he was 
 in a friendly mood whistling or singing. 
 
 Emerson has a good word on this. "Nothing 
 will supply the want of sunshine to peaches, and 
 to make knowledge valuable, you must have the 
 cheerfulness of wisdom. Whenever you are sincerely 
 pleased you are nourished. The joy of the spirit 
 indicates its strength. All healthy things are sweet- 
 tempered. Genius works in sport, and goodness 
 smiles to the last; and, for the reason, that who 
 ever sees the law which distributes things does not 
 despond, but is animated by great desires and en 
 deavors. He who desponds betrays that he has not 
 seen it." 
 
 But what about the man who frets and fumes 
 and froths at the mouth when he propounds his 
 
 9 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 favorite dogma ? What about the guide-post enthu 
 siasts who pronounce double damnation on us if 
 we do not rush forward at once on their favorite 
 roads to Utopia? What about the camp-fire seden- 
 taries who declare that unless we "stand pat * pre 
 cisely where we are, we are doomed to perdition ? 
 
 Methinks, gentlemen, you do protest too much. 
 The violence of your protest indicates a certain 
 insecurity of the ground whereon you stand. You 
 would base your programme upon ignorance of 
 what men learned in Athens, Sparta, Carthage, 
 Sicily, and Rome, long ago. That will not go ! We 
 fall back upon one of those vital phrases with which 
 slang has enriched our language "show me I" 
 
 Nor are we willing, if we can prevent it, to have 
 tried upon our tender bodies and souls the old ex 
 periments which were tried so long ago and which 
 resulted in lamentable failure. 
 
 Why suffer twice to learn the same lesson? 
 
 Communism, agrarianism, proletarianism, anarch 
 ism, have all had their day, and it was a bad day, 
 in Athens and Sparta and Rome and Jerusalem 
 and Paris. Why give them another day? 
 
 The divine right of kings and capitalists to im 
 pose their will upon their fellow men has been tested 
 
 10 
 
AND GUIDE-POSTS 
 
 many times and has always failed to make good 
 before the throne of Eternal Wisdom and Righteous 
 ness. The bloody bankruptcy of the French reign 
 of terror was no worse, and no better, than the 
 breakdown of the attempt of the Holy Alliance 
 to re-establish the tyranny of hereditary titles and 
 unjust prerogatives. 
 
 Why ask us to return to these old discredited 
 theories? They are not really guide-posts. They 
 are signs of "no thoroughfare." Give us something 
 really new, gentlemen. Think out some better way 
 of co-operation between the "haves" and the "have- 
 nots." Devise some better mode of inducing the 
 lazy to work, and of restraining the clever and in 
 dustrious from claiming exorbitant gains. That 
 is what we need, as surely as two and two make 
 four. 
 
 If you can do this, I promise you that a con 
 siderable company of the intellectual middle class, 
 neither "high-brows" who think they know it all, 
 nor "low-brows" who maintain that nothing is 
 worth knowing, will be ready for a promising ad 
 venture. Meantime we follow the old guide-posts 
 which have been proved, and take our needful ease 
 by the camp-fires where we find creature comforts 
 
 11 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 and friendly talk. And if our camp is attacked by 
 brigands, we shall be ready for them. 
 
 I was rereading the other day one of the dia 
 logues of Plato, called Thecetetus, and came upon 
 a passage which seemed to depict the position of 
 thoughtful people in our own time. Plato is speak 
 ing of a philosopher endeavoring to instruct and 
 guide a practical man of the world. "But, O my 
 friend," says he, "when he draws the other into 
 the upper air, and gets him out of his pleas and 
 rejoinders into the contemplation of justice and 
 injustice in their own nature, or from the common 
 places about the happiness of kings to the considera 
 tion of government, and of human happiness and 
 misery in general what they are and how a man 
 should seek after the one and avoid the other 
 when that narrow, keen, little legal mind of his is 
 called to account about all this, he gives the phi 
 losopher his revenge. For being dizzied by the 
 height at which he is hanging, he being dismayed 
 and lost and stammering out broken words, is 
 laughed at not only by Thracian handmaidens or 
 any other uneducated persons, for they have no 
 eye for the situation, but by every man who has 
 not been brought up a slave. Such are the two 
 
AND GUIDE-POSTS 
 
 characters, Theodoras; the one of the philosopher 
 or gentleman, who may be excused for appearing 
 futile and inefficient when he has to perform some 
 servile office, such as packing a bag, or flavoring 
 a sauce, or making a flattering speech; the other, 
 of the man of affairs who is able to do every service 
 smartly and neatly, but knows not how to wear 
 his cloak like a gentleman; still less does he acquire 
 the music of speech or hymn, in the true life which 
 is lived by immortals or men blessed by heaven." 
 
 This is a fair description, two thousand years 
 old, of the difference between the "high-brow" 
 and the "low-brow." But from this Plato goes 
 on to tell us something more important. "Evils," 
 says he, "can never perish; for there must always 
 remain something which is antagonistic to good. 
 . . . But, O my friend, you cannot easily convince 
 mankind that they should avoid vice or pursue 
 virtue for the reason which the majority give, in 
 order, forsooth, to appear respectable; this is 
 what people are always repeating, and this, in my 
 judgment, is an old wives* tale. Let us get back 
 to the truth ! In God is no unrighteousness at all 
 He is altogether righteous; and there is nothing 
 more like Him than the man among us who is the 
 
 13 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 most righteous. And the true wisdom of men, and 
 their nothingness and cowardice, are closely bound 
 up with this. For to know this is true wisdom and 
 manhood, and to ignore this is folly and vice. All 
 other kinds of so-called wisdom, such as the wis 
 dom of politicians or the wisdom of the arts, are 
 coarse and vulgar. The unrighteous man, or the 
 sayer and doer of unholy things, had far better 
 not cherish the illusion that his roguery is clever 
 ness. Let us tell him frankly that he does not realize 
 what kind of creature he is. He does not know the 
 penalty of unrighteousness: not stripes and death, 
 as he supposes, which evil-doers often elude, but 
 a final punishment from which there is no escape." 
 
 You would not take so long and stern a sermon 
 from a modern preacher. But will you not consider 
 it from the broad-shouldered, wide-browed Plato, 
 who lived four hundred years before Christ? Will 
 you not read it as a comment upon those modern 
 knaves who twist the guide-posts around and swear 
 that good is evil and vice is virtuous; those long 
 haired, lantern-jawed mockers who protest that 
 property is theft and that highway robbery is the 
 triumph of justice ? 
 
 I do not mean to be drawn into a discussion of 
 14 
 
AND GUIDE-POSTS 
 
 the bold brutalities of the Bolsheviki in Russia, or 
 the sneaking villainies of the I. W. W. in America. 
 These lie outside of the region of literature. They 
 are to be met not with essays and orations, but 
 with laws and guns. The decencies of life, the securi 
 ties of home, the safeguards of social order, having 
 been won, by toil and fighting, from the abyss of 
 barbarism, will not be suffered to perish. Neither 
 the fury of the antisocial maniacs, nor the senti- 
 mentalism of the social imbeciles will be permitted 
 to destroy them. We look to statesmen and war 
 riors to take care of this. 
 
 But what I am thinking of is the normal life 
 of humanity a journey with frequent, necessary 
 halts as Matthew Arnold describes it in Rugby 
 Chapel : 
 
 "See ! In the rocks of the world 
 Marches the host of mankind, 
 A feeble, wavering line. 
 Where are they tending ? A god 
 MarshalFd them, gave them their goal. 
 Ah, but the way is so long ! 
 Years they have been in the wild: 
 Sore thirst plagues them, the rocks 
 Rising all round overawe; 
 Factions divide them, their host 
 15 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 Threatens to break, to dissolve. 
 Ah, keep, keep them combined ! 
 Else, of the myriads who fill 
 That army, not one shall arrive; 
 Sole shall they stray; in the rocks 
 Stagger forever in vain, 
 Die one by one in the waste." 
 
 Yes, we must hold together, and go forward to 
 gether, and take our wayside rest together. That 
 is what I mean to write about in these essays. The 
 enjoyment of the camp-fires. The scrutiny of the 
 guide-posts. 
 
 But you must not suspect me of having an ul 
 terior design of springing a new theory of the uni 
 verse upon you, nor of subtly advertising a panacea 
 for all 
 
 " The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks 
 That flesh is heir to." 
 
 No, gentle reader, I am as much in the dark as you 
 are, and with you I suffer 
 
 "The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." 
 
 Tis a rough, confused, turbulent age in which we 
 have to live. But it is the only age that is given 
 
 16 
 
AND GUIDE-POSTS 
 
 to us. Let us make the best of it. And above all 
 let us not lose either our loyalty to truth or our 
 sense of humor. 
 
 For my own part I confess my prepossession in 
 favor of the small but useful virtues like fair play, 
 and punctuality, and common courtesy. 
 
 If I write of these things, more than of the ulti 
 mate ethical theories which engage our modern 
 philosophists, you will understand and forgive me. 
 I do not profess to have solved the riddle of exist 
 ence. Let us try out our guesses together by the 
 camp-fire. 
 
 And you, my young brother, don t think that 
 because I am old, I am necessarily aged, and against 
 you. You are my friend, my hope, my reliance. 
 
 I am not quite so sure of anything not even of 
 my doubts, denials, and prejudices as I was in 
 my youth. But I have had some experience of 
 what agrees with body and soul, as Keats says in 
 his ode to the bards of passion and mirth, 
 
 "What doth strengthen and what maim." 
 
 By that knowledge I try to steer my course toward 
 peace and a certain degree of usefulness. 
 
 The minor morals of life attract me. I like real 
 17 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 and decent folk of all creeds and parties. But 1 
 have no confidence in catchwords, either of au 
 tocracy or democracy, nor in universal suffrage as 
 the cure-all of man s infirmity. 
 Christ was crucified by a referendum. 
 
 18 
 
II 
 
 A CERTAIN INSULARITY OP 
 ISLANDERS 
 
 IS curious quality of human nature first at 
 tracted my notice some forty years ago, when I 
 ent to work in Newport, an ancient little city 
 (from the American point of view) situate on the 
 sland of Rhode Island, in the State of Rhode Isl- 
 md. 
 
 There, in the centre of Touro Park, stands the 
 round stone tower which the romanticists revere as 
 relic of the discovery of America by the Norsemen 
 centuries before Columbus sailed, and which the 
 factualists regard as the remains of a windmill built 
 in the seventeenth century to grind Indian corn. 
 But you are mistaken if you suppose that a mere 
 hseological dispute like this made any difference 
 in the insular feeling of the native Newporters. 
 
 Was the tower built by Leif the Viking when he 
 found his colony of Vinland? That only showed 
 how well the old Norse adventurer "knew his way 
 bout," when he picked out the island of Rhode 
 19 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 Island as the most beautiful and salubrious spot in 
 a whole new world, an island abundant in the wild 
 fox-grapes with which Nature fills her loving-cup 
 for man, and blessed with a douce climate in which 
 the Gulf Stream tempers alike the rigors of winter 
 and the ardors of summer to an enjoyable though 
 relaxing suavity. 
 
 Was the tower erected by a prudent and prosper 
 ous English colonist to triturate his maize in the 
 days of Roger Williams? That only illustrated the 
 well-known fact that the corn-meal of Rhode Isl 
 and, white, minutely granular, and highly nutri 
 tious, was, and still is, the finest on earth, and posi 
 tively the only cereal fit for the making of the suc 
 culent Johnny-cake, unexcelled among the foods of 
 mankind. 
 
 I found the insularity of these islanders absolutely 
 correct about the superiority of their corn-meal; 
 also about the supremacy of the Rhode Island tur 
 key as a "pi&ce de resistance" in a banquet. 
 
 But I found much more than this. Rhode Island 
 was not, as I in my Knickerbocker ignorance had 
 supposed, a fraction of New England, supine be 
 tween Massachusetts and Connecticut. It was an 
 independent and sovereign, though diminutive, 
 
 20 
 
A CERTAIN INSULARITY 
 
 State. It had its own traditions and its own ideals, 
 inherited from the Founder, Roger Williams, that 
 best of Puritans, who held that the freedom of his 
 own conscience implied an equal liberty for others. 
 
 The magic names of Massachusetts, Adams, 
 Endicott, Quincy, Cabot, Lodge, Hallowell, Han 
 cock, and so on, carried no spell with them in 
 Rhode Island. There Arnold, Greene, Coggeshall, 
 Coddington, Clarke, Easton, Vernon, Buffum, Ham- 
 mett, Sheffield, and so on, forgive me if I forget a 
 few, were the names of insular renown. Their in 
 heritors, no matter whether they were now engaged 
 in commerce, carpentry, or agriculture, or living 
 quietly on diminished estates in gambrel-roofed 
 houses, belonged to the first families. 
 
 The old retired sea-captains, portly, ruddy men, 
 who had a trace of profanity in their speech even 
 when they argued for the orthodox religion, formed 
 a class of their own. Like Ulysses they could say: 
 
 "Much have I seen and known: cities of men, 
 And manners, climates, councils, governments." 
 
 But unlike that insatiable old wanderer, they pre 
 ferred the climate of their own sea-girt isle to any 
 other in the world. Its ways and manners, councils 
 
 21 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 and traditions, contented them to the core. They 
 had sailed abroad, come home to the best, and set 
 tled down. They were conserved conservatives. 
 
 This was the atmosphere and spirit of the old 
 Newport, with its narrow streets, gambrel roofs, 
 house-doors opening directly upon the sidewalk, 
 square chimneys, and small-paned windows. The 
 new Newport, which was at that time just begin 
 ning to expand its million-dollar "cottages" along 
 the Cliffs, and to display its expensive and much- 
 divorced social luxuriance along the misnamed 
 Bellevue Avenue, made little impression on the real 
 islanders. They regarded it mainly as a "passing 
 show," and incidentally as an opportunity of in 
 creased gains from real estate and retail trade. 
 
 I recall an observation made by my father when 
 he was walking with me and one of my Newport 
 deacons on the Avenue. Gilded youths passed us in 
 gorgeous equipages, and were pointed out and iden 
 tified. That was so-and-so, or such-a-one, who had 
 married this-or-the-other millionaire s daughter. 
 "Well," said my governor, smiling under his brown 
 beard, "I think this part of Newport ought to be 
 called Son-in-Law City. " The remark passed 
 into a proverb in the old town 
 
 22 
 
A CERTAIN INSULARITY 
 
 They were pleasant people to live and work with, 
 those native Newporters and the folks who had set 
 tled in with them. Their self-content, not being 
 bumptious, sweetened their ways and made them 
 easy-going. Many friends I found among them: a 
 gentle, lame bookseller, who knew both men and 
 books; a schoolmaster whose latinity was as admi 
 rable as his natural wit; a cabinet-maker whose hand- 
 wrought furniture was without a flaw; a shoemaker 
 whose soles were as honest as his soul; a retired gen 
 tleman whose chief luxuries were good literature, 
 good music, and good talk; and most of all, my pred 
 ecessor in the pastorate, the old Domine, learned 
 and humorous, a famous story-teller, whose favor 
 ite doctrine was that the first of the virtues is hu 
 mility, of which he had plenty and was very proud. 
 
 In fact the insularity of the place, as I grew to 
 comprehend it, gave me sincere pleasure. The only 
 point on which it irked me was that these island- 
 people seemed to know little and care less about the 
 distinguished position in American history of my 
 own particular island, Long Island, with its fa 
 mous metropolis of Brooklyn, then a large New 
 England village, which has since been absorbed into 
 the cosmopolis of New York. This indifference to 
 
 23 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 the claims of Brooklyn chafed me a bit; but I ac 
 cepted it with the generous superiority of youth. So 
 I had four happy years in Newport. 
 
 The next time I had occasion to consider the true 
 meaning of insularity was when I began to make ac 
 quaintance with the island of Great Britain, includ 
 ing its local divisions of England, Scotland, and 
 Wales. Here is a wonderful bit of "land surrounded 
 by water," situate off the western coast of Europe, 
 which has a more distinct individuality and has ex 
 ercised a more powerful influence on the history of 
 the modern world than any country of the conti 
 nent. 
 
 Now what do you find in contact with the Briton, 
 social, intellectual, political, as the basis of his 
 thought and feeling? The conviction that his isl 
 and is central and superior, and that his own way 
 of looking at things and of doing things is the right 
 way. 
 
 "Every Englishman," wrote Novalis in a spirit 
 of German mockery, "is an island." Yes, beloved 
 philosopher; but at least he is separate from the 
 mainland of Prussia; and he regards the surrounding 
 sea not merely as his protection, but also as his 
 means of communication with the rest of the world. 
 24 
 
A CERTAIN INSULARITY 
 
 He is the most widely travelled of provincials. But 
 he never forgets where he came from. 
 
 The Englishman is that member of the human 
 family who regards his personal habits as sacred 
 rites. His morning tub accompanies him into 
 Thibet. His afternoon tea is a function in India. 
 His pale ale is placarded on the Pyramids. 
 
 The thing that an American notices on first meet 
 ing an Englishman, at home or abroad, is his high 
 coast-line. If you pass that chalk cliff, you discover 
 the richness, fertility, hospitality of the island. No 
 where do you feel more a foreigner (except for the 
 language) than on your first arrival in England; and 
 nowhere more at home, when you have lived through 
 the early shocks into a friendly intimacy. 
 
 The notable social quality of England is the dis 
 tinction between classes and the simplicity within 
 them. George Washington would have understood 
 this better than we do. But even now it is disap 
 pearing a little as the House of Lords is periodically 
 enlarged from the ranks of brewers and makers of 
 newspapers and of soap. All honors to them ! But 
 they are still expected to conform in manners, to 
 say nothing of religion, if they wish to find their 
 places in the blessed British insularity. 
 
 25 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 Often in England have I met with frankness, 
 bluff ness, even brusqueness; but only twice with 
 rudeness. Once it was from a duchess of plebeian 
 birth; which was not astonishing. The other time 
 it was from a shrivelled curator in a university li 
 brary; which gave me a shiver of surprise. 
 
 But since then, what courtesy and hospitality 
 have I found in English and Scotch houses, and in 
 the most ancient of British universities, gray home of 
 the golden dream ! What friendly and fruitful talk 
 in mellow voices, cheered by sound wine before an 
 open fire! What intimate understanding of the 
 best meaning of culture ! What sincere disregard of 
 the pratings of publicity ! What good fellowship, 
 based on the ideals of fine literature and fair morals, 
 shown in Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, and their 
 followers ! 
 
 The only difficulty I had was to persuade some of 
 those modern Englishmen that the supposed Amer 
 icanism, "I guess," was a direct inheritance from 
 Spenser and Shakespeare; and that our pronuncia 
 tion of "been" to rhyme with "bin," and our habit 
 of saying "different from" instead of "different to" 
 had good old English authority behind them. My 
 friends were delightfully insular, but they did not 
 
 26 
 
A CERTAIN INSULARITY 
 
 go far enough back in the history of their insula. 
 Finally I gave up the effort to enlighten them and 
 settled down comfortably with my "Americanisms." 
 
 I had many opportunities to observe the course 
 of the American Rhodes Scholars in Oxford. It ap 
 peared to divide itself into three periods. First, 
 irritation, when they rebelled against English cus 
 toms. Second, imitation, when they vainly en 
 deavored to acquire an Oxford accent and manner. 
 Third (but this only for the finest of them), assimi 
 lation, when they took in the best of English culture 
 and sweetened their inborn, inbred Americanism 
 with it. 
 
 Emerson wrote in 1856: "I am afraid that Eng 
 lish nature is so rank and aggressive as to be a lit 
 tle incompatible with any other. The world is not 
 wide enough for two." 
 
 Hawthorne, a little later, wrote: "An American 
 is not apt to love the English people as a whole, on 
 whatever length of acquaintance. I fancy that 
 they would value our regard, and even reciprocate 
 it in their ungracious way, if we could give it to 
 them in spite of all rebuffs; but they are beset by a 
 curious and inevitable infelicity, which compels 
 them, as it were, to keep up what they consider a 
 
 27 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 wholesome bitterness of feeling between themselves 
 and all other nationalities, especially that of Amer 
 ica." 
 
 These were comments marked by asperity more 
 than by urbanity. But it must be remembered that 
 they were made about the period of our Civil War, 
 which was not precisely the golden age of Anglo- 
 American relations. I think the earlier remarks of 
 Irving and the later observations of Lowell were 
 more to the point. 
 
 The English took unfavorable criticisms from 
 this side of the water ill, yet with far less perturba 
 tion and indignation than we Americans showed at 
 the caustic caricatures of Mrs. Trollope and Charles 
 Dickens. We knew that some of our people were 
 rude and crude; but why remind us of it so rudely 
 and crudely? We were furiously angry and we let 
 the world know it. The English may have been 
 equally vexed, but they made less fuss about it, 
 perhaps because of their more perfect insularity. 
 
 The man whose good opinion of himself is solid 
 can afford to be imperturbable. It is when vanity 
 is insecure that it grows touchy. 
 
 Is not English the only great language in which 
 the pronoun of the first person singular is capital- 
 
 28 
 
A CERTAIN INSULARITY 
 
 ized? How monumentally imposing is that upper 
 case " I " ! If a writer is egoistic the capitals stretch 
 across his page like a colonnade. When he writes 
 "we," he descends to the lower case. 
 
 But this orthographic solipsism, mark you, is 
 shared by Americans, Canadians, Australians, New 
 Zealanders, all who use the English tongue. It is 
 therefore not to be set down to insularity, but to in 
 dividualism, a stark, ineradicable, valuable qual 
 ity of these various folks whose thoughts and feel 
 ings have been nourished by the same language. 
 
 It comes to its philosophic climax in the Yankee 
 Emerson who held the infinity and sufficiency of the 
 private man, and declared, "I wish to say what I 
 think and feel to-day, with the proviso that perhaps 
 to-morrow I shall contradict it all." No Briton, not 
 even Carlyle, could beat that. 
 
 It is all very well to have confidence in yourself, 
 but when it passes into contempt for the rest of 
 mankind it becomes a different matter. Plato said: 
 "Self-will is a companion of solitude." 
 
 There are some men who consider comment on 
 the faults of others equivalent to an exhibition of 
 their own virtues. Self-complacency of that kind is 
 seldom shared by the neighbors. 
 
 29 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 Once in a while a Briton, otherwise of good dis 
 position and temperament, falls into that extrava 
 gance of insularity. Sidney Smith gave an illus 
 tration of it when he wrote in 1820, "Who reads an 
 American book? or goes to an American play? or 
 looks at an American picture or statue?" 
 
 Well, at that very time, a noted English poet, 
 Thomas Campbell, had read the poems of Philip 
 Freneau of New Jersey closely enough to steal a fine 
 verse from one of them, 
 
 "The hunter and the deer, a shade," 
 
 and embody it in his own poem O Connor s Child. 
 At that very time Lamb was praising the Journal 
 of the American Quaker, John Woolman; and Walter 
 Scott was admiring Washington Irving s Sketch 
 Book. At that very time an American painter, 
 Benjamin West of Philadelphia, was, and had been 
 for twenty-seven years, president of the Royal 
 Academy in London. Nay, it is reported that Sid 
 ney Smith himself jocosely threatened to disinherit 
 his daughter if she did not like the writings of Ben 
 jamin Franklin. So you see his supercilious com 
 ment in the Renew was of the nature of an aberra 
 tion. 
 
 30 
 
A CERTAIN INSULARITY 
 
 Something of the same nature I noted in Matthew 
 Arnold, the apostle of sweetness and light, when he 
 visited this country some thirty odd years ago. A 
 genial Scotch-American in Brooklyn, a bon-vivant of 
 the old school, made a feast for him, at which there 
 was excellent company and delicate fare, including, 
 of course, canvasback ducks, done to a turn, just 
 twenty minutes, and a small bottle with each bird. 
 The distinguished guest looked at his plate, seemed 
 at a loss, and then leaning across the table said to 
 an American bishop in a tone rather more audible 
 than he used in his lectures : " Bishop, how is it that 
 you nevah know how to cook birds in your country ? " 
 The bishop blushed, and confessed that he could 
 not quite explain it. 
 
 It was what the French call "une gaffe" of course: 
 but it was not ill-natured, and therefore not really 
 rude. Who would not pardon a little thing like that 
 to the man who had written Essays in Criticism, 
 and Sohrab and Rustem, and Rugby Chapel, and all 
 the rest of Arnold s fine and noble works ? 
 
 The truth is, there is a mental and moral kinship 
 between Great Britain and America which makes 
 little differences in manners and occasional infelic 
 ities seem of small account. We have the same 
 
 31 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 classics in literature, from the English Bible down. 
 We have been nourished on the same conceptions of 
 self-reliance and fair play, individual liberty and 
 social order. We have the same respect for prac 
 tical efficiency, though I think the British lay more 
 stress on solidity, the Americans on rapidity, of 
 work. We feel the same aversion from autocracy 
 and disgust for lawlessness. We like to deal with 
 hard facts; but 
 
 "We live by admiration, hope, and love." 
 
 We resemble each other enough in great things, and 
 differ enough in small, to make a mutual understand 
 ing easy, profitable, and durable, provided we do 
 not suffer the petty politicians to spoil it by frivo 
 lous pranks. 
 
 Who can doubt that this good understanding 
 has been increasing and deepening through the 
 hundred and seven years of peace between Britain 
 and America? We have had disputes, but they 
 have been settled by the method of reason and 
 justice. A thousand ties of grateful friendship have 
 been woven between British and American homes. 
 The best book on the American Commonwealth has 
 been written by Viscount Bryce, a North Briton; 
 
 32 
 
A CERTAIN INSULARITY 
 
 and the best book on the British Constitution by 
 President Lowell of Harvard, a New Englander. Of 
 course there are still things in American humor 
 which the average Britisher does not catch until the 
 next day, and things in British humor which the 
 average Yankee never gets at all. But upon the 
 whole we have learned to "swap jokes" with recip 
 rocal enjoyment. Since the common experience 
 of our soldiers in the great war, fighting side by 
 side in the same cause with France, we have learned 
 that the British are not "a nation of shopkeepers,* 
 and they have learned that the Americans are not 
 "a tribe of dollar-worshippers." 
 
 Yes, I think they even understand what we mean 
 when we join with them heartily in singing God 
 Save the King, but refrain from Ride Britannia on 
 the ground that "the tune is unfamiliar." 
 
 But there is no reserve nor coolness in our love 
 and admiration for their sea-girt home where our 
 forefathers once lived, 
 
 "A right little, tight little island." 
 
 No wonder they are proud of it. From Land s 
 End to John O Groat s House, from the white cliffs 
 of the Channel to the black crags of Devon and 
 
 33 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 Wales, from the broads of Lincolnshire to the firths 
 and sounds of Argyle and Ross, from the rolling 
 Downs to the misty Highlands, Earth has nothing 
 better in the way of an island, 
 
 "A precious stone set in the silver sea." 
 
 How varied, how rich, how abundant ! It is full of 
 shrines and monuments, yet not crammed with 
 them. The sober splendor of the cathedrals, the 
 sense of solid power in the cities, the opulent ver 
 dure and bloom of the countryside, the air of per 
 manence and security alike in castle and cottage, 
 the long intimacy and fresh vigor with which Na 
 ture responds to the touch of man, all these things 
 steal upon your heart quietly and irresistibly and 
 make you feel that Great Britain is the most won 
 derful country in the world next to your own. 
 
 Ireland also is an island, a very beautiful one, 
 and it has its own insularity. The trouble is that 
 it has two insularities, one to the north, and one to 
 the south. When they are harmonized to desire 
 the same thing it will be a fine day for the Green 
 Isle. 
 
 There is a very pretty illustration botlj of the 
 defects and of the virtues of insularity, in a precious 
 
 34 
 
A CERTAIN INSULARITY 
 
 old book. It seems that a certain vessel was 
 wrecked long ago on an island called Malta. The 
 ship was acting, in a way, as a government trans 
 port, for she carried a prisoner of state, named 
 Paul, with his military guard. Now their guide- 
 post was marked "Rome." But by reason of the 
 present rain and the cold they had urgent need 
 of a camp-fire. This the islanders kindled, Paul 
 helping them. As he was laying sticks on the flame, 
 a little poison-snake sprang out and fastened on his 
 hand. Whereupon the islanders concluded that he 
 was a murderer pursued by the divine Nemesis. 
 But when he shook off the deadly worm and felt no 
 harm, they promptly changed their minds and said 
 that he was a god. These superstitions and ex 
 treme judgments belong to the dangerous side of 
 insularity. But the good side came out when the 
 islanders took the castaways into comfortable win 
 ter quarters, entertained them hospitably for three 
 months, and loaded them with useful gifts at their 
 departure. 
 
 I have been struck of late by the multitude of 
 unsuspected islands in the world. 
 
 Regions supposed to be continental turn out to 
 be surrounded by water. Princeton, New Jersey, 
 
 35 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 where I live, is discovered to have an insular qual 
 ity, being enclosed by two rivers, a canal, and the 
 Atlantic Ocean. The completion of the Panama 
 Canal places the United States on an island. Rather 
 a large one, it is true, but perhaps the subtle influ 
 ence of this geographical circumstance may have 
 had something to do with a recent acute attack of 
 insularity in the Senate. 
 
 In fact, reader, you can make an island out of 
 almost anything, if you wish to. An exclusive 
 creed, an arbitrary taste, a political dogmatism, a 
 closed mind, a dislike for children and dogs, yes, 
 even a passion for musk as a personal perfume, will 
 serve well enough to cut you off from other people 
 if that is what you wish. 
 
 But that is certainly the wrong kind of insularity. 
 You might as well be cast away on an uninhabited 
 atoll. 
 
 The best islanders, it seems to me, are those who 
 live on their islands not as hermits, nor as pirates, 
 but as good and hospitable neighbors; pleased with 
 their own isle, trying to improve it, and keeping up 
 communications with the rest of the archipelago. 
 
 There is a great difference between insularity and 
 isolation. 
 
 36 
 
Ill 
 
 A BASKET OF CHIPS 
 
 USE these for your own fire, reader, if you think 
 they are dry enough to make it burn brighter. I 
 don t ask you to agree with me; but let me sit be 
 side you while you prove me wrong. The wet- 
 blanket is the only man I can t endure. 
 
 * * 
 
 Life is just the process of discovering our rela 
 tionships. While they increase, we grow. When 
 they diminish, we shrink. There is no death ex 
 cept for those who shut themselves up and out. 
 
 * * 
 
 First comes a declaration of independence: then 
 
 a recognition of interdependence. 
 
 * * 
 
 It is a pity that men should be divided by their 
 
 pleasures more than by their work. 
 
 * * 
 
 We have a word for suffering together, sym- 
 
 [pathy. But where is the word for rejoicing together ? 
 
 * * 
 
 Every possible form of government has been 
 tried, and found both good and bad. They would 
 
 37 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 all be intolerable but for the quiet people who trust 
 in the Lord and do good. They are the only ones 
 who count. Wherefore I believe there is an in 
 visible kingdom which cannot be shaken. 
 * * 
 
 Why quarrel about the social order? It is the 
 social spirit that makes the difference. 
 
 , 
 
 sat next a fat commercial traveller in the 
 smoking-car. He wore large diamonds, knew noth 
 ing, and found fault (profanely) with everything 
 except the Russian Soviets and the Sinn Fein Re 
 public. God pity his wife, unless she was like 
 
 him. 
 
 * * 
 
 "Tact," said a witty lady, "is the unsaid part of 
 what you think." Yes, and there is only one thing 
 more potent, its opposite, the unthought part of 
 
 what you say. 
 
 * * 
 
 In the big woods this is the law: Every trapper 
 must keep to his own line of traps, but the camp- 
 fire is open to all comers. If you are hungry, part 
 of the food belongs to you. But if you take what 
 
 38 
 
CHIPS 
 
 you don t need, you are a thief and liable to be 
 
 shot. 
 
 * * 
 
 Doubt is like fog. It hides things, but it does 
 
 not destroy them. 
 
 * * 
 
 It is easier to get what we like than to escape 
 from what we dislike. Good music is not difficult 
 to obtain. But it is hard to get away from the 
 ugly noises with which the modern city is cursed. 
 To open a fine vista you have only to cut a few 
 trees. But to shut out an ugly view you must 
 plant a grove and wait for it to grow. You will 
 teach your children good principles more readily 
 
 than you will rid them of bad habits. 
 
 * * 
 
 It is not BummelPs ignorance that offends me. 
 
 It is his ignoring of his ignorance. 
 
 * * 
 
 "Caesar s wife must be above suspicion." Cer- \ 
 Itainly! But how about Caesar? I know of no 
 i pro verb more Turkish than this. 
 
 * * 
 
 Tis a poor education of which the chief result is 
 the acquisition of prejudices. 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 The statesman who always follows public opinion 
 is a pilot who always steers with the tide. He 
 doesn t earn his fee. 
 
 * * 
 
 The mother of poets is the Earth; their father is 
 the Great Spirit. 
 
 40 
 
IV 
 
 SELF, NEIGHBOR, AND COMPANY 
 
 IN every one of those ambulant firms doing busi 
 ness in life, which we call human beings, there are 
 three members: the irreducible individual, the 
 social colleague, and the divine silent partner. 
 
 The last, it appears, may sometimes be excluded 
 from participation in the affairs of the firm. But 
 in that case there is always a danger that the re 
 maining two, (being by nature as inseparable as 
 the Siamese Twins,) will come to the calamity of a 
 falling-out, in which the interests of one or the other 
 will suffer, or, as more frequently happens, they 
 will decline together toward a common bankruptcy. 
 
 This, you will readily perceive, is a metaphorical 
 statement which demands some exercise of the 
 imagination to bring it within the rubric under 
 which the editor of Scribner s announced some of 
 these essays, "comment on current events." 
 
 The current events that interest me most are not 
 those which glitter upon the surface and attract 
 publicity, nor those which can be "head-lined," nor 
 
 41 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 those which emerged yesterday with a splash and 
 are likely to disappear to-morrow or next day under 
 impermanent ripples; but those which began long 
 ago and promise or threaten to continue a long 
 time, those which are unmarketable as news, those 
 which run beneath the noise and turbulence of 
 clashing waves. In short, I propose to find my 
 themes in undercurrent events, and my illustrations 
 as Providence may send them floating along. 
 
 Daily happenings can best be understood through 
 a knowledge of human nature. The key to public 
 problems is in the custody of private life. 
 
 That is what I want to talk about, and that is 
 why I invite consideration of the fortunes of the 
 old-established, much-imperilled, indispensable firm 
 of Self, Neighbor, and Company. 
 
 I 
 
 ONE of the chief things we have to do, on arrival 
 in this strange world, is to make our own acquain 
 tance. The baby does not know himself at all when 
 he begins life. He learns to know his food, his ball, 
 his cradle, his mother, other members of the fam 
 ily, even the household cat, before he knows any 
 thing about himself. 
 
 42 
 
SELF, NEIGHBOR & CO. 
 
 "The baby new to earth and sky, 
 
 What time his tender palm is prest 
 Against the circle of the breast, 
 Has never thought that this is I. " 
 
 When he begins to talk he often shows this 
 limitation in the manner of his speech. He does 
 not say, "I am hungry," "I want so and so." He 
 says "Billy hungry"; "Billy wants"; as if Billy 
 were a simple force of nature. And this, in a cer 
 tain sense, is all that Billy is at that stage of his 
 growth. 
 
 But presently he becomes aware that behind 
 these powers of seeing and hearing, there is some 
 one who sees and hears. Behind these feelings of 
 hunger and cold, there is some one who wants to be 
 fed and warmed. Underneath all these services 
 which his mother and other persons render to the 
 baby, there is a little person whom they love and 
 whom they wish to love them in return. That is a 
 wonderful discovery. The baby becomes his own 
 Christopher Columbus. He finds himself, his me. 
 
 Of course it is an unexplored continent, bound 
 aries, climate, contents, all unknown. But it ex 
 ists. It is just as real as anything outside of it. 
 
 He soon learns to distinguish this little person 
 43 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 from exterior things, even from the house and the 
 body in which he lives. He says "my foot, my 
 hand, my head," claiming ownership, but knowing 
 that neither foot nor hand nor head is himself. He 
 discriminates among the people and other living 
 creatures around him, some friendly and some 
 hostile. He begins to grasp, rather slowly, the dis 
 tinction between his own things and the things of 
 others. He learns that the appetites and desires, 
 which at first seemed irresistible powers of nature, 
 are personal to himself and must be controlled in 
 relation to the wants and needs of other persons 
 around him, otherwise disagreeable consequences 
 will ensue. He finds out not only that Billy is, but 
 that Billy belongs. He exists, but not alone. He is 
 part of a circle of life. Into this circle he must try 
 to fit his new-found self, for joy or sorrow, for good 
 or ill. 
 
 It is from this double discovery, the finding of 
 himself, and the finding of his relation to things and 
 to other persons, that his whole growth as a man, 
 a thinking, feeling, acting individual, must proceed. 
 His schooling, his pleasures, his friendships, his oc 
 cupation, his citizenship, everything must be under 
 the wing-and-wing impulse of these two facts: first, 
 that Billy is; and second, that Billy belongs. 
 
 44 
 
SELF, NEIGHBOR & CO. 
 
 If we have no real self, no thoughts, no feelings, 
 no personality of our own, we are not persons at 
 all. We are mere parts of a machine. 
 
 If on the other hand we are ruled only by self- 
 will, self-interest, we are sure to injure other peo 
 ple, and in the end to destroy our own happiness. 
 We become objectionable members of the commu 
 nity, nuisances, if not criminals. 
 
 The most difficult problem in the conduct of life 
 is the harmonizing of these two principles, so that 
 they will work together. 
 
 Every one is born an individual, a self; and that 
 self has the right (which is also a duty) to live and 
 grow. 
 
 Every one is likewise born a neighbor; with ties 
 and obligations and duties which spread out on all 
 sides. Which has the higher claim? Or are they 
 equal ? 
 
 In theory it is easy to find an answer sounding 
 well enough. But in practice, when there are only 
 two partners in the firm, they often come to a dead- 
 lockjand stand bickering in a grievous desperation 
 betwixt the devil of Egoism and the deep sea of 
 Altruism. 
 
 Of the two, it must be admitted, the devil has 
 the closer hold on us, but the deep sea is by far the 
 
 45 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 cleaner and less treacherous. Yet I confess to a 
 rooted distrust of all "isms." They imply a sur 
 render of something precious; they hint mutilation 
 and bondage, j 
 
 Is there no way of breaking the deadlock, of 
 reconciling the apparently conflicting interests and 
 saving the firm? The only way that I can see is 
 through the guidance and authority of the third 
 partner, who is so much wiser and more fair than 
 either of the others, to both of whom, indeed, he is 
 bound by an equal love. To believe this and to act 
 upon it is religion. 
 
 Ordinarily, if we speak of religion at all, we use 
 quiet tones and conventional words. But there are 
 times when the want of it haunts us like a passion, 
 burns us like a fever, pierces us to the marrow with 
 unendurable cold. Out of some tragic clash of duty 
 and desire; after some harrowing vision of the wide 
 spread sufferings of mankind, some poignant hear 
 ing of 
 
 " the fierce confederate storm 
 Of sorrow barricadoed evermore 
 Within the walls of cities"; 
 
 under some tense pressure of reproach, regret, and 
 fear; out of our bewilderment and urgent need, we 
 
 46 
 
SELF, NEIGHBOR & CO. 
 
 would fain cry aloud, as a confused soul in mortal 
 peril might shout for guidance and help. 
 
 But the answer would come then, as it comes now, 
 not in the whirlwind, the earthquake, or the fire, 
 but in a voice of gentle stillness, saying, "Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Here is balm 
 of Gilead; oil and wine for the broken traveller on 
 the Jericho Road; social wisdom from the fountain- 
 head for the individual and for society. Here is the 
 heavenly plan of the silent partner, to be worked 
 out through all the world s experiments. Without 
 this, none of them can succeed, be it never so an 
 gelic. With this, none but the devilish ones can 
 utterly fail. 
 
 II 
 
 How then are we entitled and bound to love 
 self ? That, of course, is the first question, for upon 
 the answer to that depends the line of love which we 
 must follow toward our neighbor. 
 
 Said Rabbi Hillel: "If I am not for myself, who 
 will be for me ? But if I care for myself only, what 
 am I ? And if not now, when ? " 
 
 Everybody will agree that we must not have a 
 foolish, fond, pampering, spoiling affection for our- 
 
 47 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 selves. We ought not to indulge our own whims 
 and passions, our sloth and selfishness. We ought 
 to dislike and repress that which is evil and mean in 
 us, and to cherish that which is good and generous. 
 The only kind of love for ourselves which is per 
 missible must be wise and clean and careful; it must 
 have justice in it as well as mercy; it must be capa 
 ble of discipline as well as of encouragement; it 
 must strive to keep the soul above the body, and to 
 develop both. ~4r~~ 
 
 Precisely thus, and not otherwise, we should love 
 our neighbors: with a steady, sane, liberating and 
 helpful love, which always seeks to bring out their 
 best. 
 
 We and they are bound up together in the bundle 
 of life. We cannot advance if they go backward. 
 We cannot be truly happy if they abide in misery. 
 We cannot be really saved if we make no effort to 
 save them. We must withstand in them, just as in 
 ourselves, the things that are evil and ought not to 
 be loved. 
 
 Religion does not tell us to love or to encourage 
 our neighbors faults: but to love them in spite of 
 their faults and to do what we can to better them. 
 
 True neighbor-love, then, will not be a weak, 
 48 
 
SELF, NEIGHBOR & CO. 
 
 wras, sentimental thing. It will have a con 
 science. It will be capable, ottr,ooeasroHs-of friendly 
 warning and reproof. It will even accept, if need be 
 for the protection of ourselves and other neighbors, 
 ^OrfbDBstwfckA punishment. I may have a 
 rowdy or a thief for a neighbor, but my love ought 
 not to embrace rowdiness or thievery in him any 
 more than in myself. The same thing is true of 
 malice or envy or laziness or a slanderous tongue. 
 
 But the trouble with us is that our self-reproach is 
 commonly too soft and tender even to pierce the 
 skin, while most of the reproof or restraint or pun 
 ishment which we give the neighbor is not really 
 animated by love, but by malice, or jealousy, or 
 contempt. That is why it so often fails. It mXist 
 have good-will back of it and shining through it. 
 
 If the people of a community who are thoroughly 
 
 good in themselves would also be good for others, 
 \. ^. 
 
 they would have power to lift up the whole tone of 
 life and would be ten times more happy, and more 
 useful. 
 
 Doing one s duty on the side of neighborhood 
 leads to the best results on the side of personality. 
 
 If a man concentrates his attention and affection 
 and effort on himself, he is not doing the best, but 
 
 49 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 the worst for himself. He is going to be a smooth, 
 self-satisfied prig, or a so^f old curmudgeon. Even 
 if he has some kind of a theology it will not do him 
 much good. It is sure to be as narrow and hollow 
 as an empty razor-shell on the beach. 
 
 According to the Bible, that kind of theology does 
 not count with God. He cares more for sinners than 
 for the self-righteous. But he cares most for the 
 neighborly folks who try to do right. They are 
 his salt of the earth. They are his lights in the 
 world. 
 
 Some Christians are like candles that have been 
 lit once and then put away in a cupboard to be 
 eaten up by mice. How much better to stay lit and 
 keep on burning even till the candle is burned out, 
 so long as it gives light ! 
 
 There are plehty of us who love ourselves as if 
 we were our own grandmothers. Whenever the 
 little chap cries for more candy, or somebody else s 
 doll, we let him have it. Dear little fellow, he is so 
 cunning! 
 
 But the scriptural image of the divine love, which 
 is to be our pattern, is not indulgent grandmother- 
 hood but perfect fatherhood. Now a good father 
 desires each of his children to grow up, to develop. 
 
 50 
 
SELF, NEIGHBOR & CO. 
 
 He does not wish them all alike. But he wishes the 
 whole family to have peace and happiness. He 
 wants harmony from the different instruments. 
 
 Equality of condition is nowhere written in the 
 Christian programme. In fact the parable of the 
 talents implies a continuing state of inequality. 
 
 Yet the real curse of the one-talent man is not the 
 poverty of his portion, but the meanness and selfish 
 ness of his heart. He is a slacker, a shirker, a 
 striker, a lock-out man, a parasite. His unused 
 talent becomes a fungus. 
 
 That the rich and the poor are likely to be with 
 us as long as men differ in ability and industry, is 
 clearly intimated in the Good Book as well as in 
 the dry tables of political economy. But the Good 
 Book adds a prediction of woe to the rich if they 
 suffer the pride of wealth to divide them from the 
 poor. 
 
 "Go to, now, ye rich men, weep and howl for 
 your miseries that shall come upon you. Your 
 riches are corrupted and your garments are moth- 
 eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the 
 rust of them shall be a witness against you, and 
 shall eat your flesh as it were fire." 
 
 Let the economist write this into his tables; it is 
 51 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 essential to the correctness of his computations for 
 this world as well as for the next. 
 
 Outward equality of goods without the spirit of 
 neighborliness is equivalent to an inward com 
 munity of evils. I cannot imagine a state more like 
 hell, this side of Russia. Yet even in Russia the 
 outward equality is a sham, a gross and palpable 
 fraud. Who will assert so much as a decent sem 
 blance of parity between Lenine fattening in his 
 stolen palace and Andreyef starving to death in 
 exile? 
 
 Charity is scorned and derided by the modern 
 communist. He will none of it. But who can con 
 ceive a social order, framed of the present human 
 stuff, in which kindness will not be desirable, neces 
 sary, and beautiful? 
 
 Kindness is more than mercy tempering justice. 
 It is love thoughtless of reward. It is that godlike 
 impulse which gives to others not barely what they 
 have earned, but what they need. 
 
 None of us can get through life without needing 
 charity and longing for it; and there is much com 
 fort in the promise that if we show it on earth we 
 shall find it in Heaven. 
 
SELF, NEIGHBOR & CO. 
 
 Ill 
 
 WAR, with its attendant horrors, seems like an 
 outrage upon love. And so it is, in its origin and 
 source. "From whence come wars and fightings 
 among you? Come they not hence, even of your 
 lusts that war in your members ? Ye lust and have 
 not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain." 
 
 Yet there is a war against war which is set in the 
 ivery key of "Love thy neighbor as thyself." It was 
 to frustrate a gigantic crime and to redress villain 
 ous wrong that the Allies took up arms in the World 
 War, and America at last joined them. Had her 
 heart been quicker, her feet more swift, she might 
 lave reached the Jericho Road in time to stop the 
 robbers before they began their cruel work. Who 
 can tell ? At least, having arrived, she did her best 
 and beat them off. 
 
 Great sacrifice, but far greater reward, came to 
 America in the doing of that clear duty. Never 
 were "we, the people of the United States," so 
 thoroughly united as in that vast co-operation. 
 Not only in mobilizing all our forces and resources 
 For the urgent business of battle, but also in utiliz 
 ing all the powers of sympathy and help that rust 
 
 53 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 unused in men, women, and children, for the Good 
 Samaritan work of Red Cross and Relief Commis 
 sion, we learned what it means to be born a neighbor 
 as well as a person. 
 
 The self-sufficiency, not to say self-complacency, 
 of the American temperament was absorbed and 
 fused into something larger and better. For a while 
 we ceased to satisfy ourselves with "paddle your 
 own canoe," and took up the finer motto, "for the 
 good of the ship." 
 
 With all its trials, privations, and sorrows, yes, 
 even despite its individual exposures of greed and 
 graft, the war-time was a time of elevation and 
 enlargement of spirit for the people of America. 
 
 Why not carry these benefits of a just war well 
 won, with us into the time of peace ? Why not keep 
 the lesson learned at such a cost ? No man, no com 
 munity, no nation liveth to self alone. 
 
 Joubert has well said: "To wish to do without 
 other men and to be under obligation to no one, is a 
 sure mark of a mind devoid of feeling." To this I 
 would add: A mind devoid of feeling never reasons 
 right in the affairs of life, because feeling is a vital 
 element of sound reasoning. 
 
 54 
 
SELF, NEIGHBOR & CO. 
 
 IV 
 
 Two philosophies have long contended for the 
 control of thought. One is called Individualism, 
 because it lays the emphasis upon the single person, 
 his rights, privileges, liberties, happiness. The 
 other is called Socialism, because it lays the em 
 phasis on the community. The partisans of these 
 two theories fight each other furiously. 
 
 It seems to me that both theories are wrong, when 
 they are interpreted exclusively and with damna 
 tory clauses. Each has a ray of truth in it when it 
 takes account of the other. 
 
 The most perfect type of individualism is the 
 "rogue" elephant, solitary, predatory, miserable, 
 a torment to himself and a terror to others. 
 
 The most perfect example of pure socialism is a 
 swarm of bees, where personality is nil, every mem 
 ber gets the same pay, board and lodging, and 
 the only object is to perpetuate the swarm and keep 
 the hive full. 
 
 But without the aid of man they never produce a 
 better bee or a more perfect hive. Is humanity to 
 come down to that level? 
 
 The Talmud speaks scorn of a world where "one 
 55 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 man eats and another says grace." Is it much 
 better than a world where everybody gorges and 
 nobody says grace? 
 
 I can see no reason, either in morals or in re 
 ligion, for the perpetuation of the human swarm, 
 except for the development and perfecting of the 
 human souls who make mankind. What real good 
 appears in the mere continuance of any community, 
 say New York or Nyack, unless you think of the 
 men and women and children who live there, each 
 one the inheritor of a spark of the Divine Life, 
 which may be cherished and enlarged into a flame 
 of beautiful and potent light? There is your rea 
 son for sacrifice. There is your reason for service. 
 The community has a claim to live for the sake of 
 the better men and women who are going to live in 
 it and make it better. 
 
 So then, amid the confusion at the present cross 
 roads where the counsels of the many are so loud 
 and divergent, we find a little neglected guide-post. 
 Look, tis so old and weather-beaten that some of 
 the letters are worn away; yet the sense of it is still 
 legible: 
 
 LOVE NEIGHBOR SELF 
 56 
 
SELF, NEIGHBOR & CO. 
 
 It reads like a general order. 
 
 Suppose we should try one of these roads marked 
 "Government Ownership" or "Collective Bargain 
 ing" or "High Productiveness" or "Independence 
 of Employers" or "Control by Employees," and 
 find that it was leading us away from our objective. 
 Might not the order nerve us to turn back ? 
 
 Or, if the road seemed to be a right one, evidently 
 bringing us nearer to our objective, wouldn t the 
 order encourage us to carry on, and cheer us through 
 the hardships of the way ? 
 
 Let no one imagine that it will be easy. A gen 
 eral order is far more difficult to follow than a 
 definite programme. Most men prefer a concrete 
 dose of medicine, however bitter, to a long course 
 of hygienic living. 
 
 To live up to a principle is harder than to obey a 
 rule. But just for that reason it may be better. 
 
 Let us try it, Self and Neighbor, try it more 
 seriously than we have yet done. The drop of 
 good- will in all our experiments! The touch of 
 kindness in all our efforts ! The purpose of benefi- 
 cenc jui-all-cwr- plaiis ! For a year, a month, even 
 a week, do you think we can do it ? 
 
 You are my partner, and I am yours. But ia tell 
 ^ 57 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 the truth, between us we have small capital and less 
 experience. To carry out this enterprise we shall 
 need the help of our third partner, the divine 
 silent one who knows all. 
 
 58 
 
SYMPATHETIC ANTIPATHIES 
 
 BEING by conviction as well as by profession an 
 adherent of the creed of good-will and an advocate 
 of universal charity, I am not a little chagrined to 
 discover, (and hereby confess,) the considerable 
 part which distastes and antipathies play in my 
 life. 
 
 My likings are strong enough to give assurance 
 of health. The charms of a wooded mountain coun 
 try and swift-flowing streams; American elm-trees, 
 white pines, and silver birches; the taste of fresh 
 asparagus, green peppers, and bacon; the company 
 of frank, lively, sensible, and unenvious people; the 
 reading of books well written on subjects worth 
 writing about; to all these and many other attrac 
 tions I am open and pliable, without much reason 
 ing or moral suasion. 
 
 On the other hand my dislikings, though less 
 numerous, are quite as strong. A flat, bald country, 
 dry or damp; dumplings, veal, and salt codfish; a 
 clay soil ; a lymphatic temperament in a woman, and 
 a sour, jealous disposition in a man; books about 
 
 59 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 nothing, written in a sloppy or pretentious style 
 these are things that I cannot abide. 
 
 Nor am I greatly concerned to justify such-like 
 repugnancies by abstract reasoning or high ethical 
 or political considerations. They belong to the 
 sphere of personal privilege. Without some ad 
 mixture of this kind, temperamental rather than 
 logical, we can hardly maintain our existence as real 
 individuals. Mankind, thus denatured, would be 
 reduced to the dreary stratifications of class-con 
 sciousness. Given the label of his church, or political 
 party, or handicraft, or profession, you could pre 
 dict precisely what your quasi-man would be and 
 do. The more eminent in his type, the more sapless 
 and savorless would he be in his person. He would 
 resemble that modern statue which Julius Hare de 
 scribes in "Guesses at Truth": "Like the yolk of 
 an egg cased in the soft albumen of a pseudo-ideal." 
 
 A man refined or sublimated beyond a capacity 
 for simple, natural dislikes is distinctly not a lik 
 able character. Beneath the glossy surface of a 
 superior neutrality in minor things, he may hide a 
 major hatred, a fixed, unalterable enmity, irrational 
 as the jaundice and implacable as a vendetta. 
 
 Give me rather the man of frank though foolish 
 60 
 
SYMPATHETIC ANTIPATHIES 
 
 aversions; the man who protests that he knows 
 nothing about art but is quite sure of what he does 
 not like, and declines to be bothered with it; the 
 man who has no better cause to give for his repug 
 nancy to So-and-So than that his mouth is cut the 
 wrong way, or that he talks through his nose and 
 pronounces "programme" to rhyme with "po 
 grom." These are pardonable prejudices. They are 
 to be placed in the necessary, non-moral region of 
 human life. They belong to the domain of unac 
 countable reactions, covered by the classic quat 
 rain, 
 
 "I do not love thee, Doctor Fell, 
 The reason why I cannot tell; 
 But this alone I know full well, 
 I do not love thee, Doctor Fell." 
 
 Now, the subject of these famous lines was an 
 eminently respectable scholar and prelate, dean of 
 Christ Church, and afterward Bishop of Oxford, in 
 the seventeenth century. The author of the lines 
 was one Tom Brown, a student at Christ Church, 
 and a vagarious fellow whom Addison character 
 ized as "of Facetious Memory." Yet I am prepared 
 to defend the irregular Tom Brown in his confession 
 that he disliked the established John Fell without as- 
 
 61 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 signable reasons. At all events, but for this whim 
 sical antipathy the name of Doctor Fell would never 
 have become a household word. So far, it benefited 
 him. But what it did to handicap Tom Brown s 
 academic career, we know not. 
 
 It must be admitted, for candor s sake, that these 
 unreasoned dislikes are not generally profitable in 
 the affairs of life. They act as restraints and in 
 hibitions: whether wise or not, God alone knoweth 
 that alloweth them. 
 
 I recall that my father, (of blessed memory,) 
 had an aversion from an unknown man whom he 
 used to meet and pass in his morning walks in the 
 city of Brooklyn, going at a certain hour through 
 Remsen Street from his house to his study in the 
 church which he served. This man he pointed out 
 to me once as we walked together. He was quite 
 an ordinary citizen, tailor-made, glum-faced, sour- 
 looking, with a white patch over one eye, and of a 
 general scorbutic appearance, unpleasant but not 
 terrifying. Yet my father felt so strong a detesta 
 tion for the mere look of the man, that he regarded 
 it as ominous and malign, and fell into the habit of 
 walking around by way of Montague Street, rather 
 than risk meeting his bete noire in Remsen Street. 
 
 62 
 
SYMPATHETIC ANTIPATHIES 
 
 It was absurd no doubt, but not reprehensible; and 
 it had one good result, a little longer exercise for 
 my father in the fresh air every morning. 
 
 My own dislikings have often demanded pay 
 ment for their indulgence. What shall a man who 
 abhors veal, and believes that if he eats it he will 
 presently faint away and perhaps die of acute indi 
 gestion, what shall such a man do at the tables- 
 d hote of Europe ? He must practise vegetarianism, 
 or bribe the waiter to procure a substitute for the 
 unleavened Kalbfleisch. 
 
 My absolute inability to love flat and treeless 
 countries, my positive aversion from sage-brush 
 and alkali, have prevented me from sharing the 
 eloquent affection of my Cousin John for The Desert. 
 He may have it all if he likes. Also he may have 
 the paintings of Matisse, and the plays of the very 
 Belgian Shakespeare, Maeterlinck, and the anthol 
 ogies of Spoon River and other level and bald 
 localities, if they please him. To me they are as 
 veal, and clay, and salt codfish. Je m en fiche. 
 Poorer this abstinence may make me, but it leaves 
 me honest. And it does not deprive me of the 
 pleasure of admiring the gusto, (to use Hazlitt s 
 word,) with which my Cousin John praises the desert 
 
 63 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 and finds excuse for its lack of eyebrows and eye 
 lashes in the wondrous lights reflected in its ever- 
 open eyes. By proxy I enjoy it through his enjoy 
 ment. 
 
 "But not for all his faith can see, 
 Would I that desert-dweller be." 
 
 Here we approach, by a devious but necessary 
 detour, the particular subject of this paper. Dis 
 likes, aversions, repugnancies, are inevitable, and 
 therefore to a certain extent defensible. But only 
 those are wholesome and profitable which have 
 in them a little ray of comprehension, a little drop 
 of love. 
 
 Trust not your antipathies unless they are sym 
 pathetic. 
 
 Do you remember how Charles Lamb begins 
 his essay on "All Fools Day"? 
 
 "The compliments of the season to my worthy 
 masters, and a merry first of April to us all!" 
 
 How often, if we have the priceless art of being 
 sincere with ourselves, do we recognize in the quali 
 ties which displease us in others, the very imps and 
 unruly sprites which cause the most trouble in our 
 own interior economy ! At home we are inclined 
 
 64 
 
SYMPATHETIC ANTIPATHIES 
 
 to go gently with them, to make allowances, even 
 to plead excuse for our bothersome offspring. And 
 who shall say that this is altogether wrong or ab 
 solutely unwise ? Many a vice is but a virtue over 
 driven. Pruning is better than extermination. 
 
 But why not apply the same principle to what 
 we see in our neighbor s back garden, or in his front 
 yard? Why not remember that he probably has 
 as much trouble with his faults and foibles as we 
 have with our own ? And if they happen to be alike, 
 why not use them for self-enlightenment and cor 
 rection ? 
 
 The things that we dislike in others may serve 
 as mirrors to ourselves. But let us not follow the 
 example of that foolish person described in the 
 Epistle of St. James, who "beholding his natural 
 face in a glass, goeth his way and straightway for- 
 getteth what manner of man he was." 
 
 Take that tendency to quick and fierce anger 
 which the Romans called iracundia, and in later 
 Latin stomachatio, as if it were a sudden rising of 
 the gorge. We call it irascibility. It is not a lov 
 able quality. Yet those of us who are afflicted with 
 it would not really admit that it is only and alto 
 gether evil. We would plead the excuses of right- 
 
 65 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 eous wrath; we would claim that good fuel answers 
 quickly to the flame; we would say, as if it were a 
 complete justification, "you knew I had a hasty 
 temper; why did you provoke me?" 
 
 Suppose we should apply to others the same argu 
 ments and palliations that we use for ourselves. 
 Suppose that the great quarrel of to-day between 
 two irascible men, in which the interests of all na 
 tions and of many millions of mankind are involved, 
 should have its natural antipathies loosened and 
 resolved by the infusion of a good-humored drop 
 of sympathy. Would it not have a happy effect? 
 
 I like the advice of Plutarch in the third volume 
 of his "Morals," where he says, "Should you quarrel 
 with your brother, avoid intercourse with his enemies, 
 and hold correspondence with his friends. 9 
 
 This seems to be a practical comment on the 
 words of St. Paul, wherein we find both a reasonable 
 concession to the infirmity of our human tempers 
 and a Christian counsel for controlling them. "Be 
 ye angry," says he, quite positively, as if we could 
 not help it, "and sin not. Let not the sun go down 
 upon your wrath." 
 
 Anger that breaks out is troublesome. Anger 
 that sinks in is fatal. 
 
SYMPATHETIC ANTIPATHIES 
 
 A well-founded mistrust of treacherous persons 
 we may keep. But God save us from the poison 
 of a cherished grudge. 
 
 Consider in like manner, the foible of vanity. 
 Nothing is more apt to evoke antipathy, especially 
 in those who are tinctured with the same fault. 
 
 The arrival of a person with a too manifest good 
 opinion of himself in a small community where con 
 ceit is endemic, seems like a direct challenge to all 
 the legitimate inheritors of self-complacency. It 
 becomes their pleasure as well as their duty to meet 
 the emergency and to rescue their neighbor from 
 his annoying sin. 
 
 Sometimes they go about it with open ridicule, 
 which is wholesome and harmless enough, if it be 
 free from malice. At other times a kind of League 
 to Enforce Humility is silently formed and every 
 body is proud to have a modest part in its work. 
 
 The best leader in such a campaign of levelling 
 improvement is usually a female who has passed 
 middle age in unquestioned respectability and has 
 established a local reputation for mordant wit. 
 Being cased in the defensive armor of self-satis 
 faction, she is the more free to let fly at random 
 with her sharp-pointed tongue. 
 
 67 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 An aged dame of this type I once knew, who was 
 a terror to the fresh and exuberant, and a perpetual 
 joy to herself. She was a past mistress in the art 
 of making people feel uncomfortable when she 
 thought they needed it. For those who crossed 
 her path in the flush of a first success or in the glow 
 of some long task finally accomplished, she had 
 the vigilant eye of a sleepless monitor, and the swift, 
 unerring weapon of a winged and barbed word. 
 After such a discharge you could see her fluffing 
 her feathers and preening herself like a hen who has 
 just performed the miracle of laying an egg. "Aha," 
 she seemed to say, "did you watch me do that? 
 How neatly I brought that cockscomb down ! Van 
 ity is a thing that I cannot endure." 
 
 One is reminded of the great word which George 
 Meredith, in "The Egoist," makes Sir Willoughby 
 Patterne utter to Clara, his hapless fianc6e: "Be 
 ware of marrying an Egoist, my dear ! " 
 
 An English rhymer has a verse on this subject: 
 
 The hunters of Conceit pursue a fox 
 Endowed with magic that deludes and mocks; 
 He doubles, turns, and ere they end the race, 
 Each dog that follows wears a foxy face; 
 The scent they ran by on themselves is found, 
 And now they chase each other round and round. 
 68 
 
SYMPATHETIC ANTIPATHIES 
 
 The wisest and most amiable of mankind are al 
 ways aware of this subtle and tricksy quality of 
 conceit, which masquerades in our Sunday clothes 
 and peeps out at us from our own photographs. 
 Doth not Michel de Montaigne, after humbly ac 
 knowledging that he has no memory, mollify that 
 self -accusation by remarking that "it is commonly 
 scene by experience that excellent memories do 
 rather accompany weake judgements"? Bravo, 
 intrepid philosopher of Perigord and writer of the 
 most frankly ingenuous essays ever penned ! Why 
 should we take umbrage at your further confes 
 sion? "Glorie and curiositie are the scourges of 
 our soules. The one induceth us to have an oare 
 in every ship, and the other forbiddeth us to leave 
 anything unresolved or undecided." 
 
 Listen also to a more reverend doctor, Blaise 
 Pascal, of Paris and Port Royal. "We toil without 
 ceasing," says he, "to adorn and to uphold our 
 imaginary self, while we neglect our true self alto 
 gether. We would gladly act as poltroons to ac 
 quire the reputation of being brave. Those who 
 write against glory would fain have the glory of 
 having written well. Those who read them would 
 fain have the glory of having read. And 7, who am 
 
 69 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 writing this, perhaps I also have the same desire. 
 And you, who read, perhaps you will have it also. 
 Curiosity is nothing but vanity. Generally one 
 wishes to know merely in order to talk about it." 
 
 This is an admirable, thoroughgoing discourse, 
 wherein the preacher includes himself with the con 
 gregation, and admits, smiling, that humor is not 
 out of place in a serious sermon. 
 
 Come from behind your pillar, brother Humilio ! 
 Seek not to evade your spoonful of the medicine. 
 Come out, and let us all laugh together and repent 
 and try to mend our ways. 
 
 Tis no new discovery, this streak of vainglory 
 running all through the stuff of our humanity. 
 Plutarch lets in the light upon it when he notes that 
 those who praise an obscure life seek to win fame by 
 their praise of it. He compares them to watermen 
 "who look astern while they row the boat ahead, 
 still so managing the strokes of the oar that the 
 vessel may make on to its port." A few paragraphs 
 later, he goes even beyond this and praises outright 
 the men who seek honor and good repute. "Would 
 you have them out of the way," he asks ironically, 
 "for fear they should set others a good example, 
 and allure others to virtue out of emulation of the 
 precedent ? " 
 
 70 
 
SYMPATHETIC ANTIPATHIES 
 
 Undoubtedly there is a popular antipathy to 
 those who evidently aim at eminence. Paul Elmer 
 More, in one of his delightful Shelburne essays, de 
 scribes it as a lurking malady of the democratic 
 spirit, "a kind of malaise at distinction, wherever 
 seen and however manifested." 
 
 Against this I think we should be on our guard 
 and protect ourselves by whatever prophylactic we 
 can find, just as carefully as against the far more 
 open fault of vanity. Indeed this uneasy resent 
 ment at excellence is a covert form of vanity, 
 vanitas vulgi, which cries with the Irishman "One 
 man is as good as another, and better too ! Down 
 wid all top-hats!" 
 
 It is to this ingrowing self -flattery of democracies 
 rather than to the so-called ingratitude of republics 
 that I would ascribe much of the niggling detrac 
 tion that has followed many great men in our coun 
 try. First, a brilliant burst of applause; then a 
 steady rain of abuse; then, (after the man is dead,) a 
 clearing sky and a worthy monument. 
 
 Washington, who liberated the country, was ac 
 cused of truckling to the British and tyrannizing 
 over the Americans. Lincoln, who preserved the 
 Union, was accused of currying favor with the 
 South because he declined to "hang Jeff Davis to a 
 
 71 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 sour apple-tree," or perform other vengeful antics 
 at the bidding of the Yankee irreconcilables. Roose 
 velt, who preached and practised Americanism on 
 a four-square basis, was called a "grand-stand 
 player," because he evidently relished the plaudits 
 which followed a brave speech or a good stroke. 
 (And now Woodrow Wilson is accused of the same 
 heinous crime of grand-stand play because he has 
 plainly sought the honor of promoting the largest 
 plan to defend peace on earth that the world has 
 ever seen. Would that some of those who gibe and 
 fleer at him might betray in themselves a like am 
 bition, an equal willingness to toil, to put aside ease 
 and comfort, to imperil health and life itself for the 
 sake of realizing an ideal whose nobility and gener 
 ous daring none can deny./ 
 
 Grand-stand players, forsooth ! Then so was 
 Nelson a grand-stand player when he cried at Cape 
 St. Vincent "Westminster Abbey or Victory." So 
 was William of Orange when he aimed to win, and 
 won, from all his people the more than kingly title 
 of "Father." So was Themistocles, the savior of 
 Athens, when he plainly took delight in the applause 
 of the stadium, and showed himself philotimotatos, a 
 lover of honor. So has every true hero and notable 
 
 72 
 
SYMPATHETIC ANTIPATHIES 
 
 benefactor been of the company of those who labor 
 to deserve, and are not ashamed to enjoy, the ap 
 proval of their fellow men, if it come on the path of 
 duty and in obedience to the divine command. By 
 such renown their power for good is increased, and 
 the radiance of their example is shed abroad lika 
 the light of a candle set on a high place. 
 
 Therefore I would not be among the detractors of 
 the great or the minifiers of the illustrious. But 
 the same trouble and toil which those criticasters 
 give themselves to bedim good names and find or 
 paint blots on fair scutcheons, would I gladly take 
 to brighten the shield of virtue, to find the most 
 favorable interpretation of the errors of the wise, 
 and to discover new reasons for the admiration of 
 the excellent. Well spoke Jesus the son of Sirach 
 when he said: "Let us now praise famous men, and 
 our fathers that begat us; leaders of the people by 
 their counsels, and by their understanding men of 
 learning for the people; all these were honored 
 in their generations, and were a glory in their 
 days." 
 
 But from these heights let us return to the case of 
 Themistocles. It offers an amusing illustration of 
 the vagaries of vanity in human nature. It appears 
 
 73 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 that when the battle of Salamis had been gloriously 
 won under his leadership, a council was held to 
 award the supreme prize of valor. Every general 
 present voted for himself as FIRST in valor; but 
 all voted for Themistocles as SECOND. So the 
 prize was given to him. And I imagine that it was 
 done with general laughter and good humor. 
 
 In fact, the only kind of vanity in ourselves that 
 is dangerous is that which cannot endure to be 
 laughed at. And the only kind of vanity in others 
 that is intolerable is that which denies itself to 
 friendly callers, assumes an alias, and puts on the 
 ragged cloak and broken sandals of a mock humil 
 ity. All other kinds are tolerable; and if we are 
 honest and mindful of our own infirmity, we can but 
 feel toward them a sympathetic antipathy. 
 
 There are many other common faults and fail 
 ings besides vanity, which we dislike in our neigh 
 bors and for which we may find some explanation, 
 if not excuse, if we will but look more closely into 
 ourselves. 
 
 Does Grandioso exaggerate ? Truly, it is a griev 
 ous habit. But have not you, dear Piscator, an in 
 clination to round out your fish-stories with an 
 extra pound? You do it for the pleasure of your 
 
 74 
 
SYMPATHETIC ANTIPATHIES 
 
 hearers, of course, but will you not allow the same 
 palliation to your friend? 
 
 Dogmatism is antipathetic to most men. Yet 
 there is hardly one of us who will not "lay down the 
 law" when he gets on his favorite subject. So much 
 the better, if we avoid sentences and penalties for 
 unbelief. 
 
 To tell you of all the things to which my antip 
 athies are sympathetic would be too long a tale. 
 It would amount to a last confession and a judg 
 ment-day account. It would not interest you. The 
 camp-fire of this night burns low. Before it goes out, 
 let us turn back to our most common failing and 
 universal antipathy, vanity, and see if we can find 
 a little guide-post on the way out. 
 
 For the mitigation and restraint of conceit, when 
 it becomes acute (either in its gratified or its un- 
 gratified form), there is no better remedy than to 
 frequent the company of little people to whom your 
 occupation and your achievements (or failures) are 
 unknown. Elsewhere you may find heating flattery, 
 or freezing contempt. But here you may forget 
 your wounds and cool your fever in that fresh and 
 impartial air which belongs to the society of young 
 children. If the little ones see you sad, they will 
 
 75 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 give you a glance of sorrow, they know not why, and 
 then demand a new story. If they see you glad, 
 they will rejoice with you, they know not why, and 
 then call you to their merriest play. It is helpful to 
 get away from yourself. 
 
 Let the writer forsake his Poetry Societies and 
 Authors* Leagues, and go into the woods where 
 the lumbermen and guides and hunters have never 
 heard of his books, and yet manage to live with 
 some joy. Let the captain of industry or finance 
 take a little voyage among the fishermen who know 
 nothing of his triumphs or defeats on the Exchange. 
 Let the professor find friends among farmers or 
 commercial travellers who ignore the difference be 
 tween Q.E.D. and Ph.D. Let the artist forsake the 
 academy or Greenwich Village for some region where 
 his shibboleth is never spoken because it cannot be 
 pronounced. 
 
 And the politician, where shall he go, in this 
 age of democracy ? Merciful heaven, I know not, 
 unless it be to a Trappist monastery, or, better 
 still, among the little children, who are too young to 
 have votes and too wise to seek offices. 
 
 76 
 
VI 
 PUBLICOMANIA 
 
 IT is a strange thing to see how deeply certain 
 people of our time have been smitten with a form 
 of insanity which we may call, for want of a dic 
 tionary word, publicomania. The name is rather 
 ugly, and altogether irregular, being of mixed Latin 
 and Greek descent. But it is no worse than the 
 thing it describes, which is, in fact, a sort of mongrel 
 madness. It has some kinship with the Roman 
 Grandio s passion for celebrity which Seneca sati 
 rized, and not a little likeness to the petty ostenta 
 tion of Beau Tibbs at which Goldsmith laughed 
 kindly in London a century ago. 
 
 But in our own day the disease has developed 
 a new symptom. It is not enough to be pointed 
 out with the forefinger of notoriety: the finger 
 which points must be stained with printer s ink. 
 The craving for publicity is not satisfied with any 
 thing but a paragraph in the newspapers; then it 
 wants a column; and finally it demands a whole 
 page with illustrations. The delusion consists in 
 
 77 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 the idea that a sufficient quantity of this kind of 
 .notoriety amounts to fame. 
 
 It is astonishing to observe how much time, in 
 genuity, money, and vital energy, people who are 
 otherwise quite sane, will spend for the sake of hav 
 ing their names and unimportant doings chronicled, 
 in a form of print which can be preserved only in 
 private and very inconvenient scrap-books. In 
 England, where they have a hereditary aristocracy 
 and a Court Journal, the mania seems less difficult 
 to understand. But in this country, where the 
 limits of the "smart set" are confessedly undefined 
 and indefinable, changing with the fluctuations of 
 the stock-market and the rise and fall of real estate, 
 it is impossible to conceive what benefit or satis 
 faction reasonable beings can derive from a tem 
 porary enrolment among the assistants at fashion 
 able weddings, the guests at luxurious banquets, or 
 the mourners at magnificent funerals. 
 
 Our wonder increases wiien we consider that 
 there is hardly a detail of private life, from the cradle 
 to the grave, which is not now regarded as appropri 
 ate for publication, provided only the newspapers 
 are induced to take an interest in it. The interest 
 of the public is taken for granted. Formerly the 
 
 78 
 
PUBLICOMANIA 
 
 intrusion of reporters into such affairs was resented. 
 Now it is their occasional neglect to intrude which 
 causes chagrin. 
 
 If we could suppose that all this was only a subtle 
 and highly refined mode of advertisement, it would 
 be comparatively easy to account for it. There 
 would be method in the madness. But why in the 
 world should a man or a woman care to advertise 
 things which are not to be sold a wedding trous 
 seau, the decorations of a bedroom, a dinner to 
 friends, or the flowers which conceal a coffin? We 
 can see well enough why a dealer in old silver should 
 be pleased at having his wares described in the news 
 papers. But what interest has Mr. Newman Biggs 
 in having the public made aware of the splendor 
 and solidity of his plate? 
 
 Of course one must recognize that there is such 
 a thing as public life. It is natural and reasonable 
 that those who are engaged in it should accept pub 
 licity, and even seek it within proper limits, so far 
 as it may be a necessary condition of success in 
 their work. Authors and artists wish to have their 
 books read and their pictures looked at. States 
 men and reformers desire to have their policies 
 and principles discussed. Benefactors of mankind 
 
 79 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 wish at least to have their schools and hospitals 
 and libraries received with as much attention as 
 may be needed to make them useful. 
 
 But why the people who are chiefly occupied in 
 eating and drinking, marrying and giving in mar 
 riage, should wish to have their lives turned inside 
 out on the news-stands passes comprehension. They 
 subject themselves to all the inconveniences of 
 royalty (being, as Montaigne says, "in all the daily 
 actions of life encircled and hemmed in by an im 
 portunate and tedious multitude"), without any of 
 its compensations. They are exposed by their own 
 fantastic choice to what Cowley called " a quotidian 
 ague of frigid impertinences," and they get nothing 
 for it but the disadvantage of being talked about. 
 The result of their labors and sufferings is simply 
 to bring them to the condition of a certain Doctor 
 William Kenrick, of whom old Samuel Johnson said, 
 "Sir, he is one of those who have made themselves 
 public without making themselves known." 
 
 But if we are inclined to be scornful of the vagaries 
 of publicomania, this feeling must surely be softened 
 into something milder and more humane when we 
 reflect upon the unhappy state of mind to which it 
 reduces those who are afflicted with it. They are 
 
 80 
 
PUBLICOMANIA 
 
 not as other men, to whom life is sweet for its own 
 sake. The feasts to which they are bidden leave 
 them hungry unless their presence is recorded in 
 the Daily Eavesdropper. They are restless in their 
 summer rest unless their comings and goings are 
 printed in the chronicle of fashionable intelligence. 
 Their new houses do not please them if the news 
 paper fails to give sufficient space to the announce 
 ment that they are "at home." It is a miserable 
 condition, and one from which all obscure and happy 
 persons should pray to be delivered. 
 
 There is, however, consolation for true lovers of 
 humanity in the thought that the number of people 
 who are afflicted with this insanity in an incurable 
 form is comparatively small. They make a great 
 noise, like Edmund Burke s company of vociferous 
 grasshoppers under a leaf in the field where a hun 
 dred cattle are quietly feeding; but, after all, the 
 great silent classes are in the majority. The com 
 mon sense of mankind agrees with the poet Horace 
 in his praise of the joys of retirement: 
 
 "Secretum tier, etfallentis semita vita." 
 
 One of the best antidotes and cures of the craze 
 for publicity is a love of poetry and of the things 
 
 81 
 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 that belong to poetry the beauty of nature, the 
 sweetness and splendor of the common human af 
 fections, and those high thoughts and unselfish 
 aspirations which are the enduring treasures of the 
 soul. 
 
 It is good to remember that the finest and most 
 beautiful things that can ever come to us cannot 
 possibly be news to the public. It is good to find 
 the zest of life in that part of it which does not need, 
 and will not bear, to be advertised. It is good to 
 talk with our friends, knowing that they will not 
 report us; and to play with the children, knowing 
 that no one is looking at us; and to eat our meat 
 with gladness and singleness of heart. It is good 
 to recognize that the object of all true civilization 
 is that a man s house, rich or poor, shall be his castle, 
 and not his dime museum. It is good to enter into 
 the spirit of Wordsworth s noble sonnet, and, turn 
 ing back to "the good old cause," thank God for 
 those safeguards of the private life which still pre 
 serve in many homes 
 
 "Our peace, our fearful innocence, 
 And pure religion breathing household laws." 
 
 82 
 
VII 
 MOVING DAY 
 
 LiONG ago in Brooklyn, in the consulship of 
 Plancus, when Fernando Wood was Tammany 
 Mayor of New York, and the irrepressible effer 
 vescence of the Fenians bubbled over in antidraft 
 riots, in that rolled-golden age, May Day was 
 "Moving Day." 
 
 Beautiful Brooklyn, with breezy Heights over 
 looking the turbulent tides of East River, and the 
 round green patch of Governor s Island, and the 
 long low metropolis of Manhattan, and the hills 
 of New Jersey and Staten Island beyond the busy 
 harbor! What a broad and noble outlook, what 
 a rural self-complacent charm was thine, O city 
 of churches, "all unravaged by the fierce intellec 
 tual life of the century," wrapped in New England 
 traditions and based on a solid Dutch financial 
 foundation ! 
 
 Beecher and Storrs were thine, Jachin and Boaz, 
 pillars of the oratorical Temple, and, Lord, how 
 they hated each other! Walt Whitman also was 
 thine, the insurgent rhapsodical poet, but thou 
 
 83 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 knewest him not because he was flannel-shirted. 
 Placid and prim were thy streets, and thy spirit 
 was self-contented, sure that the ultimate truth 
 and the final social form were embodied in Brooklyn. 
 
 (Reader, I am afraid that these paragraphs, if 
 you follow the punctuation, may seem like un- 
 capitalized vers libre. Let us get back to honest 
 prose.) 
 
 May the first, in the days which I recall, was 
 the time appointed for the migration of households. 
 
 It was not a movable feast, it was a fixed feast 
 of movables. 
 
 The little houses poured forth their accumulated 
 treasures and rubbish to be conveyed to other little 
 houses. "Apartments" were unknown, but tene 
 ments had begun to exist. Neither the origin nor 
 the destination made any difference. The point 
 was that you had to move if your lease was up; 
 and your goods and chattels had to move with you. 
 
 Great was the disclosure, on that day, of the stuff 
 that had been accumulated. The discreet, gigantic 
 moving-van had not yet been invented. Every 
 thing must be carried in more or less open carts 
 and wagons. The ramshackle, the unnecessary, 
 the futile, in the household gear, was inevitably 
 
 84 
 
MOVING DAY 
 
 betrayed. Moving Day was more or less a day 
 of confession and repentance. 
 
 Even solid and useful articles of furniture, sofas 
 of age if not of antiquity, armchairs and rockers, 
 centre-tables and dinner-tables, double bedsteads 
 and writing-desks, have a forlorn, disreputable air 
 when they are turned upside down. Their legs 
 project helplessly. They look inebriate. Their 
 accustomed use, the dignity of their position, the 
 softening and concealing aid of lambrequins and 
 portieres, antimacassars and footstools, fringed 
 lamp-shades and mantel ornaments, all the para 
 phernalia of their domestic state are stripped away 
 from them. In the language of the prophets, " their 
 nakedness is uncovered." The broken leg, the 
 cracked foot-board, the scratched surface, the worn 
 covering, the huge rent and the broken spring under 
 neath the corner of the parlor sofa, all are bared 
 to the cold light of day and the unsympathetic com 
 ment of the casual passer-by. 
 
 Worst of all is the state of the enormous, un 
 wieldy, beloved, square piano. For this, usually, 
 a separate dray and special movers are necessary, 
 men of rugged aspect and profane speech, men who 
 "have no music in their souls," who care not for 
 
 85 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 the sweet harmonies evoked from that gigantic 
 rosewood box when Amelia played "The Wakening 
 of the Lion," or "The Maiden s Prayer," or 
 " Juanita," and eager swains stood near her to turn 
 the leaves. The melodious monster now lies prone 
 like a stricken hippopotamus: its huge carved and 
 convoluted legs are dismembered. Beside it in the 
 dray reposes its faithful little satellite, the piano- 
 stool, with feet uplifted as if in mute appeal. 
 
 Among the disjecta membra were manv things 
 that in later times will rarely be seen, unless a place 
 is found for them in the museums of antiquity where 
 spinning-wheels and warming-pans are assembled. 
 There were the long tin bathtubs, painted green 
 without and white within, and their little round 
 brothers, the foot-tubs of like complexion. There 
 were enclosed wash-stands, with cupboards beneath, 
 where articles of domestic virtue could be concealed, 
 and with rods above, on which embroidered 
 "splashers" portraying one-legged storks could be 
 displayed. There were portentous parlor-lamps 
 on lofty brass pedestals, and curious candelabra 
 adorned with prismatic glass pendants. All these, 
 and other things of like nature, modern plumbing 
 and gas-fitting and electric wiring have consigned 
 
 86 
 
MOVING DAY 
 
 to the species of creatures extinct or soon to be ex 
 tinguished. But for the time being they had their 
 place with the fearfully and wonderfully made 
 "chromes," and the Rogers clay-statuettes, and 
 the red-plush family albums, among the impedi 
 menta which the mid- Victorian household chose 
 to encumber itself on the pilgrimage of life. 
 
 Moving Day brought them all out. To us chil 
 dren, when it struck our own family, it was a time 
 of excitement, and of apprehension lest our own 
 particular treasurable rubbish should be forgotten 
 or broken. But when it struck other families, we 
 found it a time of curiosity and amusement. We 
 never thought of questioning its reason or its neces 
 sity. To us it seemed like something between a 
 joke and a law of nature. 
 
 Since then I have tried to discover, in a mildly 
 historical spirit, the connection between this feast 
 of movables and the first day of May, a point of 
 time more naturally associated with outdoor sports 
 and pastimes in the joyousness of returning spring. 
 
 The dull, obvious, logical answer to these in 
 quiries would be that since leases were made and 
 expired "as of May first," that was inevitably the 
 day to move if the lease was not renewed. But 
 
 87 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 the deeper question still remains: why did the leases 
 fix thai day f 
 
 Washington Irving, in his "Knickerbocker His 
 tory of New York," professes to give an exact his 
 torical explanation. It was on the first of May, 
 says he, that the original Dutch settlers of the New 
 Netherlands removed from their first establish 
 ment on the marshy lands of Communipaw, west 
 of the Hudson, to the more salubrious and pleasant 
 island of Mannahatta. 
 
 "Houses were turned inside out, and stripped of 
 all the venerable furniture which had come from 
 Holland. . . . By degrees a fleet of boats and 
 canoes were piled up with all kinds of household 
 articles; ponderous tables; chests of drawers re 
 splendent with brass ornaments; quaint corner 
 cupboards; beds and bedsteads; with any quantity 
 of pots, kettles, frying-pans and Dutch ovens. In 
 each boat embarked a whole family, from the ro 
 bustious burgher down to the cats and dogs and 
 little negroes. . . . This memorable migration took 
 place on the first of May, and was long cited in 
 tradition as the grand moving. The anniversary of 
 it was piously observed among the sons of the Pil 
 grims of Communipaw, by turning their houses 
 
MOVING DAY 
 
 topsyturvy and carrying all the furniture through 
 the streets, in emblem of the swarming of the parent 
 hive; and this is the real origin of the universal 
 agitation and moving* by which this most rest 
 less of cities is literally turned out of doors on every 
 May-day." 
 
 Graphic and humorous explanation! But Pro 
 fessor Scheie de Vere, of the University of Virginia, 
 who quoted it in his very entertaining book "Amer 
 icanisms" (1871), was not entirely satisfied with it. 
 "The custom," says he, "is older than the ancient 
 settlement called Communipaw. The Dutch settlers 
 evidently brought it with them from their trans 
 atlantic home, and to this day, in Bruges and its 
 neighborhood, in Verviers and many other parts 
 of Belgium and Holland, the first of May continues 
 ;o be the general day of moving." 
 
 No doubt the professor was right. I have seen 
 something of the kind quite recently in the Dutch 
 cities. And no doubt when this essay has been 
 printed and read in various regions, letters will 
 come, (to my delight,) from friendly correspondents, 
 pointing out that the custom of Moving Day was 
 mot confined to the districts around New York, 
 and that it is altogether too narrow to ascribe it 
 
 89 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 to a purely Netherlandish origin. Right you are, 
 friend. Granted beforehand! The origin lies in 
 the universal heart of humanity, and in the laws 
 of nature. 
 
 Man is a mover. Spring is the time when he 
 feels it. 
 
 Since Abraham went down at the divine call 
 from Haran to Canaan, (but Terah stayed in Haran 
 because he liked it better;) since the pious ^Eneas 
 took old father Anchises out of burning Troy on 
 his back and set sail for Italy; since the Longbeards 
 came into Lombardy, and the Huns into Hungary, 
 and the Romans, Danes, Normans, and others into 
 Great Britain to make up the far-famed "Anglo- 
 Saxon" race; since the Pilgrims, Puritans, Cava 
 liers, Huguenots, Dutchmen and other folks crossed 
 the ocean with their household gear to occupy new 
 habitations in America; since a time when the 
 memory of man runneth not to the contrary, there 
 has been a terrible amount of moving in the world. 
 It seems like a nervous habit. And I will wager 
 that when it was not otherwise constrained by cir 
 cumstances it has usually shown itself most strongly 
 in the vernal season, that is, in the north t( 
 perate zone, somewhere about May first. 
 
 90 
 
MOVING DAY 
 
 Understand, I am not now referring to nomads 
 and their vagrant tribes. They are people whose 
 only idea of permanence is a ceaseless wandering. 
 But the folks of whom I speak are house-builders 
 and home-lovers. They want a roof, and a hearth 
 stone or some kind of a substitute. But they are 
 unwilling to be bound to it, or perhaps they are 
 unable to hold on to it, indefinitely. 
 
 Sometimes they are forced out, with bitter sor 
 row, by the relentless hand of avarice, or by the 
 bloody fist of war. There is no sight more pitiful 
 than an evicted family, unless it be a family in 
 flight before a cruel and lustful conqueror, such 
 as I have seen by thousands upon the roads of 
 France and Belgium in the late world-war. 
 
 But more often these migrations, in peaceful 
 times, are the result of altered conditions in industry 
 and trade; or of a desire for an improved situation, 
 or a finer climate, or a more convenient dwelling; 
 or perhaps merely of a subconscious wish for a 
 change, in the hope that it will mean a betterment. 
 
 Partially civilized man, if we consider him in 
 the light of self-knowledge, is evidently a home- 
 making creature with migratory instincts. 
 
 I admit that there are exceptions, or, to be more 
 91 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 exact, cases in which the home-keeping affection 
 outweighs and overmasters the wandering impulse. 
 That is my own case, though I have come to it late 
 in life. I like my old camp of Avalon, with its big 
 trees, and the marble bird-bath in the garden, and 
 the tall pillars of the verandahs. I don t want to 
 leave it until I have to. 
 
 There are many farms, and mansions, and cas 
 tles, in various parts of the world, which have been 
 in the possession of the same family for several 
 generations. Even in the cities there are real-estate 
 holdings which have passed from grandfather to 
 grandson, with their "unearned increment." Yet 
 the Astors do not live where they used to live; 
 and the Croyes, who claim to be the most ancient 
 princely house of the world, cannot afford to in 
 habit their castles without American subsidy. The 
 Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs have had a no 
 torious moving. But I fancy they sometimes hanker 
 for their former dwellings. 
 
 At a banquet in New York or Chicago or Los 
 Angeles or San Francisco, how many men do you 
 meet who were born in those cities? At a mass- 
 meeting how many of the shouters can say 
 "My foot is on my native heath"? 
 
MOVING DAY 
 
 If we could have a plebiscite of the world on the 
 proposition: We claim the right to stay where we 
 are and we promise never to move : how many af 
 firmative votes do you suppose you would get? 
 Would it make any difference whether people were 
 living in private homes or socialistic phalansteries? 
 Would not every individual regard "an habitation 
 enforced" as a kind of prison? 
 
 How many times have you moved, reader? For 
 myself, including childhood, the number runs up 
 to ten times, not counting a half-dozen summer 
 cottages in which my family has been installed, 
 and a villa in Switzerland, a house in Paris, a hut 
 in Norway, and a mansion in The Hague. None 
 of them has made much difference in the real values 
 of life. Things look rather settled for me now, with 
 a winter camp in New Jersey and a summer shack 
 on the Maine coast. In both of these temporary 
 homes work is pleasant, and in either of them I 
 should be happy to labor through to the end of the 
 job. But I will not accept a guaranty of that de 
 sired fate on condition of a pledge to undertake no 
 more travels, no more adventures. 
 
 I have been thinking of the "moving" episodes 
 some of the writers whom I love most to read. 
 93 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 Shakespeare, after many mutations, settled down 
 as a rich man in the best house at Stratford-on- 
 Avon; but he had to leave it in less than five years. 
 Milton was forced to many changes of residence, 
 and at the end he was a poor man, and cared not 
 much where he lived, provided he could have music 
 and the joy of inward vision. Burns was an in 
 spired migratory crofter; Wordsworth, a footpath 
 adventurer, who nested finally at Rydal Mount. 
 Charles Lamb was never driven from London and 
 the "sweet security" of city streets, but he com 
 plained charmingly of the inconvenience of moving 
 his abode within those precincts. Tennyson in 
 youth moved often, but when the time came he 
 fixed his winter home at Farringf ord and his summer 
 home at Aldworth. Browning belonged to London 
 and to Italy, and moved around as it pleased him, 
 always pursuing his dramatic quest of the individual 
 soul. Dickens and Thackeray were Londoners in 
 dubitable, but they shifted residences often within 
 their city, and they travelled abroad, and they 
 searched for a general human view of life. Steven 
 son was by choice and by necessity an adventurer; 
 how many "movings" he had between Edinburgh 
 and Samoa I know not; but through them all he 
 
 94 
 
MOVING DAY 
 
 followed his dream of telling vivid stories of life, 
 and of making true comments upon it in his essays. 
 Kipling is still with us in the modern "movies," 
 so we may not speak of him without reserve. We 
 know that he has had habitations in India, in Ver 
 mont, and in Sussex, and that whether he lives in 
 Bombay or in Burwash he keeps with him the same 
 keen vision, straight word, and what Mrs. Gerould 
 calls his "remarkable Tightness." But, if I mistake 
 not, his movings have carried him far beyond his 
 first "Plain Tales from the Hills." 
 
 After all, reader, be we rich or poor, learned or 
 unlearned, is not Moving Day marked in all our 
 calendars? Is it not a symbol of the unexempt 
 condition of our mortal pilgrimage? 
 
 From house to house we move; but that sig 
 nifies little, if we do not overburden ourselves with 
 rubbish. 
 
 From youth to age we move; but that is not fatal 
 if we do not overload ourselves with prejudices. 
 
 From opinion to opinion we move; but that is 
 natural if we are not forced to do it in haste. The 
 man who thinks when old precisely the same on 
 all points as he thought when young, is not a con 
 servative. He is an obstacle. 
 
 95 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 I recall what Stevenson says in one of his essays: 
 "I look back to the time when I was a Socialist 
 with something like regret. I have convinced my 
 self (for the moment) that we had better leave these 
 great changes to what we call great blind forces; 
 their blindness being so much more perspicacious 
 than the little, peering, partial eyesight of men. 
 I seem to see that my own scheme would not 
 answer; and all the other schemes I have ever 
 heard propounded would depress some elements of 
 goodness just as much as they would encourage 
 others." 
 
 Schemes, theories, systems and panaceas are the 
 lambrequins and antimacassars of the mental life, 
 things to be left behind on Moving Day. They 
 will not fit the new house. Only the essentials are 
 worth transportation. 
 
 For my part, there are just three things that 
 seem worth carrying through all earthly migrations 
 of the spirit. First, the Ten Commandments. 
 Second, the Golden Rule. Third, the "faithful 
 saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ 
 Jesus came into the world to save sinners." 
 
 Among the typically transient dwellings of the 
 world are the parsonage, the residence of the mili- 
 
 96 
 
MOVING DAY 
 
 tary or naval commandant, and the White House 
 at Washington. 
 
 Do you remember the inscription that George 
 Herbert wrote for the mantelpiece of his vicarage 
 in Bemerton ? 
 
 "TO MY SUCCESSOR 
 
 "If thou chance for to find 
 A new house to thy mind, 
 And built without thy cost; 
 Be good to the poor, 
 As God gives thee store, 
 And then my labor s not lost." 
 
 But the symbol of Moving Day runs far beyond 
 the earthly mutations of dwelling, and the changes 
 of opinion and theory, to which we are all subject. 
 It reminds us of the great migration from the known 
 to the unknown, which we call death. 
 
 Here is something universal, inevitable, and there 
 fore worth thinking about. This is Moving Day, 
 indeed. Not one of us can get away from it when 
 it comes. 
 
 Yet I have no sympathy with those who would 
 make the fact of death the controlling factor of 
 life. The flaming inscriptions on the bill-boards, 
 "Prepare to meet thy God,* and the exhortations 
 
 97 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 of the preachers, "Live to-day as if you were to 
 die to-morrow," leave me cold. The meeting, (I 
 say it reverently,) has already taken place. I do 
 not expect to die to-morrow. I want to take life 
 as it comes, as bravely, as decently, as cheerfully 
 as possible. There are lots of innocent, interesting, 
 and possibly useful things which I propose doing 
 to-day, which I should probably not do if I thought 
 that I had to die to-morrow. 
 
 The beloved ones, the friends, who have moved 
 before me into the unknown world, I believe are 
 still living. I have no need of Sir Oliver Lodge nor 
 of the excessively Belgian Shakespeare, Maeter 
 linck, to assure me of their existence. I rely upon 
 a better Teacher. 
 
 Nor do I think that my invisible friends would 
 choose to speak to me through persons, mediums, 
 with whom they would have had no sympathy 
 nor intercourse in mortal life. Nor would they use 
 a patented Ouija board for their communications. 
 They would speak to me directly, my father, my 
 dear daughter Dorothea, and I believe they have 
 done so, whether in the body or out of the body, 
 I know not. But these are "things which it is not 
 lawful for a man to utter." 
 
 98 
 
MOVING DAY 
 
 Meanwhile let us take our earthly moving days 
 as best we can. And for the last migration a word 
 from Joseph Beaumont, written three centuries 
 ago, is still timely: 
 
 "Home is everywhere to thee 
 Who canst thine own dwelling be; 
 Yea, tho ruthless Death assail thee, 
 Still thy lodging will not fail thee: 
 Still thy Soul s thine own; and she 
 To an House removed shall be; 
 An eternal House above, 
 Walled, and roofed, and paved with Love. 
 There shall these mud-walls of thine, 
 Gallantly repaired, out-shine 
 Mortal stars; no stars shall be 
 In that Heaven but such as Thee." 
 
VIII 
 
 FIRELIGHT VIEWS 
 
 CIVILIZATION began with a wood-fire. 
 
 Tis the coal-fire that has carried it on, and, 
 some think, too far. 
 
 The warmth diffused by burning wood is assuredly 
 the oldest of "creature comforts." Doubtless Adam 
 and Eve knew the joy of it when they started from 
 Eden on the long adventure. The nights are some 
 times biting cold in Mesopotamia, however hot the 
 days, and the gentle calefaction of a few blazing 
 sticks must have been grateful to the shivering 
 pair, especially in the fig-leafy period of their 
 attire, before they had received the heavenly gift 
 of fur coats. 
 
 Certainly their great-grandson Jubal, "the father 
 of all such as handle the harp and the organ," and 
 his half-brother Tubal-Cain, "the instructer of 
 every artificer in brass and iron," had fires of wood, 
 perhaps also of charcoal, for their work. And so, 
 or in some such fashion, all human arts and crafts, 
 inventions and contrivances, have sprung from the 
 red seed of fire, planted in the bodies of trees, the 
 ancient friends of man. 
 
 100 
 
FIRELIGHT VIEWS 
 
 Greek poetry tells the same tale otherwise. 
 Prometheus, the foresighted, stole a spark from 
 the hearth of the great hall of Olympus, and brought 
 it to earth hidden in a stalk of fennel. For this the 
 jealous Olympians were enraged at him, and con 
 demned him to undying torture. 
 
 But the tribes of the Orient say that the benev 
 olent fire-thief was a bird; and the North American 
 Indians hold that it was a coyote, a beast which 
 has kept the trick of theft, without a trace of benevo 
 lence. 
 
 Tell the tale as you will, the meaning is identical. 
 It was the mastery of fire that gave man the ad 
 vantage over the lower animals in all material things. 
 It built Memphis, Nineveh, Babylon, Jerusalem, 
 Athens, Rome, and many other cities of renown. 
 But in the beginning, and through innumerable 
 centuries thereafter, it was only and always wood- 
 fire. 
 
 Possibly, now and then petroleum was added 
 (after the manner of the rash and indolent house 
 maid) to hasten and augment the blaze. Does not 
 Job, that early capitalist, boast that "the rocks 
 poured me out rivers of oil " ? 
 
 But the amorphous mineral, coal, the mummy 
 101 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 of wood, the latent heat of fallen forests laid up in 
 cold storage for our use, who can tell when it was 
 first discovered ? At what time and by what chance, 
 happy or unhappy, did man find out that those 
 dusky rocks would burn ? 
 
 Was it when some cave-dweller made his fire 
 place on a vein of lignite passing through the floor 
 of his den, and suddenly saw it all aglow? Was it 
 when some primitive cottager took a fancy to those 
 smooth blocks of black stone for the building of 
 his hearth, and found that his fire laid hold upon 
 its foundations? In cave or cottage, that must 
 have been a surprise. No doubt the news of it 
 spread quickly as a dire portent. Perhaps the 
 legends of fire-and-smoke-breathing dragons, in 
 habiting caverns among the hills, had their source 
 in some such accident. 
 
 Be that as it may, it is certain that the use of 
 coal for heating purposes was late to begin and 
 slow to progress. The British apparently led the 
 way, somewhere in the twelfth century, and by 
 the sixteenth century the practice had so increased 
 in London that the Brewers Company petitioned 
 Queen Elizabeth to forbid it, alleging "Hersealfe 
 greatley greved and anoyed with the taste and 
 102 
 
FIRELIGHT VIEWS 
 
 smoke of the sea cooles." In Paris it went the same 
 way. The dainty Parisians maintained that the 
 burning of coal poisoned the air, dirtied the wash, 
 injured the lungs, and spoiled the complexion of 
 the ladies. Horrible ! This barbarous practice 
 must terminate itself. Accordingly it was forbidden 
 in 1714, and again as late as 1769. 
 
 Yet somehow or other it continued, and grew, 
 and spread upon the face of earth, and diffused its 
 sulphurous fumes in air, piling above our monstrous 
 cities what Ruskin has called the "storm-cloud of 
 the nineteenth century." Tall chimneys, vomiting 
 gloom, broke the sky-line. Forges blazed and flared. 
 Factories sprang like exhalations from the ground. 
 Railway-trains ran roaring up and down the con 
 tinents. Steamships wove their spider-web of cross 
 ing lines and lanes over the sea. Man s power to 
 make things and to move things increased tenfold, 
 a hundredfold, a thousandfold. And of this new 
 world, civilized, we call it, coal-fire is king. 
 
 For this reason, some say, Germany attacked 
 France in 1870 to gain possession of the coal-fields 
 of Lorraine, and again in 1914 to grab the Briey 
 Basin and the mines around Lens. For this reason, 
 some say, the empire of Britain is founded on a 
 103 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 coal-pit, and when that is exhausted it will fall. 
 For this reason, some say, the present prosperity 
 of mankind is illusory and transient, and some coal- 
 less day we shall all freeze or starve to death. An 
 imitator of Rudyard Kipling puts it thus: 
 
 When the ultimate coal-mine is empty and the miners 
 last labor is done, 
 
 When the pick and the drill are silent and the furnaces 
 die, one by one, 
 
 Then the trains will stall on the railway, and the fac 
 tories all grow dumb, 
 
 And shivering man will cover his head and wait for The 
 
 End to come. 
 
 V^ 
 
 Perhaps, perhaps! Yet the prophecy does not 
 curdle my marrow. As the Kingship of Coal was 
 not primeval, so its perpetuity is not assured. Nor 
 would the dethronement of the present monarch 
 necessarily be final and fatal. A competent Regent 
 has been discovered in Oil. Behind him, like a 
 sturdy heir-apparent, we see the rising head of 
 Electric Power. In the dim distance we discern 
 various heirs presumptive, Sun-heat yet unex- 
 ploited; Tide-force yet unharnessed. That em 
 bryonic wonder, of whom Sir Oliver Lodge tells 
 us, Atomic Explosion, still slumbers in the womb 
 104 
 
 
FIRELIGHT VIEWS 
 
 of nature, waiting the day of delivery. Who knows 
 but what The Coming Man, having taken the need 
 ful precautions, may gently insert a spoonful of 
 atoms into a safety-exploder and generate power 
 enough to run the world s machines for a year? 
 
 Meantime there is no present reason, moral or 
 economic, why we should not come back, after our 
 day s work, and sit down beside the old wood-fire, 
 and get the good of it. 
 
 Once a power, it is still a friend. With a mod 
 erate and variable heat, it gives out light and cheer. 
 It talks a little, and sings a little, and makes a soli 
 tary room less lonely. Old-fashioned it certainly 
 is; wasteful it may be, extravagant, if you like 
 to call it so, with fire-wood at its present price; but 
 for me it answers precisely to the French phi 
 losopher s definition of a luxury, chose ires neces- 
 saire. 
 
 Indeed it is the last of the luxuries that I would 
 forego under duress of the High Cost of Living. If 
 need be, as the poet says, 
 
 I can do without sugar and butter and eggs; 
 I can give up my carriage and trust to my legs; 
 The dream of a motor, or even a Ford 
 105 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 I renounce, while my plumber rolls by like a lord; 
 I can cut out my tailor, and wear my old shoes, 
 And resign from the club to escape the high dues; 
 I abstain from the movie, the opera, the play, 
 The lure of the bookshop, the florist s display; 
 All, aD, I surrender that Hard Times require; 
 But leave me, ah leave me, my bonny wood-fire. 
 
 My fireplace is not a splendiferous one, with huge, 
 carven mantel, brought (or copied) from some Ital 
 ian palace or Bavarian castle. I like not these 
 gigantic intruders in modest American rooms. The 
 fire smokes or smoulders discouraged in their cavern 
 ous depths. A plain, useful hearth, by preference 
 of red bricks or tiles, and a chimney that draws 
 well, are worth more than all the decorated chim- 
 neypieces in the world. 
 
 In andirons I would admit a little fancy, but no 
 ostentation. Mine are twin near-bronze figures of 
 Indian maidens that used to stand, long ago, on 
 top of the newel-posts at the foot of the stairway 
 in an ancient New York hostelry. These I found 
 by chance in a junk-shop, and had low steel bars 
 fitted to them, to hold the wood. Goldilocks calls 
 them Pocahontas and Minnehaha. They are not 
 beautiful, nor ugly, but they seem to fit the place, 
 106 
 
FIRELIGHT VIEWS 
 
 smiling as they warm their backs at the blaze. They 
 appear to be dressed, let me hasten to say, in 
 decorous deerskin garments with fringes. 
 
 Behind these proper and benignant figures the 
 fire is kindled every morning from the first of Oc 
 tober to the first of May, and later if need be. Is 
 the day warm? The windows are easily opened. 
 Is it bitter cold ? Then pile on the wood, as Hor 
 ace says, 
 
 " Dissolve frigus, ligna super foco 
 Large reponens." 
 
 That is, in modern American, beat the cold by 
 boosting the fire. 
 
 Do you want to know how to light it? I can 
 tell you a trick that is worth learning in these days 
 of costly kindling. 
 
 You must have a thick bed of ashes. This is 
 difficult to secure and protect if you are married. 
 But it can be done by making concessions on other 
 points. Now pull out your fire-dogs a little and 
 put the round backlog behind them, resting on the 
 ashes. Stuff a few sheets of dry newspaper, (old 
 copies of the Social Uplifter are best,) under its 
 curving side. Above this place just four, no more, 
 sticks of kindling-wood, not horizontally, mind 
 107 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 you, but perpendicularly, or rather "slantendic- 
 ularly," leaning against the backlog. In front of 
 this, lying on the andirons and close against the 
 kindlings, place your forelog. Then apply the match 
 to the paper. In two minutes you will have a beau 
 tiful little blaze. Now you can lay on your third 
 log, but gently, gently, and your fire is well 
 started for the day. 
 
 Reader, you may think that paragraph meticulous 
 and trifling. But really and truly it is an invaluable 
 guide-post. If you will follow it, in a year it will 
 save you the price of a subscription to the maga 
 zine, to say nothing of the profanity which you 
 would have expended in trying to light choked fires. 
 If your wife won t let you have the bed of ashes, 
 try that excellent invention, the Cape Cod Fire 
 lighter. 
 
 Air is the great thing, remember, free circula 
 tion, a good draft, both for fire-building and for 
 thought-kindling. We smother our poor minds by 
 piling on ideas and theories. We choke our high- 
 school and college education with a preposterous 
 overload of "courses." We encumber our social 
 programme with vast heaps of universal reform, 
 and complain that "we can t get anything done," 
 108 
 
FIRELIGHT VIEWS 
 
 because we fail in the fool s effort to do everything 
 at once. 
 
 Why try to do good things in a silly way ? Why 
 waste matches by applying them immediately to 
 the backlog? Take the little sticks first. And 
 above all let the fresh air of open discussion, prac 
 tical experiment, illustration, comparison of ex 
 periences, criticism, humor, and enthusiasm play 
 freely through the fire of your theories and plans. 
 
 In education, for example, I would sweep away 
 half of the "courses" and two-thirds of the "ex 
 aminations, * and concentrate attention on teaching 
 boys and girls to use their powers of observation 
 accurately, their powers of reasoning intelligently, 
 their powers of imagination and sympathy vividly, 
 and their powers of will sanely and strongly, in 
 short, to know things as they are, to conceive them 
 as they might be, and to help make them as they 
 ought to be. That is the real purpose of education. 
 And I think it may be reached, or at least ap 
 proached, better through a few studies well chosen 
 than through a mass of studies piled on at random. 
 
 But these are only "firelight views/* reader; 
 they are not systematic, sharp-cut, unalterable 
 theories. To such the magical light of the dancing, 
 109 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 flickering flames, the mystical glow of the orange- 
 red embers, are not favorable. They lend them 
 selves rather to the inspiration of dreams, and hopes, 
 and fancies. They are friendly to memories and 
 visions, without which indeed the journey of life 
 would be dull and cheerless. 
 
 Yet I cannot agree with that good British essayist, 
 E. V. Lucas, when he suggests that the wood- 
 fire harmonizes with spiritualistic experiments, and 
 goes on to say, "If England were warmed wholly 
 by hot-water pipes or gas-stoves, the Society for 
 Psychical Research would soon be dissolved." On 
 the contrary it is precisely in that stale-heated, 
 stuffy, musky atmosphere that mediums flourish 
 and perform their most marvellous feats with their 
 feet. The frankly blazing wood-fire is too healthy 
 for them. 
 
 I have heard of only one successful sSance that 
 was held beside an open hearth. The story was 
 told me by the Reverend Doctor Wonderman, a de 
 lightful comrade and a firm believer. He was sit 
 ting with a mediumistic couple, and they had pro 
 duced for his benefit during the evening various 
 "manifestations" of knocks and scratchings and 
 movements of furniture. The "control" was sup- 
 110 
 
FIRELIGHT VIEWS 
 
 posed to be the soul of a departed Indian Chief, 
 Bumbagoostook, or some such name as that, a 
 penetrating spirit, but wayward, and of rude, 
 boisterous humor. As a final and conclusive proof 
 the Doctor asked that Bumbagoostook should hand 
 him his favorite pipe, which was then lying on the 
 mantelpiece. Instantly the pipe leaped from the 
 shelf, hurtled through the air, and struck the good 
 Doctor violently in the midriff. Whether he laughed 
 or not, I do not know, but it seems to me likely. 
 Nothing of that kind has ever happened by my 
 wood-fire. I prefer to get my pipes for myself, 
 rather than have to do with unrefined spirits. 
 
 Plenty of good things have been written about 
 wood-fires, whole books, in fact, like Hamilton 
 Mabie s "My Study Fire," and Charles Dudley 
 Warner s "Backlog Studies." There are also little 
 fragments scattered kere and there, which are worth 
 picking up and remembering. 
 
 Horace has an excellent bit in his second epode, 
 where he describes the honest farmer s wife, mod 
 est, merry, sunburned woman, glad to play her 
 part in keeping house and bearing children, who 
 lays the dry fagots on the hearth, ready to welcome 
 the homecoming of her tired husband. 
 Ill 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 Cicero in his dialogue "De Senectute" gives 
 graphic picture of old Manius Curius sitting quietl 
 by his country fireside and refusing the conquere 
 Samnites who brought him a heap of gold. He sai 
 that he did not think it as fine to have gold as to b 
 superior to those who had it. 
 
 Tibullus, the so-called bucolic poet, breathes 
 true fireside wish in his first elegy: 
 
 "Let lowly fortune lead my life 
 In quiet ways, remote from strife, 
 If only on this hearth of mine 
 A constant fire may brightly shine." 
 
 But there is nothing better on this subject tha 
 the lines of Robert Messinger, an American, wril 
 ing on the familiar theme of "old wine, old woo< 
 old books, and old friends." Here is the secon 
 stanza: 
 
 "Old wood to burn! 
 Ay, bring the hill-side beech 
 From where the owlets meet and screech 
 
 And ravens croak; 
 The crackling pine, and cedar sweet; 
 Bring too a lump of fragrant peat, 
 Dug neath the fern; 
 The knotted oak; 
 112 
 
FIRELIGHT VIEWS 
 
 A fagot too, perhap, 
 
 Whose bright flame dancing, winking, 
 
 Shall light us at our drinking; 
 
 While the oozing sap 
 Shall make sweet music to our thinking." 
 
 At our place in Maine I have always been able 
 to keep the home-fires burning with white birch 
 and dry spruce from our own woodlands around 
 the bungalow. But that is quite a different thing 
 from feeding the hearth with fuel from the eight 
 acres of home-lot here in Princeton. 
 
 Every now and then one of the trees that my own 
 hands have planted and tended here is smitten in its 
 lusty youth and must come down; and sometimes 
 there are deaths among the older trees, and they 
 are brought to the funeral pyre. From such sad 
 events I draw what comfort I can, and remember by 
 the hearth the joy that the trees gave while they 
 were living. 
 
 There was a pair of silver cut-leaf birches that 
 succumbed one after the other, to some mysterious 
 malady; a massy rock-maple that grew too great 
 and blocked the sunlight from the windows; a trio 
 of tall Norway firs that died at the top; some cherry- 
 ! trees fallen into barren decrepitude, and mulberries 
 
 113 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 rent and crippled beyond repair by a beautiful, 
 cruel ice-storm. Once a giant pine-tree was struck 
 by lightning, and we gave him a splendid, long- 
 drawn flame-burial, with rattling, crackling accom 
 paniments, like salvoes of musketry over the ashes 
 of a fallen hero. Once there was the remnant of an 
 ancient orchard that went the way of all wood and 
 passed into fire. That was the best of all. 
 
 Old apple-wood burns cleanly, brightly, serenely, 
 with a delicate and spicy fragrance. The flames 
 bloom softly over the logs; they play around them 
 and dance above them with shifting colors of canary 
 yellow, and pale blue, and saffron; they send up 
 wavering pennons of pure golden light, which sink 
 down again into fringes of mellow radiance. Deeper 
 and deeper the transforming element sinks into the 
 heart of the log, which still keeps its shape, an in 
 candescent round, silvered with a fine white ash; 
 until at last the stick breaks and crumbles into 
 glowing coals, of a color which no words can de 
 scribe. It is like the petals of a certain rose, whose 
 tint I remember, but whose name I have forgotten. 
 (Tell me its name, reader, if you are sending a letter 
 this way.) So the lovely ruins of the old apple-tree 
 lie heaped upon the hearth, and over them flow 
 114 
 
FIRELIGHT VIEWS 
 
 tiny ripples of azure and mauve and violet flame, 
 lower and lower, fainter and fainter, till all dies 
 down into gray, and the tree has rendered its last 
 offering of beauty and service to man. 
 
 One of the practical merits of an open wood-fire 
 is its convenience for destroying rubbish. Old 
 pamphlets and letters, dusty manuscripts that 
 you once thought would be worth touching up for 
 publication, scraps and fragments of all kinds that 
 have cluttered your shelves and drawers for years, 
 < even new books that you have tried in vain to read, 
 how easy it is to drop them into the blaze and 
 i press them down with the poker ! 
 
 But the habit is a bad one, for three reasons: 
 
 ! first, because it dishonors the hearth with black 
 
 ashes; second, because you may set the chimney 
 
 *on fire; third, because you never can tell what is 
 
 rubbish. 
 
 You remember how King Jehoiakim made a mis 
 take in that respect when Jehudi came into his pres 
 ence to read from a little manuscript an extremely 
 disagreeable prophecy of Jeremiah. There was a 
 fire on the hearth burning before him. And it came 
 to pass, that when Jehudi had read three or four 
 leaves, he cut it with the penknife and cast it into 
 115 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 the fire. "So," thought the king, "we have done 
 with that rubbish." But neither was it rubbish 
 nor had he done with it. For Jeremiah caused an 
 other little roll to be written with the same un 
 pleasant words in it, and there were added unto 
 them many like words, and they were all true, and 
 it was worse for Jehoiakim in the end than if he 
 had preserved and heeded the first book. 
 
 Many a man burns what he wishes later he had 
 kept. 
 
 Another use of a wood-fire, though you can hardly 
 call it a practical one, is its power of begetting fan 
 tasies, some romantic and some grotesque, in the 
 mind of him that gazeth into it. 
 
 Here I often sit, when the day s task is done, and 
 indulge my vagrant fancy with improbable ad 
 ventures and impossible labors. To go a-hunting 
 in the Caucasus, and a-fishing in New Zealand; 
 to complete either my long-planned book on "Wild 
 Animals that Have Refused to Meet Me," or that 
 much-needed treatise on "The Moral Effects of 
 Chewing Gum"; to get out a serious edition of 
 The New Republic, think what it would mean to 
 the world if that journal, with all its natural gifts of 
 omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence, only 
 116 
 
FIRELIGHT VIEWS 
 
 had the added grace of ethical earnestness ! But 
 these are vain visions. Let us return to the realities. 
 
 The very best thing about a real wood-fire is its 
 power of drawing friends around it. Here comes 
 the new Herodotus, not to discuss the problems 
 of antiquity which he has already settled, but to 
 tell the most absorbing tales and anecdotes of the 
 people that you know or have known, and to dis 
 pute your most cherished opinions in a way that 
 makes you love him. Here comes Fra Paolo, the 
 happy controversialist, ready for a friendly bicker 
 on any subject under heaven, and full of projects 
 for rescuing the most maligned characters of his 
 tory. Here come the lean young Literary Rancher 
 with tales of the once wild West, and the wonderful 
 Writer of Sad Stories, who is herself always cheer 
 ful. Here come Goldilocks and Brownie to sit on 
 the rug, tuck up their skirts and toast their shins, 
 while they talk of their joyous plans and propound 
 deep simple questions that no one can answer. Here 
 come travellers and professors and poets and am 
 bassadors, not reserved and stately, but thawed 
 and relaxed to a delightful companionship by the 
 magic of the wood-fire. 
 
 Well, they have all gone their way now, and while 
 117 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 the logs burn down, I sit alone in the book-room, 
 pencilling these lines. But you, reader, if your 
 eyes glance over them at all, it will be in the happy 
 season when your fire is kindled out-of-doors. In 
 the deep, green woods, on the mountainside, by 
 the seashore, on the bank of some quiet lake or 
 flowing stream; "the camp-fire, the cooking-fire, 
 the smudge-fire, the little friendship-fire"; but 
 that is an old story, of which I have written in an 
 other book. I will not repeat it now, though the 
 theme is one upon which I could play new varia 
 tions forever. Let me rather wish you good luck 
 in the lighting of your fire in the open, and leave 
 with you a saying from old Plutarch. 
 
 He says (in his Symposiacs, Question IV,) that 
 when his guests have departed he would leave one 
 flame burning as a symbol of his reverence for fire. 
 No other thing is so like a creature alive. It is 
 moved and nourished from within; and by its 
 brightness, like the soul, reveals and illuminates 
 things around it; and even in dying resembles a 
 vital principle, sighing and trembling ere it departs. 
 
 This, then, is what the Greek philosopher has to 
 say about the firelight. But he says it, mark you, 
 only of fire indoors. 
 
 118 
 
FIRELIGHT VIEWS 
 
 Outdoors the case is different. There the fire, 
 though lovelier, must never be left alone. Fold 
 your tents and march on; but first put out the em 
 bers, lest a single spark, running wild in the woods, 
 make you the careless father of a great conflagra 
 tion. 
 
 119 
 
IX 
 FISHING IN STRANGE WATERS 
 
 f OR half a year, now, I have been writing a paper 
 a month, without so much as mentioning a subject 
 near to my heart, the ancient, apostolic, consola 
 tory art of angling. 
 
 It must be admitted the season has not been in 
 harmony with that subject. It has been a villain 
 ous rude winter, (1919-20,) violent, pitiless, per 
 sistent as a Prussian; ice on top of snow and snow 
 on top of ice, and howling ravenous winds, so that 
 even those hardened anglers who let down their 
 lines through holes in frozen ponds, have been de 
 barred from their gelid sport and driven to find com 
 fort by the fireside. 
 
 Yet fancy does not freeze in zero weather. Mem 
 ories and dreams run out across the cold to leafy 
 forests and flowing rivers and sparkling lakes. If 
 there has been thus far no word of angling in these 
 essays, you may set it down, reader, to a self- 
 denying ordinance, and reward me with leave to tell 
 a few stories of fishing. Not fish-stories, mark you ; 
 
FISHING IN STRANGE WATERS 
 
 for I have no great catches, no finny monsters to 
 describe; only a few small experiences which may 
 serve to illustrate the spirit of the game. 
 
 For such recital the signal has been given. Last 
 week, on a sharp icicled morning, the first hoarse 
 robin bravely sounded his tup-tup-tup outside my 
 window. When these pages come to you the green 
 wood tree will be full of song and the kingfisher 
 flashing blue along the stream. 
 
 In many strange waters have I fished, the Nile 
 and the Jordan, the Rhine, the Rhone, and the 
 Danube, but in none that seemed to me so strange 
 as the little rivers where I cast an occasional fly 
 while the world-war was going on. 
 
 I was sent to Holland, (presumably "for my 
 country s good,") in the autumn of 1913. There 
 was no fishing there to speak of. Canals, slow- 
 moving rivers, shallow lakes, with their store of 
 pike and perch and eels, offer no attraction to a 
 sporting angler. To catch such fish is more a busi 
 ness than a sport. There was one pretty trout- 
 stream in South Limburg; but it was so beset with 
 factories and mills and persecuted by bait-fisher 
 men and netters that it did not tempt me 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 In these sad circumstances of deprivation, it 
 seemed "almost Providential" to find that the 
 American Minister to the Netherlands was also ac 
 credited to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. A 
 strict sense of official duty called him thither every 
 year; and a willingness to enjoy small gifts of plea 
 sure paid him wages by the way. 
 
 Nature has been kind to that little inland coun 
 try, and history has handled it roughly enough to 
 make it picturesque with human interest. It holds 
 more castles ruined and unrestored than any other 
 land of equal size. Its small triangle of territory, 
 about a thousand square miles, dovetailed in be 
 tween Germany, France, and Belgium, lies on top 
 of the Ardennes, a thousand feet or more above sea- 
 level. It is furrowed by deep valleys, clothed with 
 rich woods of beech and pine, diversified with gray 
 and red cliffs, embroidered with wild flowers and 
 many bright unnavigable rivers. Its royal family 
 contains the six loveliest young princesses in the 
 world; and its 250,000 people are as friendly, hos 
 pitable, and independent as the traveller s heart 
 could wish. All this and more you may find set 
 forth admirably in the big book on Luxembourg by 
 Mr. George Renwick, the British war correspondent. 
 122 
 
FISHING IN STRANGE WATERS 
 
 For useful information I refer you to him, and turn 
 to my fishing. 
 
 My first excursion was made in June, 1914, the 
 Potsdam Plotters month. Of what I saw then to 
 convince me that Germany had chosen war and 
 was ready to force it, the story is told in Fighting 
 for Peace and need not be repeated. 
 
 The second trip was in April, 1915, after Germany s 
 long crime had been begun. It was necessary for 
 the American Minister to go down to take charge 
 of certain British interests in Luxembourg, a few 
 poor people who had been stranded there and who 
 sorely needed money and help. (What a damned 
 inhuman thing war is, no one knows who has not 
 been in the midst of it !) Mr. Derulle, the faithful 
 American Consular Agent in the city of Luxem 
 bourg, did the work, but the minister had to convey 
 the funds and supervise the accounts. 
 
 The journey was interesting. The German 
 Minister at The Hague was most polite and oblig 
 ing in the matter of providing a vise for the pass 
 ports, and giving the needful papers with big seals 
 to pass the guards in what was euphemistically 
 called "German-occupied territory." It grated on 
 my nerves, but it was the only way. 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 "Which route would you prefer to have me fol 
 low," I asked, "through Germany, or through 
 Belgium?" 
 
 "But, my dear colleague," replied the courteous 
 Baron von Ktihlman, "that is entirely for you to 
 choose." 
 
 "With your advice," I answered, "since I am 
 asking a favor." 
 
 "Well, then," he smiled, "probably you would 
 like to go by way of Maestricht and Aix-la-Chapelle, 
 in your own automobile, we will detail an escort 
 to make the journey easier and quicker." 
 
 At the border-barrier, a double fence of elec 
 trically charged barbed wire, with a sentried open 
 ing ten feet wide, the escort appeared. He was an 
 amiable and intelligent captain of cavalry in the 
 German reserve, university graduate, cloth manu 
 facturer, father of a family, pleasant companion, 
 
 named von M . His conversation was good. 
 
 Three of his remarks were memorable because they 
 lifted a corner of the veil from the German state of 
 mind. 
 
 We were rolling along the splendid highway south 
 from Aix, through a country bare of men not in 
 uniform. "This is a terrible war," exclaimed the 
 124 
 
FISHING IN STRANGE WATERS 
 
 captain, "not our fault, but terrible for us, all the 
 same ! Do you think a quiet middle-aged man like 
 me enjoys being called away from his business, his 
 home, his children, to join the colors ? We shall be 
 ruined. Of course we shall win; but what? Our 
 money spent, our industries crippled, the best of 
 our youth killed or maimed, it is a bad outlook, 
 but we are forced to accept it." 
 
 In the quaint timbered villages on the plateau 
 of the Hohes Venn many soldiers were on furlough, 
 strolling with the village girls in frankly amatory 
 attitudes. "Pleasant for these boys to come home 
 for a few days and see their old sweethearts again," 
 I remarked. The captain smiled: "Yes, well, 
 but, you see, these boys don t belong to these 
 villages; and the girls are not old sweethearts, you 
 see. But the army does not discourage it. Men 
 will be needed. They will all be good Germans." 
 
 Just before we cross the border beyond St. Vith 
 the captain says: "My general at Aix has tele 
 graphed the German commandant in Luxembourg 
 to detail an officer to act as escort and body-guard 
 to your Excellency in that country." Polite, but 
 astounding ! 
 
 "Many thanks," I answered, "most thoughtful 
 125 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 of the general. But it will not be necessary. In 
 Luxembourg I shall be under protection of her 
 Royal Highness the Grand Duchess, sovereign of an 
 independent state, in which the Germans have 
 volunteered to guard the railways. After paying 
 my respects to her and to the Prime Minister, I 
 shall call on the German commandant to assure 
 him that no escort is desired. Will that be correct 
 according to your theory ? " 
 
 The captain blinked, looked down at his boots, 
 then grinned approvingly. "Absolutely correct/* 
 he said, "that is just our theory. But, Gott im 
 Himmely you Americans go straight to the point ! " 
 
 All the diplomatic affairs of the next ten days 
 went smoothly; and there were three celestial days 
 on various streams, the details of which are vague 
 in memory, but the bright spots shine out. 
 
 One day was passed with my friend the notary 
 Charles Klein, of the old town of Wittz, a reputable 
 lawyer and a renowned, impassioned fisher. He led 
 us, with many halts for refreshment at wayside 
 inns, to the little river Sure, which runs through a 
 deep, flowery vale from west to east, across the 
 Grand Duchy. 
 
 Our stretch of water was between the high-arched 
 126 
 
FISHING IN STRANGE WATERS 
 
 Pont de Misere and the abandoned slate-quarry 
 of Bigonville. The stream was clear and lively, 
 with many rapids but no falls. It was about the 
 size of the Neversink below Claryville, but more 
 open. The woods crept down the steep, enfolding 
 hills, now on this side, now on that, but never on 
 both. One bank was always open for long casting, 
 which is a delight. The brown trout, (salmo fario) , 
 were plentiful and plump, running from a quarter 
 f a pound to a pound weight. Larger ones there 
 must have been, but we did not see them. They 
 .ccepted our tiny American flies, Beaverkill, Cahill, 
 Jueen of the Water, Royal Coachman, and so on, 
 at par value, without discount for exchange. It 
 was easy, but not too easy, to fill our creels. 
 
 My son and comrade Tertius agreed with me that 
 he European brown trout, though distinctly less 
 ;omely than the American brook-trout, or the "rain- 
 >ow" of the Pacific Coast, (not to speak of the 
 gorgeous salmo Roosevelti of Volcano Creek), is a 
 ine fellow, a "dead game sport." The birds that 
 fluttered and skipped and sang around us were 
 something of a puzzle to Tertius, who is an expert 
 HI this subject in his own country. Some of them, 
 blackbirds, wrens, tomtits, linnets, swallows, and 
 127 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 so on, were easy to identify. The crow and the 
 kingfisher are pretty much the same everywhere. 
 But there were also many strangers. 
 
 "It is funny," said he, "I can t tell their names, 
 but I understand their language perfectly." 
 
 Philip Gilbert Hamerton in The Sylvan Year 
 says that there is a tradition among the peasants 
 of the Val Sainte VSronique that every bird repeats 
 a phrase of its own in French words, and that some 
 wise old persons have the gift of understanding 
 them. This gift must be kept secret till a man comes 
 to die; then he may communicate it to one of his 
 family. But the trouble is that when a man is on 
 his death-bed, he is usually thinking about other 
 things than bird-lore. So the gift fades out, say 
 the peasants, and may soon be lost, like other won 
 derful things. 
 
 The second day of this series that I remember 
 clearly was spent on a smaller stream, north of the 
 Sure, with Mr. Le G., the son of the British Consul, 
 and other pleasant companions. The name of the 
 stream is forgotten, but the clear water and the 
 pleasant banks of it are "in my mind s eye, Hora 
 tio." It was a meadow-brook very like one that I 
 know not far from Norfolk, Connecticut, whither 
 128 
 
FISHING IN STRANGE WATERS 
 
 I have often gone to fish with my good friend the 
 village storekeeper, S. Cone. 
 
 Now there is in all the world no water more pleas 
 ant to fish than a meadow-brook, provided the 
 trout are there. The casting is easy, the wading 
 is light, the fish are fat, the flowers of the field are 
 plenteous, and the birds are abundant and songful. 
 We filled our baskets, dined at the wayside inn, a 
 jolly company, and motored back by moonlight 
 to the city of Luxembourg. 
 
 Concerning the 1916 journey to my outlying post 
 there are a few notes in my diary. I travelled in 
 y by rail through Cologne and Gerolstein and 
 Trier. There was no visible escort; but probably 
 there was one unseen; for at every place where 
 
 had to change trains, somebody was waiting for 
 me, and a compartment was reserved. Everything 
 was orderly and polite, even in the stations where 
 lundreds of thousands of green-gray soldiers were 
 rushing on their way to the great battle at Verdun. 
 [Perhaps it was because I spoke German that people 
 were so courteous. Yet for that very reason no 
 
 e could have mistaken me for a native.) But 
 ;he war-bread in the dining-cars was dreadful: 
 cutter and sugar were not at all: and the meat, 
 129 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 such as it was, had already done duty in the 
 soup. 
 
 At Gerolstein, (name made dear by Offenbach s 
 Grande Duchesse,) many civilians got into the train 
 with guns, green hats, and netted game-bags with 
 fringes. 
 
 "What go they to shoot," I asked a neighbor, 
 "is it not the closed time?" 
 
 "But not for crows," he replied. 
 
 "Crows!" I cried, with a sickening thought of 
 the near battle-fields. 
 
 "Yes, mein Herr, crows are good to eat, healthy 
 food. In all the meat-shops are they to buy." 
 
 In the capital of Luxembourg, perched on its 
 high rock, the German garrison was still in evidence, 
 tramping in stolid troops through the streets while 
 the citizens turned their backs. Not even a small 
 boy would run after the soldiers: think what that 
 means ! No longer did the field-gray ones sing when 
 they marched, as they used to do in 1915. They 
 plodded silent, evidently depressed. The war which 
 they had begun so gayly was sinking into their souls. 
 The first shadows of the Great Fatigue were falling 
 upon them; but lightly as yet. 
 
 Once I thought I heard a military band playing 
 130 
 
FISHING IN STRANGE WATERS 
 
 "God Save the King. * I ran to the balcony, but 
 turned back again, remembering that the same tune 
 is set to "Heil Dir im Siegerkranz" 
 
 The Grand Duchess was already away at her 
 summer castle of Colmar-Berg. So after "posing" 
 the needful cards and writing my name in the book 
 at the old palace, and finishing three days of official 
 business (and luncheons) with Prime Minister Thorn 
 and other dignitaries, I was free to turn to the 
 streams. 
 
 The first excursion was with Mr. Emile Meyrisch, 
 a genial, broad-shouldered ironmaster, the head of 
 great forges at Esch, Diffeedange, and Petange in 
 the south country, and an angler of the most con 
 firmed sect. In politics he was a liberal, in business 
 perhaps rather an autocrat, and in practice a friend 
 to his employees, looking carefully after their food- 
 supply and running an open-air school on a hilltop 
 for their children, to keep them well and strong. 
 
 He took me to the valley of the Clerf, the loveliest 
 little river in Luxembourg. By ruined castles and 
 picturesque villages, among high-shouldered hills 
 and smooth green meadows and hanging woods it 
 runs with dancing ripples, long curves, and eddy 
 ing pools where the trout lurk close to the bank. 
 131 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 Its course is not from west to east, like the Sure, 
 (no, I will not call it by that common German name 
 the Sauer.) The Clerf runs from north to south. 
 I suppose that was why the south wind, on that 
 quiet sunny morning, carried into the placid valley 
 a strange continuous rumbling like very distant 
 thunder. But the clear stream paid no heed to it, 
 flowing with soft, untroubled whispers of content 
 ment on its winding way. And the birds were not 
 dismayed nor hindered in their musical love-making. 
 And the flowers bloomed in bright peacefulness, 
 neither dimmed nor shaken by that faint vibration 
 of the upper air. Undoubtedly it was the noise 
 of the guns in the offensive Crown Prince s " Great 
 Offensive" at Verdun, a hundred kilometres away. 
 
 Strange that a sound could travel so far ! Dread 
 ful to think what it meant ! It crossed the beauty 
 of the day. But what could one do? Only fish 
 on, and wait, and work quietly for a better day 
 when America should come into the war and help 
 to end it right. 
 
 A very fat and red-faced Major, whom I had 
 met before at Clervaux, rode by in a bridle-path 
 through the meadow. He stopped to salute and 
 exchange greetings. 
 
 132 
 
FISHING IN STRANGE WATERS 
 
 "How goes it?" I asked. 
 
 "Verdammt schlecht" he replied. "This is a 
 dull country. The people simply won t like us. I 
 wish I was at home." 
 
 " I too ! " I answered. " Gluckliche Reise ! " 
 
 We lunched in the roadside inn of WilwerwUiz ; 
 a modest tavern, but a rich feast. The old river- 
 guardian was there, a grizzled veteran who angled 
 only with the fly, though his patrons were mostly 
 bait-fishers. He had scorned to fish in the morn 
 ing. But when he saw my basketful taken with 
 the fly, his spirit was stirred within him, and he 
 girded up his loins and went forth to the combat. 
 That afternoon he beat my whole day s catch by 
 three trouL He grinned as he laid his fish out in 
 a long row on the bench in front of the inn. 
 
 I spent the night with Notary Klein at Wiltz. 
 Ever hospitable, he made a little dinner for me at 
 the Hotel du Commerce, a little dinner of many 
 courses and rare vintages, and like the bridegroom 
 at Cana of Galilee he served the best wine last. 
 
 When we reached this point the notary presented 
 a request. He said that three officers of the Ger 
 man garrison, who felt very lonely, had asked if 
 they might come over to our table after dinner and 
 133 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 drink coffee with us. Had I any objection? Cer 
 tainly not, if he had none. So they came, and we 
 talked pleasantly for a couple of hours about vari 
 ous subjects. One of the officers was a professor 
 of literature in a small German university. Both 
 of the others were well-educated men. Finally we 
 drifted toward the war. 
 
 Why did America sell munitions only to the 
 Allies ? It was very unfair. 
 
 But the market was open to all. Doubtless any 
 body who had the money could buy. 
 
 Yes, perhaps; but then it was plain that if Ger 
 many bought them she could not get them home. 
 It was most unfair, not truly neutral. 
 
 But could America be expected as a neutral to 
 act so as to make up to Germany for her lack of 
 effective sea-power ? 
 
 No-o-o, perhaps not. But it was extremely 
 unfair. No doubt those British-Americans who 
 were so powerful in the United States were to blame 
 for it. 
 
 On the contrary; Americans of German descent 
 were most prominent in making munitions for the 
 Allies. Take the name Schwab, for example, presi 
 dent of the Bethlehem Steel Company, a good Amer- 
 134 
 
FISHING IN STRANGE WATERS 
 
 ican. Did the Herren Offizieren think his name was 
 of British origin ? 
 
 Slight confusion and hearty laughter followed 
 this question. Then the professor spoke up very 
 gravely: 
 
 "There is one thing I should like to ask you, Ex 
 cellency. You have travelled a good deal in this 
 country. Have you heard the Luxembourgers make 
 any objection to the conduct of the German army 
 here?" 
 
 "None, Herr Oberst" I answered with equal 
 gravity, "not the slightest! It is not the conduct 
 of your soldiers to which Luxembourg objects, it is 
 their presence." 
 
 "Well," he said smiling rather sadly, "God knows 
 I am tired of it too. I want to go home to my books. 
 But is there no chance that America will come finally 
 to the help of Germany, her old friend ? " 
 
 " Certainly," I replied, " there seems to be a very 
 good chance. If the present submarine warfare 
 continues, it is practically sure that America will 
 assist Germany in the only possible way, by creat 
 ing a situation in which the war must come to an 
 end. That would be the best conceivable help for 
 Germany." 
 
 135 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 With this observation, (rather in the enigmatic 
 style of the Delphic oracle,) and with an appropriate 
 "good night," the conversation closed, and I went 
 home with the Notary. 
 
 But the next day was not spent in fishing as we 
 had planned. An invitation had come by telegraph 
 during the night, bidding the American minister 
 to lunch with the royal family at Colmar-Berg. 
 The only available taxicab in Wiltz must be com 
 mandeered, and hot time made over the long road 
 in order to reach the castle at the appointed hour. 
 
 "Punctuality," says the proverb, "is the courtesy 
 due to kings"; and the saying has an extra, super- 
 diplomatic force when the sovereign happens to 
 be a very beautiful young lady. 
 
 Of the luncheon I will not write, since it was not 
 official, though there were about thirty guests. Ad 
 hering to the old-fashioned rule, I hold that hos 
 pitality lays a certain restraint upon publicity. 
 Yet there are some memories which may be recalled 
 without offense. 
 
 The American minister s chair was at the right 
 of the Grand Duchess, on whose delicate, sensitive 
 face the strain of the last two years, and the suffer 
 ings of the poor among her people, had written thin 
 136 
 
FISHING IN STRANGE WATERS 
 
 lines of care and grief. She had never coveted a 
 crown, nor did she wear one except a circlet of 
 pearls in her dark hair, and I am sure she was 
 glad when the close of the war permitted her to 
 hand over the reins of rulership to her sister Char 
 lotte, with Luxembourg independent, sovereign, 
 and free to follow her natural sympathies with 
 France. 
 
 At my right was the little Duchess Antoinette. 
 It was probably her first appearance at such a feast, 
 for she was still a mere child, with her long hair 
 loose on her shoulders. Her announced engage 
 ment to that hardened ruffian, the ex-Crown Prince 
 of Bavaria, in 1918, was a shock to every one of 
 decent feelings. Now that the German surrender 
 under the form of armistice has put this horrid en 
 gagement, with other grisly things, into "innocuous 
 desuetude, * it is pleasant to recall and reflect upon 
 the deliverance of the little Duchess from that royal 
 incubus. 
 
 After all, royalties are flesh and blood. But there 
 is a difference between the clean and the unclean, 
 which no crown can disguise. 
 
 The day following the luncheon I had an early 
 dinner with M. Pescatore, one of the ablest members 
 137 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 of the Luxembourg Parliament, at his country house, 
 and went out at sunset with Madame, to hunt the 
 deer in a wonderful beech-forest along the valley 
 of the Mamer. 
 
 She was a Belgian countess. Her hunting-dress 
 made her look like Rosalind in the Forest of Arden, 
 and she carried an effective little rifle. I took no 
 gun, having passed the age when the killing of deer 
 seems a pleasure. Hour after hour in the lingering 
 twilight we roamed that enchanted woodland, among 
 the smooth boles of the pillared beeches, under their 
 high-arched roof of green, and treading lightly over 
 the russet carpet of last year s fallen leaves. My 
 spirited companion told me pitiful tales of things 
 that she had seen, and knew by sure report from 
 her relatives and friends in Belgium, tales of the 
 fierce and lewd realities of the German Schrecklich- 
 keit, things to make an honest man s blood hot 
 within him. 
 
 Through the glimmering dusk, from thicket to 
 thicket, the dim shapes of does and fawns flitted 
 past us unharmed. Then a fine buck stood clearly 
 outlined at the end of an open glade. The slender, 
 eager huntress threw the rifle to her shoulder. A 
 sharp crack echoed through the glade, and the buck 
 138 
 
FISHING IN STRANGE WATERS 
 
 leaped away untouched. The huntress turned a 
 half -disappointed face to me. "A bad shot," she 
 said, "but I could shoot better than that. In Bel 
 gium, par exemple, with a Prussian boar for mark ! " 
 
 My last day in Luxembourg was spent with Mey- 
 risch on the upper waters of the Sure. Lovelier than 
 ever seemed that merry, tranquil stream on that 
 day of alternate showers and sunshine. The river- 
 guardian who kept me company was a strapping 
 young Luxembourgeois who had served as a volun 
 teer in the French army and come home with a 
 broken leg and an unbroken spirit. In the fore 
 noon the record says that I took forty-two trout, 
 in the afternoon thirteen. Late that night Meyrisch 
 made a feast at the Hotel Brasseur in Luxembourg. 
 The landlord and his wife were of the company. 
 Their oldest boy was with the Belgian army near 
 Ypres. The final toast we drank was this: God 
 protect the boy and the Cause he fights for ! 
 
 Other fishing-days in war-time I recall. Two 
 weeks in Norway in July, 1916, when I made ac 
 quaintance with the big salmon of the river Evanger, 
 and proved the superiority of fly-fishing to the de 
 based sport of "harling." Two days on the Itchen, 
 near Winchester, just after I got out of hospital in 
 139 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 April, 1917, when my good friend G. E. M. Skues, 
 secretary of the Fly-fishers Club in London, showed 
 me how to cast the dry fly so that two of those 
 sophisticated Itchen trout were lured and landed. 
 But I leave these things unchronicled, (having al 
 ready run beyond the space assigned), and turn 
 front-face and unabashed to meet and withstand 
 the strictures of my severe and sour-complexioned 
 reader, who has been following these lines with scorn 
 ful impatience. 
 
 "Why," I hear him mutter, "does this foolish 
 writer talk about silly things like fishing while the 
 world-war was going on, and especially now that 
 the great social problems of the New Era must be 
 solved at once? He is a trifler, a hedonist, a man 
 devoid of serious purpose and strenuous effort." 
 
 Well, friend, keep your bad opinion of me if it 
 does you any good. Certainly it does me no harm. 
 
 I hold by the advice of the Divine Master who 
 told His disciples to go a-fishing, and said to them 
 when they were weary, "come ye yourselves apart 
 into a desert place and rest awhile." 
 
 I remember the unconquerable French poilus 
 whom I saw in their dugouts playing cards, and in 
 the citadel of Verdun enjoying merry vaudeville 
 140 
 
FISHING IN STRANGE WATERS 
 
 shows. I recall the soldiers whom I saw deliberately 
 fishing on the banks of the Marne and the Meuse 
 while the guns roared round us. I remember Theo 
 dore Roosevelt, (no slacker), who whenever the 
 chance came rejoiced to go a-hunting, and to tell 
 about it afterward. I believe that the most serious 
 men are not the most solemn. I believe that a 
 normal human being needs relaxation and pleasure 
 to keep him from strained nerves and a temper of 
 fanatical insanity. 
 
 I believe that the New Social State, whatever 
 it may be, will not endure, nor be worth preserving, 
 unless it has room within it for simple play, and 
 pure fun, and uncommercial joy, and free, happy, 
 wholesome recreation. 
 
 Take that as a guide-post, if you will; and then 
 let me make my personal confession of a fisherman s 
 faith. 
 
 I choose the recreation of angling for four reasons. 
 First, because I like it: second, because it does no 
 harm to anybody: third, because it brings me in 
 touch with Nature, and with all sorts and condi 
 tions of men: fourth, because it helps me to keep 
 fit for work and duty. Selah! 
 
 141 
 
THE PATHLESS PROFESSION 
 
 IT is a curious fact that there is no good guide 
 book to authorship. There are a few self-portraits, 
 more or less convincing, of authors at work. There 
 are many essays, more or less illuminating, upon 
 the craft of writing in general, and upon the habits 
 and procedure of certain great writers in partic 
 ular. The best of these confessions and criticisms 
 are excellent reading, full of entertainment and in 
 struction for the alert and candid mind in every 
 age and calling, and touched with a special, sym 
 pathetic interest for those young persons who have 
 sternly resolved, or fondly dreamed, that they will 
 follow a literary career. A volume of carefully 
 selected material of this kind might be made at 
 tractive and rewarding to readers who are also in 
 tending authors. But the one thing for which such 
 a book ought not to be taken, or mistaken, is a 
 manual of the profession of literature. 
 
 The reasons for this appear to me quite as re 
 markable as the fact itself. The business of authors 
 
 
THE PATHLESS PROFESSION 
 
 being to write, why should we not be able to gather 
 from them such instruction in regard to writing, 
 and the necessary preparation for it, as would make 
 the pathway of authorship so plain that the way 
 faring man though a fool need not err therein ? 
 
 The answer to this question is an open secret, 
 an instructive paradox. 
 
 There is no pathway of authorship. 
 
 It is a voyage, if you like; but there are no guide- 
 posts in the sea. It is a flight, if you like; but there 
 are no tracks in the air. It is certainly not a jour 
 ney along a railway line, or a highroad, or even a 
 well-marked trail. 
 
 In this it differs from other vocations like the 
 Church, the Bar, the Army, the Navy, Engineer 
 ing, Medicine, or Teaching. For each of these there 
 is a pretty clearly defined path of preparatory study, 
 with fixed gateways of examination along its course. 
 When the last gate is passed and the young doctor 
 is licensed to practice, the young clergyman or 
 dained to preach, the young lawyer admitted to 
 the bar, the path broadens into a road, which leads 
 from one professional duty to another and brings 
 him from task to task, if he is fortunate and in 
 dustrious, with the regularity of a time-table, and, 
 
 143 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 it must be added, with something of the monotony 
 of a clock. 
 
 It is not so with the young intending author. 
 There is no time of preparation prescribed, or even 
 authoritatively advised, for him or for her. There 
 are no fierce examiners standing like lions in the 
 way. No hard-earned diploma, or certificate, or 
 license is demanded. There are no set duties to 
 be performed at certain times, like a case to be 
 argued at the first session of the court in November, 
 or an appendix to be removed next Thursday after 
 noon, or two sermons to be preached every Sunday. 
 Intending authors, and for that matter practising 
 authors, are like Milton s Adam and Eve when 
 the closed gate of Paradise was behind them: 
 
 " The world was att before them where to choose. 9 * 
 
 It looks very free and easy and attractive, this 
 vocation of making books. All that the young writer 
 has to do is to provide himself, or herself, with paper 
 and a pen (or a typewriter), retire into a convenient 
 room (almost any kind of a room will answer the 
 purpose), and emerge with a book which a pub 
 lisher will print, advertise, and sell, and which the 
 public will read. 
 
 144 
 
THE PATHLESS PROFESSION 
 
 And after that? Why, after that it looks freer 
 and easier still. All that the successful writer has 
 to do is to repeat the process with a new book at 
 any convenient season. 
 
 But this very freedom, so alluring at a distance, 
 i becomes bewildering and troublesome at close range. 
 The young intending author who has a serious am- 
 ibition and a mind in thinking order very soon recog- 
 nizes, either by the light of pure reason or by the 
 glimmer of sad experience, that there are difficul- 
 ities in this simple business of writing books which 
 ^publishers will desire to print and the public to read. 
 Many manuscripts are offered but few are chosen. 
 How does one learn to cope with these difficulties 
 and overcome them? How does one make ready 
 Ito produce a manuscript which shall be reasonably 
 re of a place among the chosen few? By going 
 college, or by travel? By living in solitude, or 
 society ? By imitating select models, or by culti- 
 ,ting a strenuous originality? By reading Plato, 
 The Literary Digest? 
 
 Nobody seems to know the right answer to these 
 uestions. Guesses are made at them. Universi 
 ties announce courses in daily theme-writing, 
 ools of correspondence offer to teach the secrets 
 14,5 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 of literature. Bureaus of Authorship are adver 
 tised. But the results produced by these various 
 institutions are not consistent enough to be regarded 
 as inevitable. Travel does not guarantee an ob 
 serving mind, nor solitude a profound one; nor 
 does society always refine the intelligence. The 
 strenuous effort to be original often ends in a very 
 common type of folly. Conscious imitation may 
 be the sincerest flattery, but it rarely produces the 
 closest resemblance. 
 
 Meantime, a sufficient number of authors, great 
 and small, continue to arrive, as they always have 
 arrived, from their native regions, by their own 
 ways. Ask them how they got there, and they can 
 not tell you, even when they try to do so. The 
 reason is because they do not know. There was 
 no pathway. They travelled as they could. Power 
 and skill came to them, sometimes suddenly, some 
 times slowly, always inexplicably. 
 
 Do you suppose it is possible to explain how 
 Shakespeare became able to write "Hamlet," or 
 Milton to compose "Paradise Lost"? It is true 
 that George Eliot describes "how she came to write 
 fiction," and Stevenson gives an entertaining sketch 
 of some of the methods in which he pursued his 
 146 
 
THE PATHLESS PROFESSION 
 
 "own private end, which was to learn to write." 
 But does George Eliot herself understand the secret 
 of her preparation to create her vivid, revealing 
 "Scenes from Clerical Life"? Or will the study 
 of those favorite authors to whom Stevenson says he 
 "played the sedulous ape," enable the young short- 
 story-tellers really to reproduce his inimitable style ? 
 
 In the middle of the nineteenth century several 
 learned, industrious, and wise Americans were de 
 livering lectures. Why did Emerson s crystallize 
 into essays? Where did Hawthorne learn how to 
 write "The Scarlet Letter," in Bowdoin College 
 or in the Salem Custom-house? Could Thackeray 
 have told you how he found the way from "The 
 Luck of Barry Lyndon" to "Vanity Fair," or 
 Dickens from "Sketches by Boz" to "Pickwick 
 Papers"? 
 
 There is no other vocation of man into which 
 "the unknown quantity" enters as largely as it 
 does into authorship; and almost all writers who 
 have won fame, even in a modest degree, if they 
 are thoroughly candid, will confess to a not un 
 pleasant experience of surprise at their own suc 
 cess. 
 
 Now all this implies an element of uncertainty 
 147 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 in the author s profession, if, indeed, a vocation 
 so pathless may be called a profession at all. In 
 the regular and, so to speak, macadamized pro 
 fessions, those who follow the road with energy, 
 fidelity, and fair intelligence may count upon a 
 reasonable reward. But in the open field of litera 
 ture it is impossible to foretell which one of a thou 
 sand aspirants will come to fame, or which ten will 
 be able to earn a living. 
 
 It is for this reason, no doubt, that some instinct 
 of prudence, or some pressure of necessity, has made 
 many authors provide themselves with another 
 bread-winner than the pen. When we consider 
 how many well-known and even famous writers, 
 from Chaucer to Conan Doyle, have had some avoca 
 tion besides writing, we may justly conclude that 
 there is hardly any human occupation, from diplo 
 macy to doctoring, in which the intending author 
 may not learn to write, and from which genius, or 
 even talent, may not find a passage into literature. 
 Charles Lamb s labor as a clerk in the East India 
 House did not dim the luminous wit of his essays. 
 William De Morgan s long life as a manufacturer 
 of tiles did not prevent him, at last, from making 
 his novels "somehow good." The career of James 
 148 
 
THE PATHLESS PROFESSION 
 
 Ford Rhodes as an ironmaster was no bar to his 
 notable success as a historian. Indeed, it almost 
 seems as if some useful occupation, or at least some 
 favorite recreation or pursuit, to bring the writer 
 into unprofessional contact with the realities of 
 life and the personalities of other men, may be more 
 of a help than a hindrance to vital authorship. 
 
 Writing, in itself, is not an especially interesting 
 or picturesque employment. Romance can make 
 little of it. Even when the hero of a novel is a lit 
 erary person, like Arthur Pendennis or David Cop- 
 perfield, the things that interest us most happen 
 to him outside of the book-room. It is what lies 
 behind writing, and leads up to it, and flows into 
 it, that really counts. 
 
 The biography of an author is almost interrupted 
 when he takes his pen in hand. 
 
 Who would not ride with Scott on a summer raid 
 through the Highlands, or walk with him and his 
 dogs beside the Tweed, rather than watch him at 
 work in the little room where he wrote "Waverley" 
 by candle-light? 
 
 I think it was Byron who said something like 
 this: "The moment in which a poem is conceived 
 is one of infinite pleasure, the hours in which it is 
 
 149 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 brought forth are full of the pains of labor." Of 
 course I do not mean to deny that the author s 
 vocation has its own inward delight and its own 
 exceeding great reward. The delight lies in the 
 conception of something that craves utterance: 
 and the reward lies in the production of something 
 that goes out alive into the world. A true call to 
 the vocation of literature is both inward and out 
 ward: a strong desire of self -expression, and a proved 
 power of communicating thought and feeling through 
 the written word. 
 
 The wish to write merely for the sake of being 
 a writer, if I may so describe a vague ambition which 
 vexes many young persons, is rather a small and 
 futile thing, and seldom leads to happiness, use 
 fulness, or greatness. 
 
 Literature has been made by men and women 
 who became writers because they had something 
 to say and took the necessary pains to learn how 
 to say it. 
 
 But how did this happen to these men and 
 women? What brought them to this happy pass 
 where the inward call to self-expression was con 
 firmed by the outward power to interest readers? 
 Who can tell ? 
 
 150 
 
THE PATHLESS PROFESSION 
 
 It looks simple. And no doubt there is a certain 
 element of simplicity in the necessary processes of 
 learning to spell, to construct sentences, to use words 
 correctly, to develop plots, to recognize rhymes, 
 and to observe metres. But there is a mystery in 
 it, after all. 
 
 From Shakespeare s deepest tragedy to Kipling s 
 most rattling ditty, from Wordsworth s loftiest ode 
 to Dobson s lightest lyric, from Victor Hugo s big 
 gest romance to De Maupassant s briefest tale, 
 from Plato s profoundest dialogue to Chesterton s 
 most paradoxical monologue, from George Eliot s 
 "Romola" to Miss Alcott s "Little Women," every 
 bit of literature, great or small, has a measure of 
 magic in it, and ultimately is no more explicable 
 than life itself. 
 
 151 
 
XI 
 A MID-PACIFIC PAGEANT 
 
 live in a period of historic pageants. The 
 world, fatigued by the monotony of manners and 
 dress which civilization is imposing on its once 
 gaily variegated folks, seeks a brief escape from the 
 tiresome prospect of a standardized humanity. It 
 loves to recall for an hour the fanciful costumes and 
 scenes, the dramatic and symbolic actions of the 
 past. History lays aside her dusty dignity and 
 goes into moving pictures. 
 
 London and Paris revisualize their barbaric 
 childhood and see themselves in the fierce conflicts 
 and gallant enterprises of youth. Alfred repels the 
 Danes, Charlemagne assembles his chivalry, William 
 of Normandy conquers Britain, Columbus discovers 
 America, Henry Hudson sails the Half Moon up 
 Manhattan Bay, the Pilgrim Fathers set their pos 
 sessive foot on the stern and rock-bound coast of 
 Massachusetts, the French monks penetrate the 
 Middle West by the broad avenue of the Missis- 
 152 
 
 
A MID-PACIFIC PAGEANT 
 
 sippi, and the Spanish friars build their missions in 
 California. 
 
 The "first settlers" of North Hingham, and New 
 Utrecht, and West Colbyville, and Calvinton, and 
 Sauk City Centre, and Almadena, and many an 
 other place dear to its inhabitants, revisit the frail 
 glimpses of glory and show their ancient garb and 
 authority before their proud descendants. 
 
 The local audience gleefully recognizes the fa 
 miliar performers in their unfamiliar guise. Old 
 Bill Hodson as Columbus awakens applause which 
 he never received as postmaster. Hi Waite, the 
 plumber, makes an immense success as William 
 Penn. Maude Alice Magillicuddy is ravishing as the 
 Indian Princess with beaded leggings. The Rever 
 end Adoniram Jump is welcomed with hilarity as 
 Bloodeye Ben the stern and deadly Sheriff. Multi 
 tudinous laughter, and cheering, and hearty hand- 
 clapping run around the encircling throng. But 
 behind the noise there is an eager attention, a seri 
 ous pleasure, a sense of imaginative satisfaction. 
 The village, the town, even the conventional city, 
 has been linked up for an hour with the wonderful 
 past, in which strange things happened and the 
 raiment of life was a Joseph s coat of many colors. 
 153 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 Were events really so much more significant and 
 entertaining in old times than they are now? Or 
 is it only an illusion of perspective, an illustration of 
 the law that 
 
 "the past must win 
 A glory by its being far, 
 And orb into the perfect star 
 We saw not when we moved therein"? 
 
 WiD the people of 2000 A. D. look back to the era 
 when the airplane and wireless telegraphy were dis 
 covered as the true and only age of romance ? Who 
 knows? What difference? For us, in these com 
 plicated days, it is a delight to reverse our vision 
 and see things pass before us in large outline, 
 simpler and more striking, perhaps truer, perhaps 
 only easier to think we understand. 
 
 One of the most vivid and delightful pageants 
 that I have ever seen was in April of 1920, on an 
 island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, at the hun 
 dredth anniversary of Christian Missions in Hawaii. 
 It was memorable not for its costly splendor and 
 famous audience, but for the clearness and signifi 
 cance of its scenes and the wondrous beauty of the 
 stage on which it was set. Moreover, along with the 
 154 
 
A MID-PACIFIC PAGEANT 
 
 pageant and around it, before and after, there ran 
 an accompaniment which illuminated and empha 
 sized its meaning and added infinitely to its charm. 
 Of this I will speak first. 
 
 The Hawaiian Islands are the carrefour of the 
 watery highways between East and West. Lay a 
 course from Tokyo to Panama, from Vancouver to 
 Melbourne, from Seattle to Singapore, from San 
 Francisco to Manila, from Los Angeles to Hong 
 kong, and your lines will make a star in the sea not 
 far from Honolulu. 
 
 Two thousand miles away is the mainland of 
 North America, four or five thousand, the main 
 land of Asia, far to southward, the sprinkled isles 
 of Polynesia, far to northward the rocky, frosty 
 chain of the Aleutians. The vast sapphire solitude 
 of the Pacific encircles the Territory of Hawaii with 
 a beautiful isolation which the adventurous spirit 
 of man has transformed into an opening for world 
 wide commerce. The lonely place has become a 
 port of call for all nations. 
 
 You must not think of these islands as a cluster 
 
 >of coral reefs, embowered in palms and sweltering 
 
 under the rays of a tropical sun. They are a group 
 
 of five, each one large enough to make a little state 
 
 155 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 in New England or Europe, and separated by wide 
 stretches of seldom-quiet sea. 
 
 From Oahu, the only island I visited, you can 
 just see Molokai with the lofty peak of Maui be 
 hind it, like a lonely purple cloud on the horizon. 
 Away to the southeast the big bulk of Hawaii, 
 where the volcanoes are still on active duty, is lost 
 in distance. Away to the northwest the sharp peaks 
 and cloven valleys of Kauai are invisible. 
 
 But Oahu contains in itself the makings of a tiny 
 complete continent. There are two ranges of real 
 mountains, which rose from the bottom of the sea 
 some twenty thousand years ago, "by drastic lift 
 of pent volcanic fires." Wind and weather have 
 carved them into jagged ridges and pinnacles four 
 thousand feet high. Between them lies the broad 
 upland plain of Waialua and Ewa. The mountain 
 sides are furrowed by deep glens and ravines, 
 sharpest on the northeast side where the rains are 
 heaviest, gentler on the south and west where the 
 vales spread out, fanlike, into the broad sugar- 
 plantations of the coast, and the virid fields of 
 springing rice. 
 
 The foliage of the hills and valleys is wonderfully 
 varied. The pale green of the kukui contrasts; 
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A MID-PACIFIC PAGEANT 
 
 vividly with the dark green of the koa and the ohia. 
 Long avenues of sombre ironwood-trees with droop 
 ing threadlike leaves stretch beside the road. The 
 huge banyans and monkey-pods spread their taber 
 nacles of pillared shade. The hau twists and twines 
 its smooth trunks and branches into wide arbors, as 
 if it were half tree and half vine. Stiff little papayas, 
 with round, flat tops like parasols, lift their clusters 
 of delicious fruit as high as they can reach. Plumy 
 mangoes conceal rich treasure among their pendent 
 foliage. Breadfruits expand their broad palmated 
 leaves. The bright feathery green of the algaroba- 
 trees (springing from a few seed-pods which a priest 
 brought from the mainland in his pocket not many 
 years ago) has flowed far and wide over the lowlands 
 and slopes, making open groves where the cattle 
 feed on the fallen beans, and tangled thickets full of 
 needle-sharp thorns. 
 
 For purely tropical effect there are the bananas, 
 with broad bending leaves, always flourishing and 
 generally dishevelled; and the palms, a score of 
 different kinds, the smooth columnar royal palm 
 with green-gray trunk and bushy head high-lifted; 
 the slender cocoa-palm with corrugated bole, often 
 slanting or curving, and heavy fruit half concealed 
 157 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 by its tousled fronds; the rough-bodied palmetto; 
 and many another little palm of the kind that 
 withers and pines in the hallways of our Northern 
 houses, but here spreads its hands abroad and wres 
 tles gaily with the wind. 
 
 The wind, the wind, the glorious life-giving 
 trade-wind is the good angel of the Hawaiian 
 Islands. It is the only big wind that I ever 
 loved. 
 
 Nine months of the year it blows out of the north 
 east over the lapis-lazuli plain of the Pacific, bring 
 ing health and joy on its wings. The great white 
 clouds come with it, like treasure-fleets with high- 
 piled sails. Above the mountains they pause, 
 tangled and broken among the peaks. They change 
 to dark gray and blue and almost black. They let 
 down their far-brought riches, now in showers as 
 soft as melted sunshine, now in torrential douches of 
 seeming-solid rain. But the big trade-wind still 
 blows, drawing down the valleys, tossing the palm- 
 fronds, waving the long boughs of the algarobas 
 and the slender tops of the ironwoods, refreshing 
 the city streets and the sun-warmed beaches, where 
 perhaps not a drop of rain has fallen, rustling 
 through the fragrant gardens, and passing out to 
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A MID-PACIFIC PAGEANT 
 
 sea with a merry train of whitecaps. There you 
 shall see him reassembling his snowy squadrons and 
 flotillas of the air, driving them southward to re 
 fresh other thirsty islands. 
 
 It is the trade-wind that accounts for the livable 
 and lovable climate of Hawaii, in which a native 
 race of extraordinary beauty and strength developed, 
 and people of America and Europe and Asia can 
 make their homes without loss of health or working 
 vigor. The thermometer, elsewhere a recorder of 
 weather-torments, here loses its terrors, for it moves 
 between 60 for winter s cold and 85 for summer s 
 heat. Even when the sun is most ardent there is 
 always a breeze in the shade that will cool you gently 
 without a chill. 
 
 Honolulu is no siesta-city, where the shops are 
 closed at noonday and the merchants retire to ham 
 mocks. It is a busy, thriving, modern town, which 
 works full time every week-day, and where the 
 telephone rings without ceasing. Its suburbs are 
 reaching out Ewa way, Waikiki way, Nuuanu 
 and Manoa way, threading house after house on 
 the trolley-lines. It has a good water-supply and 
 a clean harbor front. Best of all, its civic life has 
 | a core of intelligence and public spirit, embodied 
 
 159 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 in men and women of missionary stock, who feel 
 that they are citizens of no mean city, and are re 
 solved to have it look well and be well. 
 
 Yet it is astonishing how unobtrusive the city 
 is, how little it mars the landscape. I often found 
 myself forgetting that it was there. Our friendly 
 hosts lived in a house with broad lanai and long 
 pergola, on the shoulder of one of the lower hills 
 sloping down from Mt. Tantalus. Look out be 
 tween the royal palms on the terrace, and you will 
 see the city almost submerged in a sea of greenery, 
 like a swimmer floating on his back in tranquil 
 waters. Beyond the long beach is a lagoon of trans 
 lucent aqua marina, and beyond that the silver 
 curve of the surf on the coral reef, and beyond that 
 the intense cobalt blue of the Pacific. To the left 
 lies the fulvous shape of Diamond Head, like a lion 
 cmtchant, looking out to sea. Farther to the east, 
 and sweeping around into the north, rise the dark 
 peaks of the Koolau Range, embracing the Manoa 
 Valley. Here and there you see the roofs of houses 
 among the trees, the long arcades of Punahou School, 
 the white facade of the College of Hawaii, the many 
 windows of the Mid-Pacific Institute, (never a 
 place with so many fine schools as Honolulu !) . But 
 160 
 
A MID-PACIFIC PAGEANT 
 
 for the most part it is a tree-top view, like that from 
 the cottage in the last scene of "Peter Pan." 
 
 Under the trees, and clambering over them, what 
 flowers and vines ! Tall hedges of hibiscus all abloom 
 with scarlet and white and rose and yellow of every 
 shade: masses of climbing Bougainvillea covered 
 with light purple or flame-colored flowers: fragrant 
 plumarias with clusters of pale white, or ivory yel 
 low, or shell pink: lilies, milk-white or tawny orange: 
 allamanda vines thickly set with rich golden trum 
 pets, and honeysuckles with coral red: oleanders, 
 white and rose: acacias, drooping aureate plumes, 
 or clustering pink blossoms like apple-trees in May: 
 intense burning red of Poinsettia; heavenly blue of 
 a tree whose name I do not know, but whose rare 
 beauty I shall never forget. They tell me that later 
 in the season the long wall around Oahu College, 
 where the night-blooming cereus covers the stones, 
 will break into a glory of white bloom. But I can t 
 wait for that. 
 
 The sea is as rich in colors as the land. The water 
 changes its hues like peacock-feathers. The fish 
 beneath it are vivid as if they had been dipped in 
 rainbows. You may see them in glass tanks at the 
 Aquarium, weird, amazing creatures, some with 
 161 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 long bills like birds, others with floating plumes 
 and pennants, streaked and striped and speckled, 
 as if a mad painter had decorated them. I could 
 not get rid of the feeling that they had been fabri 
 cated for the amusement of the visitor. 
 
 But when I went on a picnic in the lonely, lovely 
 bay of Hanama I saw them and caught them among 
 the coral and lava rocks, at the foot of huge cliffs 
 where the long waves rolled and broke in fountains 
 of high-spouting foam. Those fish were quite as 
 quaint as their cousins in the Aquarium: pale 
 green, fringed with azure and banded obliquely 
 with broad strips of black; bright blue, with orange 
 fins, and on the sides a damascened pattern of mauve 
 and apple-green; dark green, bordered with dark 
 blue, and inlaid across the body with lozenges of 
 crimson. 
 
 I tell you we caught fish there that were abso 
 lutely incredible. I disbelieved in them even while 
 they flapped upon the rocks. But one I firmly be 
 lieved in, the golden giant, with a beak like an 
 eagle s and a tail like a lyre-bird s, which the lady 
 avowed she saw swimming disdainfully around her 
 hook in the clear water. She angled for him with 
 the patience of a saint, the hope of a poet, and the 
 162 
 
A MID-PACIFIC PAGEANT 
 
 courage of a hero. The waves swirled about her 
 knees; the spray dashed over her shoulders; her 
 mind was firmly set upon that preposterous, scorn- 
 ful fish. But she never caught him. That is why 
 I believe in him. 
 
 On the way home from our motor-rides we 
 would stop at some convenient place, oftenest at 
 the long beach of Kahala, and have a swim in the 
 sea. The water was warm, and soft as silk. With 
 in the lagoon it was still, but on the reef beyond 
 the big waves were roaring, (as Bottom says,) 
 "gently as any sucking dove." Bathing in the 
 Pacific is a pastime fit for Paradise. I trust that 
 some equivalent substitute for it will be provided 
 in that world where, St. John tells us, "There shall 
 be no more sea." 
 
 At Waikiki Beach we tried the surf-riding in a 
 long, narrow, outrigger-canoe. You paddle out a 
 quarter of a mile, beyond the breakers; then you 
 wait for a big roller, a decuman, the Romans called 
 it, believing that the tenth wave was always the 
 largest. But the muscular Hawaiian boy who steers, 
 (adequately clothed in a loin-cloth and his bronzed 
 skin,) knows nothing of Latin superstitions. He 
 feels by instinct when the roller is coming; swings 
 163 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 the dugout toward the beach and gives a yell; every 
 body paddles hard; the water swells beneath us, 
 rises, sweeps forward, breaks into foam; and the 
 canoe is carried swiftly on the crest, smothered in 
 spray, impelled by an immeasurable force, yet 
 guided straight by human will and skill, unable 
 to turn back, yet safe in darting forward, till the 
 wave sinks in soft ripples on the sand. 
 
 That is the joy of motion: to ride on something 
 that is infinitely stronger than you, and yet to be 
 the master of your course. It is the thrill of tobog 
 ganing, skate-sailing, air-planing, surf-riding, to 
 feel yourself borne along by the irresistible, but 
 still the captain of your own little ship ! 
 
 I have delayed too long, perhaps, in the descrip 
 tion of the scene and the accompaniments of the 
 Mid-Pacific Pageant of which I set out to tell you. 
 Yet here (and often elsewhere in the world,) the 
 stage belongs to the play, and the decor is part of 
 the action. 
 
 In the spacious park of Punahou School, (founded 
 
 by the missionaries,) there is a broad playground 
 
 called Alexander Field, (given by the descendants 
 
 of missionaries,) and behind this rises Rocky Hill, 
 
 164 
 
A MID-PACIFIC PAGEANT 
 
 a considerable height, with grassy slopes strewn 
 with blocks of lava, and a shallow valley in the 
 centre, leading by easy gradations toward the sum 
 mit. 
 
 The usual arrangement of an outdoor play is 
 reversed. The audience and the chorus occupy 
 the level: the actors move in the amphitheatre 
 above them, going and coming by their palm- 
 screened exits, makaiy seaward, mauka, toward 
 the mountains. 
 
 Seven hundred voices are in the chorus, gath 
 ered from various schools and colleges, including 
 Hawaiians, Filipinos, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, 
 Porto Ricans, and Anglo-Saxons. In the audienqe 
 there seem to be ten or twelve thousand, scattered 
 over the playing-field and the grassy slopes and 
 terraces around it. The pageant represents the 
 history of Hawaii for a hundred years, from the 
 arrival of the first missionaries from New England 
 in 1820, down to the present day. 
 
 It is difficult to compress so long a period into 
 so short a show. To tell the truth, there are some 
 ancient ways and manners in the record which must 
 be left invisible; and some modern episodes which 
 the most raging realist would not care to put upon 
 165 
 
 i 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 the stage; and some political complications and 
 intrigues which not even the most confidential chorus 
 and the most elaborate tableaux could fully present. 
 But the main story, the story of the things that 
 really count and signify, is simple enough. Miss 
 Ethel Damon has told it with admirable skill in 
 her scenario and text; and Miss Jane Winne has 
 preluded and accompanied it with excellent music. 
 
 The performance opens with Beethoven s "Hymn 
 of Creation/ rendered by the Hawaiian Band. 
 Then comes a choral overture suggesting the ancient 
 state of civil war on the islands, the unrest and 
 confusion caused by the old tabu system, and the 
 comparative unity and peace brought by the vic 
 tories of that beneficent tyrant, Kamehameha I, the 
 Charlemagne of savages. Then comes the appeal 
 to the imagination through the eyes, in color, move 
 ment, and human action. 
 
 You must know a little about the history in order 
 to follow the story closely, and to supply in imagina 
 tion the darker elements of human sacrifice and in 
 fanticide and drunkenness and debauchery which 
 so nearly turned the Hawaiian drama into an irre 
 mediable tragedy. 
 
 But even without this knowledge you can feel 
 166 
 
A MID-PACIFIC PAGEANT 
 
 the magic of the scene; the glorious setting of the 
 play between the mountains and the sea; the little 
 human shapes coming and going along the grassy 
 trails, among the scattered rocks and wind-tossed 
 trees; bare, brown arms and legs glistening in the 
 sun, many-colored garments fluttering in the breeze, 
 files and groups and crowds of men and women and 
 children forming and dissolving around certain 
 dominant figures, a chapter of the human romance, 
 unfolded on the breast of nature, beneath the open 
 sky, in the light of the Eternal Presence. 
 
 The first picture shows the royal state of Kame- 
 hameha the Great, the native conqueror of the isl 
 ands. Ancient rites and customs are displayed: 
 old women beating bark for tfopa-cloth, old men 
 preparing poi, chiefs and chiefesses paying homage, 
 commoners bringing their tribute of food and gar 
 ments, all prostrating themselves before the mon 
 arch; a procession of soldiers and priests, carrying 
 tall standards of war and hideous idols, the ugliest 
 and most sacred of which is the red god of battle; 
 a great feast spread on the ground; hula-hula danc 
 ing by beautiful damsels with mild reservations. 
 It is a confused, barbaric scene, dominated by the 
 tall old King in his cloak and helmet of red and 
 167 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 yellow feathers. He is gloomy and unsatisfied, all- 
 powerful and sad: his red god gives him no counsel 
 for the using of his power. He vainly seeks enlighten 
 ment from his oldest priest and from one of the 
 white men in his train. Silent and sombre, "the 
 Lonely One" stalks off toward the sea, and the 
 crowd melts away. 
 
 The second picture shows the breaking of the 
 ancient tabu system and the destruction of the idols. 
 The new King, Liholiho, is afraid at first, but his 
 reluctance is overcome by the Queen, and the Queen 
 Regent, who is in effect the most powerful person 
 in the islands. It is the women who have suffered 
 most from the tyranny of tabu, which forbade them 
 to eat with their fathers, husbands, or male chil 
 dren, and prohibited them from using the most 
 nourishing foods, under penalty of death. Woman 
 hood rebels. The Queen eats a forbidden banana 
 with her little son. Thus the tabu is badly cracked 
 if not smashed. The Queen Regent argues, (and 
 perhaps threatens,) with the King until he yields. 
 The idols are thrown down, trampled under foot, 
 burned. The bands of ancient, cruel superstition 
 are loosed. 
 
 (But note here, reader, a strange fact unknown 
 168 
 
A MID-PACIFIC PAGEANT 
 
 to the audience. The native Hawaiian actors cast 
 for the part of iconoclasts, alarmed by the mys 
 terious death of one of their number a few days 
 before, declined to play the role of idol-breakers. 
 Their place has to be supplied by Filipino and Chi 
 nese actors, whose subconscious minds have no 
 roots of association with these particular images. 
 Even in the twentieth century, as the Romans said 
 long ago, "you can t expel nature with a pitch 
 fork," nor with a pageant.) 
 
 The third and fourth pictures show the arrival 
 of the Christian missionaries from New England, 
 seven men and seven women, with five children, 
 and the beginning of their work. The crisis of peril 
 in their first reception, the gentle persuasions by 
 which they win a welcome and permission to stay, 
 the busyness of their early days in teaching the 
 gentle savages the rudiments of learning and the 
 arts of peace, are well depicted. The contrast in 
 dress between the styles of New Haven and of Hawaii 
 in 1820 is striking. The compromise invented for 
 the native women in the shapeless form of the ho- 
 loku, (a kind of outdoor nightgown,) is not alto 
 gether successful, but brilliant colors save it. 
 Conch-shells call the children to open-air schools. 
 169 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 Spinning-wheels are brought out. Needles get 
 busy. A great white cross is disclosed at the top 
 of the hill. Allegorical figures of Faith, Hope, and 
 Charity, clad respectively in blue, pale green, and 
 rose chiffon, flutter around, pretty and futile as 
 allegorical figures usually are. The new era has 
 begun. The details of hard work and struggle and 
 danger and privation are written in the diaries and 
 letters and records of the missionaries. Only the 
 symbolic picture is shown here, Christian love 
 and courage setting out to rescue a generous, warm 
 hearted race from the degrading vices of so-called 
 civilization without a religion, and to heal the poison- 
 sores left by the fetters of hoary superstition. 
 
 The most dramatic episode in the story is shown 
 in the fifth picture. Kapiolani, a noble princess 
 of the islands, resolves to defy the goddess Pele, 
 fierce mistress of undying fire, who dwells in the 
 seething, flame-spouting crater of Kilauea. The 
 princess, personated by a stately Hawaiian woman, 
 climbs the crag on which a mimic volcano has been 
 built. The volcano emits sufficient red fire and 
 black smoke to suggest the terrifying reality to the 
 imagination. The princess picks the sacred berries, 
 which it is death to touch on the way up the moun- 
 170 
 
 
A MID-PACIFIC PAGEANT 
 
 tain, stands on the brink of the crater and eats them, 
 scornfully tossing the stones into the lake of fire 
 and crying "Jehovah is my God!" The great de 
 fiance is accomplished and the power of Pele over 
 the souls of men is broken. Tennyson wrote one 
 of his latest poems, Kapiolani, on this theme. 
 
 (But remember, reader, what happened only a 
 few years ago in the wonderful Bishop Museum, 
 where the antiquities of the island are collected. 
 A miniature heiau, temple of the old gods, was 
 set up in the central hall. It was almost completed; 
 council-chamber of the priests, enclosure walled 
 with blocks of lava, black altar overshadowed by 
 grinning idols, all done but the slab for human 
 sacrifice. A Hawaiian youth, working upon the 
 roof, stepped by accident on the glass skylight of 
 the hall, and fell through. His head was shattered 
 on the altar, his blood stained the sands around it. 
 Crowds of the Hawaiians came to look at the place. 
 They shook their heads gravely and whispered one 
 to another: "That was the only way, no human 
 sacrifice, no temple !") 
 
 Come back to the pageant on the sunny hillside. 
 The four remaining pictures display the reign of 
 law under the Magna Charta of King Kamehameha 
 171 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 III; the development of modern industries; the 
 union of Hawaii with America in 1898, and a review 
 of the progress of a century. There is considerable 
 allegory in the presentation; but the redeeming 
 touch of reality is ever present in the fact that the 
 chief actors are the descendants of the missionaries 
 and of the Hawaiians whom they came so far to 
 teach. 
 
 In the last scene more than two thousand people, 
 from all the Christian Schools and the so-called 
 "constructive agencies" of all races on the islands, 
 take part. With waving flags and many-colored 
 banners they stream up the green hill. Forming 
 a huge open triangle, with the point toward the 
 great cross at the top, the living symbol hangs poised 
 in the light of the descending sun. The palms wave 
 and rustle in the breeze. The white surf murmurs 
 on the distant reef. The blue Pacific heaves and 
 sparkles far away. The light clouds drift across 
 the turquoise sky. Over the fair stage and the 
 finished pageant sounds Haydn s glorious hymn, 
 "The Heavens Are Telling the Glory of God." 
 
 Shall I leave my story of pictures, impressions, 
 memories, and hopes in Hawaii, just there? What 
 can I add to it that may not darken counsel by 
 words without knowledge? 
 
 172 
 
A MID-PACIFIC PAGEANT 
 
 The beautiful territory in the sea is full of people 
 now, gathered from many lands, speaking diverse 
 tongues, and thinking different thoughts, Ha- 
 waiians, and half-Hawaiians, Caucasians, Filipinos, 
 Koreans, Chinese, and one hundred and twenty 
 thousand Japanese, as many from Japan as from 
 any four of the other races. Problems of race- 
 mixture, of education, of capital and labor, of civic 
 progress or reaction, of democratic government 
 without class tyranny, must be met and solved. 
 
 The people of Hawaii have their work cut out 
 for them. The Government of the United States 
 must stand by them steadily. There will be showers, 
 storms, tempests of unrest; but I think there will 
 be no cataclysm of destruction. The spirit which 
 guided the missionaries will prove equal to its new 
 tasks. And in due time there will be a new star, a 
 bright tranquil all-Pacific star, in the flag of the 
 United States of America. 
 
 173 
 
XII 
 JAPONICA 
 
 THE plan was to take Paula to Japan, in fulfil 
 ment of a promise I made her when she was a little 
 tiny daughter; to have a brief, glorious vacation 
 there, with some collateral trout-fishing; and then 
 to come home and write a luminous, comprehensive, 
 conclusive monograph on the Japanese Problem. 
 
 This well-laid plan went "a-gley." The first 
 part of the programme rolled off splendidly. But 
 now I come to the second part and find it can t be 
 done. I know too much and too little. 
 
 Japan is no longer a mere name to me: it is a real 
 country, a wonderful land, a great nation. Its very 
 simplicity makes it hard to comprehend and ex 
 plain. The Far Eastern Question is too large to 
 be solved by an anthropological dogma, or settled 
 by a snappy phrase. 
 
 "The Yellow Peril" is an invention worthy of the 
 
 yellow press. The writers who deal with this 
 
 nightmare kind of stuff, like Houston Chamberlain 
 
 and Karl Pearson and the rest, are intellectual 
 
 174 
 
JAPONICA 
 
 neurotics, very jumpy and with a subconscious 
 homicidal tendency. You would not trust them to 
 run a mowing-machine or a trading-schooner. 
 Rudyard Kipling was right in saying, 
 
 "(Mi, East is East, and West is West"- 
 but was he right (except by metrics), in adding, 
 "And never the twain shall meet"? 
 
 In fact they have met already. The temporal re 
 duction of the spatial globe, the commercial am 
 bition of the West, the overflow of the crowded 
 populations of the East, have already brought them 
 together on a long line of contacts. The question 
 now is how shall they live and work together so as 
 to promote the welfare and true happiness of the 
 world. 
 
 This is not a question to be decided offhand, even 
 by the youngest and most cocksure of anthropolo 
 gists. It must be worked out slowly, with patient 
 good-will, and careful application of old, general, 
 well-tried principles of reason and justice. Solvitur 
 ambulando. 
 
 So I have joyfully jettisoned the idea of that con 
 vincing monograph on the Japanese Problem. Sit- 
 175 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 ting here at the wide window of my little bunga 
 low on the Maine coast, looking out over fir-clad 
 islands, blue sea, and mountain-shores (which re 
 mind me vividly of Japan), I shall only try to sketch 
 a few memories of our journey in that delectable 
 island. The title of the rambling paper is Japonica, 
 which means, "things of or pertaining to Japan." 
 
 TOKYO IN THE RAIN 
 
 Coming into Yokohama in one of the fine Toyo 
 Kisen ships, on a gray dripping day, we saw little 
 to interest us, except the home-coming joy of our 
 Japanese fellow passengers, children and all. We 
 wondered why they should love such a wet, drab 
 country. 
 
 Tokyo did not enlighten us. It is big without 
 grandeur: a wide-spread, flat, confused city, with 
 interesting and even picturesque spots in it, art 
 treasures hidden in museums and private houses, 
 some fifteen hundred Buddhist temples and Shinto 
 shrines (a few of which are noteworthy,) a hundred 
 and twenty-five Christian churches, and many 
 gardens lovely even in the rain. 
 
 The warm hospitality of the accomplished Amer 
 ican Ambassador, the Japanese Foreign Minister, 
 176 
 
JAPONICA 
 
 the cordial missionaries of the great Methodist 
 schools at Aoyama Gakuin, Doctor and Mrs. Corell 
 of the Episcopal Church, and many other friends 
 old and new; the comfort of the Imperial Hotel and 
 the intelligent and informing conversation of its 
 manager Mr. Hayashi, whom I had known years 
 ago as a student in New York; the amusement of 
 expeditions through the crowded, many-colored 
 street called the Ginza; the pathetic interest of a 
 visit to the huge shabby-splendid temple of Asakusa 
 Kwannon, most popular of city fanes these were 
 consolations and entertainments for which we were 
 grateful. 
 
 But they did not quite lift us out of the depression 
 of a rainy week in Tokyo. The air was dead, streets 
 mud, cherry-blossoms fallen. So we determined to 
 cut loose from the capital and go up to Nikko, 
 weather permitting or not. 
 
 BED TEMPLES AND TALL TREES 
 
 Five hours on a comfortable railway carried us 
 northward through a coastal plain of small square 
 fields of rice and wheat, barley and millet, rape, 
 radishes, onions, and taro, all carefully brought up 
 by hand; then eastward, through a country of rising 
 177 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 foot-hills with horizontal villages and farmhouses 
 tucked away among the trees and every inch of 
 valley-bottom cultivated to the limit; and so at 
 last, through copses of cherry and maple and pine, 
 splashed with rose-pink of wild azaleas, to the fa 
 mous avenue of tall Cryptameria Japonica leading 
 up to the scarlet shrines of Nikko. 
 
 It is a small mountain town, whose name means 
 "sunny splendor," but whose glory is nested in 
 coverts of evergreen shade. 
 
 The red-lacquered bridge that springs with a 
 delicate, effortless curve across the rushing Daiya- 
 gawa at the upper end of the village, is too sacred 
 for common use. Only Imperial Envoys and High 
 Priests and Holy Pilgrimages twice a year may 
 tread it. But they say that bold village boys on 
 dark nights climb the secluding gates and scamper 
 swiftly over the forbidden arch. 
 
 The temples are all on the north side of the 
 stream; terraced on the steep hillside that rises to 
 ward the snow-capped range of Nantai-san: em 
 bowered in a sacred grove more majestic than 
 Dodona. The stately sugi, sisters to the giant 
 sequoia of California, are the pillars of the green 
 roof. Russet-trunked hinoki, with cypress-like foli- 
 178 
 
JAPONICA 
 
 age, and plumy retinosporas, are scattered through 
 the forest. In the more open spaces are budding 
 maples and birches. In the courtyards double- 
 cherries are in radiant bloom. Far and wide the 
 ground is spread with soft moss and feathery ferns. 
 Amid all this natural splendor, so tranquil and so 
 rich, the temples stand on their gray stone terraces, 
 adorned with opulence of art and man s device. 
 
 The prevailing color is a deep Indian red. But 
 there is not a hue of the rainbow that is not lavished 
 somewhere on carved rafter or columned gateway, 
 pierced screen or panelled ceiling, treasure-house, 
 baldachin, drum-tower or bell-tower. The spirit of 
 the grotesque runs riot in the portrayal of unknown 
 animals and supernatural beings. But realism has 
 its turn in graphic portraits of familiar birds and 
 beasts, like Sakai s twelve hawks, and the "sleep 
 ing cat" of Hidari Jingoro, which makes you drowsy 
 to look at it. 
 
 Nothing "towers" at Nikko, except the trees and 
 the one stately vermeil pagoda. The temples are 
 more broad than lofty. Their green-bronze roofs, 
 curving gently outward, project in wide eaves. 
 Their doors and beams and ridge-poles are adorned 
 with bosses, rosettes, and hinges of gold or gleaming 
 179 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 black metal. They have the effect of immense 
 jewel-boxes, covered with decoration and crammed 
 with treasures. 
 
 God made the forest. Then man said, "Let us 
 see what I can do." So he made the shrines. 
 
 They are in effect the mausolea of two famous 
 Japanese warriors and rulers. 
 
 The eastern and more elaborate group is dedi 
 cated to leyasu, the first Shogun of the Tokugawa 
 clan, a great general, mighty hunter, and patron of 
 the fine arts. He pacified Japan by killing his 
 enemies in 1600, and began that long regime of 
 seclusion and comparative tranquillity which lasted 
 until the downfall of the Shogunate in 1867. 
 
 The western group belongs to lemitsu, his grand 
 son, and is considered less important. To us it 
 seemed no less attractive, perhaps because we went 
 there on a sunshiny day, when the double-cherries 
 were in glory around the old Futa-ara shrine, and 
 the clear mountain rivulets were sparkling through 
 the temple compound and overflowing the granite 
 water-basins in thin sheets like liquid glass. 
 
 Three days we spent in roaming up and down 
 these terraces, through rain and shine; and all the 
 time thousands of Japanese men, women, and chil- 
 180 
 
JAPONICA 
 
 dren, pilgrims or excursionists, were coining and 
 going, gazing and wondering, listening devoutly to 
 the discourse of their guides. 
 
 The holy of holies of the leyasu temples was 
 opened to us by special permit from the Abbot. It 
 was so rich that I can t remember much of it. 
 
 But I remember that outside the Honden was a 
 little pavilion tenanted by an old-maidenish priest 
 ess, very small and dainty in crimson kirtle and 
 snowy cap and surplice. At the request of visitors 
 she would rise from her meditative seat on the floor 
 and perform a quaint, decorous, graceful dance "to 
 | drive away the evil spirits." She was of an in 
 scrutable age; but a youthful soul smiled through 
 the lattice of her gravity; her steps and motions 
 were sure and supple. She carried a fan in one 
 id and a softly, silverly tinkling instrument in the 
 other. These she waved toward us thrice at certain 
 irns in the performance. It was fascinating. 
 We came back when no one was looking and per- 
 led her by silver inducements to do it again 
 | and again. Each time her smile was a little brighter. 
 I don t feel any evil spirits coming or going," said 
 *aula, "but I simply must get the steps of that 
 ice." 
 
 181 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 HIGHLAND WATERS 
 
 All around Nikko there are fine waterfalls, - 
 score of them within easy walking distance. In the 
 mountains beyond there are many lakes, two of 
 which have a certain renown. Chusenji, the larger, 
 nearly 4,500 feet above the sea, is a modest summer 
 resort. Yumoto, more than 5,000 feet up, is smaller 
 and hardly frequented at all except for the hot sul 
 phur baths at the head of the lake. To these high 
 land waters we resolved to go. 
 
 The motor road for some three miles followed the 
 broad stony bed of the Daiya-gawa. There had 
 been a spate a few days before, which carried away 
 the smaller bridges. Gangs of coolies were deftly 
 rebuilding them with bamboo as we passed. Pres 
 ently the valley narrowed, the road gave out, and 
 we began to foot it on the rickshaw path. Steep 
 cliffs overshadowed us. Cascades on tributary 
 streams trailed their white scarves from shoulders 
 of the hills. The path zigzagged up the mountain 
 side. Three or four rustic tea-houses, perched at 
 convenient distances, commanded gorgeous views 
 down the valley. The main river roared far below. 
 
 But the memorable beauty of that breath-taking 
 182 
 
JAPONICA 
 
 climb was the flood of wild azaleas streaming down 
 every hillside through the lace-leafy woods of early 
 spring. From pale rose to deep flame, from rich 
 mauve to faintest pink, their color shaded and 
 shimmered, now massed along a level ridge, now 
 pouring down a rocky slope a glory no more won 
 derful, but more delicate and entrancing than the 
 giant rhododendrons blooming along a Pennsylvania 
 brook, or the high laurels beside a little river of 
 South Jersey. 
 
 Useless plants, all of them, except to the soul of 
 man! 
 
 Finally topping the crest, we came through a 
 level wood of birch and maple, to the head of the 
 famous Kegon Cataract where the Daiya-gawa 
 rushes from the lake through a ten-foot rift in the 
 rock, and plunges straight down two hundred and 
 fifty feet into the churning pool below. The clouds 
 of spray, the ceaseless thunder, the dizzying change 
 of the fall from swift motion to seeming immobility, 
 were bewildering and benumbing. Hundreds of hap 
 less Japanese lovers, bent on suicide, have thought 
 this a fitting place to leap out of life into Nirvana. 
 
 Chusenji is a lovely lake. High hills embrace it. 
 Nantai-san soars above it. Bird-peopled woods en- 
 183 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 circle it, except at the outlet, where there is a small 
 village with half a dozen big Japanese inns on one 
 bank of the stream and the Lakeside Hotel on the 
 other. It is a comfortable hostelry Japanese ex 
 terior, European furnishing. We were the only 
 staying guests, and well cared for by the landlord 
 and his whole family including two little Breath 
 less Boys, who did everything on the full run, and 
 made up for their blunders by smiling good-will. 
 
 Yumoto is a very different lake, more Alpine, 
 more surprising. It lies on the knees of the moun 
 tain-gods, like a beautiful fairy child. Primeval 
 pine-trees form a dense grove round the lower part 
 of the lake; steaming sulphur springs issue from the 
 bare slopes at the upper end. At the very foot 
 there is a tiny islet, dividing the clear green water, 
 which drops straightaway over the cliff in a broad, 
 wrinkled, rippling curtain, like white watered-silk, 
 two hundred feet long. 
 
 In the green dell below, perhaps a hundred yards 
 from the fall, a fine pool has formed, with a large 
 foam-covered backwater on the opposite side of the 
 stream. Arriving there at twilight one evening in 
 mid-May, after a seven-mile tramp, Paula and I 
 could not bear to push on without trying our luck. 
 184 
 
JAPONICA 
 
 The three-ounce rod sent the tiny "Queen of the 
 Water" and "Royal Coachman" fifty feet across 
 the stream, to the edge of the foam. The white 
 sheet was broken by the tail of a fish. A quick 
 strike hooked him. He rushed gamely down the 
 rapids, played hard for a good quarter of an hour, 
 and then came to the net, a plump, American 
 brook-trout of a pound and a quarter weight. Thrice 
 the performance was repeated before the night fell. 
 Then we climbed the steep ascent, and trudged 
 over snow-drifts in the dark pine-wood, and through 
 the sulphur-scented moorland, to the little Nanma 
 Inn, where we found a warm Japanese welcome and 
 had the whole doll-house at our disposal. 
 
 Three days we fished that stream between Yu- 
 moto and Chusenji, winding along the edge of a 
 wild Alpine plain covered with reeds and bamboo- 
 grass. The fish were plentiful, rainbows, and 
 fontinalis, and pink-finned native trout; but the 
 water was too high and drumlie for fly-fishing. My 
 average was fifteen fish a day. 
 
 Our guide was a cheerful Japanese boatman 
 named Ochiai, or something like that. He knew ten 
 or twelve words of English, and was a passionate 
 bait-fisher and a thorough gentleman. I remember 
 185 
 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 the night when we arrived at the hamlet of Shobu- 
 no-hama in a pelting storm. He introduced us to 
 the humble cottage of a friend, where we sheltered 
 beside the family-fire of charcoal while the boat 
 was being prepared to take us down the lake. Hot 
 tea was served, as a matter of course. When we 
 scrambled down to the skiff, Ochiai brought up a 
 dripping, apologetic peddler with a huge pack, and 
 explained politely, "Zis gent man wet, Chu- 
 senji?" We took him in, and the boatman sculled 
 slowly down to the foot of the lake, while Paula-san 
 and I sang college songs to keep ourselves warm. 
 
 THE HEART S CAPITAL OF JAPAN 
 
 Kyoto, with its 450,000 inhabitants, lies in the 
 fertile Yamashiro plain, ringed by green and lofty 
 hills. For many centuries it was the seat of the 
 Imperial Court, until Tokyo displaced it in 1868. 
 But it still remains, I think, the chief city in the 
 heart of Japan. 
 
 Here the ancient arts and ways are more purely 
 preserved; here the old traditions centre; here a 
 visitor does not have to witness, as Lafcadio Hearn 
 said in his last days of Tokyo, "the sorry sight of 
 one civilization trampling the life out of another." 
 186 
 
JAPONICA 
 
 Mind you, I don t say that what is taking place in 
 Tokyo and other great seaport towns is wrong or 
 evitable. I only say that if you want the flavor 
 and the tone of the original Japan, you must see 
 Kyoto, and smaller cities of that type, and, above 
 all, the countryside. 
 
 We spent a fortnight in and around Kyoto, with 
 headquarters at the Miyako Hotel, where the con 
 versation of the manager, Mr. Hamaguchi, was 
 delightful and illuminating. He told us the meaning 
 of many things in Japanese life and philosophy, 
 and best of all he advised us what to skip in our 
 sightseeing. 
 
 All kinds of pictures from that fortnight are stored 
 in memory s "go-down." I can take out one after 
 another and hang it on the wall, as a Japanese would 
 do with his kakemonos. 
 
 There is the famous Cherry Blossom Dance, in 
 the biggest tea-house on the Kamo-gawa, where 
 forty geishas weave intricate, slow designs of color 
 and movement on the stage, while a double-dozen 
 of women musicians twang samisens, slap drums, 
 and chant weird nasal songs. There is the stately 
 Noh Drama, performed on the century-old stage 
 of the Nishi Hongwanji temple, by actors who have 
 187 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 inherited their calling and traditions through genera 
 tions, gorgeous costumes, symbolic action, classic 
 dialogue, mostly tragic themes, with some con 
 secrated comic episodes, the chorus intoning a run 
 ning commentary, the absorbed audience following 
 the play with their books, it is a highly intellectual 
 and at the same time eye-appealing performance, 
 something like the revival of a Greek play at Ox 
 ford or Harvard, yet different as the East differs 
 from the West. There are visits to a few well-chosen 
 temples. The golden splendor of the great Chion-in. 
 The tranquil charm of Kurodani on its shady hill, 
 with its long inner corridors where the "nightingale 
 floors" twitter beneath your stockinged feet, its 
 rooms adorned with rare paintings and silken 
 broideries, and its secluded garden where the iris 
 is in bloom around the pond. The delicate beauty 
 of the Golden Pavilion and the Silver Pavilion in 
 their landscape setting; and one little temple among 
 the trees, whose name I never knew, but which 
 Paula said she loved "because it seemed so lonely, 
 and nobody told us to go there." 
 
 Certain scenes and incidents are vivid in my 
 
 mind. Visits to workshops, where deft Japanese 
 
 fingers are busy with delicate work of tapestry, 
 
 188 
 
 
JAPONICA 
 
 damascene, lacquer, and carving. Preaching in the 
 little Union Church, and lecturing to a thousand 
 eager students at Doshisha University. Luncheon 
 with Miss Denton of the Girls School, that won 
 derful American lady who knows Kyoto better 
 than the Japanese and whom they all love. "Cere 
 monial tea" at Doctor Saiki s house, where the 
 gentle daughter of Nippon who performs the gracious 
 ritual is the mother of nine and looks no older than 
 one of her own children. 
 
 Of all Kyoto days none was brighter than that 
 on which we walked with the Shivelys over the 
 sacred mountain of Hiei-san. The long trail up 
 through the steep, stately forest; the ancient tem 
 ples and monasteries hidden on the heights where 
 the fighting monks of Buddha used to assemble 
 their bands to raid the capital; the basket lunch 
 beside a cold streamlet in a glen below the summit; 
 the rapid descent to Lake Biwa, with rapturous 
 views on the way; the boat-ride home on the swift 
 canal, half through a dark tunnel, half in broad 
 evening sunlight, high on the hillside among wild 
 azaleas, that was a memorable day. 
 
 But a single hour in another day stands out as 
 clear. It was when I climbed with a Japanese friend 
 189 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 to visit the Christian cemetery on the hillside above 
 Nanzen-ji. The only approach is by a steep foot 
 path. Here, with others of like faith, confessed 
 or secret, is buried Joseph Neesima, the father of 
 Doshisha. From this quiet hillside no doubt he 
 often looked down upon the great city spread out 
 below him, and, like his Master, longed and yearned 
 for its peace. Here he sleeps quietly, while his work 
 goes on. 
 
 TO THE CITY OF LANTERNS 
 
 This was a roundabout journey which we made 
 with a Japanese friend and scholar, Doctor Harada, 
 as our genial comrade to guide us in the ways of 
 Japanese inns and explain things seen and heard 
 on the road. 
 
 First we spent a day and night in Yamada-Ise, 
 visiting the two chief shrines of the Shinto religion. 
 Like almost all sacred places in Japan they have 
 a splendid natural setting. 
 
 Unlike Buddhist temples, however, the Shinto 
 shrines are very simple, even austere. Built of 
 plain wood, completely renewed every twenty years, 
 without painting or ornament (except some brass 
 fastenings with crests), they are distinguished by 
 primitive features of their architecture, such as 
 190 
 
 
JAPONICA 
 
 the crossing of the end-rafters, which project above 
 the roof like the poles of a wigwam. In the centre 
 of the inner shrine hangs a mirror, the symbol of 
 Amaterasu, the sun-goddess, worshipped as the an 
 cestor of the first Mikado and of the pure Japa 
 nese race. 
 
 Shintoism is the old national religion of Japan, 
 though there are many more Buddhists than Shin- 
 toists, and the two faiths have been strangely crossed. 
 The core of Shinto is ancestor-worship and patriot 
 ism. Mr. Hamaguchi said to me one night: "In 
 China they worship their ancestors dead. In Japan 
 we worship our ancestors through our children. 
 Suppose you want to move graveyard to make 
 way for needed railroad. Chinese say, Never, 
 our ancestors forbid! Japanese say, Yes, move 
 carefully, with reverence; railroad good for our 
 children. " 
 
 You will usually find chickens kept at Shinto 
 shrines, because of the cock that crows to make 
 the sun rise. 
 
 Next we went to Toba, a picturesque seashore 
 
 town, known for its ship-builders, fishermen, and 
 
 women pearl-divers. We took two of the divers, 
 
 plump, good-humored little creatures, out to the 
 
 191 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 fishing-grounds. They put on white caps and huge 
 water-goggles, stood up and dropped their kimonos, 
 and then slipped quietly overboard in their white 
 cotton shirts and drawers, taking their floating 
 tubs with them. After a little wheezing and many 
 curious noises, they gave a sharp, indrawn whistle, 
 turned over, and went down like small white seals. 
 They brought up no pearls, but many lobsters, star 
 fish, sea-urchins, and other marine curios. The 
 best pearl-fishing is at Mikimoto s place, a few miles 
 farther along the coast. 
 
 In the afternoon we climbed Weather Hill and 
 had a view finer than that from Pemetic on Mt. 
 Desert : eastward, Ise Bay and the swarm of islands 
 and the blue Pacific; westward, a far-rolling sea 
 of wild mountains and forests. 
 
 Our last point was Gifu, the city of lanterns. Here 
 they make delicious persimmon confitures, delicate 
 silk crape, the strongest paper in the world, fans, 
 umbrellas, and paper lanterns light as soap-bubbles 
 and lovely as campanula bells. We stayed at the 
 "Well of Jewels Inn," and went out at night to see 
 the celebrated cormorant fishing, a craft which 
 has been practised here for more than ten centuries 
 by the same families of fishermen. 
 192 
 
JAPONICA 
 
 The moon was rising over the mountains. The 
 swift, clear river ran half glittering and half dark. 
 Our barge was covered with an awning and lit with 
 lanterns. We poled two or three miles up the river 
 and found five other lanterned barges waiting be 
 side a gravelly bank between two rapids. I began 
 to think it would be a "tourist show," a fake. 
 
 But a little before ten o clock we saw moving 
 lights up the river. Six fishing-boats came sweep 
 ing down with the current, an iron cresset full of 
 blazing pine-knots projecting from the bow of each. 
 We joined one of them and drifted with it. 
 
 In front stood the master fisherman, a tall, 
 bronzed youth, naked to the waist, with a long skirt 
 of straw girt about his loins. The ungainly cor 
 morants, black bodies, white throats, and hooked 
 bills, stood along the gunwale, six on a side. A 
 ring of fibre around the lower part of the neck pre 
 vents the bird from swallowing fish irrecoverably, 
 and a fibre rein twelve feet long serves to guide and 
 retrieve him. The fisherman pushes the team off 
 in order, the captain last. Then they dive, swim 
 under water with feet and wings, dart hither and 
 thither ahead of the boat, come up again and 
 again with a five or six inch trout held crosswise in 
 193 
 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 the bill, gulp it down, dive again, and keep on till 
 their pouches are full. Then the master, clucking 
 and whistling to his team, lifts one bird after an 
 other to the gunwale, taps him on the throat to 
 make him give up his catch, and drops him over 
 once more. 
 
 So we drifted on with splashing, shouting, singing, 
 the torches flaring, the birds eager and skilful, the 
 master deft and imperturbable, until we came to 
 the end of the fishing-grounds. Then the birds 
 had their collars taken off and were plentifully fed 
 with the smaller fishes, and we all went home. The 
 catch that night must have run well up in the thou 
 sands. We had some the next morning for break 
 fast, delicious. Paula said, well, no matter what 
 she said. They were perfectly good pink fish. 
 
 TOKYO REVISITED 
 
 Our second week in Tokyo was more serious and 
 joyful than the first. The sun was shining, the air 
 revived. There were social engagements of a real 
 pleasure. A snug tiffin with Secretary Hofer in 
 his new bachelor house; a fine banquet (with theat 
 rical entertainment), given me by six of my former 
 Japanese students at Princeton, in the Maple Club; 
 194 
 
JAPONICA 
 
 an academic luncheon presided over by Baron 
 Yamagawa, President of the Imperial University, 
 in the Botanical Gardens; a delightful, friendly 
 feast made for us by Madame Yukio Ozaki (wife 
 of the eloquent parliamentary leader, and author 
 of those delightful English volumes, "The Japanese 
 Fairy Book" and "Romances of Old Japan"), at 
 the "Inn of Ten Thousand Pines," by the Sumida- 
 gawa; a brilliant dinner with Mrs. Charles Burnett, 
 a gifted American lady who lives very close to the 
 heart of Japan, and whose charm brought to meet 
 us a choice group of scholars and statesmen, men of 
 letters and affairs. 
 
 In such company one has glimpses of what Japan 
 really desires and seeks. I am convinced that it is 
 not war, but peaceful, orderly development, and 
 that Japan is the natural leader for this task in the 
 Far East. 
 
 There were also academic engagements which 
 involved work. A lecture at Waseda University, 
 founded by Japan s "grand old man," the Marquis 
 Okuma; an address at the fortieth anniversary of 
 the Tokyo Y. M. C. A.; two lectures at the Im 
 perial University, the first to be given on the "House 
 Foundation"; a luncheon and lecture at the Wo- 
 195 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 man s University, where we had a hearty wel 
 come from the president and all the staff and stu 
 dents. 
 
 The attitude of the Japanese toward education 
 is fine. In the public schools the enrolment and 
 attendance are 95 per cent. You see the well-trained 
 children on excursions with their teachers every 
 where, learning to see and know Japan first. In 
 the universities the eagerness for knowledge is keen, 
 so keen that perhaps it sometimes turns its own 
 edge. Know-it-all is a good dog, but Know-it-well 
 is a better. 
 
 The Japanese, in fact, have many of the Amer 
 ican virtues, and faults. To think or talk of them 
 as "brown monkeys" is distinctly asinine. They 
 have an ancient civilization; a wonderful art and 
 literature; a unified race whose spirit has never 
 been broken by foreign conquest or domination; 
 a habit of industry and great gifts of manual skill; 
 endurance, ambition, versatility, and a sensitive 
 temper. They laugh much, love their numerous 
 and delightful children, and have a firm and pas 
 sionate faith in the future of their country. They 
 are almost as political-minded as Americans, and 
 quite as honest as any other commercial people. 
 196 
 
JAPONICA 
 
 One word more. What about the Pacific Coast 
 and Japanese Immigration? 
 
 Only this ! 
 
 It is a difficult question. Within limits, I think 
 the Pacific Coasters must settle it for themselves. 
 If they do not want Japanese labor they need not 
 have it. If they want it they must treat it on the 
 principle of "the square deal." 
 
 The Californians must remember that the Pacific 
 has two Coasts. The friendly co-operation of Great 
 Britain, the United States, and Japan is essential 
 to peace and order in the Far East, where our na 
 tion has some possessions and many interests. And 
 the natural leader in the Far East is Japan, because 
 she has what China lacks, the instinct of self-or 
 ganization. 
 
 197 
 
XIII 
 INTERLUDES ON THE KOTO 
 
 I 
 
 THE RED BRIDGE AT NIKKO 
 
 OVER the hurrying torrent of Daiya-gawa, 
 Calmly I bend my bow of beauty, 
 Curving from pillar to pillar of granite, 
 Tranquil in the pride of perfection, 
 I am the Queen-rose of all bridges. 
 
 I tremble not with the fury of the current; 
 The turbulent river cannot reflect me, 
 Nor carry away my lovely image. 
 
 Holy and proud, I am often lonely, 
 When I hear on the common bridge below me 
 The pattering feet of people going to and fro, 
 And the merry laughter of little children. 
 
 Come in the night, you wild young boy, 
 And leave me not untrodden. 
 198 
 
INTERLUDES 
 II 
 
 CANDELABRA 
 
 I LOVE the wonder-working fingers 
 
 Of Springtime in Japan! 
 
 She weaves a priestly robe of green for Nature, 
 
 And broiders it with white and rose and gold. 
 
 She lifts the veil of snow 
 
 From the beautiful mountain-shoulders, 
 
 She fills the holy places of the forest 
 
 With psalms and canticles of praise. 
 
 Incense of fragrant leaves and blossoms 
 
 Floats from her footsteps in the temple. 
 
 Where are the candelabra for the altar? 
 
 Behold, the fingers of Springtime have prepared 
 them! 
 
 She has wrought silently in the midnight; 
 
 Bending the dark bronze boughs of the pine-trees 
 
 Outward and upward in lines of beauty. 
 
 On the tips of all the branches, straight and slen 
 der, 
 
 Silvery candles are set in millions, 
 
 Every one standing upright, 
 
 Every one touched with the white flame of life! 
 199 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 III 
 
 THE REPOSE OF NARA 
 
 ON the knees of the ancient mountains 
 Guarding the old Yamato plain, 
 Weary of long war and tumult, 
 Beautiful Nara climbed up to rest. 
 
 The green sugi and red-bodied hinoki 
 Shelter her temples with curving branches: 
 April heaps white blossoms among them, 
 October lights them with lanterns of a million 
 maples. 
 
 Droves of dappled deer find sanctuary in Nara; 
 Processions of pilgrims and singing school chil 
 dren 
 
 Wander and wonder through her groves, 
 While the great bell of Buddha 
 Booms the passing hours of peace. 
 
 Last of all come the refugees of Russia, 
 Flying from the fury of the Red Terror. 
 Dai Nippon, whom they once despised and hated, 
 Welcomes them to the repose of Nara. 
 They are like people walking in their sleep; 
 Happy, if in this dream they find truth! 
 200 
 
INTERLUDES 
 IV 
 
 PROMISE-TIME 
 
 IF Springtime were the only time 
 
 It would not be so dear, 
 The budding-time, the mating-time, 
 
 The promise-time o the year. 
 But Summer comes with ripening heat, 
 And Autumn with her wine-stained feet, 
 And Winter to his fireside seat 
 
 Doth cheerily call: 
 
 Yet still the dearest time of all, 
 Is the time when nothing is complete, 
 The time when hope and longing meet, 
 The promise-time o* the year. 
 
 MALGRE CELA 
 
 NEVER Summer fair as Spring foretold, 
 Never Autumn rich as Summer willed it, 
 Never Winter gleaned all Autumn s gold, 
 Never Spring so late that Winter killed it. 
 
 201 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 VI 
 
 WILD AZALEAS 
 
 WHEN the bloom of the cherry is gone from the 
 gardens 
 
 And all their white flower-drifts have melted away, 
 
 Then the wild azaleas begin to flow down the hill 
 sides, 
 
 Rivers of rose through the morning-misty wood 
 land, 
 
 Pools of tranquil flame under the evergreen-trees. 
 
 VII 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF JAPAN 
 
 WHILE the broad-boughed pine braves the ocean 
 
 gale, 
 
 And the bamboo bends to the breath of the vale, 
 And the cherry dazzles the April air 
 With a snow of beauty everywhere, 
 The Yamato spirit shall endure, 
 In beauty, grace, and strength secure. 
 
 202 
 
XIV 
 
 SUICIDAL TENDENCIES IN 
 DEMOCRACY 
 
 is a word variously employed. 
 It signifies a government, a theory, a way of living, 
 and (like Boston) a state of mind. In the United 
 States of America it is also used, and capitalized, 
 to denote one of the two political parties which 
 alternately control and criticise the conduct of the 
 state. With this last meaning the present essay 
 does not deal. 
 
 Toward the four other significations of democ 
 racy I stand thus. As a state of mind it is whole 
 some: as a way of living it is convenient, although 
 not always the most comfortable: as a theory it 
 is admirable with mild reservations: as a mode of 
 government it is the most promising yet devised 
 by man. 
 
 This is not as much as to say that it is always 
 possible or even desirable for all nations at all stages 
 of their growth. What has been written by Rudyard 
 203 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 Kipling of the Bandar-log or commonwealth of 
 monkeys is pertinent also to the Boob-rah or regime 
 of the ignorant by force of numbers. 
 
 But granting a moderate degree of self-knowledge 
 as a preparative for self-determination, and a 
 reasonable consent to those natural and moral laws 
 which cannot be altered by popular vote, prob 
 ably democracy offers more to man than any other 
 way of regulating his common affairs. 
 
 It is costly in discussion and debate; but by way 
 of recompense it promotes general intelligence and 
 the most Christian virtue of patience. It is sub 
 ject to errors; but it has the merit of bringing home 
 the responsibility to those who make the mistakes; 
 for where all decide, all must share the consequences. 
 
 Under a rule in which you yourself partake, weak 
 complaining is a form of self-reproach, violence is 
 treason, and the only wisdom of the discontented 
 lies in the continued effort to bring the majority 
 to a better choice. Thus democracy, rightly con 
 sidered, has in itself something bracing, salutary, 
 and educative. 
 
 "Government of the people, by the people, for 
 the people," as Lincoln ennobled it in his imperish 
 able phrase, has a superior quality in its ideal of 
 204 
 
TENDENCIES IN DEMOCRACY 
 
 perfection. Even in its imperfection, (and as yet 
 the world has seen no more,) it outranks the other 
 methods of government by its ultimate intention 
 of appeal to reason and the right mind in man. 
 
 Thus avowing my democratic convictions, and 
 thanking God that he has cast my lot under a gov 
 ernment which derives its just powers from the 
 consent of the governed, I feel bound, (and at lib 
 erty,) to confess my hesitations and doubts con 
 cerning the modern presentation of democracy as a 
 substitute for religion. 
 
 It is a good thing, no doubt: but not so good as 
 all that. It has the defects of its qualities. Its 
 possibilities carry its perils. Subject to the infirmi 
 ties of its makers, it needs a corrective and a guide. 
 It is as wise and just as mankind, no more. 
 
 Perhaps they are right who say that it has more 
 of wisdom and justice than any one man can ever 
 have. But even that collective sum is not enough. 
 For human wisdom has its sharp enclosing ring; 
 and when we pass that, we do but find another 
 horizon. Human justice has a twist in it, being 
 warped unconsciously by our fond blindness to our 
 own blame, and our failure to feel the needs which 
 may explain, if not excuse, the faults of others. 
 205 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 This double defect is as common in juries as in 
 judges. 
 
 To praise democracy overmuch is to invite a 
 scrutiny of its mistakes. To trust it beyond its 
 ability to perform is to court the loss of all our 
 confidence. 
 
 Do not overload the ship which carries your hope. 
 Vox populi, vox dei, says the proverb. Yes, but 
 what god is it that thus speaks? An idol of the 
 market-place, or the True and Only ? 
 
 You might think that the new religion proposed 
 by Auguste Comte, Culte systtmatique de VHu- 
 manite, would have been popular. Not so! For 
 the enthusiasm of the multitude for itself, though 
 violent for a time, is transitory. The hot fit passes 
 into the cold. 
 
 The crowd, when not hypnotized by the spell 
 binder, or inflamed by the demagogue, mistrusts 
 itself even more than the philosopher who knows 
 the common sense which lives within its limitations. 
 
 The man in the crowd, pressed and incommoded, 
 is conscious mainly of the deficiencies of his too near 
 neighbor, and whispers to himself, "Am I to be 
 governed by the likes of you?" 
 
 You may often hear one say, in mock-modest 
 206 
 
TENDENCIES IN DEMOCRACY 
 
 self-depreciation, that he belongs to the rank and 
 file. But in his heart he does not place himself en 
 tirely there. He thinks he is a little different, stands 
 somewhat apart, a bit higher. 
 
 This is why even popular writers do not fear to 
 abuse the multitude, to pour scorn upon it, to buffet 
 it with hard words. They know that none of their 
 readers will take offense, because none will think 
 that he really belongs to the multitude. 
 
 Thus Emerson, high-handed republican that he 
 was, wrote in his "Considerations by the Way": 
 "Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. 
 Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their 
 demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, 
 but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything 
 to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them 
 up, and draw individuals out of them. The worst 
 of charity is, that the lives you are asked to pre 
 serve are not worth preserving. Masses ! the 
 calamity is masses. I do not wish any mass at all, 
 but honest men only, lovely, sweet, accomplished 
 women only, and no shovel-handed, narrow-brained, 
 gin-drinking million stockingers or lazzaroni at all. 
 If government knew how, I should like to see it 
 check, not multiply the population. When it reaches 
 207 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 its true law of action, every man that is born will 
 be hailed as essential. Away with this hurrah of 
 masses, and let us have the considerate vote of single 
 men spoken on their honor and their conscience. 
 In old Egypt, it was established law, that the vote 
 of a prophet be reckoned equal to a hundred hands. 
 I think it was much underestimated. Clay and 
 clay differ in dignity/ as we find by our preferences 
 every day. What a vicious practice is this of our 
 politicians at Washington pairing off ! as if one man 
 who votes wrong, going away, could excuse you, 
 who mean to vote right, for going away; or as if 
 your presence did not tell in more ways than in 
 your vote. Suppose the three hundred heroes of 
 Thermopylae had paired off with three hundred 
 Persians; would it have been all the same to Greece, 
 and to history ? " 
 
 Now whether this be an example of what George 
 Meredith calls a "rough truth" or not, I cannot 
 say; but it is certainly a specimen of plain dis 
 course. One would like to know after what election 
 in Massachusetts Emerson wrote it, or whether it 
 was conceived after a confabulation with Carlyle in 
 his "Ercles vein." 
 
 But at one point, the last, Emerson leaves his 
 208 
 
TENDENCIES IN DEMOCRACY 
 
 belaboring of the unconscious masses, and turns to 
 thwack a far more sensitive class, the politicians. 
 And that, forsooth, on the score of their old-estab 
 lished, highly honored, and generally practised cus 
 tom of pairing off ! Here is candor to the verge of 
 rashness ! I reckon, calculate, and guess the sage 
 of Concord heard from his representatives at Wash 
 ington about that rude assault. Thus I hear them 
 talk: 
 
 * Shall not a weary Congressman or Senator pair 
 off when he has important business of his own to 
 attend to, and when a vote on one side practically 
 cancels and annuls a vote on the other? Instead 
 of being blamed, should he not rather be praised 
 for having taken the pains to arrange a pair be 
 fore forsaking the high halls of republican coun 
 cil? Is not this a pestilent idealist who ventures 
 to set up a higher standard of duty than the con 
 venience or interest of the men who have been 
 honored, and so to speak promoted to a kind of 
 nobility, by the people s choice? 
 
 A specious defense ! Yet Emerson was right. 
 
 The point he makes against the pairing politicians 
 
 is that their mating of opposites is productive of 
 
 mere negation; it is a barren match. And this, 
 
 209 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 mark you, because it proceeds upon the false as 
 sumption that voting is the highest if not the sole 
 function of man in a democratic state, and that 
 all votes are equal, not only in the numerical count, 
 but also in worth and significance. 
 
 This assumption, if granted, would be fatal to 
 true democracy. It would level down, not up; ren 
 der the appeal to reason and the right mind nuga 
 tory; and consecrate the Teller as High-Priest of 
 the God of Numbers. 
 
 Yet it is precisely the democratic state that seems 
 to breed this self -destroying fallacy most frequently 
 and to its own hurt. One man, one vote, is the mod 
 ern "slogan." (Silly word, beloved by advertisers 
 of ready-made clothing and cosmetics, I use thee in 
 derision!) As a protest against proved inequities 
 of suffrage, like plural voting and the disfranchising 
 of women on the ground of sex, the saying has its 
 portion of truth. But push it beyond the mark, 
 infer from it that, because the privilege of voting 
 works best when equally conferred on all citizens, 
 therefore all citizens and all their votes have an 
 equal vital value, and you propagate an absurdity 
 which not even the rugged digestion of democracy 
 can endure. 
 
 210 
 
TENDENCIES IN DEMOCRACY 
 
 In old Calvinton, when I was young, we had a 
 professor who was a saint, a sage, and a joy to the 
 heart. Every one in the town knew and loved him. 
 As he rode along the main street in his little one- 
 horse carryall on election day, we would say, " There 
 goes the old Doctor to vote the Republicratic 
 ticket." When he had deposited his ballot, he would 
 come out, climb into the back seat of the wagon, and 
 smilingly hold the reins, while his Irish coachman 
 went in to exercise the proud privilege of suffrage. 
 As Pat emerged from the polls, he would grin, and 
 whisper behind the back of his hand to the by 
 standers, "Begorrah, oiVe just nulligated ould 
 Docther s vote ! " But had Pat done as much as 
 that? Neither he himself nor the laughing by 
 standers really thought so. There was something 
 in the example of the wise old Doctor faithfully 
 performing a simple duty of citizenship that counted 
 far beyond the ballot he had dropped in the box. 
 It could not be equalled save by a man of equal 
 wisdom and character. 
 
 Why, then, should those who prefer a democratic 
 form of government and believe in one man, one 
 vote, as the best means of securing it, surcharge their 
 faith with inferences which are manifestly false; 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 like the dogma that all men have equal worth and 
 influence because they have an equal right to "life, 
 liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The founders 
 of our republic neither held nor practised that inane 
 creed. 
 
 Such an excessive orthodoxy has all the vices of 
 a heresy. The preaching of it, either in serious 
 fanaticism or for campaign purposes, injures and 
 imperils the republic. It is, in effect, an illustration 
 of the theme which I have been meditating by this 
 month s autumnal camp-fire, suicidal tendencies 
 in democracy. 
 
 By this phrase I do not mean carefully matured 
 purposes of self-destruction; nor even sudden im 
 pulses and resolves which have that end clearly 
 in view as a risk. They do not fall under either 
 head of Blackstone s definition of felo de se as one 
 who "deliberately puts an end to his own existence, 
 or commits any unlawful act the consequence of 
 which is his own death." 
 
 The tendencies of which I speak are marked by 
 a lack of deliberation. Nor can they be called un 
 lawful acts, since the body which commits them has 
 authority to make them legal. They have for the 
 most part the quality of unconscious self-betrayal 
 
 
TENDENCIES IN DEMOCRACY 
 
 and inconsistent action, the harboring of views 
 and the forming of habits which carry seeds of de 
 cay and presages of dissolution for the democratic 
 state. And these are at their worst, most secret 
 and perilous, precisely in those times and countries 
 where the democratic theory is presented as a sub 
 stitute for religion, and the ancient heresy that 
 "the king can do no wrong" is twisted to read "the 
 sovereign people can make no mistakes." 
 
 This dogma of popular infallibility goes directly 
 in the teeth of experience, and cancels that wise 
 and needful maxim of the Hebrew common 
 wealth, "Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do 
 evil." 
 
 A thoughtful consideration of the self-begotten 
 >rs and morbific propensities which brought 
 ibout the downfall of such democracy as existed 
 | in Athens, in republican Rome, in revolutionary 
 ,nce, and more recently, for a few months, in 
 tappy Russia, dreaming of freedom and walking 
 straight into the ditch of Soviet slavery, such a 
 ;udy would yield matter for a book of profitable 
 tings. But for our present purpose of a camp- 
 talk, (with side-reference to guide-posts,) there 
 no need to go so far back or afield. There are 
 213 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 plenty of small instances and significant illustrations 
 close at hand in these States, where democracy has 
 found its greatest opportunity. 
 
 THE REFERENDUM HABIT 
 
 What shall we say, for instance, of the tendency 
 to supersede the considerate processes of repre 
 sentative government by submitting complicated 
 questions which require long thought and enlight 
 ened judgment, to the direct, immediate yes-or- 
 no vote of the masses? Calling it a referendum 
 does not alter its nature. It is a demand upon 
 the multitude for what the multitude has not 
 got and cannot deliver, expert knowledge on a 
 variety of subjects and a careful solution of intricate 
 problems. Or else it is an attempt to get rid of the 
 burden of responsibility by throwing it upon the 
 untrained shoulders of the people. 
 
 A California woman has told in a recent maga 
 zine the unconsciously pathetic story of her first 
 experience at the polls in her glorious native State. 
 She was confronted, a few weeks before the elec 
 tion, with a vast, portentous referendum which 
 summoned her to stand and deliver her judgment 
 on forty-two points of public policy. (I think that 
 214 
 
TENDENCIES IN DEMOCRACY 
 
 was the number, but a few more or less would make 
 no difference.) This conscientious and heroic woman 
 shivered, studied, struggled, did her best to perform 
 her enormous duty in a more than manful way. 
 But at the end she was rather in the dark as to just 
 what she had done, and the joy of her first vote 
 was troubled by spasms of dubiety. 
 
 Lowell wrote: "Direct intervention of the people 
 in their own affairs is not of the essence of democ 
 racy"; and further: "The founders of our democ 
 racy put as many obstacles as they could contrive, 
 not in the way of the people s will, but of their 
 whim." That is sound doctrine. 
 
 Real reform and progress in politics must be ac 
 complished bit by bit. Sudden revolutions may 
 succeed, but do not prosper. 
 
 To change personnel, machinery, and methods in 
 a factory at one sweep, is usually fatal. New men, 
 machines, and processes, must be brought in by 
 degrees. It is only in her destructive work that 
 Nature operates by the catastrophic method. 
 
 The referendum, no doubt, has its use and justi 
 fication in certain cases, in matters which have 
 been long discussed and are generally understood, 
 in questions which are clear and definite and 
 215 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 admit of a categorical answer, will you or won t 
 you have it so? Even then, I think it takes its 
 best form in the choice of representatives who stand 
 definitely on one side or the other of the clear ques 
 tion at issue. 
 
 The formation of the indiscriminate, indolent, 
 universal referendum habit in a democracy looks 
 to me like a vice with suicidal tendency. 
 
 LEGIMANIA 
 
 Another bad habit which seems to endanger the 
 security, or at least the sound health of a democ 
 racy, is the propensity to make too many laws on 
 too many subjects. 
 
 Somewhere in my filing-cabinet I have the 
 statistics in regard to the number of laws enacted 
 by the legislatures of New York, California, and 
 other States, in a single recent year. It runs well 
 up into the thousands; and if you add to it the 
 Acts of Congress passed in the same time, you have 
 a sum total which represents a solemn revel of legi- 
 mania. 
 
 Tis as if a doctor should seek to win respect and 
 confidence by the extraordinary number of his pre 
 scriptions, or a schoolmaster to establish discipline 
 216 
 
TENDENCIES IN DEMOCRACY 
 
 by multiplying his rules. The thing cannot be done 
 in that way. 
 
 Doubtless some of these laws are wise and need 
 ful. Probably most of them are well meant. They 
 have a good heart, as the saying goes. It is in the 
 head they are lacking. And so in practice many 
 of them produce either no effect at all, or the con 
 trary of what was intended. 
 
 Not even the Puritan Fathers in their palmiest 
 days went as far in sumptuary legislation as some 
 of our modern regulators would have us go. 
 
 Of old, men were rebuked by the Divine Master 
 for asking continually, "What shall we eat, and 
 what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be 
 clothed?" Nowadays it seems to be no reproach 
 to be asking continually, "What food and drink 
 and raiment shall we permit our neighbors to 
 use?" 
 
 "You can never make men virtuous by legisla 
 tion," said the Bromidian Philosopher. "Perhaps 
 not," replied the Acidulous Reformer, "but I can 
 make them uncomfortable." 
 
 It is a historic fact that the American form of 
 government has as its basis and its aim, liberty, 
 the largest amount of liberty in action for the in- 
 217 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 dividual that is consistent with a due regard for 
 the liberties of others. To abandon that basis is 
 to impair the stability of the republic: to renounce 
 that aim is to deprive democracy of one of its main 
 appeals to the common sense of mankind. 
 
 As few rules as possible, but those well enforced: 
 that is the regime of wisdom and strength. 
 
 You can never secure by popular vote that which 
 is not supported by public opinion. 
 
 The tyranny of a meddlesome majority is as ob 
 noxious as the interference of a capricious king. 
 
 The democracy that goes beyond its duty of abat 
 ing public nuisances and protecting public health, 
 to indulge its illusion of omnipotence by regulating 
 private affairs, weakens its own power by over 
 straining it. 
 
 The craze for superlegislation in a democratic 
 state has a suicidal aspect. It undermines author 
 ity, lessens respect, and begets a brood of resentful 
 evasions under the smooth apron of hypocritical 
 compliance. 
 
 FICKLENESS 
 
 We expect the masses to be fickle, and they sel 
 dom disappoint us. But when that frivolity of 
 218 
 
TENDENCIES IN DEMOCRACY 
 
 mind takes a violent form and swings to the alter 
 nate "falsehood of extremes," it becomes dangerous 
 to the state. 
 
 Republics are always looking for heroes and al 
 ways pulling them down. How many Washingtons 
 and Lincolns has America discovered, only to revile 
 them afterward as would-be Caesars! A study of 
 newspaper cartoons from the Jacksonian period to 
 the present would show the head of many a good 
 and faithful servant of his country encircled with 
 the mocking laurels of imperial ambition. 
 
 It is a bad habit of democracy to oscillate be 
 tween adoration and abuse. When Admiral Dewey 
 came home from his famous victory at Manila Bay, 
 nothing was too good for him; he was a second 
 Nelson, the savior of his country, worthy of the 
 highest place. But a few months later, when he 
 quite properly made his wife a wedding present of 
 the house in Washington which the public had given 
 to him, (thinking, honest man, that as he and she 
 were one, the sharing of the gift was natural,) the 
 fickle populace could find nothing too bad to say 
 of him. He could not have been elected to a seat 
 in the House of Representatives, to say nothing 
 of the Presidential Chair. Yet he remained just 
 219 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 what he always was, a great, quiet, naval com 
 mander. 
 
 Death has a way of silencing these violent reac 
 tions in the people. It is only a few among the 
 journalists who cherish the malice of their oppug- 
 nancies and pursue the men whom they have scorned 
 into the grave. For the public at large, the vanish 
 ing of the contestant from the field of partisan strife, 
 means a calmer and deeper vision of the man and 
 his services. I know more than one New York 
 clubman who used to swear profanely at the mere 
 mention of Roosevelt s name while he was alive, 
 who walked among the mourners at his funeral 
 when that strong and valiant soul was gone. 
 
 Most assuredly this habit in democracy of first 
 blindly adoring and then cruelly abusing its public 
 men while they are in life is a suicidal trait. The 
 danger of it is twofold. 
 
 Some day an idol of the public may come along 
 who is really a Napoleon or a Lenin in disguise; 
 and then, good-by, democracy. That is one dan 
 ger. 
 
 The other is quite the reverse. Many a day the 
 republic imperils the usefulness of a noble servant, 
 cripples him or maims him for the time, by the ex- 
 220 
 
TENDENCIES IN DEMOCRACY 
 
 travagance of partisan scorn and vituperation. 
 This also is madness and folly, vanity and a striv 
 ing after wind. 
 
 Even worse than fickleness in regard to heroes 
 is the democratic propensity to shift and veer on 
 matters of public policy. It is a habit of minor 
 politicians to maintain their leadership by follow 
 ing what looks like the crowd. 
 
 I remember a certain President of whom it was 
 often said that he had his ear to the ground. " Watch 
 him closely," a shrewd critic said to me, "and be 
 fore long you ll see dust on the other ear." 
 
 What does it signify when at a certain time there 
 is general enthusiasm in America for a league of 
 nations to maintain peace and the leaders of both 
 parties cry out that it is the hope of the world, and 
 then, two years later, the enthusiasm has cooled 
 and half of the leaders exclaim that such an idea is 
 preposterous, impossible, a menace to the world, 
 and to the United States in particular? This also 
 is vanity and a striving after wind. 
 
 What does it signify when at one time the Monroe 
 Doctrine is extolled as the Palladium of our safety, 
 and at another time the proposal to give it a recog 
 nized standing in international law is refused with 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 mockery ? when men claim effusively that the United 
 States is now a world-power, and soon afterward 
 shout "What do we care for Abroad?* This also 
 is vanity and a striving after wind. 
 
 A foolish inconsistency may be " the hobgoblin of 
 little minds," as Emerson said. But for a great 
 democracy it is something worse than that. It is a 
 bar to a sober and settled foreign policy, and a 
 disturber of domestic order and progress. It makes 
 the pomp of politics ridiculous, and exposes the re 
 public to that kind of laughter among the nations 
 which is a warning of trouble. It needs correcting, 
 either by our sense of humor, or by our sense of 
 honor. 
 
 SCORN OF KNOWLEDGE 
 
 There are other self-destroying propensities in a 
 democratic state which we might well consider and 
 discuss if there were time. But the camp-fire wanes; 
 and before the logs break apart and fall, we must 
 give a thought to the most dangerous tendency of 
 all, contempt of learning for its own sake, scorn 
 of that elemental knowledge which is the basis of 
 character, and frivolous neglect of popular educa 
 tion. 
 
 222 
 
TENDENCIES IN DEMOCRACY 
 
 But is not America free from that defect? Are 
 not Americans the best-educated people in the 
 world ? They are not. And the worst of it is, they 
 think they are. 
 
 In the matter of universities and professional 
 schools we have done astonishingly well, as Bryce 
 remarked, (to our great satisfaction,) in his ex 
 cellent book on The American Commonwealth. Yet 
 even in this respect, if we may take the testimony 
 of recent home-made and much-praised books on 
 American college life, there is much to be desired 
 in the way of manners, morals, and mental culture 
 among the average frequenters of what we call our 
 higher institutions of learning. To speak frankly, 
 these pictures do not cheer, though they may in 
 ebriate. 
 
 But when we turn to the broader field and look 
 at the general condition and actual results of pop 
 ular education in these States, the view is dismal. 
 It would be laughable if it were not appalling. Half 
 a dozen small European states, Canada, Australia, 
 New Zealand, and Japan are all ahead of America 
 in school attendance and literacy. The selective 
 draft of 1917 uncovered the ugly fact that about 
 twenty-five per cent of the men of America between 
 223 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 eighteen and thirty-five years of age are unable to 
 read a newspaper or write a letter. Ten per cent 
 cannot write their own names. There are seven 
 and a half million people in the United States over 
 sixteen years old who can neither read nor write 
 English or any other language. 
 
 Negroes, you say, or ignorant foreigners! If 
 that were so, would it make the case any better, 
 since these are actual or potential voters, our future 
 masters? But in fact more than half of these un 
 taught sovereigns of the state are white, and nearly 
 one-third of them are white Americans, home-born 
 and home-bred. 
 
 What was democracy thinking of when it suffered 
 this perilous bulk of ignorance to grow within its 
 own body? Are the national institutions in which 
 we take such a just and honorable pride safe in the 
 hands of men and women whose minds are left in 
 darkness and whose moral training is committed 
 to chance or charity, while we use their bodies to 
 work our farms, dig our ditches, build our railways, 
 and run our factories ? 
 
 We are breeding a Helot class of our own flesh 
 and blood. We are ignoring the rightful claim of 
 every citizen to be prepared for the duties which 
 224 
 
TENDENCIES IN DEMOCRACY 
 
 the state lays upon him. We are debasing the hu 
 man currency of the republic. We are laying un 
 baked bricks in our foundations and building our 
 walls with untempered mortar. We are heaping up 
 at the doors of our own temple piles of tinder and 
 quick-flaming fuel, ready for the torch of the 
 anarchist or the insidious slow-match of the cun 
 ning usurper. We are recruiting the sullen armies 
 of ignorant unrest; 
 
 For every soul denied the right to grow 
 Beneath the flag, will be its secret foe. 
 
 But who denies that right? Democracy denies 
 it, by neglect and parsimony, by a careless disre 
 gard of the crying needs of popular education. 
 
 But is not our public-school system open to all? 
 It is; but the door is narrow, and few there be that 
 find it, few, I mean, of those who need it most. 
 For the children of the rich, the well-to-do, the 
 moderately comfortable, the provision of schools 
 is ample. It is the children of the poor who suffer 
 and go in want. 
 
 In the great city of New York last year one hun- 
 ! dred thousand poor children were deprived of school 
 ing. And why? Because there were no teachers 
 225 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 to instruct them. And again, why? Because tin 
 pay offered to teachers was too small to keep then 
 alive. 
 
 Democracy gives its carpenters, bricklayers 
 plumbers, and the like, more for their work than i 
 gives to those who have the supreme task of en 
 lightening and training its children. Does not thi 
 look as if it cared more for its houses than for it; 
 offspring, more for its goods than for its soul? 
 
 In the labor-unions of New York (1919) the aver 
 age yearly wage of skilled workers was $2,496, o 
 unskilled workers $1,664. The wage of teacher 
 was $1,240. Is not this indisputable evidence tha 
 scorn of knowledge and silent contempt of educa 
 tion prevail to some extent in America? 
 
 Is this safe? Is it true economy to indulge th< 
 proletariat and starve the educariat? (There maj 
 be no such word, but there is such a thing, the whoL 
 body of teachers, consecrated to a common tasl 
 and bound together by mutual dependence for th< 
 success of their work.) Is liberty itself secure ii 
 a country which boasts of its possession but takes 
 no care for its preservation? 
 
 "Freedom, to be desirable," says Stevenson 
 "involves kindness, wisdom, and all the virtues o: 
 226 
 
 
TENDENCIES IN DEMOCRACY 
 
 the free." But these do not spring out of the ground 
 by nature. They must be implanted, nurtured, 
 developed, and trained. 
 
 Nothing is more difficult to preserve than the 
 true love of freedom in a free country. Being 
 habituated to it, men cease to consider by what 
 sacrifices it was obtained, and by what precautions 
 and safeguards it must be defended. 
 
 Liberty itself is the great lesson. And in learning 
 it we need teachers, the wise, the just, the free 
 of all ages. Most of all we need the help of religion, 
 by which alone the foundations of the state are 
 laid in righteousness, and democracy is saved from 
 its own suicidal tendencies. 
 
 Come, let us cover the fire, and so to bed, not 
 forgetting an honest prayer for the country we love 
 best. 
 
 227 
 
XV 
 A BUNDLE OF LETTERS 
 
 MANY unknown correspondents, from all corners 
 of the earth, wrote to the Camp-fire Cogitator while 
 some of these papers were coming out in Scribncr s 
 Magazine. Almost all of the letters were kind and 
 heartening. Many of them were informing, in 
 structive, full of human interest. 
 
 See, here is a little bundle of them, covered 
 with all sorts of postmarks, messages from strange 
 cities and far-off wildernesses and lonely farms and 
 ships at sea, tokens of that hidden friendliness 
 which lies all round us in the world. One came 
 just the other day, by wireless telegraph, from the 
 British Admiral at Bermuda, while I was sailing 
 homeward: "May I say, So long? 9 
 
 Many of the letters were answers to a question in 
 "Firelight Views," do you remember? about the 
 lovely old-fashioned rose with the forgotten name. 
 Here is a sample of these answers, which comes from 
 Elizabethtown in the Adirondacks, and was written 
 
A BUNDLE OF LETTERS 
 
 by a lady with whom I played when she was a little 
 girl, but whom I have not seen for more years than 
 it would be polite to number. 
 
 "I believe the rose you refer to in the June 
 Scribner s is the Gold of Ophir, a single, or half- 
 double, climbing rose, growing over porches in Cali 
 fornia when I was there twenty-five years ago. It 
 had a deep yellow heart, shading into rose colors 
 on the edges, and having a curious lavender sheen 
 flickering through the yellow and rose, very lovely. 
 
 C. P. H." 
 
 Yes, dear lady, that is the rose, Gold of Ophir, 
 and I m glad that word about it comes from the 
 friendly mountain-land where you live. But my 
 own first sight of that softly, purely flaming flower 
 was forty-four years ago on a veranda at the "Sand 
 Hills," near Augusta, Georgia. The rose queened 
 it over all the red and white camellias. 
 
 One of my most prized letters came from an un 
 known Canadian soldier, G. J. S., who is now farm 
 ing in Saskatchewan. A fine little story is quoted 
 from it in the chapter on "Christmas Greens." 
 He signs himself, "Yours to a camp-fire cinder." 
 229 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 But once in a while a letter arrives which be 
 longs in a different class. Here is a specimen: 
 
 "San Francisco, Cal. 
 
 Feb. 13, 1921. 
 "HENRY VAN DYKE, ESQUIRE. 
 
 "Dear Sir: 
 
 "After reading your article in November Scrib- 
 ner s, (Suicidal Tendencies in Democracy), I am 
 impelled to differ with you, and as criticism is not 
 always distasteful, here you are. 
 
 "1. About school teachers: In this city they 
 have easy hours, paid vacation periods, and then 
 in old age a pension. About 75% are Roman 
 Catholics who would teach the public schools out 
 of existence if they could earn a living at anything 
 else. Recently, though, the Americans asserted 
 themselves, with the result that, by a narrow ma 
 jority, the Irish crowd were beaten. 
 
 "2. There is too much education to be had free 
 of cost. Nearly everybody is educated now, with 
 the result that 90% of the graduates spend their 
 young lives looking around for something easy to 
 do. The men who discovered and developed this 
 great state were not college graduates or book 
 worms. 
 
 230 
 
A BUNDLE OF LETTERS 
 
 "3. Democracy The American brand of Democ 
 racy is a farce. Here is an example. By a ma 
 jority of 65000 votes the people of California voted 
 wet. Immediately thereafter their duly elected 
 representatives met and voted dry. This is a 
 notorious fact, and yet political orators get up 
 and shout about the land of liberty. In a rougher 
 age, or in sane Bolshevist community, the afore 
 said legislators would have been hanged or shot. 
 American democracy, I repeat, is a farce, and the 
 talk of representative government is all bunk. 
 Pardon the slang. 
 
 "The only thing to do in this democracy is to 
 make as much money as possible and then hide it 
 away securely from the small army of tax-eaters 
 that fattens itself, a la parasite, in every com 
 munity. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 A WESTERN SPECTATOR." 
 
 Now that is an anonymous letter, which is usually 
 a thing of shame. But this one is not at all shame 
 ful. It is frank; it is friendly in purpose; it is 
 courteous enough; there is no reason at all why 
 the author should not have put his name to it. 
 231 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 Yet at the end it seems to me to go a little 
 crazy. 
 
 What do you think? Read the last sentence. 
 Is not this a graphic illustration of "Sukidal Ten 
 dencies in Democracy"? 
 
XVI 
 
 CHRISTMAS GREENS 
 
 (WRITTEN IN AUTUMN) 
 "THE time draws near the birth of Christ," 
 
 you remember, reader, the rest of those lovely can- 
 toes of In Memoriam, where the bells of four vil 
 lages answer each other through the misty night 
 while the wreaths of evergreen are woven with 
 memories and regrets to deck the church and the 
 home in honor of the best of all birthdays. 
 
 Once more the Yuletide is near, near at least 
 to the Slave of the Magazine, though by the dull, 
 prosaic almanac it is still months away. For me 
 it is proximate and pressing. The editor cajoles 
 and threatens: the printer waits at extra wages 
 for overtime: to-morrow will be Christmas and 
 the day after will be New Year; and I must gather 
 the figurative greens to-day, or leave our Christmas 
 Camp-fire without a token of remembrance or a 
 sign of cheer. 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 But what a day is this on which I set about my 
 pleasant task! Indian summer at its golden best: 
 the blue of the sky subdued by a silvery haze to 
 the tint of turquoise, faintly luminous: the verdure 
 of the woodlands, ripened and dulled a little by the 
 August heat, now shot through with the first rich 
 threads of autumnal glory: the mountains growing 
 higher and more aerial, as they recede in the light 
 mist, until they change into bastions of amethyst: 
 the deep blue of the open sea ever deepening far 
 away, while the white flower of foam above the 
 hidden reef expands and closes with every passing 
 wave, a mystic lily on a sleeper s breast. 
 
 From every orchard the smell of ripening apples 
 comes out to us, and from the tangled thicket we 
 catch the odor of fox-grapes, waiting for the frost 
 to sweeten them. Wild asters and goldenrod adorn 
 the wayside; gentians bloom in secret places. The 
 little birds have assembled their silent companies 
 for southward flight. But they are loath to leave 
 their summer haunts, and if we go warily through 
 the wood, they will flock around us suddenly, flutter 
 ing through the coppice in search of food, flitting 
 from branch to branch of the dark firs, lisping, call 
 ing, whispering sotto voce, no doubt talking over 
 234 
 
CHRISTMAS GREENS 
 
 their plans for the long journey to Central America. 
 All round us as we walk through this ephemeral 
 beauty, the more enduring growths which are to 
 serve for adornment in our homes at the midwinter 
 festival are visible and suggestive to the inward 
 eye which looks far ahead. Here the young spruces 
 and balsam-firs, shapely and symmetrical pyramids 
 of absolute green, are standing by thousands in 
 the open places, regiments of Christmas-trees! 
 
 Here 
 
 "The ground-pine trails its pretty wreath 
 Running over the club-moss burrs," 
 
 ready to be twined into garlands or long festoons. 
 Here the glistening, prickly holly lights its dark 
 foliage with red berries; and the ground-hemlock 
 hides its delicate coral fruit like drops of translucent 
 wax under its spreading branches; and the climb 
 ing bittersweet curls back its orange pods to show 
 the scarlet-covered seeds within; and the pale-green 
 mistletoe, not just here perhaps, but a little farther 
 south, prepares its pearly berries to sanction kisses 
 yet unkissed. 
 
 Nature in her lavish way provides beauty for 
 every season: flowers that fade and vanish as the 
 summer goes: gold and crimson leaves that fall as 
 235 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 the autumn wanes: and evergreens that will stay 
 with us in rich and sober loveliness when 
 
 "Full knee-deep lies the winter snow, 
 And the winter winds are wearily sighing." 
 
 All these things are given us to enjoy. They are 
 best in the place where nature put them, out-of- 
 doors: but a little of each and all we may rightly 
 take, if we will, to deck our dwellings, if for no other 
 purpose than to be a fragrant reminder that we 
 are more akin to nature than to our houses. 
 
 Shall we grieve, then, at the thought that some 
 of these pretty, wild, growing things will be cut 
 and gathered for Christmas greens? Not I, if 
 the cutting and gathering are wisely done, with 
 kindly forethought of the coming generations, so 
 that no sort of harmless vine or amiable tree shall 
 be exterminated from the earth. 
 
 Let us not spoil our love of nature with a sickly 
 affectation. There are enough evergreen things in 
 our country to provide a sign of Christmas for every 
 house and church in it. To gather them prudently 
 is to practise a kind of forestry. After all, one 
 can think of no fairer way for a little fir-tree to com 
 plete its life than by becoming for a while the 
 236 
 
CHRISTMAS GREENS 
 
 sparkling centre of a circle of human joy, a Christ 
 mas-tree! If your imagination must endow the 
 little fir with feelings, why not give it this fine emo 
 tion of ending in glory ? 
 
 I confess myself out of sympathy with tkose 
 writers who complain that they must write their 
 Christmas stories in midsummer and their August 
 fiction in midwinter. Incongruous it may seem, 
 but such incongruity is of the very warp and woof 
 of life. 
 
 Always we are looking backward and forward 
 while we live the passing hour. Every true pleasure 
 hath in it an extract of the past and a tincture of 
 the future. 
 
 I think it was that great artist John La Farge 
 who said "all drawing of the things we see is an 
 exercise of memory, and the things we have seen 
 enter into it." The springs of poetry, Wordsworth 
 found, have their origin in "emotion recollected in 
 tranquillity." This is true of noble sorrow as of pure 
 joy. There is not one little delight that comes to 
 us without a flavor of reminder. When we lie on 
 a bed of balsam boughs in the forest we dream of a 
 Christmas-tree. When we enter the room where 
 the gift-laden, candle-lighted tree waits for the 
 237 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 children, the very smell of it carries us away to 
 camp in the greenwood. 
 
 You may call this "sentimental," if you will, 
 Brother Gradgrind, and scoff at it in your sour, self- 
 satisfied way. But it is by this thread that our 
 personalities are held together. If you have it not, 
 as you boast, that is probably why you are a person 
 so little to be envied, a thing of shreds and patches, 
 but no man. 
 
 There is no present reality for us humans, with 
 out memory and hope. Lose the first, and you are 
 dead; lose the second, and you are buried. But 
 in Christmas, as truly as in Easter, if we come to 
 it in the spirit, there is a power of resurrection. 
 
 The custom of adorning our houses and places 
 of worship at this season with green tokens from 
 the winter woods came down to us, no doubt, from 
 heathen ancestors who dwelt, as we do, in what 
 is ironically called the north temperate zone. It 
 was partly a tribute to unknown gods, and partly 
 an expression of man s wish to make himself com 
 fortable and even merry in the teeth of the rudest 
 weather. 
 
 In the tropics, of course, there would be no call 
 for this defiance of the frost. And in the southern 
 238 
 

 CHRISTMAS GREENS 
 
 hemisphere the seasons would be reversed; instead 
 of Christmas greens there would be a festival of 
 flowers out-of-doors. There must be something 
 charming in that; yet those who have tasted the 
 ruder and more bracing joys of a northern Christmas 
 always hone for them, and cannot be comforted 
 with palms and pomegranates. Shakespeare, in 
 Love s Labor s Lost, makes Biron say, 
 
 "At Christmas I no more desire a rose, 
 Than wish a snow in May s new-fangled shows." 
 
 Some hold that the decking of houses with green 
 branches in December originated among the Druids, 
 and was a pious provision for the poor sylvan spirits, 
 elves and fays and good goblins, who needed a 
 shelter from the nipping cold. That may be what 
 the Druids told the people; but I think natural 
 inclination and a love of beauty had a good deal 
 to do with it. 
 
 Religious customs are most easily accepted when 
 they fit in with human desires. 
 
 Holly with its bright sheen and vivid color was 
 
 the symbol of mirth and good cheer. Ivy was sacred 
 
 to Bacchus, and hung over the door of wine-shops; 
 
 yet if I mistake not there was also an ancient tradi- 
 
 239 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 tion that while it invited to drinking it was a talis 
 man against drunkenness, a most considerate and 
 helpful arrangement! Laurel and bay were signs 
 of honor and festivity. 
 
 Mistletoe was the most weird and magical of all 
 the Christmas greens, feared a little because of its 
 association with druidical sacrifices, yet loved a 
 good deal for its modern uses. They say that in 
 the olden time it was admitted in the Yuletide deco 
 ration of houses, but not of churches. Yet one of 
 the antiquarians tells us that in the eighteenth cen 
 tury, in York Cathedral, it was the custom on Christ 
 mas Eve to carry a branch of mistletoe to the high 
 altar and "proclaim a public and universal liberty, 
 pardon, and freedom to all sorts of inferior and even 
 wicked people at the gates of the city toward the 
 four quarters of heaven." 
 
 Here we find, perhaps, a hint of that liberty of 
 osculation with which the homely plant is now con 
 nected. And this, again, we may dimly trace back 
 to the Scandinavian myth. For the arrow with 
 which the rascally Loki tricked the blind Hoder 
 into killing Baldur the beautiful, was made of mistle 
 toe. When the fatal shaft was plucked out, the 
 mistletoe was given into the keeping of Freya, the 
 240 
 
CHRISTMAS GREENS 
 
 love-goddess; and henceforth on every one who 
 passes beneath it she bestows a kiss, a right 
 pleasant legend with a happy ending! Yet after 
 all, if Freya, well, I will say no more than this, 
 if Freya ! 
 
 There is a quaint reference on this point in Haw 
 thorne s "English Note-Books," under date of 
 December 26, 1855. He was then American Con 
 sul at Liverpool living in the cosey boarding-house 
 of Mrs. Blodgett. "On Christmas Eve and yester 
 day," he says, "there were branches of mistletoe 
 hanging in several parts of the house, in the kitchen, 
 the entries, the parlor, and the smoking-room, 
 suspended from the gas-fittings. The maids of the 
 house did their utmost to entrap the gentlemen 
 boarders, old and young, under the privileged places, 
 and there to kiss them, after which they were ex 
 pected to pay a shilling. It is very queer, being 
 customarily so respectful, that they should assume 
 this license now, absolutely trying to pull the gentle 
 men into the kitchen by main force, and kissing 
 the harder and more abundantly the more they 
 were resisted. A little rosy-cheeked Scotch lass 
 at other times very modest was the most active 
 in this business. / doubt whether any gentleman but 
 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 myself escaped. [Italics mine.] I heard old Mr. 
 
 S parleying with the maids last evening and 
 
 pleading his age; but he seems to have met with 
 no mercy, for there was a sound of prodigious smack 
 ing immediately afterwards. J was assaulted, 
 
 and fought most vigorously; but was outrageously 
 kissed receiving some scratches, moreover, in the 
 conflict. The mistletoe has white wax-looking 
 berries, and dull green leaves, with a parasitical 
 stem." 
 
 Oh, Mr. Hawthorne ! Was it comedy or tragedy 
 that you meant to write ? Would you have us con 
 gratulate, or pity you on your "escape" from the 
 rosy-cheeked Scotch lass? Did you lock yourself 
 in your room and refuse nourishment for forty- 
 eight hours ? At all events you kept your pale Puri 
 tan humor in that gay galley of British fun. 
 
 The old English customs and manners of Yule- 
 tide, the general atmosphere of festive preparation, 
 the carolling of the "waits" on Christmas Eve, 
 the service in the village church on Christmas Morn, 
 the feasting in servants hall and dining-room, the 
 Yule-clog blazing on the broad hearth and the boar s 
 head borne in with ceremony, the Wassail-Bowl and 
 the Christmas-Pie, the songs and dances and games 
 242 
 
CHRISTMAS GREENS 
 
 under the Lord of Misrule, the mummery in fancy 
 dress, the ghost-stories by the fireside, the pervasive 
 spirit of joviality and good comradeship between 
 young and old, wise and simple, rich and poor, 
 these Christmas charms are nowhere set forth more 
 enchantingly than in The Sketch-Book of Wash 
 ington Irving. No wonder that Sir Walter Scott 
 loved the book and the author. Yet even when he 
 wrote, the genial Knickerbocker saw these ways 
 and manners as antiquities, in a vanishing light; 
 
 -and he prefaced his essays with a quotation from 
 a still earlier Hue and Cry after Christmas: "But 
 is old, ^^ good old Christmas gone ? Nothing but 
 the hair of his good, gray, old head and beard left ? 
 Well, I will have that, seeing I cannot have more 
 of him." 
 
 That seems to be the proper, regular, inevitable 
 attitude to take about Christmas, a kind of hail- 
 and-farewell tone, as if one would say, "let us 
 
 i have one more jolly good time, it may be the last." 
 
 ; In that fruitful little book Guesses at Truth, written 
 in 1827, I find this passage: "It was a practice 
 
 worthy of our ancestors to fill their houses at Christ 
 mas time with their relations and friends; that 
 when Nature was frozen and dreary out of doors, 
 243 
 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 something might be found within doors to keep 
 the pulses of their hearts in proper motion. The 
 custom, however, is only appropriate among people 
 who happen to have hearts. Jt is had taste to re- 
 lain it in these days, when everybody worth hanging 
 
 " oublie sa mere 
 Et par bon ton se defend d etre pere. 9 " 
 
 So runs the song from age to age, O good old 
 times ! O bad present times ! O worse times to 
 come! 
 
 I wonder what particular ways and manners of 
 our own day the people of the twenty-second cen 
 tury will regard as especially picturesque and ro 
 mantic. 
 
 There is plenty about Christmas in the treasure- 
 house of English poetry, from Milton s glorious 
 hymn to the lyrics of Eugene Field and Bliss Car 
 man and Lady Lindsay. Richest and most Christ 
 massy are the old ballads and carols and the poems 
 by such writers as George Wither and Robert Her- 
 rick. But every poet when he comes to this sub 
 ject shows something of his own personal character 
 and sentiment, his way of looking at life. Thus 
 Stevenson writes a ballad of Christmas at Sea, and 
 Kipling of Christmas in India. 
 244 
 
CHRISTMAS GREENS 
 
 To some of us there is a peculiar brightness 
 and sweetness in the memories associated with the 
 homely household rites of putting up the greens 
 and dressing the tree. This is done on Christmas 
 Eve, after the younger children, or perhaps the 
 grandchildren, have hung up their stockings and 
 gone to bed. The elder children help. There is a 
 joyous bustle and an air of secrecy about the busi 
 ness. If you hear a patter of small feet on the 
 stair or see a tousled head peeping through the 
 banisters, you must pretend to notice nothing. 
 
 The tall step-ladder must be brought up from 
 the cellar, and it is usually very rickety. There are 
 wreaths to be hung in windows and festoons to be 
 looped over doors. A new way of decorating the 
 pillars is much called for, but after many experi 
 ments you always come back to the old way. 
 (Reader, I know not what your favorite way may 
 be, but I am all for spirals of ground-pine.) Then 
 the tree must be set up, on a white cloth, and decked 
 with tiny candles, and hung with ornaments, old 
 and new. (Don t forget the old ones, or the children 
 will miss them.) Then the presents, the simpler 
 the better, must be arranged in little piles under 
 the tree. 
 
 245 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 Last of all, there are certain pictures, "the old 
 familiar faces," gone away, but never nearer than 
 to-night and each one of them must have its wreath 
 of green, or perhaps a flower in a little vase before 
 it. While you are doing this you have few words, 
 but long, long thoughts. 
 
 Now it is midnight, and so to bed, for the chil 
 dren will have emptied their stockings by sunrise, 
 and will be down in force to assault the room where 
 the tree is locked in. 
 
 This is Christmas at home, the best place. But 
 who can tell where the holy day will find him, 
 how far away, how lonely, in what strange and hard 
 surroundings? Shall he then be robbed of its joy? 
 Shall it pass by without a bit of green and a bless 
 ing? Not if he have the heart to put forth his 
 hand and touch the hem of its garment in passing. 
 
 Many a boy, in the years just passed, has had a 
 rough Christmas. A letter came to me the other 
 day from a young Canadian farmer, a stranger, who 
 had been reading these Camp-fire papers, and this 
 is what he wrote: 
 
 "The memory comes back embellished by many 
 a pleasant and stirring adventure in the Balkans 
 246 
 
CHRISTMAS GREENS 
 
 and takes one back to Christmas Day 1916. I was 
 one of a British Artillery observation party and 
 we were then leading a precarious existence on the 
 bald, bare and lofty crown of Hill 380, which over 
 looked Ghergheli, that border town of many vicissi 
 tudes. Our attack, made a few days previously, 
 had fizzled into chaos owing to small numbers and 
 faulty liaison work with the Zouaves on our left. 
 Incidentally our ration supply had failed for about 
 five days and a brief, (very brief in fact,) survey 
 of our larder found us with a leg of mutton of the 
 * white lean* (fat) description and three tins of the 
 ubiquitous * bully. Of tea, sugar, bread or fuel 
 there were none, and even if hope springs eternal 
 according to Pope, it is apt to run rather in the 
 valley of melancholy when a party of nine have to 
 spend Christmas day in a poorly constructed shelter, 
 and with a few pounds of raw meat as sole suste 
 nance. The hilltop was exposed to machine-gun fire 
 and also enfilade artillery strafes, and so movement 
 of any kind was somewhat hazardous and even, in 
 the circumstances, futile. I had joined the French 
 sous-lieutenant in the O. P., and in saddened strains 
 we conversed of Noel under more cheerful and homely 
 conditions. Towards evening, observation became 
 247 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 difficult, and so, posting a lookout man in case of 
 infantry flares for barrage, we crawled back to our 
 inhospitable dugout and exchanged cigarettes with 
 a view to await the possible, though highly improb 
 able, arrival of the ration party. From the men s 
 quarters came sounds of a melancholy dirge known 
 to the troops as Looking for Rum. 5 A casual glance 
 in the direction showed a faint trickle of light, waver 
 ing over the ground. My companion and I crawled 
 from our sleeping-bags and crossed to the other dug 
 out. It was a sight of great content to a pair of 
 chilly and hungry mortals. In a battered tin helmet 
 was a cheery fire, over which one of the telephonists 
 fried bully beef in his dixie lid. Further inspection 
 showed that the fire came from the outlaw leg of 
 mutton ! And so in its greasy and spluttering flame 
 we saw, each in his own way, that Me after all was 
 worth living. We gathered round and sat in the 
 warmth, nibbling at fried bully beef and swapping 
 yarns, regardless of wars or War Lords. That 
 Christmas night was well on its way to relegation 
 among the happy and curious incidents of life, when 
 a nasty shriek sounded and a dull phoof of an ex 
 ploding gas shell. We donned our gas helmets and 
 in a spirit of braggadocio infused by our fire, allowed 
 248 
 
CHRISTMAS GREENS 
 
 the mutton to burn on as a further inducement to 
 the prowess of the Austrian gunners. Fortune must 
 have felt benevolent, because we sat for about three 
 quarters of an hour in the glow before it spluttered 
 out. And the happy ending came at four in the 
 morning with the ration train of mules. 
 
 G. J. S., 
 Mankota, Sask., Canada." 
 
 Reader, do you think the war has spoiled Christ 
 mas? Do you believe the coming revolution, the 
 social upheave, the triumph of materialism, the 
 anarchy, or the dictatorship of the proletariat, or 
 whatever may be before us, is going to destroy it, 
 and leave no room for its return ? I tell you, no ! 
 
 Whatever turnings and overturnings, whatever 
 calamity and ruin, are in store for this battered 
 old world, you and I will never be poorer than the 
 blessed Mary and Joseph when they walked to 
 Bethlehem, and that same night 
 
 "The stars in the bright sky looked down where He lay, 
 The little Lord Jesus asleep on the hay." 
 
 Whatever fantasies of government or no-govern 
 ment the brains of men may devise, the heart of 
 249 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 man will always ask and take a day of rest and peace, 
 gladness and good-will to sweeten the long year. 
 
 So let us put up our bits of Christmas green, 
 brother, with brave and cheerful hearts: and if 
 we want something to strengthen and steady us, 
 we will read by our camp-fire this verse of Charles 
 Kingsley: 
 
 "O blessed day, which giv st the eternal lie 
 To self, and sense, and all the brute within; 
 O come to us amid this war of life; 
 To hall and hovel come: to all who toil, 
 In senate, shop, or study; and to those 
 Who sundered by the wastes of half a world, 
 Ill-warned and sorely tempted, ever face 
 Nature s brute powers, and men unmanned to brutes. 
 Come to them, blest and blessing, Christmas Day ! 
 Tell them once more the tale of Bethlehem, 
 And kneeling shepherds, and the Babe Divine, 
 And keep them men indeed, fair Christmas Day." 
 
 250 
 
XVII 
 ON SAYING GOOD-BYE 
 
 1HE words consecrated by custom for use at 
 meeting and at parting take on a certain formal 
 quality by reason of their very sameness and oft 
 repetition. For the most part they are but verbal 
 gestures of politeness. We exchange them as mere 
 tokens or counters of speech, without too curiously 
 considering the metal whereof they are made, or 
 their weight and value in the exact scales of reason. 
 On this ground some severe and haughty spirits 
 affect to scorn them. Yet, after all, if they serve 
 their purpose as signs of courtesy and friendliness 
 in the quotidian come-and-go of life, why should 
 we ask more of them? The greater, (though not 
 the better,) part of our existence is composed of 
 things whose general worth doth not depend upon 
 their particular importance. They are of that " daily 
 bread" which it behooves us to beseech with hu 
 mility and accept with thankfulness. And believe 
 me, reader, we digest it better without a careful 
 computation of the calories which it contains, or 
 251 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 a close count of the number of times we munch 
 each morsel. 
 
 "Life is real, life is earnest," says the poet; and 
 for that very reason, (being put together as we are 
 of fatigable flesh and indefatigable spirit, in the 
 proportion of a stack of fuel to a spark of flame,) 
 our conduct of life should rightly have its large and 
 fitting portion of things done easily and lightly, 
 by routine, habit, and common consent. 
 
 Is the customary, the conventional, always to 
 be despised? Shall a man always take the wrong 
 side of the road only to prove himself original? 
 After all the road hath but two sides, and he that 
 taketh ever the wrong one, to show his liberal genius, 
 is in the end as conventional a rogue as if he fol 
 lowed the harmless custom of the country. Nothing 
 is more monotonous than a habitual irregularity. 
 
 I feel and admit the extraordinary attractions 
 of change and novelty. No man can have more joy 
 than I in a fresh adventure. Somewhat too much, 
 indeed, of the experimental and venturesome there 
 hath always been in my temperament, leading me 
 often into situations from which it was difficult to 
 emerge with credit and skin unbroken. Even now, 
 many failures have not cured me of this fault. 
 252 
 
ON SAYING GOOD-BYE 
 
 But familiarity also hath its charm, and I count 
 it good that life is impregnated with it. The regular 
 ways, the rules of the game, the customs of courtesy, 
 and the common phrases of colloquial speech, 
 these are pleasant things in their season, (which is 
 daily,) and without them our existence would be 
 wayward, rude, exhausting, and far less tolerable 
 than it is. 
 
 So with the salutations we exchange as we meet 
 and part on the highway or the footpath of life: 
 I find that a certain regularity and matter-of-course 
 in them is not so much a defect, as a necessity, a 
 wise and friendly concession to the limits of our 
 inventive power. Meetings and partings are so 
 common that their proper ritual must needs be of 
 the commonplace. To make it otherwise would 
 be to weave the plain family umbrella of cloth of 
 gold. 
 
 What should we do if it were required of us to 
 invent a new gesture of greeting every time we 
 passed a lady of our acquaintance upon the street ? 
 Shall not the time-honored lifting of the hat suffice ? 
 You may give it a special flourish or grace-note, I 
 admit, according to the beauty or dignity of the 
 lady, or the degree of warmth in your regard for 
 253 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 her. But these are matters of subtle shading and 
 gradation. The gesture remains the same: "Mad 
 am, I take off my hat to you." It is the homage 
 of the civilized man to the eternal womanly. 
 
 Granted, then, that our perpetual business of 
 coming and going must evolve its formulas of ave 
 atque vale, hail and farewell. Granted that we use 
 them by convention and habit. Granted that we 
 say "How do you do?" without waiting for an 
 answer, and "Good day" without looking at the 
 sky. What does it matter ? Tis not the bare mean 
 ing of the word that counts, but the spirit in which 
 it is spoken: good-will at meeting, good wishes at 
 parting, can you ask, or give, more? 
 
 Yet now and then something happens, inward 
 or outward, to touch these familiar phrases with a 
 finger-ray of light, so that we regard them more 
 attentively, and reflect a while upon their origin 
 and propriety. Maybe we would fain choose among 
 the well-worn stock at our disposal that one greet 
 ing which hath most fitness to the moment and to 
 our desire. Maybe we would fain lend to the mere 
 syllables of farewell some special tone of kindness, 
 comfort, or regret, to make it linger in the memory 
 as a note of music in the air. 
 254 
 
ON SAYING GOOD-BYE 
 
 Three things of this kind have moved me in the 
 choice of a theme for this essay. 
 
 It is a word of parting from a year-long occupa 
 tion, and from the friendly readers, near and far, 
 who have sat with me in spirit beside these camp- 
 fires. 
 
 Moreover, it belongs to the season of the year s 
 decline and fall, that last of old December which 
 must precede the first of new January; and though 
 Charles Lamb calleth New Year s Day every man s 
 second birthday, "the nativity of our common 
 Adam," I note that his little essay on the subject, 
 (true as his writing always is to the depth of human 
 nature,) dwelleth more on the losses than on the 
 gains of this anniversary. It is epicedial, more 
 of a farewell to the parting than a welcome to the 
 coming guest, and so is most poetry, ten times 
 vale, to once ave! 
 
 Finally, I find myself now upon that stage of 
 life s journey wherein the milestones, as Lowell said, 
 seem altered into gravestones, at least by the 
 evening light. Or, if that figure is too sombre for 
 you, (and I confess in my own judgment it hath 
 too cemeterial a shade for a whole truth,) then let 
 me use a simpler metaphor and say: I have come 
 255 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 so far along the way that I have surely more part 
 ings to remember than meetings to expect, on the 
 terrestrial road. So, then, it is thrice natural at 
 this time that I should write a little essay "on say 
 ing good-bye." 
 
 The word has a beautiful, sacred meaning, which 
 is lost to view when we spell it "Good-by." It is 
 really a contraction of the phrase God-be-with-ye, 
 and is even lovelier than the French "Adieu," a 
 deep, holy word. 
 
 But I have often wondered why we have no part 
 ing phrase in English to express what we so clearly 
 hear in other tongues, the lively hope of meeting 
 again. The Germans say auf Wiedersehen y do 
 you remember Lowell s lovely lyric with that title ? 
 and the Italians, a rivederci, and the French, au 
 revoir. All these are fitting and graceful words; 
 they solace the daily separations of life with the 
 pleasant promise that we shall see each other again, 
 a bientot, the French say sometimes, as if to un 
 derline the wish that the next meeting may be 
 soon. 
 
 Why should we be forced to use a foreign phrase 
 for such a native feeling? Yet what English word 
 is there that briefly and precisely utters this senti- 
 256 
 
ON SAYING GOOD-BYE 
 
 ment? The nearest to it is the modern colloquial 
 ism, So long! 
 
 This comes, I fancy, from London; it is a bit of 
 Cockney dialect. The dictionary of "Passing Eng 
 lish of the Victorian Era," (suspicious title !) says 
 that it is a corruption of the Jewish word selah, used 
 in the Whitechapel district as a form of good-bye. 
 Of this I have my doubts, both whether selah is used 
 in that way, and whether it could be twisted into 
 "so long." Salaam, or shalom, the Eastern saluta 
 tion of peace, seems to me a more likely derivation. 
 
 But why go so far afield ? Have not the syllables 
 o long in themselves a meaning, or at least a hint 
 of meaning, that comes close to what we want? 
 So long as we are parted may no harm befall you ! 
 Till we meet again, it will seem so long! I profess 
 a liking for this child of the street who brings us 
 what we need. I would take him in, adopt him, 
 make him of the household. Has not his name 
 been used already by Walt Whitman as the title 
 of a good poem ? 
 
 "While the pleasure is yet at the full, I whisper, So long! 
 
 The unknown sphere, more real than I dreamed, more 
 direct, awakening rays about me So long /" 
 257 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 The next time I have to bid good-bye to a person 
 not too dignified to be loved, the next time I have 
 to leave a scene or an edifice not too grandiose to 
 be dear, the next time, I am going to say, boldly 
 and cheerfully, So long! and I care not who hears 
 me. 
 
 It is a comfort that so many of our frequent part 
 ings in this sublunary sphere are temporary and 
 carry with them the possibility of reunion. You 
 shake hands regretfully with a good companion as 
 you leave the ship, you going east, he going west, 
 yet the world is small and round, suddenly you 
 and he turn a corner in Tokyo or Cairo, and there 
 you are, gladly shaking hands again. You finish 
 a task this year, and feel half lost as you let it go. 
 But next year you shall find yourself busy with 
 another task so like the first that you are sure it 
 must be a reincarnation. You listen to some favorite 
 actor or singer on a "farewell" tour, and sigh that 
 you shall hear that voice no more. Yet it falls again 
 upon your ear with the old, familiar cadence. I 
 will not tell how many years ago I mourned at Mary 
 Anderson s good-bye to the stage. But it is less 
 than four years since I crept out of hospital in Lon 
 don and saw her again in Pygmalion and Galatea, 
 258 
 
ON SAYING GOOD-BYE 
 
 her face and form as lovely, her liquid voice as 
 entrancing as ever. Instead of "farewell" tours, 
 let our well-beloved players give us "so long" tours, 
 with bright promise of return. 
 
 Of places, too, while we live there is ever this 
 hope of another sight. I remember it was in the 
 summer of 1888 that my lady Graygown and I bade 
 farewell to Norway, not expecting to look upon 
 those huge rounded mountains, green vales, and 
 flashing waters again. Yet we saw them once more 
 in the summer of 1916, a most unlikely time, 
 the very heart and centre of the wild tempest of 
 war. But the high hills of Voss gave back no echo 
 of the world-tumult, and the swift-flowing Evanger 
 had no tinge of crimson in its crystal current. 
 
 Peace rested round our little wooden cottage in 
 its old-fashioned garden, on the point between the 
 rushing river and the placid lake. Peace lay upon 
 the far mountain-ridges, touched here and there 
 with gleams of vanishing snow. Peace walked in 
 the smooth, sloping meadows where the farmer- 
 folk, prolonging pleasant labor late into the luminous 
 night, hung the long racks of harvest with honey- 
 scented hay. Peace floated in the air over the white 
 rapids and translucent green pools of the stream 
 259 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 where I cast the fly, and welcomed me walking home 
 at midnight, carrying a brace of silver salmon, 
 through the little square where the old villagers sat 
 reading their newspapers by the lingering light of 
 the northern sky and chatting 
 
 "Of new, unhappy, far-off things 
 And battles yesterday" 
 
 They gossiped also, I was sure, of homelier sub 
 jects, 
 
 "Familiar matter of to-day, 
 Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, 
 That has been, and may be again !" 
 
 Were they wrong, those ancient cronies, in tak 
 ing their ease for an hour between ebbing daylight 
 and rising dawn? And was I wrong to relish that 
 peaceful fortnight of Norway revisited, that steady 
 ing interval of quiet amid long months of strenuous 
 duty on the very edge of war s black and bloody 
 gulf? Nay then, if you blame me, reader, I must 
 even bear your censure and contempt with the same 
 philosophy which hath often helped me through 
 life s hard places and bitter seasons. 
 
 Rough is the road, and often dark; frequented 
 by outlaws and sturdy beggars; encumbered with 
 260 
 
ON SAYING GOOD-BYE 
 
 wrecks of goodly equipages, and bodies of wounded 
 travellers; full of cripples, and weary folk who are 
 ready to faint and fall, and overladen beasts and 
 men, and little lost children. At every turn we meet 
 some disappointment or grief; in the long level 
 stretches there is blinding heat and dust; and in 
 the steep high places, cold and solitude. It is no 
 primrose path, but a way of trial and trouble, 
 yes, at times a very via dolor osa, a way of grief. 
 
 And yet, truth to tell, are there not consola 
 tions and encouragements along the way? Rest 
 ing-places like that house in Bethany where the 
 Master found repose and love; wide and cheering 
 outlooks from the brow of the hill, snug shelters 
 in the bosom of the vale, camp-fires beneath the 
 trees, wayside springs and fountains flowing among 
 the rocks or trickling through the moss ? Here will 
 I stop, and stoop, and drink deep refreshment. Share 
 with me ! Music and friendship and nature, sleep 
 and dreams and rested waking in the light of morn, 
 to these we say not good-bye, but so long ! They 
 will always keep something for us, something to 
 come back to; and if we are content with little, 
 enough will be better than a feast. 
 
 Let us be honest with ourselves, and own that 
 261 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 the return is never quite the same as the first ex 
 perience. It may be more, it may be less, but it 
 always has a shade of difference. One thing is 
 surely lost, the touch of surprise, 
 
 "The first fine careless rapture." 
 
 But by way of recompense there may come a 
 deeper understanding, a more penetrating sym 
 pathy. It is so, I think, with great music. The 
 third or fourth hearing of a noble symphony is per 
 haps the best. After that our delight varies, rising 
 or falling with our mood, or with the outward cir 
 cumstances. It is so with our best-beloved books, 
 companionable books, books made for many 
 readings. Their inward charm outwears their bind 
 ing. As often as we revisit them after a brief sepa 
 ration they tell us something new, or something 
 old with a new meaning. Yet one thing they offer 
 us but once, that which Keats describes in his 
 sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman s Homer," 
 the joy of discovery. I confess that I would give 
 a thousand dollars if I had never read Henry Esmond 
 or Lvrna Doone, so that I might have the delight 
 of reading them for the first time. But to make 
 it quite complete perhaps I should need also to give 
 262 
 
ON SAYING GOOD-BYE 
 
 an extra tip to the old Timekeeper and persuade 
 him to set my clock back fifty years. 
 
 Many of our farewells are unconscious. You 
 lend a book, and it is never brought back. You 
 leave a place, and find no opportunity or pathway 
 of return. You part from a friend, in anger or in 
 sorrow, or it may be simply in the casual way with 
 no special feeling, and lo, the impenetrable cur 
 tain falls and the familiar face is hidden forever. 
 
 So much are we at the mercy of the unknown in 
 this regard, that if we thought of it too closely and 
 constantly it would unhinge reason and darken 
 life with an intolerable gloom. Every departing 
 carriage would bear black plumes, and on every 
 ship that sailed away from us we should see a ghostly 
 Charon on the bridge. We should be trying always 
 to speak memorable "last words," instead of the 
 cheerful, heartening so long which befits our ordi 
 nary occasions. 
 
 Here memory helps us to be sane, if we trust her. 
 For we know that whatever hath entered deeply 
 into our being is never altogether rapt away. The 
 scene that we have loved, 
 
 "This town s fair face, yonder river s line, 
 The mountain round it and the sky above," 
 263 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 cannot be blotted from the inward vision. Nor 
 can the soul that hath companioned ours through 
 days and nights of bright and dark, turn a corner 
 into oblivion. Though much is taken, more remains, 
 the very cadence of the voice, the clasp of the 
 hand, the light in the eyes, "the sweet assurance 
 of a look," these are treasures laid up in the heaven 
 of remembrance where thieves do not break through 
 nor steal. 
 
 Strange, how the last sight or the last word of a 
 friend is not always the one that we recall most 
 vividly. It is often some chance phrase, some un- 
 meditated look or gesture. As if nature would say 
 to us, (even as the Master said,) "Take no thought, 
 be not anxious, for the morrow: be. yourself to-day: 
 so you will be remembered. * 
 
 It hath been my lot, (having lived too long,) to 
 conduct the funeral, or pronounce a memorial ad 
 dress, for many friends more renowned than I shall 
 ever be, Governor E. D. Morgan, ex-President 
 Cleveland, Mark Twain, Clarence King, Edmund 
 Clarence Stedman, John Bigelow, Hamilton Mabie, 
 Sir William Osier, William Dean Howells, and 
 each of these lives in my memory by something 
 very simple and not at all famous: a little name- 
 264 
 
ON SAYING GOOD-BYE 
 
 less act of every-day kindness or courage, a self- 
 revealing look of wonder or joy or regret, a good 
 word let fall by hazard at the crossroads, in brief 
 a natural, unintended, real good-bye. 
 
 No doubt the world grows poorer by the loss of 
 such friends, yes, and of others most dear to my 
 heart: the father whose firm loving hand set my 
 fingers on life s bow and taught me to draw the 
 arrow to the head; the bright-faced, daring lad 
 on whom the half of my hope was staked; the girl 
 with golden hair and warm brown eyes who was to 
 me "a song in the house of my pilgrimage." Poorer, 
 ay de mi! What honest man dare deny that the 
 parting from such comrades leaves life poorer ? But 
 against all inconsolable grievers and complainers, 
 (and most of all against my own rebel thoughts,) 
 I maintain and will ever maintain that life is also 
 richer, immeasurably richer than it would be if 
 these treasures had not been loaned to us for a while. 
 
 "Death," said Stevenson, "outdoes all other 
 accidents because it is the last of them." There 
 is something taken for granted in that word "acci 
 dent" which I would not altogether admit. But 
 when our grim and genial essayist goes on to speak 
 of the slight influence which the prospect of death 
 265 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 and its certain uncertainty exercise upon our daily 
 conduct, and of the folly of allowing it to play the 
 master in our thought and drive us like slaves to 
 a hundred trembling compliances and evasions, I 
 follow him fully and find him right. 
 
 A friend once begged Woodrow Wilson not to 
 risk his life by marching in a long procession through 
 an excited city, "the country cannot afford to 
 lose its President." Like a flash came his answer, 
 "The country cannot afford to have a coward for 
 President." 
 
 It is a strange fact, and worth noting, that those 
 who have most to do with death, like doctors and 
 nurses and ministers, are not much perturbed by 
 it. They are of the same mind as Cato, in Cicero s 
 dialogue On Old Age: "satisfy the call of duty and 
 disregard death." 
 
 There is a curious illustration of this written by 
 Procopius and cited by Anatole Le Braz in his won 
 derful book La Legende de la Mort. Here it is: 
 
 "At the beginning of the sixth century after 
 Christ, the island of Britain was popularly believed 
 to be the country of the dead. On the opposite 
 coast of Brittany, says Procopius, there are scat 
 tered many villages whose peoples follow fishing 
 266 
 
ON SAYING GOOD-BYE 
 
 and farming for their living. Subjects of the Franks 
 in all other respects, they are excused from paying 
 tribute, because of a certain service ( tis their word,) 
 which they say has been laid upon them since a 
 remote epoch : they claim to be under vows as * the 
 ferrymen of souls. At night they are suddenly 
 roused from sleep by a loud knocking at the door: 
 a voice outside calls them to their task. They rise 
 in haste; it would be vain to refuse obedience; a 
 mysterious force drags them from their home to 
 the beach. There they find boats, not their own, 
 but stranger-boats. They look empty, but in reality 
 they are full of people, loaded down almost to the 
 sinking-point, the water laps along the gunwale. 
 The ferrymen embark and take the oars. An hour 
 afterward, despite the heavy load of invisible pas 
 sengers, they reach the island, a voyage which 
 ordinarily requires not less than a day and a night. 
 Hardly have the boats touched shore when they are 
 quickly lightened, though the rowers cannot see 
 any of their fellow-travellers debark. A voice is 
 heard on the land, the same which waked the 
 rowers in their beds. It is the Conductor of Souls 
 presenting the dead whom he brings, one by one, 
 to those appointed to receive them. The men he 
 267 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 calls by their fathers* names; the women, if there 
 are any, by the names of their husbands; and of 
 each shade he tells what work it did while living." 
 
 There the legend breaks off. But what becomes 
 of the boats? And what of the ferrymen of souls, 
 with their oars dripping, and their tanned faces 
 gleaming in the misty starlight ? Undoubtedly they 
 row home to their Breton coast, and go to bed and 
 sleep late, and rise again to their fishing and their 
 farming, and day after day are busy and lazy and 
 quarrelsome and tranquil and merry and unsatis 
 fied, (even as you and I,) until the next knocking 
 at the door by night, and the next call from the 
 dark, and the time, at last, when their own names 
 will be on the list of passengers. 
 
 For what port? Methinks I know; for One who 
 is worthy of all trust, my Pilot, hath spoken a 
 name to me and told me not to be afraid. But where 
 it lies, that haven of salvaged ships and of forgiven 
 failures, and when or on what course it will be ap 
 proached, I know not, friend, any more than you. 
 
 The guide-posts of the sea are the stars. And 
 all its mighty waters lie in the hollow of an almighty 
 hand. 
 
 So good-bye, reader, a good voyage, so long ! 
 268 
 
FELLOW TRAVELLERS 
 
 MEMOKIS POSITA 
 
XVIII 
 
 AN OLD-STYLE AMERICAN* 
 
 THE long, useful, honorable career of John Bige- 
 low was marked from beginning to end by a joyful 
 attention to human duties. He was a human foun 
 tain of sanely directed energy. He loved to be in 
 the thick of things. He was never willing to retire, 
 like Shelley s imaginary reformers, into a cave. 
 He steadfastly pursued the active life. 
 
 But, at the same time, he was a follower of the 
 contemplative life. He loved truth, and sought for 
 the Heavenly Wisdom more than for hid treasure. 
 Finding her, his heart was glad, and he took counsel 
 with her in the night season. Life was intensely 
 real to him, and intensely interesting, because it 
 meant more than the eye can see or the ear can 
 hear. Guided by the Bible, and by Swedenborg, 
 and by such poets as Milton and Wordsworth and 
 Bryant, he learned to read the inward heart of things 
 beneath their outward form. But the more his 
 
 *Read before the Century Club, New York, March 9, 1912. 
 271 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 meditation deepened, the more his action was in 
 vigorated and directed to useful ends. 
 
 He was in fact a common-sense mystic, refusing 
 to let life be divided, or to content himself with 
 either half. He belonged to the double tribe of 
 Joseph, both dreamers and doers, men of the type of 
 Milton and Lincoln and Pasteur, who are better 
 citizens on earth because they hold fast to their 
 citizenship in Heaven. 
 
 John Bigelow was born in 1817, at the village 
 which is now called Maiden, on the shores of the 
 Hudson River, between Kingston and Catskill. 
 The love of that noble stream ran through his life; 
 beside it he built his country residence, "The Squir 
 rels"; and one of his latest public utterances was 
 a fervid, almost fiery, letter to the people, in con 
 nection with the Hudson-Fulton Celebration in 
 1909, urging that the only fitting way to honor the 
 memory of those men would be to protect the waters 
 of their river from pollution and its banks from 
 desecration, that it might flow brightly and bravely 
 to the sea, "ready to appease the hunger and thirst 
 of millions." There was always something con 
 crete and practical in the idealism of John Bige 
 low. 
 
 272 
 
AN OLD-STYLE AMERICAN 
 
 The same homely, concrete quality marks the 
 boyhood chapter in his "Retrospections of an Ac 
 tive Life." He makes you see his birthplace, the 
 old farmhouse, lighted by tallow dips, warmed by 
 huge wood-fires, with its big kitchen, its spinning- ^ 
 wheels and tubs of goldenrod dye, its cask of soft 
 soap in the woodshed, and its cellar crammed with 
 all sorts of provisions, "the very stomach of the 
 house." He takes you with him driving the cows 
 to pasture, and into the snake-haunted Eden of a 
 certain strawberry-meadow (where he was duly 
 punished for picking fruit on Sunday) and over 
 the river to a dull school at Sharon, and back again 
 to his native district school, which he says was " the 
 only school in which I was conscious of having re 
 ceived any thorough or conscientious instruction 
 from my teachers." He gives you a glimpse of a 
 spelling-bee, a country circus, the disastrous conse 
 quences of his first cigar, his first attempt to com 
 mend himself to a little girl by wearing his Sunday 
 clothes on a week-day. He shows you his father s 
 big country store by the river, and the sloops that 
 carried its multifarious trade, and the father him 
 self, six feet four of rugged manhood, a Bible Chris 
 tian and a convinced Presbyterian, but withal a 
 273 
 
CAMP-jFIRES 
 
 good provider, a careful farmer and shrewd trader, 
 "not ascetical, but always cheerful and sensible," 
 a very human sort of Puritan and good to live with. 
 
 Such homes as this were favorable starting-places 
 for young Americans. They had enough rough 
 ness to be bracing, enough restraint to be sobering, 
 enough elevation of thought and talk to be enno 
 bling, and enough liberty to quicken the heart with 
 the joy of living. 
 
 Young Bigelow spent three years at a college in 
 Hartford without getting much good, and finished 
 his course at Union College without getting any 
 harm. In his eighteenth year, he left home to study 
 law; starting with a firm at Hudson, where he used 
 to sweep out the office before breakfast; and then 
 going to New York, where he began making those 
 friendships of the royal kind which are only pos 
 sible to one who has himself a royal spirit, among 
 which the first place must be given to his intimacies 
 with William Cullen Bryant, Charles O Conor, and 
 Samuel J. Tilden. After that, comes the long list 
 of men who were brought into relation with him 
 by a common interest in public affairs, Sumner, 
 Preston King, Seward, E. D. Morgan, Cobden, 
 John Bright, William Hargreaves, Laboulaye, Mon- 
 274 
 
AN OLD-STYLE AMERICAN 
 
 talembert, it would be impossible to name them 
 all. No man was ever richer in the fruits of human 
 intercourse than John Bigelow, for in this kind he 
 was both a generous giver and a grateful receiver. 
 
 Plutarch tells us that Plato, at the close of his 
 life, found cause for thankfulness in three things: 
 that he was born a man, not a beast; that he was 
 born a Greek, not a barbarian; and that he was 
 born a contemporary of Sophocles. John Bigelow 
 was one of Plutarch s men, and I think he would 
 have put his reasons for thanksgiving thus: "that 
 I was born a man; that I was born an American; 
 that I was born a contemporary of Bryant." For 
 the character and genius of this illustrious friend 
 he cherished the most sincere reverence. He tells 
 us that, long after their daily intercourse was 
 terminated, it was his custom to test what he had 
 done, or proposed to do, by asking himself: "How 
 would Mr. Bryant act under similar circum 
 stances?" "I rarely applied this test," he adds, 
 "without receiving a clear and satisfactory an 
 swer." 
 
 Such a talent for friendship as this is one of the 
 marks of excellence, not of the Napoleonic type, 
 but of the human, companionable, serviceable kind. 
 275 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 Admitted to the bar in 1838, he made respectable, 
 but not rapid, progress in his profession, helping 
 to make both ends meet by teaching and by writing 
 literary articles for the reviews and political articles 
 for the newspapers. His first public appointment 
 was as an inspector of the State Prison at Sing Sing, 
 in which position he did good work for reform. 
 
 In 1846 the alleged war with Mexico inaugurated 
 the real conflict between Slavery and Freedom. 
 Mr. Bigelow took his part with that section of the 
 Democracy known as the Free-Soil Party, of which 
 Martin Van Buren, Silas Wright, and Samuel J. 
 Tilden were leaders. Mr. Bigelow s force as a writer 
 increased as his interest in national affairs grew 
 more intense. In 1848 he was invited to join Mr. 
 Bryant in the ownership and editing of the Eve- 
 ning Post, the ablest organ of the Free-Soil Democ 
 racy. Charles O Conor, although belonging to the 
 other wing of the party, generously indorsed the 
 notes which were necessary to finance the arrange 
 ment. Thus Mr. Bigelow entered upon the most 
 active and strenuous period of his labors, and worked 
 as a fighting editor from 1848 till 1861, when he 
 sold his interest in the paper and resigned his chair 
 to his friend Mr. Parke Godwin. 
 276 
 
AN OLD-STYLE AMERICAN 
 
 Of the policy of the Post during those years we 
 have his own description. "The questions we had 
 to discuss, happily for me, were mainly moral ques 
 tions. We were for freedom against slavery, which 
 was the piece de resistance from year in to year out. 
 We were the leading, if not the only, champion of 
 a revenue tariff as against a protective tariff, in all 
 the Northern States. We hunted with almost reck 
 less audacity every base or selfish influence that 
 was brought to bear either upon legislation or ad 
 ministration. Hence, although we always professed 
 to be Democrats and to preach what we regarded 
 as the genuine principles of popular sovereignty, 
 we were never regarded as part of the machine, 
 and rarely were even as tolerant of it as perhaps at 
 times we might well have been." 
 
 Precisely so. Not only toward "the machine" 
 but toward other objects and adversaries, Mr. Bige- 
 low s early and middle manner sometimes betrayed 
 a lack of tolerance that bordered on acerbity. He 
 was not an easy-going man, nor by nature soft- 
 spoken. His disposition was sanguine; his temper 
 a distinct conductor of ardent heat; his will strong 
 to the point of obstinacy. Doubtless the tempta 
 tions of an editor s irresponsible power, of which 
 277 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 he wrote so feelingly in his "Life of Bryant," may 
 have led him into some of those errata that he de 
 plored as inseparable from the conduct of frail and 
 ignorant humanity. But all this only makes it the 
 more remarkable and praiseworthy that his later 
 manner should be so marked by consideration and 
 urbanity, that he became to us in the Century Club 
 the very type and model of the high courtesy which 
 (by way of sad confession) we call "old-fashioned." 
 
 A gentleman, I take it, is one who is not incapable 
 of anger, but capable of learning to control it, and 
 who, for reasons of good-will, sets his intelligence 
 to avoid equally the giving and the taking of offense. 
 
 But the years preceding the Civil War were hot 
 times, in which offense abounded. Through all that 
 heat and turbulence and confusion, the Evening 
 Post held steadily, if not always serenely, to its 
 moral principles, and rendered great service in in 
 spiring and guiding the independent Democrats, 
 whose courage and self-sacrificing loyalty made 
 possible the foundation of the Republican party, 
 the election of Abraham Lincoln, and the preserva 
 tion of the Union. 
 
 Before leaving this part of my subject, I must 
 say a word as to the kind of Democracy in which 
 278 
 
AN OLD-STYLE AMERICAN 
 
 Mr. Bigelow believed, and to which he remained 
 faithful throughout his life. He was no friend to 
 absolutism in popular sovereignty any more than 
 in monarchy or empire. He held that the rule of 
 the people should be self-limited and self-directed 
 by constitutional restraint; that the use of the 
 suffrage should be for the choice of representative 
 and executive officers, and for such amendment of 
 the Constitution as becomes necessary from time 
 to time; that the object of the Republic is to safe 
 guard the development of the native energies of its 
 citizens unfettered by superfluous legislation; and 
 above all that a democracy, while it may defend 
 itself by arms, can only propagate its ideas by ex 
 ample. He was in fact a collective individualist. 
 
 He thought, not that the Old is better than the 
 New, but that the Old is necessary to the New, its 
 root and spring. Progressivism he disliked for its 
 reactionary tendencies. He expected no more from 
 political organizations and combinations than was 
 in them, knowing that "governments like clocks 
 would run down as they were wound up." He was 
 of the school of Solon, who tried "so to frame his 
 laws as to make it evident to the Athenians that 
 it would be more for their interest to observe them 
 279 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 than to transgress them." He belonged to the 
 party of the wise men in all the ages, the party 
 that knows the only sure way to better the social 
 fabric is to improve the moral fibre out of which 
 it must be woven. 
 
 It was during his journalistic period that three 
 great good fortunes came to Mr. Bigelow; first, 
 the beginning of his happy domestic life, by his 
 marriage with Miss Jane Poultney in 1850; second, 
 the commencement of his life as an author in 1852, 
 with a volume called "Jamaica in 1850; or the 
 Effect of Fifty Years of Freedom on a Slave 
 Colony"; third, the recovery of his faith in the 
 Bible, through an acquaintance in 1853 with the 
 works of Emanuel Swedenborg. So, close together, 
 he found the three immediate jewels of the soul: 
 companionship, vocation, illumination. 
 
 In August, 1861, President Lincoln appointed 
 him to the American Consulship in Paris, with the 
 idea that he should give special attention to the 
 Press in France, and to the formation of public 
 opinion favorable to the United States. A man 
 better qualified by nature and training for such a 
 task could not have been discovered. 
 
 Mr. Bigelow was a representative of the Spirit 
 280 
 
AN OLD-STYLE AMERICAN 
 
 of America in the sense that he gave a personal 
 impression of the qualities that created the Revo 
 lution and the Republic: self-reliance, fair play, 
 energy, love of the common order, and desire of 
 individual development. These he embodied with 
 a singular charm of simplicity and dignity in France 
 during our Civil War, even as Benjamin Franklin 
 had embodied them with a like charm during our 
 Revolution. 
 
 The services of these two persons of native dis 
 tinction and shrewdness, the one in winning the 
 alliance of France in our struggle for liberty; the 
 other in preventing the hostility and interference 
 of France in our struggle for Union, were of a 
 value so inestimable that it is difficult to measure 
 between them. If Bigelow s task was easier than 
 Franklin s by reason of the greater national re 
 sources and powers which supported it, at the same 
 time it was more difficult by just so much as the 
 character of Louis XVI was more sincere, generous, 
 and noble than the character of Napoleon III. It 
 was a fascinating turn of fortune that Bigelow was 
 able, at the close of his French residence, to recover 
 for his country the manuscript of Franklin s Auto 
 biography, and to publish the editio princeps of the 
 281 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 correct text of that extraordinary little book, the 
 first American classic. 
 
 In 1865 he was appointed by Lincoln to succeed 
 the late W. L. Dayton as Envoy Extraordinary 
 and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of 
 France, in which office President Johnson continued 
 him until Bigelow s resignation in 1866. His work 
 in connection with the French occupation of Mexico 
 and the preposterous but none the less dangerous 
 schemes involved in what he called "The Chromo 
 Empire" of Maximilian, was done with a firm, deli 
 cate, and masterly hand. 
 
 He conveyed warnings to Napoleon and his 
 rather sky-rockety ministers without making 
 threats. He encouraged the government at Wash 
 ington to wait with dignity for the inevitable dSbdcle 
 of the Franco-Austrian house-of-cards, rather than 
 to plunge rashly into a superfluous war in Mexico. 
 
 His letters and sayings of this period are full of 
 pithy eloquence and homespun wit. For instance, 
 he says to Napoleon s Foreign Minister, "It is as 
 idle to suppose that you can disregard a great na 
 tional feeling as that you can annihilate a particle 
 of matter." To R. H. Dana he writes, "I hope 
 282 
 
AN OLD-STYLE AMERICAN 
 
 you will do what you can to prevent the country 
 getting into a false position about Mexico and con 
 verting a sentiment into a policy." To Seward: 
 "There is a way of saying that you won t be bul 
 lied that amounts to bullying." Of a certain 
 bishop: "He is one of those who are for all the 
 freedoms when they serve the Church and against 
 them when they don t." Of President Johnson 
 beginning his conflict with Congress: "I wish he 
 had found means to plough around this stump in 
 stead of running smack into it." Of the approach 
 of the Austro-Prussian War: "Europe is going to 
 war as people sometimes go to the brandy-bottle 
 to get rid of their own domestic troubles, and with 
 a prospect of the same success." 
 
 Still more clearly do Mr. Bigelow s natural 
 sagacity and power of just estimation come out 
 in his appreciation of President Lincoln. "The 
 greatness of Lincoln must be sought for in the con 
 stituents of his moral nature. I do not know that 
 history has made a record of the attainment of any 
 corresponding eminence by any other man who so 
 habitually, so constitutionally, did to others as he 
 would have them do to him. He was not a learned 
 283 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 man. But the spiritual side of his nature was so 
 highly organized that it rendered superfluous much 
 of the experience which to most men is indispensa 
 ble, the choicest prerogative of genius. In the 
 ordinary sense of the word, Lincoln was not a 
 statesman. The issues presented to the people 
 at the Presidential election of 1860 were, to a larger 
 extent, moral questions, humanly speaking, than 
 were those presented at any other Presidential elec 
 tion. . . . Looking back upon the Administration, 
 and upon all the blunders which from a worldly 
 point of view, Lincoln and his advisers seemed to 
 have made, and then pausing to consider the re 
 sults of that Administration, ... we realize that 
 we had what above all things we most needed, a 
 President who walked by faith and not by sight; 
 who did not rely upon his own compass, but fol 
 lowed a cloud by day and a fire by night, which 
 he had learned to trust implicitly." 
 
 After Mr. Bigelow s return to America, he was 
 appointed by his friend Governor Tilden, in 1875, 
 as a member of the Commission which broke up 
 the dishonest Canal Ring of New York. In the same 
 year he was elected Secretary of State. With these 
 284 
 
AN OLD-STYLE AMERICAN 
 
 two exceptions, his life from 1867 to 1911 was with 
 drawn from political office and devoted to public 
 service. 
 
 Mature at sixty, mellow at seventy, vigorous at 
 eighty, venerable at ninety, he followed and finished 
 his chosen course of usefulness, with eye undimmed, 
 joy unabated, and courage undismayed. 
 
 To those of us who knew and loved him in his 
 later years, he seemed a living link between the 
 present and the past. But his power to join old 
 times with ours lay not only in his longevity, but 
 also in his vitality. His interest in the present days 
 was no less than in the days that are gone. He 
 joyfully admitted that many changes in the world 
 had been for the better. 
 
 He was not one of those old men who think to 
 show their greatness by making others feel small, 
 their venerableness by making others feel juvenile. 
 Retired from business and politics, he did not live 
 in retirement and idleness, but in the open, will 
 ingly assuming such labors, burdens, and studies 
 as he conceived would enable him to employ his 
 undiminished strength gratis for the benefit of his 
 country and his city. 
 
 285 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 Remembering this beautiful and fruitful period 
 of John Bigelow s autumn, we think not so much 
 of the length of his life as of its nobility, and recall 
 for him the words of that fine inscription in the 
 Latin Chapel of Christ Church, Oxford: 
 
 "Non enim quae longaeva est senectus 
 honorata est, neque numero annorum mul- 
 torum ; sed prudentia hominibus est canities, 
 et vita immaculata est senilis aetas." 
 
 His literary works were considerable, both in 
 number and importance; and in all of them that 
 I have read, the substance and the style are marked 
 and distinguished by the personality of the author. 
 This is one of the indispensable qualities of Litera 
 ture, which calls no children legitimate who do not 
 resemble their father. 
 
 Chief among his books, I would name his Life 
 of Samuel J. Tilden; his admirable monograph 
 on William Cullen Bryant, whom he always re 
 garded as "America s greatest poet"; his pro 
 foundly interesting and spiritually suggestive 
 volume on The Mystery of Sleep; and finally 
 his three rich tomes of Retrospections of an Active 
 Life, a title which he emphasized with some 
 286 
 
AN OLD-STYLE AMERICAN 
 
 particularity, and rightly, for it defined his pur 
 pose and revealed his character. 
 
 There was always something definite and decided 
 about John Bigelow. He knew what he thought, 
 and said it. His courtesy was not of the nature 
 of compromise, but of the respect due to others 
 and to himself. In his opinions, his theories of life, 
 even his personal tastes, he was clear and positive. 
 His preferences for the teachings of Swedenborg, 
 for the practice of homeopathy, for the doctrine 
 of free trade, and for temperance, fresh air, and 
 cheerfulness as the elements of a sound hygiene, 
 were subject to polite discussion but not liable to 
 change. I imagine that nothing short of an amend 
 ment to the Constitution would have induced him 
 to give up his horses for an automobile. 
 
 It is pleasant and profitable to bring to mind his 
 rugged face, his lofty figure, his simple-stately ways 
 as he moved among us, bearing the burden of his 
 ninety years with a certain half-humorous, half- 
 pathetic, wholly virile grace. Recall his presence 
 as he presided in the Century library, cheerfully 
 upholding the tradition of the fellowship from 
 which all of his contemporaries and most of his 
 earlier friends had vanished. Recollect him as he 
 287 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 appeared fifteen months ago, at the meeting of 
 the American Academy in the New Theatre, to 
 read his audaciously delightful paper on "A Break 
 fast with Alexander Dumas," or six months later 
 when he spoke at the opening of the Public 
 Library. Or best of all, remember him as he used 
 to receive his friends last fall, in his sunny book- 
 room at 21 Gramercy Park, sitting in his high- 
 backed chair, reading, dreaming, or working, sur 
 rounded by the loving care of children and grand 
 children. 
 
 Always where he could put his hand upon them, 
 a copy of the Bible and a volume of Swedenborg 
 lay beside him. Always he was ready to talk with 
 unfailing interest and vividness of old times or new 
 times, of the progress of the city, of the union of 
 the churches on the basis of their main and real 
 beliefs, of the improvement of the world, or of the 
 mysteries of Heaven. 
 
 Thus he waited, not idly but busily, not fear 
 fully but bravely, "in the confidence of a certain 
 faith, in the comfort of a reasonable, religious and 
 holy hope," for the coming of the great change, 
 the great liberation, the great promotion from 
 an active life to a redeemed immortality of ser- 
 288 
 
AN OLD-STYLE AMERICAN 
 
 vice. So John Bigelow passed away on December 
 19, 1911: 
 
 "His twelve long sunny hours 
 Bright to the edge of darkness: then the calm 
 Repose of twilight and a crown of stars !" 
 
 289 
 
XIX 
 
 INTERPRETER S HOUSE* 
 
 A TRIBUTE to the memory of Hamilton Wright 
 Mabie must be full of deep and warm affection if 
 it would express in any measure the thoughts and 
 feelings of the many who knew him personally in 
 the crowded pilgrimage of American life. 
 
 He was a man with a genius for friendship. 
 Religious by nature and holding to Christian faith 
 and ideals with unalterable conviction, he had a 
 simple, beautiful, reasonable quality of manhood 
 which kept him from ever becoming a bigot, a 
 fanatic, or a sentimentalist. He understood hu 
 man nature, with all its faults and twists, and he 
 loved it notwithstanding all. Steering his own 
 course with a steady hand, he wished not to judge 
 or dominate other men, but only to help them to 
 see the star by which he steered and to make its 
 light more useful to them for guidance. Those 
 who came to him for counsel got it clean and 
 
 *Read before the American Academy of Arts and Letters, 
 April 10. 1919. 
 
 290 
 
INTERPRETER S HOUSE 
 
 straight, often with that touch of humor which 
 was the salt of his discourse. Those who disliked 
 and scorned him as an "old fogy," and pursued 
 him with a strange malice of petty mockery, found 
 him silent, tolerant, content to go forward with 
 his own work, and ready to help them if they got 
 into trouble. He was the most open-minded and 
 kind-hearted of men. To his acquaintances and his 
 thousands of auditors on his lecture tours, he was a 
 voice of tranquil wisdom, genial wit, and serene 
 inspiration. To his intimates he was an incompar 
 able comrade. 
 
 I came to know him well only after he had passed 
 middle life. But I felt sure that the spirit which 
 was in him then, had animated him from the be 
 ginning, and I know that it continued to illuminate 
 him to the end. Mabie was not a man to falter or 
 recant. He advanced. He fulfilled the aim of 
 Wordsworth s "Happy Warrior," who 
 
 "when brought 
 
 Among the tasks of real life hath wrought 
 Upon the task that pleased his childish thought." 
 
 He was born at Cold Spring, New York, in 1846, 
 and graduated from Williams College in 1867, and 
 291 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 from the Columbia College Law School in 1869. 
 But the practice of law as a profession did not at 
 tract or suit him. In 1879 he became an editorial 
 writer for The Christian Union, a religious period 
 ical of broadening scope and influence, which de 
 veloped under the leadership of Lyman Abbott 
 and Hamilton Mabie and an able staff into the 
 liberal, national, Christian weekly well named The 
 Outlook. 
 
 Mabie s work on this paper was constant, de 
 voted, happy, and full of quiet stimulus to clearer 
 thinking and better living. Most of his articles, 
 which must have numbered thousands during his 
 service of thirty-seven years, were unsigned. But 
 they bore the image and superscription of his fine 
 intelligence, broad sympathies, and high standards 
 both in literature and in life. They were not ser 
 mons. They were plain words of wisdom uttered 
 in season. They were sometimes pungent, for he 
 had a vivid sense of righteousness, but they were 
 never malicious or strident. They were the coun 
 sels of a well-wisher. He hated evil, but when he 
 struck at it he desired to help those whom it had 
 deluded and enslaved. For the most part he wrote 
 from the positive rather than from the negative 
 
INTERPRETER S HOUSE 
 
 side, preferring the praise of right to the condem 
 nation of wrong. Something in his character per 
 meated his style. A certain unpretending reason 
 ableness, a tranquil assurance of the ultimate vic 
 tory of light over darkness, an understanding sense 
 of the perplexities and shadows which overcast our 
 mortal life, gave to the words which he wrote from 
 week to week a power of penetration and per 
 suasion. They entered myriads of homes and 
 hearts for good. In this service to modern life 
 through the editorial pages of The Outlook he con 
 tinued gladly and faithfully until he died, on New 
 Year s Eve, 1916. 
 
 During this long period of professional labor as 
 a writer for the press, he developed a national in 
 fluence perhaps even wider as a public lecturer and 
 an author. 
 
 No man in America was more welcome to an in 
 telligent audience, for a lyceum lecture or a com 
 mencement address, than Hamilton Mabie. Here 
 his personal qualities had full play, even more than 
 in his writing. His radiant nature, his keen sense 
 of humor, his ready and attractive manner of 
 speech, his sympathy with all sorts and conditions 
 of men and women, gave him quick and easy ac- 
 293 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 cess to his listeners. He reached them because he 
 took the trouble to open the doors. 
 
 The material of his lectures, as in the case of 
 Emerson, was that which he afterward used in his 
 books. But when he was speaking it was put in a 
 different form, more free, more colloquial, adapted 
 to the occasion. Why should a speaker regard his 
 auditors as cast-iron receptacles for a dose of doc 
 trine? Mabie never did that. But he always had 
 something to say that was serious, well-considered, 
 worth thinking about. That was the reason why 
 thoughtful people liked to hear him. He was a 
 popular lecturer in the best sense of the phrase. 
 
 The demands upon his time and strength in this 
 field were incessant. In addition he met the con 
 stant appeal of humane and hopeful causes looking 
 to the betterment of social life, like the Kinder 
 garten Society of which he was for many years the 
 president. To these calls he was always ready to 
 respond. It was his self-forgetfulness in such work 
 that exhausted his strength and brought on his 
 final illness. He was a soldier on the firing-line of 
 human progress. In that cause he was glad to give 
 his life. 
 
 His books have deserved and had a wide reading. 
 294 
 
INTERPRETER S HOUSE 
 
 They show the clear carefulness of this thinking, 
 the depth of his love for nature and human nature* 
 his skill as a writer of translucent English. 
 
 Nothing could be better for the purpose for which 
 they were intended than the volumes in which he 
 rendered, for the boys and girls of to-day, the great 
 stories and legends of the past, Norse Stories 
 from the Eddas, Myths Every Child Should Know, 
 Heroes Every Child Should Know, and so on. 
 
 But much more significant and original is the 
 series of books in which he made his contribution 
 to the art of essay-writing, My Study Fire, Under 
 the Trees and Elsewhere, Short Studies in Literature. 
 These are rich in the fruits of observation in the 
 home, the library, the great out-of-doors, 
 
 " The harvest of a quiet eye 
 That broods and sleeps on his own heart." 
 
 These volumes were followed by others in which 
 he expressed his deepening thoughts on the unity 
 and the beauty of life in brief essays on Nature 
 and Culture, Books and Culture, Work and Culture, 
 The Life of the Spirit, and The Great Word, by 
 which he means Love, not blind and selfish, but 
 open-eyed, intelligent, generous. A fine ideal 
 295 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 guides the course of all these essays, an ideal 
 of the co-operation of nature and books and work 
 in the unfolding of personality. Culture, in that 
 sense, was Mabie s conception of the best reward 
 that life has to give. Kultur, in the German sense, 
 machine-made and iron-bound, he despised and 
 hated. For this and other reasons he was ardent 
 for the cause of the free and civilized nations 
 against Germany in the barbaric war which she 
 forced upon the world in 1914. 
 
 But the bulk of his work was done before this 
 sharp and bitter crisis, in a period of general tran 
 quillity, through which his writing flows like a pure 
 and fertilizing stream in a landscape. He was an 
 optimist, but not of the rose-water variety. He 
 knew that life involves painful effort, hard conflict. 
 Nevertheless, he believed that for those who will 
 face the conflict and make the effort, help and vic 
 tory are sure. He was a critic, delighting to read 
 and comment upon the great books, Homer, the 
 Greek Tragedies, the Mediaeval Epics, Dante, 
 Shakespeare, Milton, and the more modern classics. 
 But he was not a technical and scholastic critic. 
 He sought to catch the spirit and meaning of the 
 literature which he loved. His work always re- 
 296 
 
INTERPRETER S HOUSE 
 
 minds me of that passage in the Pilgrim *s Progress 
 which describes the "House of the Interpreter." 
 The beauty of his comment on the classics is that 
 it has a way of being right about their real signif 
 icance. 
 
 This is true of his most important critical work, 
 William Shakespeare, Poet, Dramatist, and Man. 
 On this volume he spent long, loving, patient 
 study and toil. The result was one of the best, 
 clearest, most readable and illuminating books in 
 Shakespearean literature. Its central thesis, that 
 Shakespeare s poetic genius, his gift of vision, pas 
 sion, and imagination, was the spring of his power, 
 and that therefore, despite our imperfect knowl 
 edge of his biography, we may be sure of his great 
 ness as a man, is thoroughly sound. It is set forth 
 with admirable lucidity and abundant illustration. 
 
 There is one of Mabie s books which is less known 
 than others. It is called A Child of Nature. It 
 represents his first and only attempt, so far as I 
 know, in the field of fiction. But it is fiction of a 
 peculiar type, no plot, little dialogue, no incidents 
 except birth and death and the ordinary run of 
 life in the New England village where "John Fos 
 ter" spent his days. The theme of the book, de- 
 297 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 veloped with deep fidelity and subtle beauty, is 
 the growth of this quiet, simple, lonely man in fel 
 lowship with nature and a few great books. He 
 dies silent and alone, never having learned to speak 
 out to the world, or even to his neighbors, the wis 
 dom which he has garnered. But some brief daily 
 record of his experiences, his thoughts, the light of 
 life that has come to him, he has written down and 
 leaves behind him. Then comes a young man of 
 another type, Ralph Parkman, scholar, traveller, 
 and author, to live in the old farmhouse. He finds 
 the forgotten papers, and their sincerity and beauty 
 take hold of him. He gives them the form and 
 finish which they need, and sends them out to the 
 world. 
 
 "It was a little book which finally went forth 
 from the old house, but it was very deep and beau 
 tiful; like a quiet mountain pool, it was far from 
 the dust and tumult of the highways, and there 
 were images of stars in it. With the generosity of 
 a fine spirit the younger man interpreted the life 
 of the older man through the rich atmosphere of 
 his own temperament, but there was nothing in 
 the beautiful flowering and fruitage which the world 
 received from his hand which was not potentially 
 
INTERPRETER S HOUSE 
 
 in the heart and mind of John Foster. The silent 
 man had come to his own; for God had given him 
 a voice. After the long silence of a lifetime he spoke 
 in tones which vibrated and penetrated, not like 
 great bells swung in unison in some high tower, but 
 like dear familiar bells set in old sacred places, 
 whose sweet notes are half-audible music and half- 
 inaudible faith and prayer and worship." 
 
 With these words of his own I leave this brief, 
 imperfect tribute to Hamilton Mabie as man and 
 author. The value of his work is still living in the 
 hearts of his hearers and readers whom it has en 
 lightened and encouraged. It is worthy to be 
 treasured. To me the memory of his friendship 
 means more than words can tell. 
 
 299 
 
XX 
 
 THE HEALING GIFT* 
 
 TO divide and distinguish a man from the pro 
 fession in which he is engaged, to make the 
 measure of his success depend merely on his tech 
 nical proficiency and reckon his fame only by the 
 discoveries and inventions which he has made, 
 seems to me foolish. There may be some profes 
 sions in which this is possible; for example, en 
 gineering, where one has to deal chiefly with the 
 tenacity of certain minerals; or astronomy, where 
 one observes the motions and calculates the con 
 stitution of distant stars; or chemistry, in which the 
 supposed elements of imagined matter are tested 
 by experiment and recombined by hypothesis. But 
 in the more personal professions, such as teaching 
 and medicine, where the unexplained mystery of 
 our human nature is part of the material to be dealt 
 with, no professor can be truly excellent or mem 
 orable unless he has within him the qualities which 
 
 *Read at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, March 22, 
 1920. 
 
 300 
 
THE HEALING GIFT 
 
 belong to the make-up of a really great man. Such 
 a man was Sir William Osier, world-renowned phy 
 sician. 
 
 Of his achievements in medicine and surgery, 
 Doctor Welch and other honored colleagues have 
 written and spoken with authority which is indis 
 putable. I speak only of the personality in the pro 
 fession, the man William Osier, who was a famous 
 doctor, and had the healing gift. 
 
 It was in Baltimore that I first met him, when 
 he was Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins 
 University. He had behind his name a score of 
 degrees and decorations from various universities 
 all over the world, honors fairly won by his work. 
 But this was not the main thing about the man. 
 He bore his honors, to use the American phrase, 
 "not so that you would notice it." He was like the 
 friend whom Tennyson describes in In Memoriam: 
 
 "wearing all that weight 
 Of learning lightly like a flower." 
 
 He was the simplest, most modest, and most charm 
 ing of the companions whom I met at the hospitable 
 dinner-tables of Baltimore. 
 
 Do you remember his topaz eyes, never inquisi- 
 301 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 tive but always searching and comprehending; his 
 mouth with no set smile fixed on it, but always 
 quick to respond in sympathy; the tranquil, 
 friendly, understanding expression of his beautiful, 
 dark, oval face ? 
 
 I was never fortunate enough to be his patient, 
 but I could have trusted him to "the crack o 
 doom." I should have felt that he would do for 
 me all that man can do. 
 
 Two friends of mine I ventured to commend to 
 his care in England. One was a poor governess. 
 The other was an English official of high rank. To 
 both of them he gave an equal care and interest. 
 Both of them are living now, but, alas, the friend 
 who helped them through their hard time is gone. 
 
 The next time that I saw Doctor Osier intimately 
 was in Paris, in the winter of 1908-1909. As al 
 ways, the meeting with him was delightful. But 
 far more illuminative and instructive were the re 
 ports that came from my son, who was then a 
 scholar at Magdalen College in Oxford. He wrote 
 me that Sir William and Lady Osier were like father 
 and mother to the American students there. 
 
 At an evening party, Doctor Osier would put his 
 hand on the shoulder of a shy boy and say: "You 
 
 302 
 
THE HEALING GIFT 
 
 don t care for dancing. Come into the library with 
 me." And then he would show the boy wonderful 
 treasures among the old books. 
 
 The last thing that Doctor Osier gave me was 
 his monograph on the bookworm, anobium pani- 
 ceum against which he had a justifiable human 
 hatred, but which, none the less, he was careful to 
 study scientifically and to depict accurately in a. 
 fine plate of which he was proud. His attitude 
 toward this noxious beast was very much like that 
 which he held toward the Prussian Kultur y and 
 other deadly microbes. 
 
 Looking through his writings I find a thousand 
 things which interest me. His most characteristic 
 volume Mquanimitas recommends that steady tran 
 quillity of demeanor which is essential to the prac 
 tical work of a physician; but underneath that 
 counsel I find the distinctly Christian words of 
 patience, charity, and hopefulness. I should like to 
 add to the title of the book, "Magnanimitas." 
 
 In an address which he delivered to the medical 
 students at Toronto, he said the "Master Word 
 of Medicine" is Work. From this he went on to 
 teach the three great lessons of life. "First, learn 
 to consume your own smoke. Second, we are not 
 303 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 here to get all we can for ourselves, but to make 
 the lives of others happier. (This he supports by 
 the authority of Christ.) Third, the law of the 
 higher life is only fulfilled by love, i. e., charity." 
 
 His writings and addresses are saturated with the 
 Bible. But he quotes also from other sources. 
 
 In one brief address, called Man s Redemption 
 of Man, made to the students of Edinburgh in 
 1910, I have noted the following quotations and 
 references: Isaiah, Christ, Confucius, Cardinal 
 Newman, Euripides, Edwin Markham, Deuter 
 onomy, John Bunyan, Sir Thomas Browne, Sir 
 Henry Maine, Plato, Sir Gilbert Murray, Robert 
 Browning, Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Galen, Coper 
 nicus, Charles Darwin, Aristotle, Galileo, Milton, 
 Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Weir Mitchell, Poe, 
 Prodicus, and Shelley, with whose verse the ad 
 dress closes. Quotation on this scale would swamp 
 an ordinary man. But Osier was not an ordinary 
 man. He was a true scholar, who read much and 
 assimilated all that he read. 
 
 The breadth of his knowledge was an inspiration 
 
 to his practice as a physician. It was not only 
 
 medicine that he understood, but life. He gave 
 
 his patients confidence and serenity, and thereby 
 
 304 
 
THE HEALING GIFT 
 
 helped them to get the benefit of such other medi 
 cines as he prescribed. 
 
 In nothing was he an extremist: certainly not a 
 pessimist; hardly an optimist, because he knew too 
 much; distinctly a meliorist, because he believed 
 that the advance of medical science would bring 
 great good to mankind. Yet I am sure he felt that 
 life meant more than mere living on earth. This, 
 I think, is the conclusion of his lectures on Science 
 and Immortality delivered at Harvard University 
 in 1904. 
 
 The last time that I saw him, gracious and vital 
 as ever, was in Oxford in the spring of 1917, when 
 America had just awakened after long slumber, 
 and taken her right place in the World War. Os 
 ier s only child, Revere, was on the front-line, fight 
 ing for justice and freedom. That was where his 
 father and mother wanted him to be. Anxiety for 
 their boy, so young, so bright, so rare and delicate 
 in promise, was in their hearts day and night. Yet 
 it only made them kinder, more thoughtful and 
 generous in ministering to others. 
 
 I had just come out of hospital in London after 
 slow recovery from a slight injury received in the 
 trenches at Verdun. Doctor Osier had known of 
 305 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 it and had sent me wise counsel and help. Now 
 he took me with him through the wonderful war- 
 hospitals of Oxford, knowing that it would humble 
 and strengthen my heart to see the men who were 
 bearing and suffering a thousandfold more than I, 
 for the good cause. As we passed through the long 
 wards of the Schools Building, and among the tents 
 where the outdoor patients were sheltered in the 
 lovely New College Gardens, faces brightened, eyes 
 lit up with affection and hope in the presence of 
 the beloved physician. There was something heal 
 ing, calming, stimulating in the soul of the man, 
 shining through his outward form. He pretended 
 nothing. He knew all that there was to be known. 
 He never faltered nor flinched from the facts. His 
 keen and evident sensibility never interfered with 
 his steadiness of hand or coolness of nerve. His 
 very look seemed to say, "Be brave, be patient, 
 remember the other fellows, do your best to get 
 well and I will help you; for the rest we must all 
 put our trust in God." 
 
 Osier s sense of humor was native, unconquer 
 able, and always full of human sympathy. He up 
 held and illustrated the ancient Hippocratic stand 
 ards in the practice of medicine: "learning, sa- 
 306 
 
THE HEALING GIFT 
 
 gacity, humanity, probity." No one could have 
 laughed more heartily than he at the refutation 
 which his own life gave to his jocose confession, 
 in his farewell address at Johns Hopkins in 1905, 
 of two "harmless obsessions," namely, that men 
 above forty are comparatively useless, and men 
 above sixty are cumberers of the ground. This was 
 a jest so fine that the so-called "reading-public" 
 in America could not possibly understand it. Nor 
 could they be expected to note that the suggestion 
 in regard to the use of chloroform to get rid of people 
 over sixty was a quotation from Anthony Trollope, 
 to which Osier distinctly declined to give his ap 
 proval, because as he said, " my own time is getting 
 so short." 
 
 Yet, after all, it was not so very short: fourteen 
 years were left to him, and he filled them to the 
 brim with noble work and happy play. Never was 
 he more alive, more useful, more helpful and heal 
 ing to his fellow men than in those years, 
 
 "Serene and bright, 
 And lovely as a Lapland night, * 
 
 which he passed at Oxford. The final test that 
 
 came to him, the news that his boy had made the 
 
 307 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 supreme sacrifice on the field of honor in Flanders, 
 he bore with that equanimity which is the crown 
 of a sensitive and unselfish soul, a soul that lives 
 in God for man, and therefore can never be lost in 
 sorrow nor die in death. 
 
 After his own custom, I have been considering 
 what wise and ancient words may best express his 
 personality. 
 
 Most of all he would have liked, I am sure, the 
 words of Christ which he quoted to the students 
 of Yale University in 1913: "Ye must be born of 
 the Spirit." That spiritual birth was the secret 
 of the extraordinary power with which Osier used 
 his rare intellectual gifts and scientific attainments. 
 
 But next to that quotation from his favorite 
 book, the Bible, I think he would have liked these 
 words written by Tacitus about his father-in-law, 
 the noble Roman Agricola. 
 
 "The end of his life brought mourning to us, 
 melancholy to his friends, solicitude even to the by 
 stander and those who knew him not. The great 
 public itself, and this busy, preoccupied city, talked 
 of him in public gatherings and private circles. No 
 one, hearing of his death, was happy or soon for 
 getful. . . . Should posterity desire to know what 
 308 
 
THE HEALING GIFT 
 
 he looked like, he was well-proportioned rather 
 than imposing; there was no impatience in his face; 
 its dominant expression was benign. You could 
 easily believe him good, and gladly recognize him 
 great. Though snatched away in his prime, he 
 lived to a ripe old age, measured by renown. He 
 fulfilled the true blessings of life which lie in char 
 acter. ... If there be a habitation for the spirits 
 of the just; if, as wise men are happy to believe, 
 the soul that is great perishes not with the body, 
 may you rest in peace, and summon us from weak 
 repinings and womanish tears to the contemplation 
 of those virtues which it were impiety to lament or 
 mourn. Let reverence, and unending thankfulness, 
 and faithful imitation, if our strength permit, be 
 our tribute to your memory. This is true honor: 
 this is the piety of every kindred soul." 
 
 309 
 
XXI 
 
 A TRAVELLER FROM ALTRURIA* 
 
 THE Dean of American Letters passed away in 
 the spring of 1920, gently and serenely, as he was 
 wont to go in life s affairs. Having lived with a 
 fine faithfulness and joy in labor for more than four 
 score years, having finished the last page of his 
 many-leaved manuscript, William Dean Howells 
 laid down his pen, and set out cheerfully on his 
 long voyage to the Undiscovered Country, shall 
 we not call it his Golden Wedding Journey? 
 
 It was sixty years ago that he made his debut 
 as an author in Poems of Two Friends, written 
 in comradeship with John James Piatt. Then he 
 wrote a campaign Life of Abraham Lincoln, and 
 afterward illuminated the ledger of his youthful 
 consulship in Venice with two lovely series of 
 sketches: Venetian Life and Italian Journeys. In 
 1871 he published the first of his charming, inti 
 mate, fancifully realistic pieces of fiction, Their 
 Wedding Journey. After that not a year passed 
 
 *Read before the American Academy of Arts and Letters, 
 New York, March 1, 1921. 
 
 310 
 
A TRAVELLER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 without some fruit from his fertile mind: verse, 
 short story, long story, novel, essay, criticism, 
 sketch of travel, or commentary on life. 
 
 He was always a painstaking writer; but it was 
 never a pain for him to write. He liked it; and the 
 sense of his own pleasure in finding the right words 
 to describe the people and things that he had in 
 his mind s eye was, (to me at least,) a distinct ad 
 dition to the pleasure of reading his work. It was 
 perfectly natural for him to be an artist in litera 
 ture. His feeling of security and comfort in writing 
 clear and beautiful English was at the farthest re 
 move from vanity or priggishness. It was simply 
 the result of keeping good company among books 
 and men. It would have been as unnatural for 
 him to write loud, ungainly things, as for Raphael 
 to paint a Cubist picture. 
 
 There was something singularly humane and 
 sympathetic, intelligent and teachable about his 
 spirit. Though of a very quiet manner, he was 
 capable, even after middle age, of strong enthu 
 siasms, witness his adoration of Tolstoy. 
 
 His own careful and almost meticulous taste in 
 words did not prevent him from knowing and un 
 derstanding the colloquial speech of the day, 
 311 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 that broad river of so-called "slang** which carries 
 on its flood much perishable rubbish, but also many 
 treasures to enrich the language with new phrases 
 and figures. No doubt the New England School 
 of writers and the stringent intellectual climate of 
 Boston influenced Howells strongly, especially at 
 the beginning of his career. But no less clearly 
 do we recognize in his work the genial influence of 
 the Knickerbocker School, begun by Washington 
 Irving and carried on by George William Curtis, 
 Charles Dudley Warner, Donald Mitchell, Frank 
 Stockton, Henry Bunner, Hopkinson Smith, Bran- 
 der Matthews, and others. In fact there was in 
 Howells a quality of appreciation and responsive 
 ness which made him open to influences of various 
 kinds, as his book My Literary Passions clearly 
 shows. 
 
 As a critic, it seems to me, the lasting value of 
 his work is discounted a little by this susceptibility. 
 His criticism is sincere, vivacious, often charming 
 by its very personalism. But it is more a statement 
 of successive likings, than a dispassionate and 
 reasoned judgment. He has no real standard of 
 excellence; or rather, he has too many standards 
 of predilection. Yet it was this very quality that 
 312 
 
A TRAVELLER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 made him so generous and encouraging as a friend 
 to the younger writers of his day, though so far 
 from infallible as a prophet regarding them. 
 
 In verse he wrote comparatively little, but in 
 that little he condensed the very essence of his 
 deepest thoughts and emotions. Here we feel that 
 wistful sadness which the true humorist so often 
 carries in his heart: here we can trace the secret 
 furrows which personal grief, (especially the loss 
 of his beloved daughter,) ploughed in his soul : here 
 also we find the humble, hardy blooms of spiritual 
 faith and ethical conviction, surviving all the as 
 saults of sorrow and doubt. He did not lose the 
 will to believe, though sometimes he had to faH 
 back on sheer moral loyalty to defend it. He was 
 an inveterate questioner, an habitual sceptic in the 
 old Greek sense of the word, which means an in 
 quirer, a searcher. But underneath all he was a 
 mystic, unwilling to surrender realities invisible and 
 eternal, or to 
 
 " Deny the things past finding out." 
 
 Three veins, it seems to me, are clearly marked 
 in his novels and stories. The first vein is a 
 delicate and delightful humor, altogether native, 
 313 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 quaint, and savory, the humor which brings the 
 smile before the laugh. This I find at its best in 
 "A Chance Acquaintance," "A Fearful Respon 
 sibility," and that absurdly delightful love-story 
 "The Lady of the Aroostook." 
 
 The second vein is a sincere and reasonable real 
 ism, an endeavor to be true to the facts of life, ma 
 terial and spiritual. This is quite a different thing 
 from the gross "naturalism," as they call it, of 
 those novelists who are imperfectly house-broken. 
 The stories of Howells are clean, not by force of 
 prudery, but by virtue of decency. I do not know 
 where to find more closely studied, accurately 
 drawn, well-composed pictures, large and small, of 
 real life in certain parts of America at the close of 
 the nineteenth century, than in such novels as A 
 Modern Instance, Dr. Breen s Practice, and The 
 Rise of Silas Lapham. The last in particular, with 
 all its predominant Bostonian atmosphere, is lifted 
 by its moral force into a broader region. It seems 
 to me Howells s best book. I think it comes nearer 
 than any other yet written to that much-called-for 
 but perhaps impossible achievement, "the American 
 Novel." 
 
 The third vein in Howells s work is the social pas- 
 314 
 
A TRAVELLER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 sion, the sense 6f something shamefully wrong in 
 modern civilization, the intense desire for a new 
 and better life. This, according to his own state 
 ment, is directly traceable to what he calls the 
 noblest of his enthusiasms, his "devotion for the 
 writings of Lyof Tolstoy. * This came to him, he 
 tells us, just after he had "turned the corner of his 
 fiftieth year,* that is to say either in 1886 or 1887, 
 according as you take the "corner" as the first or 
 the last of his year. In 1888 he published Annie 
 Kilburn, the earliest of his books in which this 
 Tolstoyan influence is unmistakable, a novel which 
 had such a place in his affection that he sent it to 
 me with his own portrait, as if to say, "Here I am, 
 and thus I believe." 
 
 In many volumes which followed, A Hazard of 
 New Fortunes, A Traveller from Altruria, The 
 World of Chance, New Leaf Mills, and so on, 
 we find the same vein, worked with varying power, 
 but always, if I mistake not, with unvarying sin 
 cerity and loyalty to his master s cause. There 
 was, of course, a large elemental force in the 
 Russian master that the disciple did not possess. 
 But on the other hand, the American disciple had 
 a keenness of perception, a balance of judgment, a 
 315 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 shrewd common sense that the master had not. 
 You might resume the difference roughly by saying 
 that Howells was a grown-up man of power, while 
 Tolstoy was an infant of genius. 
 
 I used to have the impression that Howells s ad 
 miration of Tolstoy was unlimited and indiscrimi 
 nate. I now confess that this was a mistake. It 
 may have been extreme, but it was not without 
 discrimination. Howells admits that his master s 
 doctrine of absolute individualism and passive re 
 sistance, like his theory in regard to Money, "though 
 it may be logical, is not reasonable." He dis 
 counts the ineffectiveness of Tolstoy s allegories and 
 didactic tales. He faults The Kreutzer Sonata for 
 applying to marriage in general the lesson of one 
 evil marriage. He concedes that in certain things 
 the master s life was fallible and seems a failure. 
 And he concludes with a very noble sentence: 
 "There was but one life ever lived upon the earth 
 which was without failure, and that was Christ s, 
 whose erring and stumbling follower Tolstoy is." 
 
 As I look back among my personal memories of 
 Howells, which run through more than thirty years, 
 there comes to me somehow a gleam of rare bright 
 ness from one unforgettable season. 
 316 
 
A TRAVELLER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 We had passed the summer of 1898 as neighbors 
 at York Harbor on the Maine coast. There were 
 others of the guild of letters in the little colony, 
 Mabie and Warner and Thomas Nelson Page and 
 Kate Douglas Wiggin. We met often, and of course, 
 there was an "authors reading" for some good 
 local cause to which we all contributed of "such as 
 we had." Yet during the summer each of us was 
 more or less busy with his own task of writing, 
 Howells more. 
 
 But in September came a golden leisure time, 
 when the air was opal with the light sea haze, and 
 hints of autumnal color gleamed secretly through 
 the fading green of grove and thicket, and the 
 marsh-grasses turned russet brown and the bracken 
 dim gold, and the asters put on royal purple, and 
 the long filmy gossamers went floating with the 
 slow breeze or lay on the emerald aftermath glis 
 tening with tiny drops like threaded diamonds. 
 Then Howells walked with me in the high pastures, 
 or under the pointed firs, or in the old fields where 
 mushrooms grew for our gathering. The sunset 
 came early but faded slowly. There was a smell 
 of ripening apples and wild grapes. The blue smoke 
 from farmhouse chimneys went straight up into 
 317 
 
CAMP-FIRES 
 
 the sky. We could feel that frost was coming, 
 not far away. 
 
 Howells talked with me of nature and art, of 
 books and people, of love and sorrow, of life and 
 death and life beyond. Speaking of his own poetry 
 he called himself "a sadder singer, full of doubt 
 and misgiving." Nothing on earth could be to 
 him what it used to be before his daughter died. 
 Yet he would not give up his work, nor go mourn 
 ing silent all his days. The best that he would have 
 men say of his writing was that it was true to what 
 he thought and felt when he wrote it. Whatever 
 there was of misery and trouble and evil in the 
 world, still courage and patience, labor and fellow 
 ship were good, good in themselves and good in 
 their results. Justice was what we ought to work 
 for, but meantime most of us must confess that 
 we needed charity, authors not exempt, nor 
 preachers ! A man ought to think more of what he 
 belongs to, than of what belongs to him. When 
 we see something queer in others it should be a 
 kind of a looking-glass. The best hope we can have 
 is that God smiles at us as we do at our small chil 
 dren. The things we toil for on earth are not vain, 
 they are real enough, some of them, but all tran- 
 318 
 
A TRAVELLER FROM ALTRURIA 
 
 sient, and some day, perhaps, we shall look back 
 at them as not very different from these bundles 
 of mushrooms we have been gathering. "I see," 
 he added, with a whimsical smile, "my bundle is a 
 little larger than yours. But that is only because 
 my handkerchief is bigger. Besides, we are going 
 to divide them equally when we get home." 
 
 I still see him with that wistful smile on his lips 
 and around the corners of his eyes, and hear his 
 soft, slightly hesitant voice, as he says good-bye 
 at the door of his cottage. 
 
 319 
 
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