,note3 ,images of the original pages are available through ,internet ,archive_/,canadian ,libraries4 ,see https3_/_/archive4org_/details_/secretli febeingb#jj;bisluoft ,transcriber's note3 ,text enclosed by underscores is in italics 7italics74 ,this e-text includes ,greek and characters that require ,,utf-#h 7,unicode7 file encoding4 ,if any of these characters do not display properly make sure your text reader's character set or file encoding is set to ,unicode 7,,utf-#h74 ,you may also need to change the default font4 ,the reader will find a transliteration of the ,greek in the iso-#hhei-a 7,latin-#a7 text file #dfjhd-h4txt or #dfjhd4zip3 https3_/_/www4gutenberg4org_/files_/#dfj hd_/dfjhd-h4txt or https3_/_/www4gutenberg4org_/files_/#dfj hd_/dfjhd-h4zip ,,the ,,secret ,,life ,being the ,book of a ,heretic ,prove all things3 hold fast that which is good4 ,st4 ,paul1 #a ,thessalonians v4 #ba4 ,ici l'on voulut que tout ft simple1 tranquille1 sans ostentation d'esprit ni de science1 que personne ne se crt engag avoir raison1 et que l'on ft toujours en tat de cder sans honte1 surtout qu'aucun systme ne domint dans l',acadmie l'exclusion des autres1 et qu'on laisst toujours toutes les portes ouvert la vrit4 ,fontenelle4 ,london3 ,john ,lane1 ,the ,bodley ,head ,new ,york3 ,john ,lane ,company4 ,,mdccccvii ,copyright1 #aijf ,by ,john ,lane ,company ,,contents ,,page ,l',enfant ,terrible #a ,an ,optimistic ,cynic #g ,a ,poet ,sheep-rancher #aj ,an ,eaten ,cake #ac ,concerning ,elbows on the ,table #af ,an ,autumn ,impulse #ag ,john-a'-,dreams #ai ,the ,fountain of ,salmacis #da ,two ,siegfrieds #dd ,a ,door ,ajar #dg ,at ,time of ,death #di ,the ,curse of ,babel #di ,the ,fourth ,dimension #eb ,the ,ant and the ,lark #eh ,the ,dppelganger #fc ,a ,young ,man's ,fancy #gc ,an ,arabian ,looking-glass #gh ,the ,cry of the ,women #hj ,the ,beauty of ,cruelty #ie ,the ,duke of ,wellington's ,trees #aja ,the ,boy with the ,goose #ajc ,a ,god ,indeed #ajd ,a ,question of ,skulls #aaj ,the ,modern ,woman and ,marriage #aab ,the ,ideal ,husband #abj ,a ,new ,law of ,health #abf ,dead1 ,dead1 ,dead #aci ,verbal ,magic #adj ,hamlet #adc ,ghosts #adi ,amateur ,saints #aec ,the ,zeitgeist #aei ,the ,abdication of ,man #ahg ,life #bje ,portable ,property #bjf ,are ,american ,parents ,selfish8 #bjh ,a ,question of ,heredity #bai ,the ,little ,dumb ,brother #bbj ,fever ,dreams #bdh ,a ,misunderstood ,moralist #bej ,the ,pleasures of ,pessimism #bee ,moral ,pauperism #beg ,on a ,certain ,lack of ,humour in ,frenchmen #beh ,the ,value of a ,soul #bfg ,a ,grateful ,spaniard #bga ,bores #bga ,emotions and ,oxydization #bgc ,abelard to ,helose #bge ,helose to ,abelard #bgg ,yumei ,mujitsu #bgi ,the ,real ,thing #bhd ,oh1 ,eloquent1 ,just1 and ,mighty ,death #bhf ,philistia1 be ,thou ,glad of ,me #bii ,oh ,king1 ,live ,forever6 #cje ,the ,little ,room #cjg ,aftermath #cab ,june #ba4 ,l',enfant ,terrible4 ,the very ,devil's in the moon for mischief3 ,there's not a day1 the longest1 not the twenty-first of ,june1 ,sees half the mischief in a quiet way ,on which three single hours of moonlight smile4 ,at my age1 alas6 one no longer gets into mischief1 either by moonlight or at midsummer1 and yet to-day all the tricksey spirits of the invisible world are supposed to be abroad--tangling the horses' manes1 souring the milkmaid's cream1 setting lovers by the ears4 ,some such frisky ,puck stirs even peaceable middle-aged blood at this season to mild little secret sins1 such as beginning a diary in which to set down one's private naughty views--the heresies one has grown too staid and cautious to give speech to any longer4 ,all1 ,i think1 have some ,secret ,garden where they unbind the girdle of conventions and breathe to a sympathetic listener the opinions they would repudiate indignantly upon the housetops2 but ,i know of no such kindred soul--indeed my private views are so heretical that ,i should tremble to whisper them even into the dull cold ear of night1 lest ,i should cause it to turn pink1 and thereafter hymns would not purge it4 ,hence no resource remains to ease my bosom of its perilous stuff but the unprotesting innocence of the blank pages of a diary4 ,there is a story concerning the king of some ungeographical country1 to whom came two adventurers of cynical tendencies1 professing to be able--given a certain allowance of jewels and precious metals--to weave a garment of exceeding richness and of such subtle texture that no monarch on earth might hope to match it4 ,setting up a loom and providing themselves with ample materials from the ,royal treasury1 they went through the motions of stringing a warp and thereupon industriously threw empty shuttles back and forth4 ,when the king1 accompanied by his court1 was summoned to observe the progress of the famous web1 the puzzled ruler could see nothing but an empty loom1 but before the eager explanations of the enthusiastic weavers1 who pointed out here a glowing dye1 there a splendid pattern1 and having regard to the non-committal countenances of the courtiers1 the king nodded sagely and waited developments4 ,best of all1 ,sire1 cried the cheerful rogues1 so magical is this robe we weave1 that only those can see it whose tongue has never uttered a lie1 whose hands have never taken a bribe4 ,rises thereupon instant chorus of praise of the beautiful fabric from a unanimous court4 ,next day a solemn procession through the streets of the capital to display to the world the magic robe4 ,amazed multitude staring at the king in pompous dishabille1 but hearing the courtiers' admiring cries1 no man willing to admit his own blindness--when up speaks ,tiresome ,child3 ,mother1 why does the king ride abroad in his shirt8 ,general outburst of mortified veracity1 and futile search for the discreetly vanished adventurers4 ,so ends the story4 ,but nothing of the sort really took place4 ,instead1 l'enfant terrible was slapped and put to bed1 to meditate upon his ill-timed outspokenness1 and next day1 and all the days thereafter1 sees what his companions see4 ,i know1 because ,i myself am that ,tiresome ,child1 and because my uncomfortable eyes refuse to see the imaginary robe in which so many kings of this world are dressed ,i have spent a large part of my life in disgrace4 ,at last and tearfully ,i have learned to hold my tongue1 but when the tricksome spirits of ,mid-summer ,eve are abroad1 ,i get out pen and paper and1 where no pious ear can be violated1 secretly vent my elderly naughtinesses4 ,my respectable acquaintances will be all the safer in consequence that ,i have an inviolable confidant of the real thoughts that lie behind my but slightly wrinkled brow and unrevealing eyes4 ,thackeray once said1 ,if women's eyes could only be dragged1 what queer things one might learn4444 ,ah1 the ,secret ,life6--who among us can guess at the thoughts that are concealed behind the clear brows and frank-seeming eyes of even those nearest us8 ,we live our lives draped and masked in our own bodies2 forcing those bodies to speak the words1 perform the actions expected from them1 while we dwell alone within1 thinking and wishing what we never1 or rarely1 express4 ,it is this that drives us to diaries--the need to somewhere1 somehow1 speak the truth in a world of conformable lies4 ,it is of no use to slip aside our masks or raise our draperies for an instant1 in the hope that our fellows will recognize a hand or an eye like their own1 and that thereupon even one of our companions will invite us to come out from under our robe and walk about with him friendlily1 without disguise4 ,instead our companion makes signs of distress and resentment through the veil of his concealment1 and we hastily readjust the mask and domino and resist further temptation to find a heart akin4 ,it takes1 says ,thoreau1 two to tell the truth--one to speak and another to hear4 ,called upon once to help a grief-stricken mother to lay away the belongings of a boy summoned suddenly out of life1 we unearthed among his abandoned treasures a curious collection of odds and ends concerning which we could imagine no value that should have moved him to keep them by him4 ,a shell1 a bit of ribbon1 a rusty nail2 scraps of paper with a scribbled line or two2 cuttings1 whose printed words referred to nothing which seemed to bear in any way upon what we might guess of as touching his life4 ,i thought ,i knew every fibre of his heart1 cried the mother in sudden tears1 and yet of all these strange things he seems to have treasured so carefully ,i cannot divine the meaning of a single one6 ,a whole world of ambitions1 interests1 and sentiments foreign to her he had carried away into eternal silence4 ,if ,i shall have persistence sufficient to continue this ,heretic ,diary1 ,i am afraid it will find itself stuffed with an equally absurd number of my secret loves and hates1 of the intolerable opinions for which ,i have been slapped and put to bed1 of all the sentimental rubbish ,i carry about with me in a fardel under my mask and domino--the poor inconsequential treasures of my secret life4 ,july #g4 ,an ,optimistic ,cynic4 ,amiel's ,journal3--,i have been reading it with the half impatient interest which such books always arouse--in me at least4 ,it is a more agreeable book1 however1 than ,marie ,bashkirtseff's disingenuous posings1 or ,rousseau's vulgar1 insulting confidences4 ,one is impatient with the bore who talks about himself when one is impatient to bore him about one's own self1 and yet1 somehow1 one is fascinated by the hope of getting behind the mask of personality4 ,i learned to read ,french that ,i might possess the contents of the ,confessions4 ,george ,eliot called it the most interesting book she knew1 which fired my ambition to read it4 ,with the aid of a dictionary1 the four great volumes were got through somehow1 and when the task was accomplished1 though ,i loathed ,rousseau1 ,i had enough ,french to serve roughly for both reading and speech4 ,what ambition and courage one had in those days6 ,i studied ,french while ,i did the churning4 ,remembering the strength and persistency of that time ,i wonder that ,i have come to middle age and done nothing4 ,athletic trainers say that there is in every one only a fixed capacity for development4 ,one may reach that limit readily1 and once reached no toil or patience will ever carry the power of the muscles beyond it by the smallest part of a fraction4 ,mentally1 the same probably holds good4 ,my capacity was1 no doubt1 always small4 ,so far as it went the cramping1 unpropitious circumstances of youth had no power to chill it1 but prosperity1 leisure1 opportunity1 could not add one jot to its possibilities4444 ,in all these journals what ,i find interesting is not so much what the writer says as what he reveals unintentionally4 ,the impression ,amiel leaves upon the reader is that he was at least a gentleman--that he had a gentle soul2 clean and modest1 continent and grave4 ,his melancholy seems neither so profound nor so touching as ,mrs4 ,humphrey ,ward and his other critics would have one believe4 ,at least it is neither tragic nor torturing4 ,he gives the impression of saying ,i have no bread--but1 he adds cheerfully1 after a moment's reflection1 the ,lord will provide4 ,he is not rebellious4 ,in moments of the most real gravity1 when he is face to face with death1 he clings to the egotistic superstition that perhaps--most probably--there is somewhere some wise kind ,power deeply interested in his doings1 his emotions1 his future4 ,he is profoundly convinced that it is important how he feels1 how he bears himself4 ,he has no sense at all of the blind nullity of things4 ,he asserts this nullity to be unthinkable4 ,all this is surprising when one remembers the insistence of his commentators upon the intense modernity of his mind4 ,is this modern8 ,i cannot see wherein it differs from the spirit of the past4 ,such natures were not uncommon in other centuries--as was the nature of ,erasmus for example4444 ,the man had no passion4 ,he did not marry because1 he says1 he demanded perfection2 could not find or give it1 and therefore resigned himself cheerfully to celibacy4 ,passion1 of course1 would have blinded his eyes to imperfections2 having none1 his eyes were always clear4444 ,it is perhaps in this passionlessness that he is most modern4 ,most of us no longer demand perfection4 ,knowing it to be unattainable1 modern common sense cheerfully agrees to abandon desire for it4 ,this is visible in our literature1 in art1 in love4 ,no one reads or buys long poems any more1 therefore the poets never contemplate a new ,paradise ,lost4 ,no one paints heroic pictures1 for they are not salable4 ,the grandiose has no market and therefore grows obsolete4 ,the law of supply and demand rules there as elsewhere4 ,passion and the perfection it longs and strives for is dmod4 ,july #bj4 ,a ,poet ,sheep-rancher4 ,f---- is dead1 and with the announcement by cable this morning comes a belated letter from ,m----1 full of hope and encouragement4 ,a sudden rally had made her believe in a possibility of recovery--no doubt it was that last flare which comes often just as the oil fails and the light is about to go out4 ,my mind has been full of amazement all day4 ,it is so difficult to realize that a strong1 aggressive personality is finally and definitely extinguished4 ,i have been thinking of their odd1 romantic story4 ,he must have had great seductive power--not easily realizable now--to have come into her life and have persuaded her to abandon everything to follow him4 ,i have heard her tell the story often4 ,the tall young sheep-rancher from ,new ,zealand1 with his burning eyes and his pockets full of sonnets1 appearing one morning1 and she suddenly abandons her brilliant position1 her jointure1 her two orphan boys1 and goes away1 despite the furious outcries of her family and friends1 with a man seven years her junior2 goes into the wilderness with him1 ,new ,zealand of more than a quarter of a century ago being decidedly wilderness1 yet she calls those the happiest years of her life--spent in a shanty fifty miles from the nearest neighbour6 ,she likes to recall the wild scrambles among the mountains2 the wrestles to save the sheep from the spring floods2 the vigils2 the dances to which they rode on mountain ponies1 sixty or seventy miles2 the makeshifts2 the caring for flocks and shepherds in the stress of heat and cold1 of sickness and sorrow2 and the snow-bound nights beside the fire1 when the sonnets came to the fore again4 ,after all it was youth1 and love1 and adventure2 why shouldn't she have been happy8 ,and she was justified in her faith4 ,when ,i came to know them the detrimental young sheep-rancher moved in a world of gilded aides-de-camp1 with sentries and mounted escorts attending his steps1 surrounded by tropical pomp and spacious luxury1 and now1 alas6 he is but one more unit in the yearly tribute of flesh and blood demanded by ,england's ,equatorial ,empire4 ,a handsome1 brilliant1 charming creature4 ,the generation is the poorer for the loss of his graceful1 cynical wit4 ,he belonged to the generation who formed their ideals of manners upon ,pelham and ,vivian ,grey4 ,it was ,byronism translated into prose4 ,m---- says he bore his sufferings--enormous sufferings--with the light and humorous courage with which it was the ideal of the fine gentleman of his period to face all unpleasant situations4 ,september #d4 ,an ,eaten ,cake4 ,the ,s----s came in last night after dinner4 ,they cling to the old fashion1 common in ,england before the advent of afternoon tea1 of having the tray brought in about ten o'clock1 so ,i tried it to-night because of them1 and found it not a bad idea4 ,simple1 agreeable folk they are1 of what is called in ,scotland the middle classes4 ,that is to say1 they follow some commercial calling3 ,i am not sure of its exact nature4 ,they are very well educated in just the way which differentiates the ,british middle-class education from the other sort--they speak several modern languages fluently1 and know little of the classics4 ,all their learning is sound1 unornamental1 utilitarian4 ,some reference was made to a kinsman in a foreign town which ,i had visited4 ,i could not recall any association with the name until the elder brother said quite simply and without any self-consciousness3 ,he is ,jones of ,jones ,co4 7a large haberdasher in ,p----7--you may have been in his shop4 ,it was nicely done4 ,i doubt if an ,american could have achieved it in quite the same way4 ,if he had made the confidence it would have been made with bravado1 or he would have explained that the shop was an emporium4 ,the girl has such a good restful ,british calm about her--,i felt it after she was gone4 ,it arises1 ,i think1 from lack of any special interest in the impression she makes upon others4 ,all the rest of us--we ,americans--were desirous of being agreeable1 amusing--of making a good effect4 ,we were consciously sympathetic1 consciously vivacious1 consciously civil4 ,she was just herself2 we might take or leave her as she was4 ,it never occurred to her to attempt to be different for our sakes4 ,the result of it is very reposeful4 ,one is always conscious of a sense of strain in ,american society for this reason4 ,it is because of that desire to impress1 to please1 that ,american voices in conversation grow sharp and hurried1 that ,american faces grow keen and lined4 ,we have a tradition that ,english women are dull and bovine1 but no doubt they make the better mothers because of it4 ,they hoard their energies to give to their sons4 ,they bring their children into the world with deep reserves of strength4 ,i have often observed the great superiority of ,english men over ,americans in the capacity for long1 sustained1 unflinching labour4 ,i am sure they owe that to the immense fund of unexhausted power given them by their mothers1 who are profound wells of calm vitality4 ,it is the old story of being unable to eat one's cake and have it too4 ,american women eat their cake in the form of a higher exhilaration in existence1 but when the drain of creation comes they have nothing save nervous energy to give4 ,the rest of the cake has already been devoured4 ,there are no reserves for the child to call upon4 ,i believe that ,englishmen--without reasoning upon the matter--feel this instinctively4 ,they vastly prefer their own women as mates4 ,i have rarely known an ,englishman to marry an ,american woman who had not the extrinsic attraction of wealth4 ,they do not hesitate to marry penniless countrywomen of their own4 ,september #ab4 ,concerning ,elbows on the ,table4 ,a---- was here to-day4 ,what a formal little soul it is6 ,she can never begin where she left off4 ,one has her acquaintance to make all over again each time she comes4 ,the depths1 the heights of her propriety6444 ,always that extremely well behaved look1 which never changes4 ,p---- says1 ,a---- is too modest to take off and put on expressions in public4 ,one wonders if there is any privacy so entire that she would consider dishevelment of behaviour permissible4 ,how exhausting to herself such flawless respectability must become6 ,she is the concentrated essence of the bourgeoisie4 ,a savage can be natural2 he knows nothing else1 but when his eyes are opened and he sees himself to be naked the reign of the fig-leaf begins4 ,there is something pathetic in that long era of profound distrust of his own nature and impulses4 ,what does he think he would do if he let himself go8 ,perhaps he is1 underneath all that propriety1 still so close to savagery that he dare not trust himself to be natural lest he instantly relapse into barbarism4 ,after many generations of breeding he dare be savage and free again if he like--he is so sure of himself4 ,as ,mrs4 ,b---- says1 he becomes at last ,a man who can afford to put his elbows on the table4 ,when he reaches such a point ,i notice he is always impatient of the constraint of those still bound by the shackles of self-conscious propriety1 forgetting that he owes his own freedom to many generations that laboured in bonds1 struggling to slay or subdue the savage4444 ,october #ad4 ,an ,autumn ,impulse4 ,a bird sat on the balcony rail just outside my window to-day gossiping with an unseen neighbour perched somewhere out of my range of vision4 ,he was rather a grimy little person1 and as the day was cold he made a perfect puff ball of himself4 ,i listened to them conversing with great interest1 feeling1 as ,i always do when ,i hear birds talk1 that if ,i only paid a little closer attention it would be possible to understand all they say4 ,it is somewhat the same sensation one has in overhearing a rapid dialogue in ,french which one is too lazy to try to follow4 ,when ,i came through ,i think ,i left some of the doors ajar behind me1 and ,i remember my bird avatar especially clearly4 ,even yet1 when autumn comes1 ,i am pursued by a fluttering longing to arise and go southward4 ,i feel that something beautiful--some wide splendid ecstasy is calling me if ,i will only go to meet it4 ,i can remember having that sensation in my earliest childhood4 ,in my dreams ,i often fly1 with beautiful swoopings and balancings1 with sudden confident droppings1 through the elastic air1 and sometimes ,i am in an enclosed place1 beating my wings against the bounds1 knowing no other way to get out4444 ,when ,i look at birds they seem to know me4 ,not in the way of a mere creature who puts out crumbs in convenient breakfasting places1 or who brings strawberries to one's cage1 but they meet my eye with that familiarity one sees in the glance of brothers--a look of mutual understanding4 ,my own sense is of kinship of the closest character4 ,i understand how they regard things--what they think and feel4 ,i wish ,i could so concentrate my attention as to catch what this grimy little citizen is saying to his fellow on the nearby ledge4 ,if ,i could1 what a flood of other memories it would restore that are now dim and confused4 ,november #a4 ,john-a'-,dreams4 ,i dreamed last night that ,i wore upon my breast a great necklace of flat golden plates cut in the shape of winged things1 and these were linked together with other flat plates of turquoise4 ,my garments were of white semi-transparent stuff1 and my limbs and body showed through it4 ,before me stood a building of some sort1 creamy yellow in colour and of a style of architecture with which ,i am not familiar--though it seemed familiar enough to me in my dreams4 ,now ,i have only a confused sense of low domes set upon massive cubes4 ,i was waiting for the sun to rise4 ,the air was warm and dry and that white glamour of the dawning light lay upon the surrounding country1 which seemed flat and not very verdant4 ,suddenly the rays of the sun1 which rose apparently immediately behind this dome1 spread out about it like an aureole 7,gavin ,douglas's ,golden fanys7--and this seemed a signal for me to lift my arms above my head and recite a sort of litany--and then--it all passed away4444 ,most of one's dreams are confused and blurred by a sense of conflicting personalities4 ,there is generally a sort of impression that while the incidents are apparently happening to one's self1 they are happening in reality to some other being1 not quite one's self2 but this one was very clear1 with no arrire pense4 ,i have worked out a theory which seems to me to quite solve the mystery of dreams4 ,lifelong familiarity with the phenomena of sleep--with the trooping phantoms that inhabit slumber's dusk realm--has so dulled our wonder at the mystery of our double existence of the dark that night after night we open with calm incuriousness the door into that ghostly underworld1 where we hold insane revels with fantastic spectres1 babble with foolish laughter at witless jests1 stain our souls with useless crime1 or fly with freezing blood from the grasp of unnamable horrors1 and with the morning we saunter serenely back from these adventures into the warm precincts of the cheerful day1 unmoved1 unstartled1 and forgetting4 ,the hypnotists1 because they can make a man feel pain or pleasure without material cause1 are gaped upon with awed surprise by the same man who once every twenty-four hours of his life1 with no more magic potion than healthy fatigue1 with no greater weapon for wonder working than a pillow1 may create for himself phantasmal illusions beside which all mesmeric suggestions are but the flattest of commonplace4 ,the naive egotism of superstition saw in the movements of the solar system only prognostications concerning its own bean crop1 and could discern nothing in the dream-world but the efforts of the supernatural powers to communicate1 in their usual shuffling and incompetent fashion1 with man4 ,the modern revolt from this childishness has swung the pendulum of interest in dreams so far up the other curve of the arc that there seems now to be a foolish fear of attaching any importance whatever to the strange experiences of sleep1 and as a result an unscientific avoidance of the whole subject4 ,the consequence of this absurd revulsion is that in a period of universal investigation one of the most curious functions of the brain is left unexamined and unexplained4 ,some dabbling there has been1 with results of little more value than were the contents of the greasy1 bethumbed dream-books of the eighteenth-century milkmaid or apprentice4 ,the labour bestowed upon the matter has been mainly directed to efforts to prove the extreme rapidity with which dreams pass through the mind1 and that it is some trivial outward cause at the very instant of awakening--such as a noise1 a light1 or a blow--which rouses the brain to this miraculous celerity of imaginative creation4 ,the persistent assertion that a dream occurs only at the moment of awakening shows how little real attention has been given to the matter1 since the most casual observation of the dog that hunts in dreams would have shown that he may be chasing the wild deer and following the roe in the grey ,kingdom of ,seeming without breaking his slumbers4 ,he will start and twitch1 and give tongue after the phantom quarry he dreams he is pursuing1 and yet continue his sleep without an interval4 ,but have it whichever way one likes1 the heart of the mystery is not yet discovered4 ,how do they explain why a noise or a gleam of light--such as the waking senses know familiarly--should at this magical moment of rousing cause the brain to create with inconceivable rapidity a crowd of phantasmagoria in order to explain to itself the familiar phenomena of light and sound8 ,dr4 ,friederich ,scholz1 in his recent volume upon ,sleep and ,dreams1 gives an example of rapid effort of the mind to explain the sensations felt by the sleeping body3 ,i dreamed of the ,reign of ,terror1 saw scenes of blood and murder1 appealed before the ,revolutionary ,tribunal1 saw ,robespierre1 ,marat1 ,fouquier-,tinville1 all the personages of that time of horrors1 argued with them1 was finally1 after a number of occurrences1 condemned to death1 was carried to the place of execution on a cart through enormous masses of people1 was bound by the executioner to the board4 ,the knife fell and ,i felt my head severed from my body4 ,thereupon ,i awoke and found that a loosened rod of the bed had fallen on my neck like the knife of the guillotine1 and this had happened1 my mother assured me1 at the very moment when ,i awoke4444 ,that the mind should1 merely because of the body's sleep1 be able to create a whole scene of a terrible drama with a rapidity impossible when all the functions are awake and active is incredible4 ,the only function of the brain capable of this lightning-like swiftness of vision is memory4 ,to create requires a certain effort1 consumes a certain period of time1 but a scene once beheld1 an adventure once experienced and vividly impressed upon the memory1 can be recalled in its minutest details in a period of time too short to be reckonable4 ,that the sensitive plate of the brain never loses any clear picture once received1 has been demonstrated beyond doubt4 ,the picture1 the sensation1 may be overlaid and hidden for a long time beneath the heaps of useless lumber that the days and years accumulate in the mind's storehouse1 but need or accident1 or a similarity of circumstance1 will bring the forgotten belonging to light--sometimes with startling effect4 ,there is the well-known instance of a girl who1 during an attack of fever delirium1 spoke in a language that no one about her could understand4 ,investigation proved it to be ,welsh--a language of which1 both before and after her illness1 she was totally ignorant4 ,further investigation showed that being born in ,wales she had understood the tongue as a very little child1 but had afterwards completely forgotten it4 ,it is commonly known that in the struggle of the body against death by water1 the memory1 stirred to furious effort1 produces all her stores at once--probably in the frantic endeavour to find some experience which may be of use in this crisis4 ,it is often broadly asserted that the memory retains each and every experience which life has presented for its contemplation1 but this is hardly true4 ,the memory makes to a certain extent a choice1 and chooses oftentimes with apparent caprice4 ,to demonstrate the truth of this1 let one endeavour to recall the first impression retained by his childish mind and it usually proves to be something extremely trivial4 ,my own first clear memory is a sense of the comfort to my tired little two-year-old body of the clean linen sheets of the bed at the end of a perilous and adventurous journey1 of whose startling incidents my memory preserved only one4 ,often this capricious faculty will seize upon some few high lights in a vivid picture and reject all the unimportant details4 ,as a rule1 however1 it is the profound stirring of the emotions which wakes the memory to activity4 ,a woman never forgets her first lover4 ,a man to the end of his life can recall his first triumph1 or his most imminent danger1 and a trifle will often1 after the lapse of half a century1 fill the eye with tears1 make the cheek burn1 or the heart beat with the power of the long-passed emotion1 preserved living and fresh by the memory4 ,that the memory uses in sleep the material it has gathered during the day1 and during the whole life1 no dreamer will deny2 but here again it is capricious2 some parts of the day's--the life's--experiences are used1 others rejected4 ,added to these natural and explicable possessions of the memory are a mass of curious1 conflicting1 tangled thoughts1 which are foreign to our whole experience of existence1 and which1 when confused with our own memories1 makes of our nights a wild jumble of useless and foolish pictures4 ,if it be true that it is by some outward impression upon the senses that dreams are evoked1 that it is the endeavours of the somnolent mind to explain to itself the meaning of a noise1 a light1 a blow1 which creates that delusion we call dreams1 then it is not upon the stores of our own memories alone that the brain draws for material1 since the falling rod awoke in the mind of ,dr4 ,scholz a picture of the ,french revolution1 which he had never seen1 and different in detail and vividness from any picture his reading had furnished4 ,heredity is an overworked jade1 too often driven in double harness with a hobby2 but the link between generation and generation is so strong and so close that none may lightly tell all the strands of which it is woven1 nor from whence were spun the threads that tie us to the past4 ,it is very certain1 despite the theories of ,weismann1 that the acquired characteristics of the parent may be transmitted to the child4 ,the boy whose father walked the quarter-deck is1 nine times out of ten1 as certain to head for salt water as a seagull born in a hen's nest4 ,the victim of ill-fortune and prisoner of despair who breaks the jail of life to escape fate's malice leaves a dark tendency in the blood of his offspring1 which again and again proves the terrible power of an inherited weakness4 ,women who lose their mind or become clouded in thought at childbirth--though they come of a stock of mens sana--transmit the blight of insanity to their sons and daughters both2 and not only consumptive tendencies and the appetite for drink are acquired in a lifetime and then handed on for generations1 but preferences1 talents1 manners1 personal likeness--all may be the wretched burden or happy gift handed down to the son by the father4 ,who can say without fear of contradiction that the memories of passions and emotions that stirred those dead hearts to their centre may not be a part of our inheritance8 ,the setting1 the connection1 is gone1 but the memory of the emotion remains4 ,such and such nerves have quivered violently for such or such a cause--the memory stores and transmits the impression1 and a similar incident sets them tingling again1 though two generations lie between4 ,certainly animals possess very distinctly these inherited memories4 ,a young horse never before beyond the paddock and stables will fall into a very passion of fear when a snake crosses his path1 or when driven upon a ferry to cross deep1 swift water4 ,he is entirely unfamiliar with the nature of the danger1 but at some period one of his kind has sweated and throbbed in hideous peril1 and the memory remains after the lapse of a hundred years4 ,he1 no more than ourselves1 can recall all the surrounding circumstances of that peril1 but the threatening aspect of a similar danger brings memory forward with a rush to use her stored warning4 ,when the migrating bird finds its way without difficulty1 untaught and unaccompanied1 to the ,south it has never seen1 we call its guiding principle instinct--but what is the definition of the word instinct8 ,no man can give it4 ,it but removes the difficulty one step backward4 ,call this instinct an inherited memory and the matter becomes clear4 ,such memories1 it is plain1 are more definite with the animals than with us2 but so are many of their faculties1 hearing1 smell1 and sight4 ,everyone has felt many times in his life a sense of familiarity with incidents that have had no place in his own experience1 and has found it impossible to offer any explanation for the feeling4 ,coming suddenly around a turn of a hill upon a fair and unknown landscape1 his heart may bound with a keen sense of recognition of its unfamiliar outlines4 ,in the midst of a tingling scene of emotion1 a sensation of the whole incident being a mere dull repetition will rob it of its joy or pain4 ,a sentence begun by a friend is recognized as trite and old before it is half done1 though it refers to matters new to the hearer4 ,a sound1 a perfume1 a sensation1 will awaken feelings having no connection with the occasion4 ,the first day ,i ever spent in a tropical country ,i was charmed with the excessive novelty of everything about me2 but suddenly that evening1 being carried home in a chair by the coolie bearers1 a flood of recognition poured over me like the waves of the sea1 and for a few minutes the illusion was so strong as to leave me breathless with astonishment4 ,i had the sense of having often done this before4 ,the warm night1 the padding of the bare feet in the dust1 the hot smell of leaves1 were all an old1 trite experience4 ,for days ,i struggled with that tormenting sense1 with which we are all familiar1 of being unable to recall a something1 a name1 that is perfectly well known--is on the tip of the tongue1 as one says--but all in vain2 and in time the recognition grew fainter and more elusive with each effort to grasp it1 until it slipped forever away into darkness4 ,if such experiences as these are not inherited memories1 what are they8 ,with sleep1 the will becomes dormant4 ,waking1 it guards and governs2 chooses what we shall do and be and think2 stands sentinel over the mind and rejects all comers with which it is not familiar4 ,unless the thought comes from within the known borders of the body's own life1 the will will have none of it4 ,but overtaken by fatigue and sinking into slumber with the night1 his domain is left fenceless and unpatrolled1 for with the will goes his troop of watchmen1 judgment1 logic1 deliberation1 ethics2 and memory1 ungoverned and uncontrolled1 holds a feast of misrule4 ,the barrier between past and present melts away2 all his ancestors are merged into the individual2 the events of the day are inextricably tangled with those of two centuries since1 and this motley play of time is called a dream4 ,a man going back but to his great grandparents has already fourteen direct progenitors1 and is heir of such strange or striking episodes of their fourteen lives as were sufficiently deeply impressed upon their memories to be transmittable4 ,this alone is enough1 one would think1 to provide all the nights with material for the queer kaleidoscopic jumbling of leavings1 with which the nimble mind diverts itself1 turning over the leaves of its old picture-book alone in the dark while its sluggish comrade snores2 but there is no reason to believe that there is a limit to these inheritances4 ,the most vivid sensation my night memory holds is of finding myself standing alone1 high up in a vast arena4 ,it is open to the sky and the night is falling swiftly and warm4 ,everyone has gone but myself1 but there is a tremulous sensation in my mind1 as of very recent excitement1 noise1 and tumult4 ,i am waiting for someone who is coming through the arched door on the left1 and ,i rise to go4 ,i feel the rough coolness of the stone beneath my hand as ,i help myself to rise1 and upon my throat and bosom ,i have a sensation of the light wool of my garment4 ,it has the vivid familiarity of a personal and perfectly natural experience--so strong that1 waking1 ,i retain as keen a sense of it as if it were a happening of yesterday4 ,i remember many more dreams of this type--momentary flashes of sensation of the trivial things about me1 such as all persons have felt in their waking lives1 only that the things about me in my dreams are totally unfamiliar to my waking brain4 ,in one of these ,i am emerging from the back door of a small white house--intensely white in the glare of a fierce sun4 ,the house seems square and flat-topped1 built of stone and with no windows visible here in the rear4 ,it opens on a narrow street of similar residences4 ,a man is with me1 dressed in a long black robe and wearing a curious black head-dress4 ,he is reproaching me and remonstrating violently concerning my indifference in regard to religious matters4 ,i look away1 annoyed and bored by his vehemence1 and the whole picture vanishes4 ,it was as clear1 as natural and familiar1 as my own waking life1 while it lasted4444 ,the narrow street of white houses seemed the only possible form for a street4 ,i had no consciousness of anything different or more modern4 ,the man's eager1 stern face1 with the heavy beard and the high head-dress1 looked in no way strange or unfamiliar4 ,with that double consciousness with which we are all familiar when awake1 ,i watched the movement of his lips and the wagging of his beard as he talked1 full of a sense of distaste1 and thought1 while listening to his flow of clear words1 ,how tiresome these religious men are6 ,another time ,i was aware of standing in the dark1 sword in hand 7,i seemed to be a man and the seeming was not strange to me71 listening with furious pulses to a confusion of clashing blades and stamping of feet4 ,under the surface of passionate excitement the deeper sub-consciousness said3 ,all is lost6 ,the conspiracy is a failure6 ,i was aware of a cool bravado which recognized the uselessness of attempting escape4 ,the dice had been thrown--they had turned up wrong1 that was all4 ,yet so vigorous and courageous was the heart of this man that he was still buoyantly unafraid4 ,there was a rush of bodies by him2 the door swung back against him1 crushing him to the wall1 and a few moments later1 under guard1 he was passing through a long1 low corridor of stone4 ,the torches showed the groined arch above him1 and1 a cell being unlocked1 for the first time he felt afraid4 ,inside was a big bear with a collar about its neck1 and two villainous-faced mountebanks sat surlily upon the floor4 ,the man was very much afraid at the thought of such companions1 for his hands were tied and he had no sword2 yet he reasoned jovially with his guards1 not wishing to show his real terror4 ,after some protests his sword was returned to him and he stepped inside1 again cheerfully confident4 ,the door clanged to behind him and the dream faded4 ,all the conditions of the dream1 the change of sex1 the strange clothes and faces1 the arched corridor1 the men with the bear1 seemed to my senses perfectly natural4 ,they were quite commonplace1 and of course4 ,for the most part1 however1 my dreams are the fantastic hodge-podge common to dreamers1 such as might result from the unsorted1 unclassified memories of a thousand persons flung down in a heap together and grasped without choice4 ,one curious fact ,i have noted is that though ,i am a wide and omnivorous reader1 ,i have never had a dream or impression in sleep which might not have been part of the experience of some one of ,european or ,american ancestry4 ,i am an ardent reader of travel and adventure1 but never have ,i imagined myself in ,africa1 nor have the landscapes of my dreams been other than ,european or ,american4 ,mr4 ,howells1 in ,true ,i ,talk of ,dreams1 added confirmation on this point by saying that he had never been able to discover a dreamer who had seen in his dreams a dragon or any such beast of impossible proportions4 ,it suggests itself--en passant--that dragons and other such fearful wild fowl are not uncommon in the cataclysmic visions of delirium1 but perhaps the potency of fever1 of drugs1 of alcohol1 or of mania1 may open up deeps of memory1 of primordial memory1 that are closed to the milder magic of sleep4 ,the subtle poison in the grape may gnaw through the walls of ,time and give the memory sight of those terrible days when we wallowed--nameless shapes--in the primval slime4 ,who knows whether ,alexander the ,great1 crowning himself with the gold of ,bedlam's straws1 may not be only forgetful of the years that gape between him and his kingly ,macedonian ancestor8 ,even ,horatio's philosophy did not plumb all the mysteries of life and of heredity4 ,another interesting fact1 in this connection1 is that those who come of a class who have led narrow and uneventful lives for generations dream but little1 and that dully and without much sensation2 while the children of adventurous and travelled ancestors--men and women whose passions have been profoundly stirred--have their nights filled with the movement of old forgotten far-off things and battles long ago4 ,again1 it is a fact that many persons1 while hovering on the borders of sleep1 but still vaguely conscious1 are accustomed to see pictures of all manner of disconnected things--many of them scenes or faces which have never had part in their waking life--drifting slowly across the darkness of the closed lid like the pictures of a magic lantern across a sheet stretched to receive them1 and these1 by undiscernible gradations1 lead the sleeper away into the land of dreams1 the dim treasure house of memory and the past4 ,if a dream is a memory1 then the stories of their momentary duration are easily credible4 ,the falling rod upon the sleeper's neck might recall1 as by a lightning flash1 some scene in the ,red ,terror in which his ancestor participated--an ancestor so nearly allied1 perhaps1 to the victim suffering under the knife as to know all the agonies vicariously1 and leave the tragedy bitten into his memory and his blood forever4 ,when the words heredity or instinct are contemplated in their broad sense they mean no more than inherited memory4 ,the experiences of many generations teach the animal its proper food and methods of defence4 ,the fittest survive because they have inherited most clearly the memories of the best means of securing nourishment and escaping enemies4 ,the marvellous facility gradually acquired by artisans who for generations practise a similar craft is but the direct transmission of the brain's treasures4 ,in sleep the brain is peculiarly active in certain directions1 not being distracted by the multitude of impressions constantly conveyed to it by the five senses1 and experiments with hypnotic sleepers prove that some of its functions become in sleep abnormally acute and vigorous4 ,why not the function of memory8 ,the possessions which during the waking hours were useless1 and therefore rejected by the will1 surge up again1 vivid and potent1 and troop before the perception unsummoned1 motley and fantastic2 serving no purpose more apparent than do the idle1 disconnected recollections of one's waking moments of dreaminess--and yet it may hap1 withal1 that the tireless brain1 forever turning over and over its heirlooms in the night1 is seeking here an inspiration1 or there a memory1 to be used in that fierce and complex struggle called ,life4 ,november #f4 ,the ,fountain of ,salmacis4 ,g---- was talking yesterday about the ,sonnets from the ,portuguese4 ,liked them4 ,thought them the high-water mark of ,feminine ,poetry4444 ,alas1 then1 for that capitalized variety of verse6 ,to me these sonnets are extremely disagreeable4 ,there is a type of man whose love is intolerably odious in all its manifestations to a wholesome woman4 ,she feels that he is too nearly akin to her own sex for his love to seem a natural1 virile thing4 ,other men never appear to guess this cause of persistent lack of success with women4 ,they say3 ,jones is a good fellow--modest1 clean-minded1 gentle1--why is he so unlucky with women8 ,the truth is1 women like brutes4 ,the underlying femininity of ,jones is not repulsive to them4 ,they probably feel1 however1 the same repugnance for the tendernesses of women who are too nearly akin to themselves4 ,the ,greeks seem to have thought about and observed this4 ,from their keen vision none of the phenomena of life1 apparently1 was hid1 and they were quite aware of this occasional confusion of the nature and person of the sex4 ,as usual they typified it and invented legends about it1 though they were not1 of course1 aware of its cause--the atavistic tendency to throw back to the primordial condition when both sexes existed in the same individual2 but then they were poets and not scientists4 ,they got at essential truths by instinct and revealed their knowledge by beautiful suggestion rather than by exact analysis4 ,the dry-as-dusts fail even yet to see that their marbles and legends are as valuable in the study of life as ,german theses4 ,the ,sonnets from the ,portuguese give me the unwholesome1 uncomfortable sense that one gets from those unlucky feminine men and masculine women4 ,they mingle in a disagreeable fashion the pride and reserve of the woman who receives worship and the abandon and aggressiveness of the man who sues4 ,one wonders why women cannot write poetry8--or rather1 to speak with more exactness--are never poets4 ,once or twice in their lives1 perhaps1 they may speak with sacred fire1 but they are never1 in the full meaning of the word1 poets4 ,they cannot rise out of themselves4 ,gosse says of ,mrs4 ,browning3 ,she was not striving to produce an effect2 she was trying with all the effort of which her spirit was capable to say exactly what was in her heart4 ,there is the whole secret of the feminine failure in art4 ,it always degenerates into an attempt to express1 not humanity1 but the individual woman4 ,woman is inevitably personal4 ,she still sits alone at the door of her wigwam4 ,of humanity1 she is ignorant1 and to it is1 moreover1 indifferent4 ,mrs4 ,browning was only once shaken out of herself--when she wrote that fine plaint ,de ,profundis--voicing the griefs of the many in telling of her own4 ,after all1 a portrait of one's self only is not art1 or is art in its most limited form4 ,aurora ,leigh and all the rest are simply ,elizabeth ,barrett masking under other names4 ,however much the hand may resemble ,esau's1 the voice is always the voice of ,jacob4 ,byron had these same feminine limitations--dressing up 7as the children say7 as a ,pirate1 a ,turk1 or the like1 and reciting a rhymed ,baedeker for the benefit of the untravelled2 but whether ,pirate or ,giaour1 always unmistakably ,byron4 ,what the women with poetic gifts can do is to translate delightfully4 ,mrs4 ,browning's translations of ,heine are quite the best in existence4 ,emma ,lazarus made an ,english version of ,une ,nuit de ,mai that is almost more delightful than the original4 ,she might have enriched our treasury of verse with priceless transferences2 instead of which she wasted her gifts upon unimportant expressions of herself4 ,november #bj4 ,two ,siegfrieds4 ,a---- says there is no definite1 abstract standard of beauty or perfection4 ,we were talking of ,jean de ,reszke's ,siegfried4 ,a---- was completely satisfied with it4 ,i explained that he was so only because he had not seen ,alvary in the part4 ,a---- was sure that even if he had done so de ,reszke might still be best to his taste2 asserting again that there was no ideal good in art1 but only preference4 ,of course he does say this for the very reason that ,i advanced--because he had not seen ,alvary4 ,poor beautiful young creature6 ,he died recently in ,germany in horrible1 useless1 ridiculous pain4 ,wagner1 ,i am sure1 would have thought him the ideal ,siegfried1 for he never made vocal gymnastics a fetish1 but demanded satisfaction for the eye as much as for the ear4 ,alvary's ,siegfried was the very embodiment of splendid1 golden1 joyous youth4 ,balmung beaten into shape1 he sprang from the forge1 whirling it and laughing at its glitter as an ecstatic child might4 ,the splitting of the anvil was the mere sudden caprice of youthful bravado and mischief4 ,he looked about for an instant to find something on which to test his new toy1 and struck the iron in half as a boy would snip off the head of a daisy with his new whip4 ,all his movements had the unpremeditatedness of youth4 ,drunk with the struggle and the triumph of his contest with the dragon1 he killed ,mime more to sate this new lust of power than to mete out justice or due punishment4 ,he threw himself1 sweating with exertion1 and swelling with a new realization of his manhood1 upon the grasses by the stream1 and as the breezes cooled his body and spirit1 and the soft peace of the green world stole upon him1 romance woke in his face and voice3 the rough uncouthness of boyhood fell away like a discarded garment4 ,who that once saw and heard it can ever forget those fresh tones or that slim-waisted boy wandering away into the sunlit forest1 his beautiful dreaming face lifted yearningly to the thrilling bird voice that sang of love8444 ,youth seeking passion--the sleeping woman ringed with fire4 ,ah me6--all our hearts ached after him2 after our own splendid moment4 ,it is useless to say that this is not absolute beauty4 ,it is impossible that a heavy-footed tenor 7whose belt would have served for a saddle girth7 with a square ,sclav head and pendulous cheeks can be equalized to the other by individual taste4 ,such taste is simply bad4 ,january #f4 ,a ,door ,ajar4 ,i have been reading ,pater's ,greek ,studies2 a volume which an amiable friend presented to me as a ,christmas gift4 ,it affects me physically as well as mentally4 ,i must lay the book down now and then1 because ,i find my heart beats and my temples grow moist4 ,it is as if its covers were doors opening into the other world--that world that is always just beyond one4 ,i don't know whether it is a common experience1 but from my earliest childhood ,i have always had a sort of belief that if one stooped very low1 held one's breath1 and made a bold spring1 one would break through and under the barrier1 and be ,there6 ,or one might go very suddenly around a corner and be ,there4 ,always there was the sensation that it was lying just beyond1 just outside of one's self1 and that only a certain heaviness of the flesh1 a certain lack of concentration of attention1 prevented one's participation in it4 ,twice the door almost opened4 ,i sprang in spirit to cross the threshold1 and there was--nothing4 ,the door was slammed in my face1 but ,i never forgot that ,i had nearly got through4 ,it was like death4 ,as if one's brain and heart had suddenly grown vast and vapourized4 ,pater's book rouses some echo of those sensations4 ,i can't define what the other life is4 ,it is all around me4 ,i feel it in the water when ,i swim--a sentiency4 ,if ,i could only look close enough into the shifting depths1 ,i should see--a hand clasped quickly enough would grasp--what always just evades4 ,i feel it around me1 breathing and watching in the woods4 ,it is what ,i cannot quite catch in the talk of the birds4 ,it is what the animals say with their eyes4 ,the ,greeks understood it4 ,they called it ,pan1 and ,cybele1 and ,dionysus1 or dryads in the woods1 or nymphs in the fountain1 but those were only terms by which they tried to express the inexpressible4 ,it is so subtle--so intoxicating4 ,it is like love--a reblending with all the elements of nature4 ,one aches and strains toward it1 and yet feels a delicious1 shuddering reluctance to know4 ,january #g4 ,at ,time of ,death4 ,oh ,high ,heart of mine1 ,now list to a wonder6 ,thou shalt vent thy great rages ,in lightning and thunder4 ,and the force of thy fury1 more mighty than they1 ,shall rock mountains1 and rip them asunder4 ,when thou weepest1 oh ,heart6 ,all thy bitter deploring ,in the white whirling rains ,shall have anguished outpouring4 ,and the salt and the sound of thy grief1 like the sea1 ,shake the night with its sullen wild roaring4 ,when thou lovest1 oh ,heart6 ,into sudden fierce flower1 ',neath thy passionate breath ,in one rapturous hour1 ,earth shall blossom1 all crimson and trembling with love1 ,stirred to heart by thy rage and thy power4 ,then1 high ,heart1 be brave6 ,this death is but rending ,of limits that vexed1 ,and the ultimate blending ,with the cosmical passions of ,nature thine own1 ,made immortal1 insatiate1 unending4 ,january #aj4 ,the ,curse of ,babel4 ,boutet de ,monvel1 who had been lending ,h---- a polite but obviously fatigued attention1 got up with alacrity as the clock struck ten and bowed himself out1 with that military bend of the hips characteristic of ,french salutes4 ,h---- passed his handkerchief around the top of his collar and said3 ,damn ,babel6 ,we all laughed4 ,now1 here1 said ,h----1 indignantly1 is a man with a beautiful mind1 a man full of beautiful thoughts and visions1 and because of those infernal ,french verb inflections1 because they will call tables and chairs 'he' and 'she' instead of 'it1' ,i can't communicate with him without boring him to death4 ,we ,english-speaking people are a great deal more lenient4 ,some of the pleasantest talks ,i've ever had have been with foreigners who waded through a slaughter of my native tongue to a positive throne in my respect4 ,but no foreigner can ever tolerate broken ,french or ,spanish4 ,they jump to the immediate conclusion that a man who can't speak their abominable gibberish correctly must be either a boor or a fool1 and they don't take the pains to conceal that impression4 ,why don't they learn to speak ,english1 so that a human being could talk to them8 ,r---- told a story of recent experience in ,italy1 which he thought suggested an equal arrogance in the ,anglo-,saxon4 ,he had watched a young woman1 an ,american1 on the railway platform at ,naples1 explaining in lucid ,english to the porter her wishes concerning her luggage4 ,the porter stared1 shrugged1 and seized a bag4 ,the girl caught his arm4 ,put that down1 she said sternly4 ,i mean that to go in the carriage with me4 ,those two trunks are to be labelled for ,rome and put in the van4 ,the porter began to gesticulate and gabble4 ,there's no use making so much noise1 she commented contemptuously4 ,just do as ,i tell you and don't lose time4 ,the ,italian hunched his shoulders1 threw his hands out in fan-like gestures1 and made volcanic appeals to heaven4 ,r----1 who is shy1 but chivalrous1 and who speaks six ,italian dialects1 felt called upon to take part4 ,excuse me1 ,madam1 he said1 but you seem to be having some difficulty with your luggage4 ,as ,i speak ,italian1 perhaps ,i may be of service to you4 ,the girl turned a cold eye upon him and waved him away4 ,thank you1 she said1 you are very kind1 but all the world has got to speak ,english eventually1 and there is no use indulging these people in their ridiculous ,italian now6 ,january #ad4 ,the ,fourth ,dimension4 ,i lunched with ,mary ,r---- yesterday and heard a curious story4 ,mrs4 ,m----1 who is ordinarily so amusing1 seemed distrait and disturbed all through the meal1 and when the other women had gone1 ,mary1 who is extremely sensitive and sympathetic to the state of mind of everyone about her1 led ,mrs4 ,m----1 in a manner fascinating in its skilfulness1 to unpack her overladen spirit4 ,she said3 ,i have been spending the morning with a friend1 who is half mad with melancholia4 ,she has had a terrible experience4 ,she is a ,philadelphia woman4 ,her husband was a manufacturer of window glass4 ,he died about five years ago from typhoid fever and left her with a small fortune and two daughters2 one fourteen years old1 one seventeen--nice1 rosy1 wholesome1 well brought up girls4 ,they had always wanted to travel1 but during her husband's lifetime he was too busy and she would never leave him4 ,about a year after his death1 they concluded1 as the lease of their house had run out1 to store their furniture and go abroad for a time1 with the idea that the girls could perfect themselves in languages and music and see something of the world4 ,i don't want you to think there was anything sensational about them4 ,they were just quiet1 middle-class ,philadelphians1--you know the type1--modest1 conventional1 devoted to the proprieties4 ,that's what makes their story all the more tragic4 ,they arrived in ,london2 took quiet lodgings in ,dover ,street1 and concluded to spend six months in ,england1 seeing the sights1 and making these ,london lodgings their headquarters4 ,they had been there all through the month of ,may1 doing picture galleries1 churches1 and the museums1 and occasionally a theatre4 ,one ,saturday they had tickets for a concert1 and as the place was near and the day was fine1 they decided to walk to the place where the concert was to be given1 stopping at a shop in ,regent street on the way to give an order about something being made there4 ,i don't know what it was1 or where the shop was situated1 but at all events the three were walking abreast1 the girls chattering and joking about the order4 ,the sidewalk was very crowded1 so that the mother stepped ahead1 but heard her daughters' voices at her elbow for several minutes4 ,the street grew clearer as she went1 and she turned to beckon the girls alongside again4 ,she didn't see them1 and stood a few moments for them to catch up4 ,after waiting awhile she walked back and still missed them4 ,it occurred to her that they might have passed ahead without her noticing it1 and gone on to the shop where they had planned to stop1 so she went there and waited twenty minutes4 ,then she imagined they might have missed their way1 and gone to the concert hall to wait for her4 ,by this time she felt sufficient anxiety to hail a cab1 but no one had seen them at the concert hall1 and she herself had all three of the tickets1 so she returned to their lodgings1 sure that they would turn up there eventually in any case4 ,at six o'clock they were still absent1 and really frightened by this time she visited all the near-by police stations1 but could get no news of them4 ,that was four years ago1 and from that day to this she has never seen or heard of them4 ,she has travelled all over ,europe and returned twice to ,america1 has advertised in every possible way1 and has employed the best detectives of both continents4 ,now she has come back for the third time1 utterly broken in health and fortune4 ,their home in ,philadelphia has become a boarding-house1 and she has taken a room and will spend the rest of her life there1 hoping that in that way1 if they ever return1 they may be able to reach her4 ,nearly all her money has gone in the search1 and her mind is almost equally a wreck4 ,she goes over to ,philadelphia this afternoon1 and ,i went in the morning to tell her good-by4 ,mary said--her lips were white--,but1 good heavens1 ,emily6 where could the girls have gone8 ,that's the terrible part of it1 ,mrs4 ,m---- answered4 ,one can't imagine4 ,they were both so young4 ,it was in a foreign country3 they had no money4 ,as far as the mother knew1 neither had1 nor could have had1 any reason for going1 nor anyone a reason for taking them4 ,if one only had gone one might suspect a lover1 or a sudden aberration of mind1 but there were two2 it was in broad daylight4 ,three minutes before they had been beside her4 ,there was no struggle1 no accident4 ,no one could have silently carried off or made way with two grown girls in ,regent ,street in midday4 ,one minute they were there1 laughing1 happy1 and commonplace1 and the next minute they had vanished utterly and forever1 without a word or a cry4 ,but why has one never heard of it8 ,i said4 ,well1 of course1 the mother kept it out of the papers4 ,for a long time she feared they might have been the victims of the sort of person who preys on young girls1 and dreaded that there should be a scandal by which their lives should be ruined if they ever returned4 ,to-day ,i think she would be glad to find them even in the lowest brothel1 if she might only see them again4 ,hadn't any of the police or detectives a theory8 ,oh1 thousands at first1 but they never bore any fruit4 ,consider all the circumstances4 ,they were sensible1 self-reliant ,american girls4 ,by this time1 if they were alive1 they would have found some means of communicating with their mother4 ,she has published guarded appeals1 which they would understand1 and always in the ,english language1 in about every paper in this country and ,europe4 ,but what do you think8 ,what can one think8 ,can you conceive of any solution when you consider all the facts8 ,has the mother no theory8 ,well1 she has1 but then she is hardly sensible1 you know1 after the strain of such an experience4 ,you've heard of the ,fourth ,dimension1 haven't you8 ,she says if that's not the explanation1 she cannot imagine any other4 ,she doesn't really believe it1 ,i think1 but she says if they did not stumble into it1 where are they8 ,and what answer can one give her8 ,by this time it was late1 and ,i came away4 ,outside the sun was shining and the trolley cars buzzing by4 ,the theory of the ,fourth ,dimension seemed absurd1 but ,i wondered where those poor young girls could have gone1 and felt an oppression in my breathing4 ,january #bc4 ,the ,ant and the ,lark4 ,who1 ,i wonder1 was the stupid phrase-maker guilty of saying that ,genius was only an infinite capacity for taking pains8 ,and yet ,shakespeare1 according to tradition1 never blotted a line4 ,how much pains had the little ,mozart taken when he began his first concert tour8 ,creation comes swiftly and with heat4 ,the man who must take infinite pains in production is never a genius4 ,indeed1 when one sees how little the creation of beauty1 harmony1 or ideas is related to their human creator1 how little1 in a way1 he seems related to them1 one is almost inclined to imagine that somewhere there exists a great reservoir of force and that the genius is merely a cock through which the creative fluid runs4 ,he happens to be the cock that is turned on while the handles of the others are left untouched4 99 99 99 99 99 ,there was once a very ambitious and industrious ,ant4 ,its home was in a field where the grass and flowers bloomed4 ,this ,ant had convictions as to the best uses of life1 and wasted no time4 ,so many hours a day she devoted to the improvement of her mind1 and so many to her life labour1 which was to build an ant-hill4 ,early and late she toiled1 and as she toiled she thought very deeply1 elaborating numerous excellent and noble theories4 ,all her theories concerned the best use of opportunities1 and the doing of some work which should make the world better because she had existed4 ,once in a long while1 when quite worn out by her labours1 she would climb to the top of a blade of grass1 and look out into the world4 ,sometimes the sun was just rising and the field was damascened with the blue and white cups of morning-glories1 and sometimes it was evening and the moon silvered the dew-hung grass1 which palpitated with fireflies4 ,at such times a divine yearning and great longing filled the heart of the tired little emmet1 and she would hurry down to her work at once1 saying bravely to herself3 ,if ,i waste a moment my hill will never be high enough to look out upon this beautiful world4 ,and so would toil on without ceasing1 taking the greatest pains with every grain of sand1 fitting and refitting it into its place with infinite pains1 and comforting herself for her slow progress by saying3 ,i am really not very old yet4 ,i still have a great many days in which to complete my work4 ,and would make some excuse to herself for going down to stand on the ground beside it and gain encouragement by noting how much greater was the hill than her own stature1 and then went happily back to her task4 ,near the ,ant's hill a lark had built its home--a careless body1 who roughly kicked out the earth for a nest1 and who1 being dull as she sat on her eggs1 conversed at times with the ,ant1 for whom the matron manifested an ill-concealed contempt4 ,in heaven's name6 she said1 ,what is the use of wearing yourself to skin and bone working on that hill8 ,isn't it quite big enough for your uses already8 ,yes1 replied the ,ant1 patiently1 but it is every one's duty to make the world as beautiful as they can1 and ,i want to build the biggest and most beautiful ant-hill in the world4 ,and oh6--she cried1 clasping her little paws and with a hungry look in her eyes--,i do so want to be famous6 ,fiddle-de-dee6 answered the brown bird1 contemptuously4 ,famous6--what is that8 ,are you wearing yourself out for such nonsense8 ,as for me1 give me a fat worm for breakfast and luck with my eggs1 and it's all ,i ask4 ,saying which1 she tucked her head under her wing and went to sleep1 while the ,ant hurried away to finish the daily task she set herself4 ,in course of time a young lark was hatched4 ,a great red1 sprawling1 featherless thing1 with a big bill and no idea but worms4 ,the ,ant used to try sometimes1 when his mother was absent hunting food1 to teach the ugly young thing some of her own excellent theories1 but the bird only blinked sleepily and scornfully and never answered a word1 so the ,ant was reluctantly obliged to give up the hope of ever inspiring him with the nobler ambitions of life4 ,she was growing much encouraged about her own work4 ,all the other ants in the field wondered at and admired it1 and as one could nearly see out above the grasses by standing upon her hill on tiptoe1 the happy insect began to dream of immortality4 ,by this time1 too1 the young lark had grown feathers1 and one morning he stumbled out of the nest1 fluttered a moment to try his wings1 and suddenly1 bursting into a flood of song1 soared upward into the sunlit blue4 ,the ,ant fell to the earth1 breathless and paralyzed1 but in a moment1 stifling her pain and despair1 she rose up and began1 from mere habit1 fitting more grains of sand into her unfinished hill4 ,a ,poet walked in the field that day1 meditating some verses upon the divine gift of genius4 ,he cried aloud with joy at the lark's song1 and while he gazed upward stumbled over the ,ant's hill and demolished it1 but in his note-book he wrote3 ,oh1 miracle of ,genius1 that lifts the ,sons of ,god on golden pinions to the gates of heaven1 while the dull myriads toil futilely at ,babels below4 ,january #bi4 ,the ,dppelganger4 ,i suppose that everyone who has reached maturity has been aware of a sense of a dual personality--of a something within him that is a me and a not me2 of opposing influences that puzzle his judgment1 weaken his resolves1 and warp his intention4 ,these natures he finds engaged in an eternal conflict which sways him from the course he would instinctively follow1 and draws him along lines of thought and conduct satisfying to neither side of his being1 and achieving only a helpless compromise between the two4 ,to be8--,or not to be8 contend the two at every crossing of the tangled meshes of existence1 and neither disputant is ever convinced by the other's logic4 ,to sleep--says one4 ,perchance to dream1 replies the other coldly2 and so gives pause to ,hamlet's swift intentions4 ,which is the real man8 ,the ,hamlet whose soul lusts for sudden brute revenge1 whose promptings are the instinctive play of the natural man1 or that frigid censor who checks the impulses of the first speaker and chills him with cold reasons and balancings of right and wrong1 so that the sword falls from his nerveless hand at the very moment of opportunity8 ,or after all1 is the real man the one whose actions are a continual endeavour to steer between the two promptings2 the ,hamlet whose doings are not in direct answer to either voice--are but furious and confused outbursts of indecision8 ,if it were at all possible to decide between the two1 one would incline to think that the second voice1 that chilling critic1 was another self1 alien to us1 though entrenched in the very depths of the soul--was the not me1 in everlasting opposition to the me--was the past warring with the present4 ,the warm1 impulsive1 blundering me we know1 but who is that other8 ,whence comes this double1 this alter ego1 this bosom's lord1 and strange1 nameless ghost who haunts the house of life8 ,how many thousand deaths have we died to give him life8 ,for he is inexpressibly aged1 infinitely sophisticated2 and while the me still crowns its locks with youth's golden illusions1 he is grey with knowledge and hoary with disenchantment4 ,though a part of our most intimate selves1 he is not at one with us4 ,he sympathizes with none of our enthusiasms1 is tempted by none of our sins4444 ,sins6444 what should he do eating forbidden fruit who is all compounded of the knowledge of good and evil8 ,ye shall be as gods1 having eaten of that tree--and like a god he sits in the dusk of the soul's seat1 knowing the past1 predicating the future1 calmly beholding the fulfilling of our destiny4 ,and yet is his grim wisdom of no avail1 since--a shadowy ,cassandra--he warns in vain4 ,his deity-ship is of no more worth than that of the ,olympian heavens1 which might punish or reward1 but could not divert the decrees of a power higher than itself4 ,it is indeed the fate of all gods to have their creations caught from between their shaping hands by the blind1 fumbling fingers with the shears4 ,gods may teach2 may command2 may ban or bless1 but the being once made is ,fate's creature1 not theirs4 ,this cynical1 impotent dppelganger goes by many names4 ,his ,christian cognomen is ,conscience1 and his voice is raised to exalt ,christian tenets of clean living and high thinking4 ,thou shalt surely die1 he declaims from the altar where he wears with cheerful indifference the livery of a faith in which he has no part1 and we walk contentedly in the path he designates1 flattering ourselves upon being upheld and guided by the voice of omnipotent truth1 until passion trips our heels with some hidden snare1 and1 rolling headlong in the mire1 we lift our stained faces in astonishment to behold that calm-lidded countenance all unstirred by our wild mishap4 ,he foresaw1 but he was helpless to prevent1 nor does he greatly care1 since he also knows that age after age every reincarnation of the spirit must be tempted anew by the ever-renewed1 ever-lustful1 unalterable flesh4 ,weissman diverts himself and indulges the ,teutonic weakness for word-building by naming this double self the germ-plasm--that immortal1 eternal seed of life that links the generations in an unbroken chain2 changing and developing only through the unreckonable processes of time1 and taking heed not at all of the mere passing accidents of fleeting avatars4 ,why should not this germ-plasm1 this eternal ghost1 be infinitely sophisticated8 ,what surprises can its mere momentary envelope contrive for a consciousness as old as the moon8 ,if temptations seduce the young flesh1 though the old1 old soul declares with scorn that teeth are set on edge by the eating of sour grapes1 it is not surprised at all when the body persists in its will to seize upon the fruit of its desire1 having seen in everyone of a myriad generations the same obstinacy and weakness of the flesh1 which learns little and very hardly from the spirit4 ,now and again--in his moments of exalted seriousness--man listens to this ancient voice of the spirit breathing the accumulated experience of time1 and then it imposes upon him the ripened wisdom of its long retrospect of the generations1 and man creates religions--by which he does not square his conduct--or philosophies--whose bit he immediately takes between his teeth4 ,but for the most part he stops his ears to the soul's stern1 sad preaching with the thick wax of sentimentalism1 and that undying determination that life shall be not what it is1 but what he wishes it to be--and so stumbles along1 through ever-renewed pangs and tragedies1 after a mirage in the hard desert of existence1 to whose stones and flints1 despite his bruises1 he will not turn his eyes4 ,and well it is for us that upon many the mantle of flesh lies so warm and thick that this ghost called consciousness of self cannot chill their blood with his dank wisdom breathed from out a world of graves4 ,in the hearts of such as these all the sweet illusions of existence came to full and natural bloom4 ,to their lusty egoism life has all the exhilaration and freshness of a new and special creation4 ,far otherwise is it with the haunted man1 whose dwelling is blighted by that cold presence with its terrible memory4 ,forever echoes through his chambers the cry that hope will be unfulfilled1 that love will die1 the morning fade1 that what has been will be again and forever again2 that the waters of life will climb the shore only to crawl back again into the blind deeps of eternity2 that the unit is forever lost in the eternal ebb and flux of matter4 ,endeavour can find no footing in this profundity of experience4 ,to all desire1 all aspiration1 the ghost says in a paralyzing whisper3 ,scipio1 remember that thou art a man--that everything has been done even if thou doest it not--that everything will be done whether thou doest it or no4444 ,where are the poems that were written in ,baalbec8 ,where the pictures that were painted in ,tadmor of the ,wilderness8 ,are there fewer pictures and poems to-day because the men who made them are not8 ,who was prime minister to the bearded ,king of ,babylon8 ,where is his fame8444 ,ay1 drink this cup if you will1 but you know well the taste of it is not good at the bottom4 ,you have drunk it a thousand thousand of times1 and the taste was never good1 and yet you will drink it a thousand times again1 hoping always that it will be good4444 ,and the haunted man sits with idle hands and withered purpose1 listening always to the voice1 while his neighbours push loudly on to die futilely but gloriously in the unending battle4 ,an end-of-the-century disease1 say these full-fed1 happy egotists with lowered breath and eyes askance as they pass the haunted house4 ,the mould of age has fallen upon him and made him mad4 ,yet before the walls of ,troy these two--the ghost-ridden1 and the happy egotist--battled for the glowing shadow of a woman whom neither man loved nor desired4 ,achilles1 blackly melancholy in his tent1 heard the old voice cry and disdains the greatness of life and the littleness of it4 ,to an iron inevitableness of fate he opposes only indifference and an unbending courage4 ,that which has been will be1 and the end is death and darkness4 ,he has no illusions4 ,he wars neither for love of country nor love of ,helen4 ,if ,troy falls nothing is gained4 ,if the ,greeks fail nothing will be lost4 ,in time all the sweat and blood shed upon ,ilium's windy plain will evaporate into a mere mist of uncredited legend4 ,in ,achilles1 the other self1 the alter ego1 is the stronger man4 ,the ghost of dead experience is as living as he4 ,not so is it with ,hector4 ,all the passions of humanity are as new and fresh to him as if none before himself had known them4 ,he looks neither forward nor back4 ,the present is his concern4 ,what though men have died and been forgotten1 he will not lessen his utmost effort1 even to the giving up of his life to save ,troy4 ,that is to him the one thing of importance4 ,so robust is his courage1 his faith1 his love1 that the sad spirit of memory within him cannot speak loud enough to make him hear4 ,there is no warring of dual personalities in him2 he is aware of but one--that rich momentary incarnation called ,hector1 more potent than the memories and experiences of the thousands of lives that preceded him1 that gave him existence4 ,what though ,achilles was right2 what though both be but dust and legend now--who would not choose that flash of being called ,hector--,hector dragged at the chariot-heel of ,achilles--,hector with wife enslaved and children slaughtered and his city's proud towers levelled with the plain1 rather than to have been the haunted victor1 triumphing but not triumphant2 fighting without purpose or hope8 ,the same end indeed came to both1 but one died as he lived1 for what he thought a glorious end1 while the other too passed away--but with the cold knowledge that both deaths were fruitless and vain4 ,troy is a dream1 but the battle forever is waged between the fresh incarnation of being and the memories of past being4 ,every creature wakes out of childhood aware that he lives not alone in even the secretest chambers of his life4 ,which is the ,i he cannot always say4 ,the two companions are never at one4 ,sometimes the struggle breaks into open flame4 ,sometimes the one is victor1 sometimes the vanquished4 ,each fights for ,helen1 for his ideal of pleasure1 of wisdom1 or of good1 but in the very handgrips of battle a chilling doubt will fall between them whether she for whom they war--call her virtue1 beauty1 lust1 life1 what you will--is the real ,queen1 or only some misleading eidolon whose true self is hid in distant ,sparta2 and so the grasp relaxes1 the tense breath falls free1 the selves mingle4 ,man gropes for truth and finds it vague1 intangible1 not to be grasped--a dream4 ,february #ag4 ,a ,young ,man's ,fancy4 ,what is that ineffable quality in the air that says ,spring8 ,long ago1 as far back as towards the end of ,january1 there came suddenly one day a sense that the winter was conquered4 ,there has been much cold weather since--we shall have much cold still1 but there is always a promise in the air4 ,there is a sad day later in the year when one is aware all at once that summer is ending1 and the warm1 mild weeks that follow never console for that hour's realization that the apex is crossed and the rest of the path slopes downward4 ,just such a day comes in one's life1--while one is still young and strong--a sudden sense that youth is done2 the climacteric of passion passed4 ,life has a long ,indian summer still1 but it's never again the real thing1--that ripening toward fruition2 that ecstasy of expansion and growth4 ,there is no visible change for a while1 yet every day there is an imperceptible fall in the temperature4 ,always the nights are growing longer4 ,the flowers drop away one by one--the sap sinks a little1 leaving the extreme delicate twigs moribund4 ,no one has seen the leaves fall1 yet there are fewer upon the bough--winter is coming4 ,age is peaceful1 perhaps--but middle age--6 ,the wave clings to the shore1 but the inexorable ebb draws it down relentlessly into the deep4 ,this is the time that men go musth1 like old elephants4 ,this is the period when both men and women do their mad deeds1 which belie all their previous records4 ,it is their one last frantic clutch after vanishing romance and passion4 ,men buy a semblance of it from young women sometimes1 and resolutely endeavour to persuade themselves that it is the real thing--that gold can renew youth1 can purchase a second summer--but they know well that it is only a mechanical imitation4 ,those cruel old satirists1 the comedy writers1 loved to paint the trembling dotard resolutely shutting his eyes to the lusty young rival hiding behind the jade's petticoats4 ,as for the women6--who shall tell the real story of the middle age of women8--of the confident coquette1 who one day turns away to punish her slave1 and finds1 when she relents1 that his eyes are fixed upon her daughter8--of the bewildered inspection of the mirror1 that still tells a fluttering tale of curves and colours1 though startled experience shows the eyes of men turning in preference to crude1 red-elbowed girls1 obviously her inferior in grace and charm8--of the shock of finding that the world is no longer much interested in her--the amazement of the discovery that the handsome lads see little difference between a woman of thirty-five and one of fifty8--of the shame-faced misery of learning that the passion1 which she has virtuously resolved to repulse1 is given in reality to her niece8 ,her charm1 her sweetness1 her well-preserved beauty is as nothing beside mere raw youth4 ,undeveloped figures1 flat chests1 blotchy complexions1 are of more value than her rounded mellow loveliness4 ,she is pushed from her throne by giggling girls1 who stare at her in hard contempt and wonder openly what the old creature does lingering belated in this galley4 ,though she be called a fine woman still1 men of all ages will turn from her to dote upon an empty-headed debutante4 ,her comprehension and sympathy1 her wit and her learning are less enthralling than the vapid babblings of red-cheeked misses just out of pinafores4 ,her heart is as young as ever2 she knows herself capable of a finer1 nobler passion and tenderness than the girl can dream of1 yet the selfish1 egotistic emotions of the self-confident chit awake a rapture that would be dulled by the richest warmth she could give4 ,age1 ,i do abhor thee3 ,youth1 ,i do adore thee2 ,o1 my love1 my love is young6 ,that she in her turn elbowed the preceding generation from its place comforts her not at all4 ,oh1 for again one hour only of the splendid domination of youth--one rich instant of the power to intoxicate6444 ,there is nothing for it but to keep such things to one's self1 and jog on quietly and respectably to the end4 ,one has had one's turn4 99 99 99 99 99 ,that mad girl ,spring has passed up this way ,with a hole in her pockets1 ,for here lies her money all strewn in the grass-- ,broad dandelion ducats4 ,she'll be needing this wealth ere the end of the year ,for a warm winter gown1 ,though now she's content with a breast-knot of buds ,and a violet crown4 ,she heard in the green blooming depths of the wood ,the voice of a dove1 ,and she dropped all these flowering coins as she ran ,to meet summer and love4 ',twill not serve you to gather from out her wild path ,all your two hands can hold-- ,only youth and the ,spring may buy kisses and mirth ,with this frail fairy gold4 ,february #ah4 ,an ,arabian ,looking-glass4 ,there has been great recrudescence of the ,essay of late--none of it very important1 ,i take the liberty of thinking4 ,we moderns have lost the trick of it4 ,all of us1 at least1 but ,stevenson1 and he hardly seems a modern1 so closely is he related to the great classics1 with his inheritance of the ,grand ,style1 like the bel canto1 now a lost art4 ,and yet the ,essay is a great temptation4 ,doubtless not one of all those who go down into the ink-bottle with pens has quite escaped its seduction4 ,generally it is1 ,i suspect1 merely an outcropping of the somewhat too widely known need of the artistic nature for self-expression in more definite terms than ordinary work permits4 ,the young fellows1 still walking in the light of the eternal pulchritudes1 are touchingly anxious lest they falsify themselves--pathetically unaware of the supreme unconcern of the rest of humanity as to their personal veracity4 ,the line between art and the other thing is drawn just across this zone of egotism4 ,the other thing is a man's expression of himself2 ,art is the mirror in which each observer sees only his own face4 ,the ,arabian legend of the prosperous old beggar who1 making a pilgrimage to ,mecca1 left to his son1 as his sole means of support1 a looking-glass1 and returned to find the boy starving and gazing into the mirror himself1 is supposed to cynically suggest the uses of judicious flattery1 but has deeper application4 ,speak of yourself--the world yawns4 ,talk to it of itself--rudely1 vaguely1 profoundly1 how you will--and it hangs upon your lips4 ,turn the mirror toward it and it says proudly1 ,of just such exalted devotion and sacrifice am ,i capable1 or mutters with a shudder1 ,there1 but for the grace of ,god1 goes ,augustine4 ,the tenor sings ,sous ta ,fenetre and every face is lighted by the inner shining of romance4 ,the strangest revelations are discerned upon the countenances of respectable matrons1 of rang men of affairs4 ,they beat their hands together in a flooding wave of applause1 and the greasy ,italian in his uneasy evening dress swells with a strutting consciousness of his vocal chords1 of his method1 his upper ,c1 of his own value4 ,o tempora6 ,o mores6 ,he is nothing whatever to them4 ,it is only that in every human heart there is a chord that vibrates to ,c in alt4 ,they are quite unaware of him1 and of his greasy personality4 ,every man is singing with his own soul's voice under the lattice of his first beloved4 ,every woman is leaning to listen to a dream lover yearning up to her through the warm scented moonlight4 ,as for the garlicky loves of the singer they care not one jot whether he loves or not4 ,it is all a question of themselves1 of a vibration4 ,march #d4 ,the ,cry of the ,women4 ,i have been clearing out a lot of old books1 preparatory to moving1 and have been amused to see how empty and dead many already are1 which a few years since were raging through edition after edition1 and were the subject of so much talk and interest4 ,already more than half have grown as desiccated and unimportant as last year's leaves1 and their timeliness seems of a time as far past as the deluge4 ,there was among these dead books a group on the ,woman ,question1 which already1 in so short a space1 has lost all its interrogation point4 ,is it that there was really no ,woman ,question1 or has the ,question already received an answer8 ,usually one is inclined to think that when a book voices with truth and passion the needs and thoughts of even a portion of humanity1 it has a real claim to be classed as literature1 though it fails of the immortality which is the meed only of such writings as express with beautiful verity the immortal1 unchanging needs of life4 ,but already one regards with amused indifference yesterday's crop of novels written by women1 with their vague ecstasies of longing1 their confused cries of discontent1 their indistinct moans and reproaches1 though such a very short time since those books faithfully expressed the mental state of the sex1 as one could not doubt1 seeing the greediness with which editions were called for of ,the ,heavenly ,twins1 ,keynotes1 ,a ,superfluous ,woman1 and their like1 or listening to the echoes awaked by their inchoate sentiments in the feminine mind4 ,yet the sum of the protest of all these books by women was like the cry of an infant--suffering but inarticulate4 ,i suppose the truth is that even so short a time since free thought and free speech were still so new to women that1 struggling in the swaddling bands of ignorance and convention1 it was small wonder that she could not state with precision1 or even define clearly to herself1 where her pain lay1 nor how she would allay it4 ,she knew she was in revolt against what had been4 ,she could not yet choose what she would change in the future4 ,some of them cried out for larger political rights1 others were convinced that the abolition of stays and the introduction of trousers was all that was needed to produce a feminine millennium4 ,latch-keys6 cried the browbeaten ,english girls--and freedom to be out after dark like our own brothers4 ,look at the men4 ,they are quite happy4 ,it must be the possession of latch-keys that makes them so3 give them also to us4 ,no1 roundly declared a certain ,mona ,caird1 what we really need is a latch-key to let us out of the lifelong oppressive bond of marriage4 ,it weighs too heavily upon us--let us go free6 ,nonsense6 contradicted ,sarah ,grand4 ,marriage is all right4 ,what is wrong is man4 ,he comes to the marriage altar with stained and empty hands1 while he demands that ours be spotless1 and heaped with youth1 health1 innocence1 and faith4 ,he swindles us4 ,reform man if you would make us happy6 ,higher education--,equal wages--,physical development--,no household drudgery--,expansion of the ego1 cried the conflicting voices2 each with a quack panacea for the disease of discontent4 ,can it be that all this was but ten years ago8 ,how quickly ideas are changing6 ,i think that this noise among the women was the last wave of the democratic ideal expending itself4 ,it was their restlessness under a sense of their inferiority to man4 ,until the nineteenth century1 woman had been content to accept the male of her kind1 with his mental and physical endowments1 as the true standard of human excellence1 and to humbly admit that she permanently failed to reach that standard4 ,the universality of the democratic ideal aroused in her at last an unwillingness to admit her innate inferiority1 and drove her to a desperate search for some fountain of ,salmacis that should transmute her to an exact likeness of her long-time lord and superior4 ,the search1 of course1 was delayed and confused by that furious and debasing fin de siecle demand for happiness at all cost4 ,she heard no talk anywhere of courage1 submission1 or duty4 ,the later decades of the democratic century had refused to contemplate the world-old riddle of the blind ,fates who create one vessel to honour and another to dishonour4 ,so woman1 no more than her fellows1 would consider the caprices of destiny which from the union of one man and one woman will produce an heir to beauty1 talent1 and success1 and from the same union--without volition or intention upon anyone's part--brings forth a cripple1 an idiot1 or the helpless ,inadequate1 who is foredoomed to failure with a grim gravitation no human laws or institutions can arrest4 ,the nineteenth century was a sentimental one2 unwilling to consider unpleasant truths4 ,all men are born equal1 it stubbornly persisted in asserting1 and then was rather shocked when some of its offspring sought this equality of happiness at the sword's point or the bomb's fuse--as if content was a coin to be stolen and concealed about the person of the thief4 ,of course1 the women finally became infected with the bacillus of unsound ideas1 and struggling against the immutable burden of sex ran to and fro1 crying ,lo1 here6 and ,lo1 there6 and wailing1 ,where is my happiness8 ,who has my happiness8 ,you men have stolen and are keeping it from me6 ,a certain part of the charge was true1 too4 ,men had filched from her4 ,the theft was not a new one4 ,if the statute of limitations could ever run in crimes against nature it might have almost ceased to be a wrong in this case1 after the lapse of nearly two thousand years4 ,morgan in his ,ancient ,society1 dealing with the question of ,mtter-,recht1 declares that throughout the earliest period of human existence regarding which any knowledge is attainable1 descent and all rights of succession were traced through the women of the gens or clans1 into which primitive man was organized4 ,women1 as being the bearers and protectors of the young1 were regarded as the natural land owners1 and therefore did not leave their homes to follow the fathers of their children1 lest they should lose their own possessions and rights of inheritance4 ,instead1 the men married into the sept of their wives4 ,the power and independence of women was lost at last through the practice of making female captives in war4 ,these had no land and were the property of1 and dependent upon the will of1 their male captor4 ,in course of time men naturally grew to prefer these subservient wives4 ,the ,arab advises his son3 ,it is better to have a wife with no claims of kin and no brethren near to take her part4 ,women therefore began to dread capture as the greatest of evils4 ,after the movements of vast hordes began--the marches of the race columns across the continents--with their wars of spoliation and conquest1 there was no security save in physical strength1 and the females yielded all claims to the men in return for protection4 ,it was better1 they thought1 to be a slave at home than a slave among strangers4 ,still the man1 while asserting physical superiority1 claimed none morally4 ,under the pagan rule of ,rome1 the jurisconsults1 by their theory of ,natural ,law1 evidently assumed the equality of the sexes as a principle of their code of equity4 ,sir ,henry ,maine says there came a time when the situation of the female1 married or unmarried1 became one of great personal and proprietary independence2 for the tendency of the later law 444 was to reduce the power of the guardian to a nullity1 while the form of marriage conferred on the husband no compensating superiority4 ,among the ,germanic races of the ,roman period1 a woman was occasionally ruler of the tribe1 and the blue-eyed wife of the roving ,barbarian1 as well as the proud ,roman matron1 were held alike in high esteem for their functions as wife and mother4 ,the priestess crowned with oak leaves1 officiating at the sylvan altars of the forest1 or the ,vestal ,virgin serving the fires of the white temples of ,rome1 were alike held worthy of speaking face to face with the gods and of conveying their blessings to man4 ,it was the humble religion of ,judea--which women embraced with ardour1 and to which they were early and willing martyrs--that cursed them with a deadly curse4 ,it denied woman not only mental and physical1 but moral equality with man1 and besmirched the very fountain and purpose of her being with a shameful stain4 ,it made her presence in the most holy places a desecration1 and for the first time regarded her feminine functions as a disgrace rather than a glory4 ,and this although the founder of the ,christian faith had set an example of reverence and tenderness for the sex in his own life1 and had left his mother to be raised to a heavenly throne by his worshippers4 ,never from his lips had fallen a word that could give warrant for the insult offered woman by his church4 ,he was the first of all men living to denounce the injustice of visiting upon the woman the whole penalty of a double sin1 and his life was beautified with the tenderest friendships with women4 ,but already1 before a church had been fairly organized1 ,paul was dictating silence to women1 covered heads and supreme submission to the male1 and was declaring against marriage as a weakness4 ,if a man must marry because of his weakness1 he might do so1 but not to marry was better4 ,scorn of woman and her functions grew4 ,antagonism to marriage intensified4 ,woman by the very law of her existence was a curse and a temptation to sin4 ,hear ,tertullian--one of the fathers of the ,church--on this subject3 ,do you not know that each one of you is an ,eve8 ,the sentence of ,god on this sex of yours lives in this age2 the guilt must of necessity live too4 ,you are the devil's gateway2 you are the unsealer of the forbidden tree2 you are the first deserter of the divine law2 you are she who persuaded him who the devil was not valiant enough to attack4 ,you destroyed so easily ,god's image1 man4 ,on account of your desert--that is death--the ,son of ,god had to die6 ,this is but one of a thousand similar insults by the early writers of the ,church--all ,patristic books bristle with them4 ,lecky1 comparing the ,roman jurisprudence with the canon or ecclesiastical law1 remarks that the ,pagan laws during the earlier centuries of the ,empire were constantly repealing the disabilities of women1 whereas it was the aim of the canon law to substitute enactments which should impose upon the female sex the most offensive personal restrictions and stringent subordination4 ,even marriage and the production of offspring--which in the pagan world had been an honour to both sexes--was stigmatized4 ,no priest of ,god might approach a woman1 scarcely even look at her1 and no woman was allowed to serve at ,god's altar4 ,celibacy was a virtue so great in man that none set apart for the highest duties might marry1 and woman was encouraged to suppress in herself all the sweet and wholesome instincts for motherhood--an instinct upon which the race hung dependent1 one for which she willingly suffered the sharp pangs of childbirth--and instead to immure herself in convents and endeavour to find solace in the spiritual ecstasies of morbid meditation4 ,now was woman at last robbed and poor indeed6 ,her social and civil equality having been yielded in exchange for protection1 her protectors had bereft her of all moral rights1 and denounced as unclean the function for the perfect performance of which she had paid out all her goods4 ,it was the triumph of the ,oriental idea over the ideals of the ,occident1 and so deeply did the ,eastern thought stamp itself upon the ,western mind that only to-day the latter begins to free itself from the yoke of the ,asian ,paul's fierce egotism of sex4 ,so deeply indeed did this thought penetrate1 that historians do not hesitate to attribute to this scorn of woman and her mission of childbearing a long delay in the development of ,european civilization4 ,the higher spiritual natures1 being more under the influence of the ,church1 accepted its suggestions of asceticism and left the baser sort to perpetuate the race and thus delayed the processes of evolution4 ,it was the denial by the ,church of the beauty and nobility of natural love that drove the ,middle ,ages to the invention of chivalry and the romantic love of the unwedded1 that they might evade the ban and find some outlet for the emotions4 ,with the ,reformation1 that first uprising of the ,western mind against ,asian domination1 men threw off the yoke in so far as it bound their own necks1 and declared the rightness and reasonableness of all their mental and physical functions4 ,it was no longer a shame for the priest of ,god to mate with a woman1 nor a weakness for a man to round his life with the fulness of joy to be found in connubial love1 when he at the same time assumed its duties and responsibilities4 ,the ingrained contempt of women was not so easily eradicated4 ,honour the man defined for himself as integrity1 wholeness1 a development of every power to its highest possibility4 ,honour for woman was simply chastity4 ,that is to say1 if she repressed all the animal side of life she might entirely neglect the spiritual4 ,she might be but indifferently honest1 a liar1 a slanderer and a tattler1 guilty of every minor baseness1 and yet be held in good and honourable repute4 ,the wonder is that woman's morals survived at all so false a training6 ,centuries of such teaching wrought their wretched work despite all the forces of nature4 ,virginity instead of purity became the ideal of the highest type of woman1 who shrank from the fulfilment of her functions as a stepping down1 instead of glorying in it as the fulfilment of her sacred purpose4 ,what had been urged upon her upon every side she endeavoured to conform to in the spirit as well as the letter4 ,her mind strained towards the virginal as well as her body4 ,the higher type of woman cried out to man for spiritual rather than physical love1 and she found his natural sane tenderness for her person brutal rather than beautiful4 ,the young girl1 sedulously guarded from knowledge of the fundamental reasons of her being1 cast suddenly and unprepared into marriage1 shrank with disgust from a relation which her husband--educated in wholeness of thought--regarded as the culmination of the flower of life into its fruit4 ,it is not too much to say that four fifths of all modest1 pure girls--as a result of their foolish training--contemplated the sexual relation with the bitterest reluctance4 ,they had been led to believe that virginity was in itself a virtue1 instead of regarding it only as the sanctification of the body until such time as it legitimately becomes the temple of life4 ,with many this feeling survived marriage1 and embittered it to both the wife1 who resented what she looked upon as a baser nature in the man1 and to the man who resented1 and was rebuffed by the coldness of his companion4 ,at least half of the disappointments and failures of marriage arose from the mistaken training of good women4 ,ten years ago this ,patristic ideal still had a strong hold upon the race1 but the long centuries of study of the ,latin and ,greek literatures in the schools finally1 almost suddenly1 bore fruit4 ,we had through our school boys and girls imbibed the spirit of the two ,european races whom the ,semitic influences had never dominated4 ,one wonders that some foolish so-called progressives should now be wishing to drop those literatures from the curriculum of students1 though perhaps their work is done4 ,at all events we hear very little now of this talk of the inferiority of women4 ,when the miracles of male achievement are pointed to to-day1 women know enough to say proudly1 ,did man make this8 ,well1 ,i made man2 and is content4 ,may #d4 ,seville4 ,the ,beauty of ,cruelty4 ,what a people are these1--these ,spaniards6 ,this afternoon--,sunday--,i saw my first bull-fight4 ,one need never wonder again at the ,roman ,arena and its horrors4 ,it is as incredible that human beings can sit through such spectacles as that women could have reversed their thumbs when a staggering1 bloody barbarian turned up a glazed eye to seek mercy4444 ,and this1 after two thousand years of ,catholicism1 of ,christianity6 ,these ,spaniards say--staring stupidly at your horror--,mas1 no es ,cristianos4 ,they are only animals4 ,animals6--and yet ,christians dare talk of divine mercy2 of their faith having softened hearts1 and sweetened human nature4 ,civilization has done so1 in truth1 but where this faith reigns most arbitrarily such an atrocious spectacle is permissible2 goes undenounced of its priests4 ,it is not the baser sort alone who love this cowardly butchery4 ,in the same box with ourselves sat a woman and her two daughters1 evidently members of the upper classes4 ,the arena below was crowded with the people--women in sulphur-coloured shawls1 embroidered with sharp blues and scarlets--men of all classes--dandies and workmen cheek by jowl--but the rows of boxes above held the women and children of the well-to-do1 even the aristocracy4 ,the ,royal family itself patronizes the arena4 ,the women1 whose faces ,i watched instead of the shambles after the fight began1 grew devilish1 a hard smile drew their lips back over their teeth2 their eyes glittered2 a look of lust strained the lines about the nose4 ,they forced the children--some of whom cried1 and shrank from the horrid sight--to turn and see the blood and the struggle4 ,i believe the secret charm of this gory game to many is the prick that the sight of blood gives to the senses4 ,the history of war is full of evidence of this fact--that the sight of horrors spurs the passions4 ,it was curious to think that many of the people there owed their existence to just such a stimulus as this4 ,cruelty thus lies1 hereditarily1 at the very roots of their being2 intensified in each generation4 ,for the same reason1 ,i suppose1 that so much of my life seems to me a glamour of tangled shadows1 elusive and shifting1 with no definite line between the real and the unreal1 between to-day and all the yesterdays--for that reason the arena's gaunt1 windowless walls and passages seemed startlingly familiar4 ,equally familiar the yellow1 sand-strewn circle2 the glaring blue sky above the bright-coloured maelstrm of faces2 the whirl of fans all around the ring--as of a circle of innumerable dancing butterflies2 the cries of the venders2 the clang of the trumpets2 the glitter of the tinsel and gew-gaws2 the bold rush of the black bull2 the quick spatter of the applauding hands4444 ,no animal was ever more beautiful than this splendid beast1 the perfect focus of power and rage4 ,he knew that he was facing murder4 ,there was desperation in his glance from the first moment1 but he simply didn't know the meaning of cowardice4 ,he knew there was no use in anything he might do2 that his courage1 and beauty1 and long battle for life1 would not stir to pity one of those hard1 handsome faces with their dark shaven jaws and tight lips1 but he struck at his foes with all his force in mere sullen fury4 ,he tore open the bellies of the shivering1 sweating1 blindfolded horses1 who staggered a few steps trailing their entrails in the sand and then crumpled helplessly2 he caught a man in the breast and tossed him over the barrier with blood spurting from the hole his horn had made4 ,he himself leaped the fence once1 as agile as a deer1 and brushed the crowd back like flies1 but he did it all without a sign of hope1 and never made a sound4 ,pricked1 goaded1 red streams running over his satin skin and searing his eyes1 stumbling wildly here and there1 his sides sunk in1 his muzzle dragging in the dust1 dumb1 dull fury in his heart at his useless torture1 spurred to new effort by explosive darts that tore his flesh into gory1 pendulous ribbons1 hissed by the women1 he fell at last upon his knees in blind helplessness4444 ,how it ended ,i don't know4 ,a rage of horror squeezed my heart till the tears spurted from my lids4 ,it seemed necessary to seize some weapon and slaughter indiscriminately the men who were murdering this poor brute for mere amusement1 the women who were hissing his death throes4 ,in such horrid sequence does cruelty engender cruelty4 ,the people about me regarded my emotion and retreat with surprise and contempt4 ,some such sensation1 ,i suppose1 as would have been felt by a ,roman who should have seen me shed tears when the big cats of the arena crushed the bones of some brave young barbarian or ,christian4 ,these creatures were so far beneath him in the scale of existence that he could not conceive of any poignancy of suffering or emotion in such a mere animal4 ,was not one hair of a ,roman worth many sparrows--or ,christians8 ,the ,jewish democrat tried to teach the world to recognize the value of the individual1 the sanctity of each human life--when will a ,christ of the beasts arise8 ,may #e4 ,this old world1 with its horrors and its beauties1 how tame it makes our smug1 comfortable ,america appear6444 ,yesterday ,i wished to make a hecatomb of the ,spaniards4 ,to-day ,i forgive them everything because of the ,sevillian dancers4 ,my lusts are all of the eye4 ,i can quite conceive ,herod tossing the ,baptist's head to the supple ,salome in an ecstasy of approval4 ,dancing1 when it is good1 is more beautiful to me than music4 ,and this dancing is very good4 ,the muscular gymnastics1 which modern ,italy has imposed upon the world as dancing1 are as dissimilar from the real thing as the fiorituri singing is from the old bel canto4 ,the ,spaniards make dancing--as all arts should be made--the poetical expression of life and love4 ,such ardour and seduction1 such abandon to the joy of living1 such rage and daring1 such delicate coquetry and wild wooing6444 there is nothing like it out of ,spain1 the country where they torture helpless animals for sport4 ,is there1 perhaps1 some secret tie between cruelty and beauty2 between crime and art8 ,it is certain that religious reformers have always thought so1 and have acted with logical fury4 ,in our peaceful1 decent country1 beauty1 except such as ,nature herself affords1 is rare4 ,a race that loves its neighbour as itself seems incapable of creating an art4 ,the good ,swiss have done nothing for the mind's delight3 the virtuous ,spartans could not even appreciate loveliness when they saw it4 ,nearly all the great periods of flowering in art come after the roots of a nation have been watered in blood1 after some frightful crise of suffering4 ,it would seem as if bringing forth must be always accompanied by birth-pangs4 ,may #g4 ,granada4 ,the ,duke of ,wellington's ,trees4 ,h---- said that the greatness of a people depended upon its trees4 ,this sounded rather cryptic1 and ,i entreated him to be more diffuse4 ,we were walking home from that enchanted garden1 owned by the ,pallavicini1 which rewarded the ,moor for betraying his city4 ,the ,may moon was shining on the white mountain tops1 and the jargoning of the snow-brooks sounded about our feet4 ,the air smelled of orange flowers and roses1 and the nightingales were shouting in the gloom of those one hundred thousand trees planted by the ,duke of ,wellington4 ,this ,spanish peninsula1 ,h---- said1 under the rule of the ,moors1 supported thirty millions of people in comfort4 ,the ,christian kings allowed the upland forests to be ruthlessly sacrificed1 and now look at ,spain4 ,one swallow--,i quoted4 ,will one instance support a theory8 ,no2 but ,i could give you a dozen4 ,carlyle and the rest of the historians have talked the fearfulest rot about ,france under the monarchy which preserved her forests4 ,of course1 every one has weakly credited the stories of oppression and starvation in aristocratic ,france4 ,and yet the sons of these peasants1 who were pitifully pictured snatching at leaves of those forests for food1 overran ,europe4 ,i don't believe that children bred in starvation could ever have had the vitality to be conquerors4 ,at all events1 when the land was divided and the forests delivered to spoliation1 the population of ,france began to decline4 ,possibly the modern effort at reforesting the country may arrest that decline4 ,just listen to the noise of those nightingales1 ,i said4 ,do you suppose we shall be able to sleep8 ,may #ae4 ,naples4 ,the ,boy with the ,goose4 ,the ,pompeian bronze1 which the guide books and catalogues name ,the ,boy with the ,goose1 is quite wrongly named4 ,the lad carries a wine-skin4 ,the rude1 swollen outlines of the pig are clear1 and the attitude of the boy one may see any water-seller in ,tangier assume when called upon for a drink--the arm raised1 the body tilted back upon the hip to elevate the lip of the skin1 so that no more water may flow than is needed4 ,the whole1 a delicious bit of genre1 smiling and vivid after two thousand years4 ,there is a curious vitality of a trifling custom discoverable here in the ,pompeian museum4 ,the great bronze horses of ,balbo have forelocks wrapped and twisted in exactly the same fashion that still prevails all along this ,neapolitan shore4 ,the breed has changed utterly2 bone and structure have altered and shrunk1 but the vetturino1 who drives through the streets of ,naples to-day1 twists up that bit of hair in exactly the same manner as did the coachman of ,glaucus or ,balbo4 ,may #cj4 ,rome4 ,a ,god ,indeed4 ,how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of--,apollo6444 ,i have to-day1 for the first time1 seen a god4 ,he stands in the ,vatican1 and follows1 with upthrown head and far-seeing eye1 the flight of the golden arrow that slays the serpent of the miasmatic marsh4 ,one feels a sad tenderness for the poor bleeding deity1 who hangs dead and helpless from a thousand crucifixes here in ,rome1 but to-day1 for the first time in my life1 ,i felt the impulse to fall on my knees and worship4 ,here is at last1 and indeed a god1 whose fine feet disdain the earth1 whose proud youth never knew suffering or defeat4 ,here is the embodiment of the ideal of the ,european--beauty1 health1 power4 ,how he must smile to stand here1 merely a statue1 in the place where the ,christian reigns1 amid luxury and pomp1 in the name of the sorrowful ,hebrew democrat who had not a place to lay his head4 ,apollo's ideal1 his worship1 still remains dominant1 though they call his religion by another name4 ,the ,european remains1 and always will remain1 a pagan2 none more pagan than the popes with their lust for temporal power4 ,only here in ,rome is it possible to realize the long struggle for supremacy between the ,european and ,semitic ideas2 for here is gathered the bulk of the relics of ,greece--mother and nurse of our race--who early broke the bonds of ,asiatic thought and sought her own development1 material rather than spiritual 7if one accepts the theory that spirit and matter are divisible71 sensuous rather than mystical1 concerned more with the well-being of the body and the freedom and vigour of the mind than with the condition of the soul4 ,she who threw herself with passion into the arms of ,nature1 and worshipped only the sublimated human characteristics and visible natural forces deified into exquisite personifications4 ,she who exalted the beauty and health of the body into a cult1 strove after the demonstrable truths of science1 and loved man as he was--humorously loved him with all his faults and limitations1 rather than an impossible ideal of him4 ,here in ,rome one finds all the records of the next great development of the ,european ,erd-geist--the growth of its genius in military1 social1 and political organization4 ,still1 as in ,greece1 clinging to the aristocratic ideal2 to the rule of the strong and gifted4 ,the fruit did not exist for the benefit of the vine2 the vine existed to produce1 to nourish1 to minister to the perfect culmination of its species in the fruit1 which drank its sap as of right4 ,here again the ,european followed ,nature1 that ,arch-,aristocrat who destroys multitudes to produce a few perfect specimens--whose right is always might4 ,the ,asian conquests brought again inroads of ,asian thought2 more particularly the thought of that small tribe1 the quintessential of ,semitism1 which was ever engaged in revolt against nature1 and maintaining democratic convictions in the teeth of all experience4 ,impatient of rulers1 but submissive to those who scourged the impulses of their appetites4 ,scornful of kings1 and turning from beauty and genius to exalt the insane and insect-ridden fakir with knotted unshorn locks who muttered vague prophecies4 ,struggling always to escape from the grip of the inevitable cruelties of natural forces by opposing to them bloody sacrifices and cruel self-restraints--flowering at last into that supreme incarnation of the ,semitic mind called ,jesus ,christ1 who wrested from asceticism a dream of a panacea for the brutalities of the laws of life4 ,the misshapen and undeveloped fruit of the tree of existence1 the windfalls--always a vast majority--received with ecstasy this new gospel1 absurd but fascinating1 which denied actualities and promised impossibilities4 ,the feeble majority clutched at a power denied them by nature1 and only by outwardly accepting the new tenets were the strong few able to maintain their old dominance4 ,nietsche's blond savage pouring in from the north found ,rome disintegrated by this ,asian influence1 and unable to discern that the new faith was not an integral part of the civilization whose splendour dazzled him1 accepted this theory of life as part of the lesson he set himself humbly to learn at the feet of ,italy4 ,hence followed that blind welter of medivalism2 the material genius of the ,european race struggling in the bonds of a creed entirely foreign and unsympathetic4 ,the strong still ruled1 as always1 but ruled by new formul1 and moistened with blood and kneaded by swords the hard paste of the ,european ,aryan was leavened by ,semitism4 ,not willingly2 never entirely4 ,a thousand years after ,rome's acceptance of the new cult the re-discovery of the old art and philosophy of ,greece intoxicated ,europe with joy4 ,here was something of her own--natural to her--sympathetic4 ,the ,renaissance became an ecstasy of negation of the heavy yoke under which her neck had so long been bowed4 ,learning again was glorious4 ,the philosopher dared assert his superiority to dirty1 ignorant scions of the gutter1 who had claimed equality with sovereigns by reason of not eating three meals a day1 and because of the virtue which lay in the frequent recitation of gibberish4 ,art abandoned its endless repetitions of a single theme1 and essayed in faltering delight to rival the glorious fragments of those who had made nature their model and had joyed to picture life in all its rich grace and charm4 ,the ,western world stood once more upon its feet and burst into a rapture of creation4 ,it laughed to scorn the narrow commands of ,semitic asceticism against the graven image4 ,once more it allowed the beauty of visible nature to pour through its veins in a rich1 fecundating flood4 ,but after all1 the leaven had reached every part1 and had tinctured it past any possible casting out4 ,never could the ,european be free of ,asian influence4 ,the pendulum has swung back and forth ever since--ever moving a little higher toward the side of the natural1 material development of the race1 but ever checked and brought back to the old ,jewish revolt against nature4 ,to-day the influence of ,asia shows itself in the absurdities of democracy1 the phantasies of socialism4 444 ,one of the most curious phases of the whole question is that the ,jew--dispersed throughout the ,western world--has entirely succumbed to the very ideas which he overthrew4 ,he is the artist1 the materialist of our times6 ,june #a4 ,a ,question of ,skulls4 ,the portrait busts of the ,romans were their highest achievements in art4 ,one sees literally thousands of them in ,italy1 and their painstaking accuracy is obvious4 ,what is to me most interesting is that the sculptured ,roman head and face might easily be taken for a portrait of the ,english people of to-day4 ,in any congregation of the ,english governing classes will be found constantly reproduced the long1 narrow skull1 the bold aquiline nose1 the stern lips and chin1 and that clean fleshless outline of the ,roman--resembling the keen modelling of the head of the high-bred horse--repeated so frequently in marble and porphyry in all these museums4 ,can it be that ,empire reproduces the type8 ,yet ethnologists trust more to the shape of the skull in the study of race affinities than to any other proof4 ,the modern ,italian skull is the extreme opposite in type2 is short and broad2 so indeed is the skull of all the continental races of ,europe4 ,i know that the skull measurements are not supposed to give this result1 but to the eye the ,english alone seem to possess this long1 narrow skull4 ,amusing also is it to remark that the ,roman women were not handsome4 ,in both races the resemblance between the sexes is too strong4 ,the fine1 bony1 equine type1 so admirable in the male ,roman and ,englishman1 becomes hardness in the women1 who lack seduction and charm4 ,also curious to note1 there is the same proud grace of costume and coiffure in the men2 the same ugliness and lack of taste in the arrangement of the hair and dress of the women of the two races4 ,london4 ,june #cj4 ,the ,modern ,woman and ,marriage4 ,h---- and ,i dined last night with ,mary ,l---- at the ,carleton1 and ,h---- asked her1 in his large generic fashion1 what everybody had been doing at home during our absence4 ,oh1 having their appendices cut out and getting divorced6 she said flippantly1 and ,h---- laughed outrageously1 so that people turned and stared4 ,it was probably the lobster we ate that made me think her remark more pathetic than funny while ,i turned it over in my mind all the long hours ,i lay awake4 ,howells has said1 with only humorous apology1 that his sex1 after nineteen hundred years1 is but imperfectly monogamous1 and yet our modern women are beginning to treat marriage so disrespectfully1 and change partners for life as light-heartedly as if the engagement was as unimportant as an engagement for a dance6 ,that even this imperfect measure of self-denial and fidelity has been arrived at by men seems to me to be almost solely due to the women of the past4 ,i know the ,church claims--in her usual arrogant way--that she should have the credit of it1 but ,lecky says in his ,european ,morals3 ,the first consequence of the prominence of asceticism was a profound discredit thrown upon the domestic virtues4 ,the extent to which this discredit was carried1 the intense hardness of heart and ingratitude manifested by the saints towards those who were bound to them by the closest of earthly ties1 is known to few who have not studied the original literature on the subject4 ,these things are commonly thrown into the shade by sentimentalists who delight in idealizing the devotees of the past4 ,to break by his ingratitude the heart of the mother who had borne him1 to persuade the wife who adored him that it was her duty to separate from him for ever1 to abandon his children1 uncared for and beggars1 to the mercies of the world1 was regarded by the true hermit as the most acceptable offering he could make to his ,god4 ,the root of family life is not mutual affection between man and woman1 because that1 alas6--whether it be founded on physical attraction or mental affinity--is subject to change4 ,age withers1 and custom stales it3 circumstance blights it1 a diversity of spiritual growth rends it apart1 and no man or woman can say with certainty that it will endure for a lifetime4 ,but the fluctuations to which wedded love is subject are unknown to the self-abnegating instinct of parenthood4 ,mutual affection for the offspring will hold together the most opposite natures2 it will rivet for all existence two lives that must otherwise inevitably spring asunder by instinctive repulsion4 ,love of offspring is in man a cultivated emotion2 in woman an instinct4 ,there are women lacking the instinct as there are calves born with two heads1 but for purposes of generalization these exceptions may be ignored4 ,in many of the lower orders of life the female is obliged to protect the young from the enmity of the male parent4 ,the alligator finds no meal so refreshing as a light lunch off his newly hatched children1 and the male swine shares this epicurean taste for tender offspring4 ,the stallion is a dangerous companion for the mare with colt at foot1 though the colt be of his own get1 and many species of male appear to experience a similar jealousy of the young while absorbing the attentions of the female4 ,speaking generally of the animal world1 the young are obliged to look to the mother entirely for food and care during the period of helplessness4 ,with savage man of the lower grade the paternal instinct is still faint and rudimentary1 and even where the woman has1 through long ages of endeavour1 succeeded in cultivating in the heart of the other parent a fair imitation of her own affection1 this affection1 being a cultivated emotion and not an instinct1 frequently breaks down under stress of misbehaviour or frowardness on the part of the child4 ,to this end1 then1--that end toward which the whole creation moves1--to effect this result of an equal care and affection for the offspring1 all the energies of women have been bent for ages4 ,she has fought polygamy with incessant hatred2 not only for its injury to herself1 but its constant menace to her children4 ,the secret strings of the woman's heart are wrapped about the fruit of her own flesh1 but the desire of the man is to the woman1 and this desire she has used as a lever to work her will--not consciously1 perhaps1 not with reasoned forethought1 but with the iron tenacity of blind instinct4 ,reasoned will may be baffled or deflected1 but water can by no means be induced to run up hill2 and so while woman has been apparently as fluidly yielding as water--to be led here and driven there according to the will of her master--she has stuck to her own ends with a silent persistency that has always tired out opposition at last4 ,she has1 like ,charity1 suffered all things1 endured all things2 she has been all things to all men4 ,she has yielded all outward show of authority2 she has submitted to be scoffed at as an inferior creation1 to be sneered at for feebleness and shallow-mindedness1 to be laughed at for chattering inconsequence1 and to be regarded as a toy and trifle to amuse man's leisure hours1 or as a dull drudge for his convenience1 for ends are not achieved by talking about them4 ,all the ages of masculine discussion of the ,eternal ,feminine show no reply from her1 but to-day the world is a woman's world4 ,civilization has1 under the unrelaxing pressure of endless generations of her persistent will1 been bent to her ends4 ,polygamy is routed1 and the errant fancy of the male tamed to yield itself to a single yoke4 ,she has1 with bare and bloody feet1 climbed the steep road of wide empire1 but to-day she stands at the top--mistress of the world4 ,man1 with his talents1 his strength1 and his selfishness1 has been tamed to her hand4 ,the sensual1 dominant brute with whom she began what ,max ,nordau calls the toilsome1 slow ascent of the long curve leading up to civilization1 stands beside her to-day1 hat in hand1 her lover--husband2 tender1 faithful1 courteous1 and indulgent4 ,this is the conquest that has been made1 the crown and throne achieved by the silent1 uneducated woman of the past4 ,monogamous marriage is the foundation stone on which has been built her power2 a power which1 while it has endured to her own benefit1 has not been exercised for selfish ends4 ,she has raised the relation between man and herself from a mere contract of sensuality or convenience to a spiritual sacrament within whose limits the purest and most exalted of human emotions find play4 ,for the coarse indulgence and bitter enmities of polygamy has been substituted the happiest of bonds1 in which the higher natures find room for the subtlest and completest felicities1 and within which the man1 the woman1 and the child form a holy trinity of mutual love and well-being4 ,to this jewel1 so hardly won1 so long toiled for1 it would be natural to suppose that woman would cling with all the force of her nature2 all the more as education broadened her capacity for reflection and deepened her consciousness of self4 ,on the contrary1 the little learning she has so far acquired seems1 as usual1 a dangerous thing1 and with the development of self-consciousness the keen1 unerring flair of her instinct for the one thing needful has been blunted and enfeebled4 ,it is not necessary to give undue weight to the blatant and empty-headed crew who announce marriage to be a failure1 and that women are tired of1 and will no longer submit to1 child-bearing4 ,there are crowing hens in all barnyards1 and their loud antics never materially affect the price of eggs4 ,but that the women of our own time should treat marriage--that hard-won1 dear-bought triumph--with such profligate recklessness amazes me4 ,we are making ducks and drakes of the treasure heaped up for us by our mothers4 ,how long will this imperfectly monogamous animal respect an institution which is all for our benefit1 if we ourselves regard it so lightly8 ,the modern woman is so spoiled1 so indulged1 that she does not realize how much a man gives and how little he gets in marriage4 ,he gives a half1 sometimes--indeed often--more than half1 of his earnings1 his name and its honour1 his protection and defence of her person1 and a lifelong responsibility for her and her children1 and he gets--what8 ,her person1 and it is to be hoped her affection4 ,the woman of the present day lays too much stress upon this gift of her person4 ,she appears to think that this gift alone renders man her eternal debtor4 ,to speak a little brutally1 he knows that he can easily buy a like gift elsewhere and for a less price4 ,i remember that last year ,alice complained of some of ,ned's small foibles4 ,oh1 you must be patient with him1 ,i said4 ,think how much he gives you2 home1 name1 support1 protection--everything4 ,he works hard for you every day4 ,you are under tremendous obligations to him4 ,well1 if you put it that way-- she answered resentfully1 but don't ,i give him love and affection in return8 ,yes1 ,i countered triumphantly1 but he gives you equal love and all these other things beside4 ,it seems to me there's no question who gives most4 ,she opened her eyes rather wide and looked thoughtful4 ,july #ag4 ,the ,ideal ,husband4 ,it being the silly season a controversy is raging in the daily papers as to the ideal wife and the ideal husband1 and much correspondence is occurring under various anonyms4 ,alas6--the only ideal husband who ever lived married the only ideal wife ever born4 ,they were cut off in the flower of their youth--some time during the first years of the ,pliocene ,period--and minute fossil fragments of their bones are now worn as relics by pious celibates1 and are said to have worked miracles4 ,of so potent an essence are their mere memories1 it is said his knightly ghost haunts the rosy chambers of all maiden dreams1 and men seeking ,her like find all other women less desirable because of her fabled virtues4 ,i suppose all girls see him more or less in their lovers4 ,imagination deceptively moulds their features to a similacrum of that noble legendary person1 until the fierce light which beats upon the married reveals the unprepossessing traits of plain everyday humanity4 ,yet every woman begins her sentimental life with hopes unabated by the depressing failures of others4 ,a most quaint and charming creature--this ideal who haunts the dreams of maidenhood6 ,compounded all of purity and passion1 of chivalry and grace1 of vigour and beauty4 ,he can in moments of excitement tie the poker into love-knots1 and has a hand of velvet with which to touch the dreamer's curls4 ,a ruler of men1 he is to be led by a single golden hair4 ,capable of volcanic passion1 which renders him indifferent to meals or to fatigue1 he can yet be moved to these ecstasies by but a single member of the sex1 and despite snubs or coquetry can live for decades upon the mere hope of her favour4 ,he excels in all manly prowess and diversions1 and yet is never guilty of causing the loved one to mourn his absence during a golf widowhood4 ,he adores poetry and is superior to all vulgar commercialism1 and yet manages--in that simple fashion known only to ideals--to accumulate a fortune and be generous in the matter of diamonds4 ,he combines in one stalwart person all the virtues of ,galahad1 ,arthur1 ,launcelot1 and ,baron ,rothschild4 ,later on the wife develops an ideal less magnificently ornamental than this choice collection of bric--brac virtues4 ,the married idol must be thoroughly domesticated3 prepared to throw himself with enthusiasm into the study of croup and measles2 is deeply versed in the matter of female domestic service1 and yet so full of tact as to be able to obliterate himself at moments of domestic crisis4 ,like the ideal servant1 he must be never in the way and never out of it4 ,he must be uncritical of failure1 yet capable of enthusiasm for success2 unselfish as a saint1 yet commanding the secret of worldly achievement2 and above all he must be hopelessly blind to the virtues and charms of every woman but his wife4 ,taste as to details may differ according to temperament1 nationality1 and social condition1 but1 broadly speaking1 this delightful person with his eccentric combination of qualities figures in the abstract affections of all women4 ,but these are dreams2 diversions of those pleasant moments when the human moth allows itself1 with futile richness of imagination1 to consider the star as a possible companion1 and it seems useless to hope that such a person will ever appear in this sinful and unworthy world4 ,perhaps from time to time a man who faintly reflects the luminous charms of this knightly husband-saint does arise to cheer and comfort the weaker sex and keep their hopes and ideals alive1 but the ,mauds1 and ,charlottes1 and ,mrs4 ,s4 ,f4 ,j4s1 who have been extolling his attractions in print1 seem not to have prayerfully considered whether they themselves were fit mates for1 or capable of satisfying the ideals of1 this wholly impossible he4 ,there is far less talk about the ideal wife--for two reasons1 ,i suppose4 ,one is that men have less time for chattering generalizations1 and the other--alas6--is that men are far less interested in women than are women in men4 ,the ,american is supposed to more nearly approach this high standard than the men of any other nationality1 but that typical ,american husband of novels has1 ,i must confess1 always seemed to me a paltry1 bourgeois creature1 with the soul of a bank clerk1 a neglected mind1 and with a low estimate and a sort of amused indulgence of women as pretty1 fantastic1 inconsequent children with an insane greed of luxury4 ,of course1 it is heresy to say so1 but my observation leads me to think that ,american women hold a general position far inferior to the women of ,europe4 ,the ,american man is pre-eminently generous to them in material things4 ,often while he slaves and goes shabby himself he is willing to metaphorically back a van up to the coal-hole and fill the cellar full of jewels1 but he denies to his women that whose price is above rubies--his own society4 ,why is ,american society made up of women8 ,what is the cause of our superfluity of women's clubs1 committees1 and classes8 ,what place has the middle-aged or elderly woman in ,america except as the mother of her daughters1 or the dispenser of her husband's hospitalities and charities8 ,after the period of sex-attraction has passed women have no power in ,america4 ,who ever sees here1 as is so often seen in ,europe1 an elderly woman's drawing-rooms filled with politicians1 financiers1 artists1 who come for the refreshment and stimulation of her ideas and conversation8 ,mentally ,american women do not interest ,american men4 ,july #bc4 ,a ,new ,law of ,health4 ,louisa has become a raging ,christian ,scientist4 ,a distant memory returns to me4 ,once upon a time there was a little girl who1 after the manner of her sex1 feared greatly all and sundry of certain fierce beasts1 among which were to be enumerated rats1 mice1 bumblebees1 and more vividly and especially ,,dogs--whose culminating direfulness was only to be expressed in italicized capitals4 ,on a day1 being bidden to go across the village street to deliver a note to an opposite neighbour1 she set out1 radiating the pleasing results of soap1 brushes1 and a clean pinafore1 but on reaching the gate came to a sudden pause4 ,a specimen of the worst of enemies1 who seemed to the perspective of an eye only three feet from the ground to easily rival an elephant in size1 lay prone across the path1 lolling an intimidating tongue1 and rolling an eye which1 though outwardly calm1 might be guessed to conceal a horrid intent4 ,there was a swish of short starched skirts1 a twinkle of bare knees1 and appeal was made to that infallible power and knowledge which ,providence has so wisely placed in mothers4 ,being a person of nimble imagination this particular parent1 realizing that a mastiff as large in proportion to her own inches as this one was to the normal height of five years might well daunt her own courage1 forbore to remonstrate or use reason4 ,here1 she said placidly1 is a lump of sugar4 ,put it on your tongue and hold it there4 ,of course1 no dog will touch a person who has sugar on her tongue4 ,and so fortified1 ,five ,years set forth with a conviction of immunity that carried her triumphantly past the source of terror4 ,the incident is not in itself1 perhaps1 of historic importance1 but is a particularly vivid example of the absolute divorce in the undeveloped mind between the laws of cause and effect1 and in no department of human thought has that divorce continued so long as in the science of health4 ,every one of us can revive out of childhood a memory of the balm that overspread the injured temple when a sympathetic nurse bestowed the richly deserved spanking upon the offending chair corner that had caused the pain1 or applied the clearly indicated plaster of a kiss2 and medicine in its long career has followed the intelligent example of the nursery4 ,but while medicine as a science has passed out of this stage with the general growth of knowledge1 the bulk of mankind still continues to put sugar on the tongue as a protection against dogs1 to castigate chair corners1 and to apply remedies as unknown to the pharmacopia as the feminine kiss4 ,perhaps the stolen potato carried in the pocket1 or the bit of red flannel bound on the left wrist1 are not so trusted a remedy for the pangs of rheumatism as they were fifty years ago1 and the dried heart of a mouse worn in a bag about the neck seems to have lost its potency against epileptic seizures1 yet the very large sums spent annually upon patent medicines--rivalling in amount what is known in temperance circles as the ,drink ,bill--and the rise and popularity of innumerable mushroom cures and systems1 proves that the laws of health are still as heterogeneous from the intelligence of the majority of mankind as are the laws of the differential calculus4 ,it would be diverting1 were it not so pathetic1 to see the constant endeavour on the part of the multitude to lift itself by its own hygienic boot-straps in the form of barefoot cures1 mind cures1 prayer cures1 cures by clairvoyance1 by magnetism1 red or blue lights1 or by pilgrimages and relics4 ,the child moving about in worlds unrealized is still the father and epitome of the man1 and sees no reason why his own will1 or that of some ,power wishing him individually well1 should not break through the immutable sequence of cause and effect1 or upset the machinery of the universe in his behalf4 ,his childish ,let's pretend sweeps away for the moment the dull persistency of facts and opens a world where it is possible to eat one's cake and have it too1 and after dancing escape the bill for the fiddling4 ,speaking accurately there is1 of course1 no such thing as a new law of health--such laws being of their very nature eternal--but a consciousness of the hygienic code is as new as was the discovery not more than a century ago of the forces of electricity1 which had1 though the most powerful agent upon the earth1 lain ready to our hands unrecognized throughout recorded time4 ,the unfortunate fact that the world of knowledge is not a globe is shown by this--that if1 in setting out toward a fixed goal of truth1 one's face is turned in the wrong direction1 no length of travel1 no miracle of persistency1 ever conducts to the haven where one would be4 ,a truth of moral geography by no means universally accepted as yet1 and indeed certain inherent tendencies of human nature1 will forever prevent its unanimous acceptance1 a chronic childishness of mind being so common that one would almost despair of the acceptance of any new truth1 were it not that the adult intelligence of the few eventually imposes its conclusions upon the multitude1 or enforces at least an outward concurrence4 ,the immature-minded many are always lusting after a sign of the wonderful1 and kicking against the pricks of plain truth4 ,bullied out of crediting the existence of ghosts and fairies1 they earnestly engage in burning witches1 and shamed out of such mistaken zeal fling themselves into the arms of spiritualist mediums1 flirt with the theosophists1 or die under the ministrations of ,christian ,scientists4 ,the whole history of supernaturalism has been the history of travel in the wrong direction--a wrong turning that had its beginning in a childish impatience that would attain to its end by sudden leaps in lieu of dusty plodding along the highway that led by slow windings to the desired end4 ,man found painful barriers of time1 space1 and physical decay fencing him out of his ,eden of gratified desire1 and like a child he straightway fell to dreaming of flying carpets1 of magic lamps1 of transmutable metals1 of fountains of youth and elixirs of life4 ,at first these miracles were thought to be the gifts of shadowy1 higher powers1 who were happily superior to the cruel limits of material existence1 and might give their assistance according to their capricious elfin fancy4 ,later1 man began to believe that in himself lay the powers which were to break the chains that bound him the unhappy slave of distance1 of the need for labour1 of the tyrannies of nature1 with her resistless heat and cold1 storm and flood1 pain and age4 ,a glimmering of the truth1 this1 at last1 but only a faint reflection on the horizon of the rising sun1 on which he had turned his back4 ,there followed a period of fasts and macerations whose courage and persistency was to make the gods tremble in respectful terror--a triumph over material passions which should give an occult power over material limitations4 ,the ,buddhists stood moveless and speechless until the birds reared their young in their hair1 and thereby were supposed to grow so mighty that the mountains rocked beneath the weight of their thoughts1 and space and time were annihilated4 ,superb energies1 passionate patience and ardour1 master intellects1 were wasted in the long endeavour to find some means by which nature could be conquered and man made master of circumstance--all given fruitlessly2 thrown into that bottomless pit of error never to be filled4 ,and these earnest1 misguided travellers--so blinded were they--when one of their number turned about in the other direction promptly fell upon him and beat him into submission1 as one who would check the struggle towards light and knowledge4 ,even now that the fact is accepted that nature is to be conquered by her own natural means only1 and that supernaturalism is a waste and quaking morass upon which no edifice of truth is to be reared1 there are many--sadly many--descendants of ,lot's wife casting longing glances back to the ,sodom of their intellectual sins4 ,it is nothing to them that having once faced about in the right direction the same amount of effort1 properly directed1 has achieved that for which the supernaturalists had for ages striven in vain4 ,eating his due amount of food and attaching no mystical significance to anything1 man tore his way through the heart of mountains1 flashed his thoughts under the wastes of ocean1 sent his voice across a thousand miles1 sailed into the teeth of the wind1 devoured space with steam1 reared palaces more lofty than ,aladdin dreamed of1 and--his own ,kobold--dived into the darkness and fetched up gold and gems more than the fairy tales ever knew4 ,he made himself lord of the visible earth1 of time1 of distance1 of wave and wind4 ,he laid his hands upon all the forces which had awed his childhood and forced them to work miracles beside which the fables of the ,kabbalists seemed tame and feeble4 ,and in spite of this there remain men and women who are more awed by a banjo flying through a dark room than by the telephone2 who find the untying of knots in a cabinet1 or the clutches of damp hands when the lights are turned down1 more important than the automobile4 ,it is the attitude of mind of a child1 who is more interested by rabbits coming out of a conjurer's hat than by wireless telegraphy4 ,there is as great an inequality in the inheritance of health as in the heirship of wealth or brains4 ,some are born with a fortune of vigour and soundness so large that not a lifetime of eager squandering will leave them poor1 and others enter the world paupers of so dire a need that no charity of medicine will ever raise them to comfort2 but most of us have just that mediocre legacy of vitality which makes us indistinguishable units in the mass4 ,it lies in the hands of each to improve or waste that property as he chooses1 for there are self-made men physically as well as financially1 and spendthrifts of health come to as sorrowful an end as prodigals of gold4 ,the body is a realm where a wise ruler brings happiness as surely as a foolish one ensures distress1 and wisdom here1 as elsewhere1 lies in the observance of natural laws4 ,it is just these natural laws--simple1 severe1 inexorable--against which the majority chafe1 for which some magic pill or potion is offered as a substitute4 ,temperance1 cleanliness1 activity1 are the three cardinal virtues of the body1 as faith1 hope1 and charity are of the soul4 ,as tithes of mint1 anise1 and cumin are easier to render than the observance of law1 justice1 and judgment1 so burnt-offerings of drugs are offered to the ,goddess ,hygeia in place of obedience to her regimen4 ,after the excesses of the carnival came the brief rigours of the ,lenten retreat1 and after the ,fat ,tuesday of gluttony comes the short atonement of the ,cure at some mineral spring1 where the priests of health are yielded a complete but passing submission4 ,it is easier to repeat incessant formul of prayer than persistently to keep one's self unspotted from the world1 and it is easier for fat old sinners to paddle about barefoot in the dew at a ,kneippe cure than to abandon at once and forever their little darling sins of greediness or indolence4 ,one hears a constant cry of ,lo1 ,here6 and ,lo1 ,there6 and all the world rushes to sit hopefully under blue glass or swathe itself in pure wool in the ever-renewed belief that some substitute may be found for the fatiguing necessity of obedience to the three rules4 ,even yet ill health is considered as a sort of supernatural visitation rather than a certain result of the infringement of plain laws4 ,i remember reading once a clever book1 less popular than it deserved to be1 which told of a country in the heart of the ,andes in which the intelligent inhabitants looked upon crime as the unfortunate result of congenital temperament2 a disease demanding sympathy and treatment2 but ill health aroused only condemnation as a wilful infringement of wise and well understood laws4 ,a bronchial case caused arrest and imprisonment1 and friends of the family considered it rude to cough in the presence of the criminal's unfortunate family2 but a severe attack of embezzlement was cause of polite condolence1 and cards were left upon the invalid with kind inquiries as to whether he was receiving the best moral attention4 ,an idea less whimsical than it may seem4 ,paracelsus--who was accused of magic because his cures were effected by such simple means--always asserted that if he were allowed to absolutely direct a child's diet from its birth he could build up a constitution which might without difficulty be made to last out a century in undiminished vigour2 and there are those who are prepared to accept literally the age of the antediluvian patriarchs1 on the ground that as at that time bread had not been discovered1 digestions never called upon to struggle with starch found no difficulty in sustaining life to ,methuselah's term4 ,it is certain that the subtle but supremely important chemistry of nutrition has been shamefully neglected in favour of matters far less germane to happiness1 and that the same skill which has developed the science of bacteriology and pursued the most elusive microbe to his most secret lair might have been more profitably applied4 ,after the microbe has been found and named his dangerousness remains unattenuated4 ,how much more valuable would be a knowledge--equally attainable--of exactly the amount and nature of the food for the best results of growth and health4 ,there is a farmer ant in the ,west ,indies1 who1 in a carefully prepared soil1 compounded of flowers and leaves1 grows a tiny fungus on which he feeds4 ,the eggs of this ant seem1 when hatched1 to produce creatures all alike1 but through different feeding they develop into warriors1 farmers1 or queens1 as may be needed4 ,if through an accident the supply of warriors is dangerously lowered1 larv being fed with the meat which nourishes farmers are transferred to the soldiers' nursery1 and change of diet produces change of nature4 ,ah6 could we too know upon what meat to feed our ,csars1 or ,roosevelts1 that they might grow so great4 ,what a much more important achievement that would be than the naming of microbes which would be impotent to injure a perfectly nourished body4 ,to know the law1 to practise it daily--there is the secret of the fountain of youth1 the elixir of life4 ,these ,christian ,scientists1 who practise the latest abracadabra to conjure away the effects of fixed causes1 who dream that pain arises from sin1 and can be abolished by faith1 childishly overlook the fact that pain in itself is no evil1 but rather a good4 ,it is simply a telegraphic message sent over the nerve-wires to the brain to inform it that some member of the physical commonwealth is in danger and requires help4 ,not by magic is health to be obtained4 ,flying carpets will not reach it4 ,fasts and prayers will not call it down from heaven4 ,fixed1 immortal1 the laws continue4 ,always unchanged2 always inexorable4 ,the wages of the sin of disobedience are disease4 ,july #bd4 ,dead1 ,dead1 ,dead4 ,i wonder if there is still anyone in all the world to whom this date is important8 ,and after all why should it be8 ,in twenty-three years a whole generation has come into life2 has wept and laughed1 and loved and married1 and produced another generation to do the same thing--and who remembers the roses that withered even yesterday8 99 99 99 99 99 ,oh1 wild1 loud wind1 ,who1 moaning1 as in pain1 ,beats with wet fingers at my door in vain1 ,dost thou come from the graves with that sad cry ,which pleads for entrance1 and denied1 goes by ,to faint in tears amidst the freezing rain8 ,in here the live red fire glows again4 ,of life and living we are full and fain4 ,here is no thought of death1 or men that die-- ,oh1 wild1 loud wind6 ,why shouldst thou come then to my window pane ,to wring thy hands and weep1 and sore complain ,that they alone all sad and cold must lie ,in wet1 dark graves1 and we breathe not a sigh8 ,we have forgot4 ,the quick and dead are twain1 ,oh1 wild1 loud wind6 ,september #f4 ,verbal ,magic4 ,j---- was reading me parts of his new book in manuscript to-day1 and ,i objected that it lacked style4 ,why1 all the successful writers tell me that style is unnecessary1 he said in an injured tone4 ,d---- says he just writes ahead and pays no attention to it4 ,he says that the laboriousness of ,stevenson and ,flaubert has 'gone out' and the public are bored by it4 ,and just see how successful ,d---- is6 ,what was one to say8 ,i merely tried to look convinced and begged him to continue4 ,and yet ,emerson said that when the distraught ,hamlet cried to the mailed spirit of his father1 ,what may this mean1 ,that thou1 dead corse1 again in complete steel ,revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon8 he was so possessed by the verbal magic of the phrase that he could attend no more to the rest of the play4 ,perhaps it is some penetrating assonance in that complete steel--in those sibilant repetitions of revisit'st thus the glimpses--that makes its witchery4 ,poe carefully analyzed the science of it--which is no science at all1 but the inscrutable magic of inspiration4 ,such lines as ,came up through the lair of the lion ,with love in her luminous eyes are built upon that theory of liquid consonants and open vowels1 and it has no magic at all1 while ,to ,annie--which was written without conscious plan--is full of it4 ,her grand family funerals is instinct with that prickling delight of the magic of words1 as is the wizard rout of the bodiless airs that blew through her casement open to the night4 ,tennyson's famous alliteration1 ,the moaning of doves in immemorial elms ,and the murmur of innumerable bees lacks glamour4 ,one scents the intention4 ,ay6 ,ay6 oh ay6 ,the wind that blows the brier recaptures the elusive charm1 because of its wild1 unconscious lyrism4 ,fancy these absurd1 ignorant young writers talking of style having gone out6 ,apparently they suppose it means fine writing1 in which nothing is more lacking than style4 ,the essence of style1 ,i suppose1 is in the inspired1 instinctive choice of words which present suddenly to the mind a picture of what the writer is talking about4 ,the whole clou of ,hamlet's phrase is that glimpses of the moon4 ,it makes one see the vague1 intangible momentariness of the apparition4 ,sir ,thomas ,browne's famous drums and tramplings of three conquests gives just that flashing picture of the banners and rolling sounds of those long vanished invasions4 ,and ,keats's ,casements opening on the foam ,of perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn presents the indescribable to the eye4 ,there is1 of course1 that other element of musical quality1 and ,hamlet's phrase is delicious for its strange1 broken sibilations1 but without the picture the alliterations and vowel sounds are but dead things4 ,all the fine1 rolling1 organ-like sonority of ,swinburne's ,hymn to ,proserpine would be tedious without the impressions of light and colour that palpitate through the lines4 ,for style ,i can think of no better modern example than the concluding paragraph in ,lafcadio ,hearn's paper on the dragon-fly in the volume called ,kotto3 444 then let me hope that the state to which ,i am destined will not be worse than that of a cicade or of a dragon-fly2--climbing the cryptomerias to clash my tiny cymbals in the sun1--or haunting1 with soundless flicker of amethyst and gold1 some holy silence of lotus pools4 ,october #h4 ,hamlet4 ,old ,mr4 ,a---- was most interesting to-night at dinner on the subject of the various ,hamlets he has seen--apparently every actor of any importance who has attempted the part in the last sixty years2 not only the ,english-speaking ones1 but ,german and ,french as well4 ,after dwelling upon all manner of details of the varied dress1 business1 scenery1 and so forth1 of the different men who have attempted the role1 ,i asked him which of them all he considered to have been the best1 and he decided after some hesitation that not one of them satisfied him completely4 ,not one of them all1 he concluded1 seemed to me to have a clear1 comprehensive grasp of the essentials of the part4 ,each appeared to try to express some one phase of it1 but you felt the thing as a whole escaped them4 ,which is1 perhaps1 not to be wondered at1 since1 so far1 it appears1 as a complete conception1 to have escaped every one4 ,no one of the ,shakespearian scholars has expressed what definite meaning the play in its entirety conveyed to his mind4 ,mr4 ,a----'s talk interested me immensely1 much more than any of those long-winded mystical triumphs of verbiage the ,germans perpetrate4 ,i have seen but two eminent actors in the part4 ,booth's ,hamlet was1 of course1 only a noble piece of elocution1 not an interpretation1 and without vitality4 ,mounet ,sully--but then all ,frenchmen believe ,hamlet mad1 despite his express warning to ,horatio-- ,how strange or odd so'er ,i bear myself1 ,as ,i1 perchance1 hereafter shall think meet ,to put an antic disposition on 444 ,and of his confidence to ,guildenstern that he is but ,mad nor'-nor'-west4 ,when the wind is southerly ,i know a hawk from a hernshaw4 ,of course1 ,i've a theory of my own about ,hamlet4 ,it seems to me that the difficulty most persons experience in endeavouring to penetrate what they call the mystery of the ,prince's character arises from the fact that they read the play either carelessly or with some prepossession1 to fit which they bend all that he says or does4 ,the ,german critics blunder through forgetting how essentially sane and unmystical was ,shakespeare in every fibre of his mind4 ,to him the cloudy symbolism of the second part of ,faust would have sounded very like nonsense4 ,his interest was in man--the normal1 typical man and his passions of hate1 love1 ambition1 revenge1 envy1 humour4444 ,to me the key to ,hamlet seems to be a proper regard for the attitude of the mind of the seventeenth century toward the belief in ghosts4 ,the ,englishman of ,shakespeare's day hardly doubted their existence1 but was unsettled as to the nature and origin of spectres4 ,whether they were truly shades of the departed ones which they resembled1 or were merely horrid delusions of the mind1 projected upon it by some malign and hellish influence1 they were not clear4 ,hamlet says3 ,the spirit that ,i have seen ,may be the devil3 and the devil hath power ,to assume a pleasing shape2 yea1 and perhaps1 ,out of my weakness and melancholy1 7as he is very potent with such spirits7 ,abuses me to damn me3 ,i'll have grounds ,more relative than this4444 ,personally1 my method of endeavouring to clear vexed questions is to make an effort to conceive of my own emotions and actions in a like difficulty4 ,to understand ,hamlet ,i try to imagine what my frame of mind would be if ,p---- had died1 suddenly and tragically1 during my absence4 ,hastening home in all the turmoil of grief and shock ,i find ,h---- has grasped all ,p----'s fortune and has promptly married ,m----1 whom ,i had expected to find as afflicted as ,i4 ,naturally ,i would be deeply horrified and offended and greatly puzzled over such a situation4 ,when one injects the warmth and power of one's own emotions into a situation by personifying it with one's own kinspeople one begins to realize ,hamlet's condition of mind prior to the appearance of the ,ghost4 ,a ghostly visitation not being imaginable nowadays1 one may suppose one's self having a vivid and circumstantial dream1 making all these curious conditions clear by an explanation of hideous criminality4 ,the hysterical distraction of ,hamlet's interview with the ,ghost seems natural enough when one pictures one's own horror and incredulity on awaking from such a vision4 ,of course1 a reaction would follow the first red lust for denunciation and for revenge of the deep damnation of the taking off of the helpless victim4 ,one would be continually paralyzed in the very act of vengeance by the remembrance that one had no better authority than a dream for proof of crime in those one had always loved and trusted4 ,the thing would seem so incredible1 and yet the dream would explain all the puzzling facts so clearly4 ,to a young and noble mind1 evil in those one loves appears impossible4 ,one would be always fighting the thought--which pulled the very ground of confidence from under one's feet--and yet always laying traps to prove one's suspicions true1 as the jealous notoriously do2 wishing yet fearing to know the truth4 ,hamlet's varying fits of violence and indecision seem natural enough under the circumstances1 and not a sign of madness nor of eccentricity of character4 ,he is called the ,melancholy ,dane1 but to a young confiding heart the first revelation of the possibility of filth and criminality in those near in blood and love causes distrust of all the world2 arouses a mad desire for escape out of a cruel existence where such spiritual squalour is possible4 ,if one will bring the situation home to one's self in this way--vivifying it with one's own heart--,hamlet no longer seems a strange and alien soul1 but one's very own self caught in a web of horrid circumstance1 and doing and being just what one's self would do and be in like case4 ,temptation to suicide1 murder1 unpacking one's heart with words1 bitterness to1 and distrust of1 the innocent ,ophelia1 treachery1 doubt1 indecision1--all are inevitable temptations4 ,looked at in this way1 there is no mystery at all in the play if one reads it straight and simply1 and from the human point of view--which view was always ,shakespeare's1 ,i think4 ,december #ac4 ,ghosts4 ,the ,r----s are home this week from ,california1 and full of a surprising tale of their experience in renting and trying to live in a haunted house4 ,they had no idea of its unpleasant character when they took it4 ,indeed they decided upon it principally because of the sunniness of the rooms and its generally cheerful character4 ,the only suspicious feature was the very moderate price2 but that appears to have aroused only gratitude instead of suspicion in their minds4 ,the sounds they heard1 which finally drove them out of the house1 were such commonplace ones--the clinking of medicine bottles1 the mixing of stuff in saucers--that one hardly believes they could have invented them4 ,invention would certainly have conceived a more dramatic excuse for abandoning a house4 ,also1 they solemnly aver that it was only upon their giving up the lease that they heard the story of the almost incredible tragedy of the former owner's death4 ,there certainly must be some manifestations such as are commonly known as ghostly4 ,i never have come across any personally1 but the testimony is too frequent and persistent for doubt4 ,some phenomena have undoubtedly been observed of which the laws are not yet understood4 ,the psychologists profess to be working in this direction1 but the psychology of our day is still in about the condition of astronomy and chemistry in the days of the thirteenth-century astrologers and alchemists--mere blind flounderings4 ,we need a psychological ,copernicus badly4 ,i am convinced that what are commonly called superstitions are really observed results of unknown causes4 ,when ,i was a child the negroes always warned one that it brought bad luck to go near a stable when one had a cut finger4 ,nothing could seem more blindly uncorrelated1 and yet it is now known that the germ of tetanus breeds only in manure1 which shows that their observation was correct1 though they had no conception of germs1 or microbes4 ,it was an old superstition1 derided by the medical profession1 that there was some merit in hanging red curtains at the windows of a smallpox patient2 yet recently some interesting discoveries have been made as to the effect of red light upon sufferers from this disease4 ,again there is the old-wife's belief that the howling of a dog presages death4 ,i saw no sense in that until ,i was brought in contact with death for the first time1 and then discovered that a person near the end1 and immediately afterwards1 emitted a powerful odour1 very like the smell of tuberoses4 ,in two cases within my experience this odour remained in the death-chamber1 despite persistent airing and cleaning1 for fully a year4 ,my sense of smell is extremely acute1 and no one seemed to remark this odour but myself1 nor have ,i ever heard or seen any mention of the phenomenon being noticed by others2 but naturally a dog1 whose sense of smell must be a thousand times more acute than mine1 is aware of this strange1 half repulsive perfume1 which has the effect upon his nerves produced also1 apparently1 by moonlight and by music4 ,if fresh rose leaves are shut closely into a drawer until they have thoroughly dried and crumbled1 they will be found1 when removed1 entirely scentless1 but the drawer will retain for years some intangible emanation which they have given off1 and this will permeate any object left in the drawer4 ,recent delicate experiments have shown how the violence of emotion will affect the weight of human beings1 and no doubt1 in supreme crises of feeling1 living bodies may lose this weight by the throwing off of some emanation which may linger for a long time in the immediate surroundings4 ,it has been discovered that many objects retain luminosity1 after being long exposed to powerful rays2 a luminosity invisible to our sight1 but sufficient to make dim photographs upon highly sensitized plates4 ,the ghosts are very probably explicable on some such theory as this4 ,some individuals are like these extremely sensitive plates4 ,the emanations thrown out in the condition of intense emotion affect them1 and give them an impression of sounds or sights which appear1 in our present state of ignorance1 to be supernatural4 ,of course1 any psychologist or scientist would pooh-pooh this hypothesis of mine1 if it were made public1 but equally they would have sniffed fifty years ago at a guess at wireless telegraphy1 or the ,rontgen ray1 or the radioactivity of radium4 ,after all1 however1 they are right in thinking that guesses are not very valuable unless one has the industry to demonstrate their accuracy4 ,december #bj4 ,amateur ,saints4 ,if there is any one thing more particularly repulsive to me than another it is the way the average clerical person speaks of religious things4 ,one would suppose that such matters1 if one really believed them1 would be the profoundest sentiments of one's nature1 and be mentioned with the reserve and reverence with which the lay person treats the deeper sentiments1 such as love1 honour1 or patriotism4 ,a little pamphlet came by mail to-day1 which proved to be a sort of begging letter from a community of ,protestant clergymen1 who are undertaking to imitate monasticism in ,america4 ,under a heading of a cross is this text1 ,if we have sown unto you spiritual things1 is it a great matter if we shall reap your worldly things8 ,and there follows an appeal for assistance in building a monastery on the ,hudson4 ,the language of this pamphlet is the usual language of begging letters1 only with that flavour of smug religiosity and bland business-like dealing with matters of the soul which amazes the lay mind4 ,this community of1 presumably1 able-bodied men who desire to reap of our worldly things naively sets forth in the following programme the manner in which they intend to occupy their time3 #e ,a4,m4 ,rise4 #e4cj to #f4 ,meditation in ,chapel4 #f4 ,morning ,prayer and ,prime4 #f4ej to #h4 ,celebrations of the ,holy ,eucharist4 #h4 ,breakfast4 #i4cj4 ,terce and ,intercessions4 #ab ,m4 ,sext and ,none4 #ab4cj ,p4,m4 ,dinner4 #a to #a4bj4 ,recreation 7in common74 #d4de4 ,evensong4 #e4ae to #e4de4 ,meditation4 #f4 ,supper4 #f4cj to #g4ae4 ,recreation 7in common74 #h4cj4 ,compline4 #aj4 ,lights extinguished4 ,and it is to permit them to spend their days in such fruitful fashion that one is called upon to contribute the money earned by men who toil6 ,that many have already contributed is to be inferred from the fact that this community has become possessed of seventy-five acres of valuable land1 and has spent some forty thousand dollars on the erection of a monastery4 ,of course1 there are worthless idlers everywhere1 but very few of them in our practical day assume their indolence as a merit1 or call upon their neighbours to support them1 in the name of the deeper sentiments of life4 ,hare1 in ,a ,pair of ,spectacles remarks cynically1 when asked to help an indigent widow1 ,oh1 ,i know that indigent widow2 she comes from ,sheffield4 ,one knows these sturdy beggars4 ,they come from out the ,middle ,ages1 when it was still felt that there was some special virtue in abandoning the obvious duties of life to take up others more appealing to the ,saint2 more appealing precisely because they were anything but obvious4 ,the very name of ,saint is a stench in my heretical nostrils4 ,i never knew or read of one who was not a vain egoist1 with all the cruelty1 obstinacy1 and selfishness of the egoist4 ,read the ,lives of the ,saints4 ,not one of these absurd chronicles but is a repulsive tale of an insane vanity trampling on the rights and feelings of others to achieve notoriety4 ,st4 ,louis is a sample of the type3 renouncing his duties to his unlucky wife1 squabbling with every other monarch unfortunate enough to be associated with him1 and wrecking the expeditions in which he joined because of some petty qualm about his meagre1 unimportant little soul4 ,the person who extorts my reverence is not ,saint ,elizabeth1 but that poor boy1 her husband1 bearing the torments of her hysterical squeamishness with such noble patience and chivalry4 ,one can picture that tired1 sleepy young fellow1 busy with his duties of government all day1 dragged out of his proper slumber to behold his ridiculous wife climbing out of bed to lie on the cold floor in her nightgown1 while the attendants stood about and crossed themselves in admiration4 ,st4 ,theresa seems to have been a sort of ,moyen-,age ,hedda ,gabler2 no better than an ecclesiastic flirt4 ,go through the whole list and the story is always the same4 ,one never hears of a person with a sense of humour--which implies a sense of proportion--setting up as a saint4 ,the breath in the nostrils of these gentry is the stare of the unthinking multitude1 who are awed by anything out of the ordinary4 ,and yet it takes so much finer patience1 so much greater self-abnegation1 to do the plain duties of life4 ,i feel far more like crossing myself when ,i look at the humble commuter1 who has sat on a stool all day1 and travels with his arms full of parcels to that cheap1 draughty cottage in the cold dusk of ,lonelyville1 to listen patiently to ,emily's recitals of ,johnny's cut finger and ,mary ,ann's impudence4 ,it is upon such as he that civilization and the world's happiness and sunshine depend4 ,he has done a man's duties2 upon him depends a helpless woman1 and innocent children4 ,his tedious1 petty drudgeries rise to nobility compared with the lives of these fat and lazy grubs with their complines and sexts and primes4 ,st4 ,theresa seems vulgar to me contrasted with the anxious ,emily cheapening chops at the butcher's1 and fighting around the bargain counter to make her laborious commuter's meagre salary stretch over the needs of her family4 ,it requires a finer and sweeter1 a more saintly nature to walk the floor patiently with a teething baby than to pose as a saint on the floor to no one's benefit but one's own4 ,ah1 those humble1 lovely souls bearing the whips and scorns of ,time1 and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes--their commonplace daily halos make the saints' diadems look like imitation jewels4 ,january #a1 #aijj4 ,the ,zeitgeist4 ,back from the gates of the ,city of ,life there runs a great highway1 whose beginning is in the land--east of the sun and west of the moon--where the unborn dwell4 ,it is a broad and well-trodden road2 beaten smooth by the feet of the hurrying generations that tread sharp upon one another's heels as they press forward out of grey and airless nothingness into the warm atmosphere of existence4 ,by the side of this road lies a chimra1 with woman's breasts couched upon lion's paws4 ,it is the old direful ,questioner of ,thebes2 the ,propounder of ,riddles2 the prodigious ,asker of ,enigmas4 ,before entering the gates of the ,city the jostling multitude must pause in their furious haste towards life and listen to her as she propounds to each generation her problem4 ,every generation guesses at the riddle with fear or hope1 with timidity or courage1 as its nature may be1 and then rushes on within the gates1 not knowing if it has guessed aright1 but with the task laid upon it of living out its life by the light of that answer1 let the result be what it will4 ,the ,sphinx lies watching the generations whirled past her into existence4 ,she listens to the cries1 the turmoil1 the bitter plaints of those within the walls who believed that they had solved her problem a century ago1 and as she listens she smiles her cold1 incredulous smile4 ,not yet have they divined her secret1 if one may judge from their loud protests1 and this new generation pouring in among them has but small patience with their failure4 ,the newcomers are quite sure that they at last have answered the immortal conundrum correctly4 ,they have found it quite easy1 and they mean to show their silly predecessors how simple it is to find happiness if one has only the correct formula4 ,all the preceding guesses have been wrong8--well1 but it is just because they were wrong that the application failed4 ,here is the right one at last1 triumphantly evolved by the new heir of all the ages1 and it will be soon seen how criminally1 how almost incredibly mistaken the previous generations have been in their foolish attempts to live by such palpably absurd theories of existence4 ,make way6--you silly old folk--make way for the young lords of life who come bearing truth and wisdom to the world6 ,who come to inaugurate a reign of peace and plenty and delight6 ,the old generation1 nearing the ,city's lower gate1--beyond which lies another road1 equally broad and well-travelled1 but gloomier and more airless than the one by which they came1--shake their heads doubtingly at these assertions4 ,they were quite as confident in their time1 and yet1 somehow1 things did not work out as they expected4 ,no doubt their own guess was quite right2 they are almost sure of it2 but many unforeseen exigencies interfered4 ,people were obstinate4 ,the formula was perfect1 but people were so very wrong-headed that it never had a proper opportunity of proving how infallible it really was4 ,and so difficulties in the application arose1 and--,but the young newcomers push them1 still babbling and explaining1 out of the further gate1 and set at once about regenerating the unfortunate city which has been forced to wait such a weary while for this the perfect solution of all problems4 ,and the old ,questioner lying without the gates stares with her long1 calm eyes into the white mist from which yet more generations are to come1 and she smiles her fixed and scornful smile4 ,it was after this fashion our century1 nineteenth of the era1 came in--flushed1 happy1 confident4 ,it came an army with banners1 every standard blazoned in letters of gold with its magic device--,liberty1 ,equality1 ,fraternity4 ,how it hustled the poor painted1 formal1 withered1 old eighteenth century out at the nether gate6 ,smashing its idols1 toppling over its altars1 tearing down its tarnished hangings of royalty from the walls1 and bundling its poor antiquated furniture of authority out of windows4 ,all doors were flung wide2 the barriers of caste1 class1 sex1 religion1 race1 were burst open and light poured in4 ,the gloomy ,ghettos were emptied of their silent1 stubborn1 cringing population2 forged by the hammer of ,christian hate through two thousand years into a race as keen1 compact1 and flexible as steel4 ,the slave stood up free of bonds2 half exultant1 half frightened at the liberty that brought with it responsibilities heavier and more inexorable than the old shackles4 ,woman caught her breath and lifted up her arms4 ,the old superstitious ,asiatic curse fixed upon her by the church was laughed scornfully into nothingness4 ,she was as free as the ,roman woman again4 ,free to be proud of her sex1 free to wed where she chose1 free to claim as her own the child for whom she had travailed to give life4 ,a vast bonfire was made of the stake1 the wheel1 the gyve2 of crowns1 of orders1 of robes of state4 ,all wrongs were to be righted1 all oppressions redressed2 all inequalities levelled1 all cruelties forbidden4 ,men shuddered when they thought of the crimes of the past1 when they talked of ,calas4 ,such a crime would never be possible in this new golden age4 ,only of oppression and cruelty was vice bred4 ,given perfect liberty and perfect justice the warring world would become ,arcadia once more4 ,lions if not hunted1 and if judiciously trained by the constant instilling of virtuous maxims1 would acquire a perfect disgust for mutton1 and lambs would consequently lie down beside them and would grow as courageous and self-reliant as wolves4 ,what a beautiful time it was1 those first thrilling days of the new era6 ,how the spirit dilates in contemplating it1 even now4 ,the heart beat with the noble new emotions1 the cheek flushed1 the eyes glistened with sensibility's ready tear4 ,it was so pleasant to be good1 to be kind1 to be just2 to feel that even the bonds of nationality were cast aside1 and that all mankind were brothers striving only for pre-eminence in virtue4 ,it was a new chivalry1 a new crusade4 ,only1 instead of lovely princesses to be succoured1 or sepulchres to be saved1 it was the rescue of all the humble and suffering1 a crusade against the paganism of the strong4 ,the heart could hardly hold without delicious pain this broad flood of universal kindness4 ,it was then that ,anarcharsis ,clootz presented to the ,national ,assembly his famous deputation of mankind4444 ,on the #aith evening of ,june1 #agij1 the sun's slant rays lighted a spectacle such as our foolish little planet has not often to show4 ,anarcharsis ,clootz entering the august ,salle de ,mange with the human species at his heels4 ,swedes1 ,spaniards1 ,polacks1 ,turks1 ,chaldeans1 ,greeks1 dwellers in ,mesopotamia come to claim place in the grand ,federation1 having an undoubted interest in it4444 ,in the meantime we invite them to the honours of the sitting1 honneur de la sance4 ,a long-flowing ,turk1 for rejoinder1 bows with ,eastern solemnity1 and utters articulate sounds2 but owing to his imperfect knowledge of the ,french dialect1 his words are like spilt water2 the thought he had in him remains conjectural to this day4444 ,to such things does the august ,national ,assembly ever and anon cheerfully listen1 suspending its regenerative labours4 ,it was at this time the big words beginning with capitals made their appearance and were taken very seriously4 ,one talked of the ,good1 the ,true1 the ,beautiful1 and the ,ideal1 and felt one's bosom splendidly inflated by these capitalized mouthfuls4 ,there were other nice phrases much affected at the time--the ,parliament of ,man1 the ,federation of the ,world1 la ,republique de ,genre ,humain4 ,the new generation was intoxicated with its new theory of life1 with its own admirable sentiments4 ,discrepancies existed1 no doubt4 ,the fine theories were not always put into complete practice4 ,while the glittering phrases of the ,declaration of ,independence were declaring all men free and equal1 some million of slaves were helping to develop the new country with their enforced labour4 ,the original owners of the soil were being mercilessly hunted like vermin1 and the women of ,america had scarcely more legal claim to their property1 their children1 or to their own persons than had the negro slaves4 ,nor did the framers of the ,declaration show any undue haste in setting about abolishing these anomalies4 ,the ,national ,assembly of ,france decreed liberty1 equality1 and fraternity to all men1 and hurried to cut off the heads and confiscate the property of all those equal brothers who took the liberty of differing with them4 ,but it was a poor nature that would boggle at a few inconsistencies1 would quench this fresh enthusiasm with criticism4 ,after all1 mere facts were unimportant4 ,given the proper emotion1 the lofty sentiment of liberty and good-will1 the rest would come right of itself4 ,a new heaven and new earth1 so it seemed1 was to be created by this virile young generation who had rid themselves of the useless lumber of the past4 ,the period was one of universal emotion1 exhibiting itself in every form3 in iconoclastic rages against wrong--rages that could only be exhausted by the destruction of all the customs1 laws1 and religions that had bound the western world for two thousand years2 it showed itself in sanguinary furies against oppression--furies which could be satiated only by seas of blood2 in floods of sympathy for the weak that ofttimes swept away both strong and weak in one general ruin4 ,it was displayed in convulsions of philanthropy so violent that a man might not refuse the offered brotherhood and kindness save at the price of his life4 ,the cold dictates of the head were ignored4 ,the heart was the only guide4 ,is it any wonder that driven by the wind of feeling and with the rudder thrown overboard the ship pursued an erratic and contradictory course4 ,seen in this way one is no longer surprised at the lack of consistency of the ,declaration des ,droits de l',homme1 that declared ,all men are born and continue free and equal in rights--that ,society is an association of men to preserve the rights of man--that freedom of speech is one of the most precious rights1 and yet that ,france1 crying aloud these fine phrases1 slaughtered even the most silent and humble who were supposed to maintain secret thoughts opposed to the opinions of the majority4 ,it is no longer astonishing to read the generous sentiments of our own ,declaration and to remember the persecutions1 confiscations1 and burnings that drove thirty thousand of those not in sympathy with the ,revolution over the borders of the ,new ,england ,states into ,canada1 and hunted a multitude from the ,south into ,spanish ,louisiana4 ,one is no longer amazed to hear de ,tocqueville declare that in no place had he found so little independence of thought as in this country during the early years of the ,republic4 ,by liberty--his adored liberty--the revolutionary sentimentalist meant only liberty to think as he himself did1 and the whole history of man records that there is nothing crueller than a tender heart ungoverned by a cooler head4 ,it is in this same spirit that the inquisitor1 yearning in noble anguish over souls1 burns the recalcitrant4 ,it is plain to him that such as are so gross and vicious as to refuse to fall in with his admirable intentions for their eternal welfare can be worthy of nothing gentler than fire4 ,but whatever the discrepancies might be1 the whole state of feeling was vastly more wholesome1 more promising1 than the dry formalism1 the frivolous cynicism which it had annihilated and out of which it had been bred4 ,the delicate1 fastidious1 selfish formalists of the eighteenth century were naturally aghast at the generation to which they had given birth4 ,it was as if an elderly dainty cat had been delivered of a blundering1 slobbering1 mastiff puppy1 a beast which was to tear its disgusted and terrified parent in pieces4 ,no doubt they asked themselves in horror1 ,when did we generate this wild animal that sheds ridiculous tears even while drinking our blood8 ,not seeing it was the natural child and natural reaction from the selfish short-sightedness of ,que ne mangent ils de la brioche8 from the frigid sneer of ,apres nous le deluge4 ,this torrent of emotionalism to which the nineteenth century gave itself up is amazing to our colder time4 ,it manifested itself not only in its public policy1 in its schemes for universal regeneration1 but it completely saturated all the thought of the time1 was visible in its whole attitude toward life4 ,madame ,necker could not bear the thought of her friend ,moulton's departure after a short visit1 so that he was obliged to leave secretly without a farewell4 ,she fainted when she learned the truth and says1 ,i gave myself up to all the bitterness of grief4 ,the most gloomy ideas presented themselves to my desolate heart1 and torrents of tears could not diminish the weight that seemed to suffocate me--and all this about the departure of an amiable old gentleman from ,paris to ,geneva6 ,they had no reserves4 ,the most secret sentiments of the heart were openly discussed4 ,tears were always flowing4 ,nothing was too sacred for verbal expression4 ,they wrote out their prayers1 formal compositions of chaste sentiments1 and handed them about among their friends as ,italian gentlemen did sonnets in the ,quattro ,cento4 ,on anniversaries or special occasion they penned long epistles full of elegant phrases and invocations to friends living under the same roof1 who received these letters next morning with the breakfast tray1 and shed delicious tears over them into their chocolate4 ,a delicate female was a creature so finely constituted that the slightest shock caused hysterics or a swoon1 and it was useless to hope for her recovery until the person guilty of the blow to her sensitiveness had shed the salt moisture of repentance upon her cold and lifeless hand and had wildly adjured her to live--after which her friends of the same sex1 themselves tremulous and much shaken by the mere sight of such sensibility1 recovered her with an exhibition of lavender-water or with some of those cordials which they all carried in their capacious pockets for just such exigencies4 ,nor did the delicate female monopolize all the delicacy and emotionalism4 ,the ,man of ,feeling was her fitting mate1 and the manly tear was as fluent and frequent as the drop in ,beauty's eye4 ,swooning was not so much in his line2 there was less competition1 perhaps1 for the privilege of supporting his languishing frame1 but a mortal paleness was no stranger to his sensitive countenance1 his features contracted in agony over the smallest annoyance1 and he had an ominous fashion of rushing madly from the presence of the fair one in a way that left all his female relatives panting with apprehension1 though long experience might have taught them that nothing serious ever came of it4 ,thus the ,nineteenth ,century entered upon its experiment with the verities1 beginning gloriously2 palpitating with generous emotion2 ready with its blazing ubiquities to light the way to the millennium4 ,the truth had been discovered1 and needed but to be thoroughly applied to ensure perfect happiness4 ,by #ahdj the tide of democracy and liberalism had risen to flood4 ,the minority were overawed and dumb4 ,to suggest doubts of the impeccable ideals of democracy was to awaken only contempt2 as if one should dispute the theory of gravity4 ,it was chose juge4 ,it did not admit of question4 ,the experiment was in full practice and the new theory1 having swept away all opposition1 had free play for the creation of ,arcadias4 ,alas6 ,thus in the eighteenth period of our era had ,authority cleared the ground4 ,it had burned1 hanged1 shut up in the ,bastille all cavillers1 and just as the scheme had a chance to work it crumbled suddenly to pieces in the blood and smoke of revolutions4 ,democracy had no fear of tragedy from the very nature of its principles1 but it had decreed liberty1 and liberty began to be taken to doubt its conclusions4 ,there began to arise voices bewailing the flesh-pots and the lentils of the ruined ,house of ,bondage4 ,democracy had brought much good3 that was not denied1 but alas1 what of the old dear things it had swept away1 the sweet loyalties1 the ties between server and served4 ,the enormous social and political edifice reared by feudalism had had black dungeons1 noisome cloac1 no doubt1 but what of its rich carvings1 of its dim1 tender lights filtered through flowered traceries8 ,where was its romance1 its pageants and revels8 ,the rectangular1 ugly1 wholesome building1 which democracy had substituted as a dwelling for the soul of man1 with its crude1 broad light flooding every corner1 failed to satisfy many who forgot all the bitter inconvenience of the ancient castle1 remembering in homesick longing only its ruined beauties and hoary charm4 ,science in its hard unsentimental fashion commenced to demonstrate the fallacy of the heart's ardent reasoning4 ,she stripped the lovely veil from nature's face1 and showed the tender springing grass of the fields1 the flushed orchard blossoms1 the nesting bird1 the painted insect floating in the breeze1--all1 all engaged in a ferocious battle for life--trampling on the weak1 snatching the best food1 always either devouring or devoured4 ,it had been decreed with thunderous finality that the feeble should be by law placed on equality with the strong1 and this was announced as the evident intention of beneficent nature4 ,science1 however1 relentlessly demonstrated that nature was not beneficent2 that in fact she was a heartless snob1 and that to ,nature's darling1 the ,strong1 she ruthlessly sacrificed multitudes of the helpless4 ,democracy had made itself the champion of the humble1 had cursed the greedy and powerful2 science proved that the humble and unaggressive were doomed1 as was proved by their not surviving in the terrible struggle for life that was raging in all forms of nature1 and of which the human mlee was but an articulate expression4 ,the conviction that humanity had once known perfect equality1 and that freedom had been filched by the unscrupulous1 was shown to be quite unfounded4 ,rousseau's ,contrat ,social was made absurd by ,darwin's ,descent of ,man4 ,all research tended to prove that from the earliest ,pliocene it was not the weak or the humble1 but he who ,stole the steadiest canoe1 ,eat the quarry others slew1 ,died1 and took the finest grave1 who had founded families1 developed races1 brought order out of chaos1 had made civilizations possible1 had ordained peace and security1 and had been the force of upward evolution4 ,it was thus that the freedom which the heart had given to the head was used to prove how fallible that generous heart was4 ,then out of all of this groping regret1 out of this new knowledge1 there arose1 with excursions and alarums1 ,carlyle2 the first who dared frankly impeach the new theory and decry its results4 ,through all his vociferousness1 through all his droning tautology1 his buzzing1 banging1 and butting among phrases like an angry cock-chafer1 through the general egregiousness of his intolerable style1 there rang out clear once again the pon of the strong4 ,here was no talk of the rights of man4 ,his right as of old was to do his duty and walk in the fear of the ,lord4 444 ,a king or leader in all bodies of men there must be1 he says4 ,be their work what it may1 there is one man here who by character1 faculty1 and position is fittest of all to do it4 ,for the aggregate wisdom of the multitude1 to which ,democracy pinned its faith1 he had only scorn4 444 ,to find a ,parliament more and more the expression of the people1 could1 unless the people chanced to be wise1 give no satisfaction4444 ,but to find some sort of ,king made in the image of ,god1 who could a little achieve for the people1 if not their spoken wishes yet their dumb wants1 and what they would at last find to be their instinctive will--which is a far different matter usually in this babbling world of ours 444 that was the thing to be desired4 ,he who is to be my ruler1 whose will is higher than my will1 was chosen for me by heaven4 ,neither1 except in obedience to the heaven-chosen1 is freedom so much as conceivable4 ,here was the old doctrine of the divine right of the strong man to rule1 come to life again1 and masquerading in democratic garments4 ,no revolution resulted4 ,democracy did not fall in ruins even at the blast of his stertorous trumpet1 but the serious-minded of his day were deeply stirred by his words1 more especially as that comfortable middle-class prosperity and content1 to which the democrat pointed as the best testimony to the virtue of his doctrines1 was being attacked at the same time from another quarter4 ,not only did ,carlyle scornfully declare that this bourgeois prosperity was a thing unimportant1 almost contemptible1 but the proletariat--a new factor in the argument--began to mutter and growl that he had not been given his proper share in it1 and he found it as oppressive and unjust as we had found the arrogant prosperity of the nobles intolerable4 ,that old man vociferous has passed now to where beyond these voices there is peace1 but the obscure mutterings of the man in the street1 which was then but a vague undertone1 has grown to an open menace4 ,the ,sphinx smiles as she hears once more the same cries1 the same accusations4 ,we of the middle classes1 who threw off the yoke of the aristocracy1 clamoured just such impeachments a century back4 ,we are amazed now to hear them turned against ourselves4 ,to us this seems an admirable world that we have made2 orderly1 peaceable1 prosperous4 ,we find no fault in it4 ,it has not worked out1 perhaps1 on as generous lines as we had planned1 but on the whole each man gets1 we think1 his deserts4 ,we ask ourselves wonderingly if the aristocrat of the eighteenth century did not1 perhaps1 see his world in the same way4 ,he paid no taxes1 but he thought he did his just share of work for the body politic2 he fought1 he legislated1 he administered4 ,perhaps it seemed also a good world to him2 well arranged4 ,perhaps he was as indignant at our protests as we are at those of to-day4 ,we thought ourselves intolerably oppressed by his expenditures of the money we earned1 by his monopoly of place and power2 but we argue in our behalf1 that as we pay the taxes we should decide upon the methods of the money's use and have all the consequent privileges4 ,what1 we ask ourselves angrily1 do these mad creatures1 who are very well treated1 mean by their talk of slavery--of wage-slavery8 ,how can there be right or reason in their contention that the labourer rather than the capitalist should have the profit of labour8 ,does not the capitalist govern1 administer1 defend8 ,attacked1 abused1 execrated1 we begin to sympathize with those dead nobles1 who were perhaps as honest1 as well-meaning1 as we feel ourselves to be2 who were as disgusted1 as scornful1 as little convinced by our arguments as we by those who accuse us in our turn of being greedy1 idle feeders upon the sweat of others4 ,perhaps to him the established order of things seemed as just and eternal as it does to us4 ,we begin to have more comprehension of that dead aristocrat4 ,for a hundred years now democracy has had a free hand for testing its faiths and ideals4 ,let us reckon up the results of this reign of liberty1 equality1 fraternity4 ,out of the triumphant bourgeoisie has grown a class proud and dominant as the nobles of old days4 ,they have wealth1 luxury1 and power1 such as those nobles never dreamed of4 ,capital is organized into vast1 incredibly potent aggregations4 ,labour in its turn has organized for itself a despotism far-reaching1 unescapable1 which the old rgime would never at its haughtiest have ventured upon4 ,the two are arrayed against one another in struggles of ever-increasing intensity4 ,the ,brotherhood of ,man is still a dream4 ,the continent of ,europe is dominated by two autocratic sovereigns1 who overawe others by the consistent and continuous policy only possible to a despotism4 ,the republics of ,france and of ,south ,america are the prey of a horde of adventurers who only alternate despotisms2 the armaments of the world are so pretentious that each fears to wield so terrible a weapon4 ,the great nations are dividing the weak among themselves as lions do their prey4 ,all nations are exaggerating their barriers and differences4 ,russia is repudiating the ,occidental languages and civilizations which she at first received so gladly4 ,hungary has abandoned the ,german tongue1 and the ,hungarians1 ,czechs1 and ,bohemians1 held together by the bond of ,austria1 are restive and mutually repellent4 ,the ,celt revives and renews his hatred of the ,saxon1 and in ,ireland and in ,wales the aboriginal tongues and literatures are being disinterred and taught as a means of destroying the corporate nationalism of the ,british ,isles4 ,the ,bretons disclaim their part and interest in ,france4 ,the ,spanish empire has fallen into jealous and unsympathetic fragments4 ,the ,hindus are clamouring for an ,india for the ,indians4 ,all are rivals2 envenomed1 and seeking domination4 ,and ,america1--,america1 the supreme demonstration of the democratic ideal1--what of her8 ,america has embarked upon imperial wars3 refuses sanctuary to the poor and oppressed as inadmissible paupers1 and laughs at the claims to brotherhood and citizenship of any man with a yellow skin4 ,the church1 which is most opposed to individual liberty of thought1 has been reconquering great territory in the very citadels of free conscience4 ,one large body of ,protestants is repudiating its protests against irresponsible authority1 and basing its claims rather upon appeal to ancient precedent4 ,science has one by one torn in pieces and scattered the iridescent bubbles of democracy's sentimental visions4 ,the ,ghetto is open1 but the ,jews are still persecuted4 ,a ,calas is no longer sacrificed to bigoted churchmen1 but an intolerant army make possible the ,affaire ,dreyfus4 ,zola1 after a century of democracy1 is called upon once more to take up the work of ,voltaire4 ,woman is still waiting for political equality with man4 ,but perhaps the most surprising result is man's change in his attitude towards himself4 ,man1 who spelled himself with reverent capital letters1 who pictured the universe created solely for his needs1--who imagined a ,deity flattered by his homage and wounded by his disrespect--,man1 who had only to observe a respectable code of morals to be received into eternal happiness with all the august honours due a condescending monarch1 had fallen to the humility of such admissions as these4444 ,what a monstrous spectre is this man1 the disease of the agglutinated dust1 lifting alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber2 killing1 feeding1 growing1 bringing forth small copies of himself2 grown upon with hair like grass1 fitted with eyes that glitter in his face2 a thing to set children screaming2-- 444 ,poor soul here for so little1 cast among so many hardships filled with desires1 so incommensurate and so inconsistent2 savagely surrounded1 savagely descended1 irremediably condemned to prey upon his fellow lives1 444 infinitely childish1 often admirably valiant1 often touchingly kind2 sitting down to debate of right or wrong and the attributes of the ,deity2 rising up to battle for an egg or die for an idea4444 ,to touch the heart of his mystery we find in him one thought1 strange to the point of lunacy1 the thought of duty1 the thought of something owing to himself1 to his neighbour1 to his ,god2 an ideal of decency to which he would rise if possible1 a limit of shame1 below which if it be possible he will not stoop4444 ,not in man alone1 but we trace it in dogs and cats which we know fairly well1 and doubtless some similar point of honour sways the elephant1 the oyster and the louse1 of whom we know so little-- ,alas1 ,poor ,yorick6 ,how a century of liberty has humbled him4 ,it is thus the successors of ,rousseau1 of ,chateaubriand1 of the believers in the perfectibility of man1 speak--saying1 calmly1 ,the ,empire of this world belongs to force--and that ,hitherto in our judgments of men we have taken for our masters the oracles and poets1 and like them we have received for certain truths the noble dreams of our imaginations and the imperious suggestions of our hearts4 ,we have bound ourselves by the partiality of religious divinations1 and we have shaped our doctrines by our instincts and our vexations4444 ,science at last approaches with exact and penetrating implements 444 and in this employment of science1 in this conception of things1 there is a new art1 a new morality1 a new polity1 a new religion1 and it is in the present time our task to discover them4 ,we must not forget to consider a little the amusing change our century has seen in the alteration of its heroic ideals4 ,for the sentimental rubbish1 the dripping egotism of a ,werther1 of a ,manfred1 in whom the young of their day found the most adequate expression of their self-consciousness1 we have substituted the ,stevenson and ,kipling hero--hard-headed1 silent1 practical1 scornful of abstractions1 contemptuous of emotions1 who has but two dominant ideals1 patriotism and duty2 who keeps his pores open and his mouth shut4 ,the old democratic shibboleths still remain on our lips1 are still used as if they were truisms1 but in large measure we have ceased to live by them1 we have lost all our cocksureness as to their infallibility4 ,we give frightened sops to our anarchical ,cerberus4 ,we realize that despite all we so proudly decreed the strong still rule and plunder the weak1 and weak still impotently rage and imagine a vain thing of legislation as a means of redressing this endless inequality4 ,much of good we have given4 ,how could an ideal so tender1 so beautiful1 so high of purpose1 fail of righting a thousand wrongs8 ,how could those sweet1 foolish tears fail to water the hard soil of life and cause a thousand lovely flowers of goodness and gentleness to bloom8 ,that we have not solved the riddle of the ,sphinx1 that we have not found the secret of happiness1 is hardly cause for wonder or shame4 ,neither will our successors find it1 but it is interesting to speculate as to what clue they will use to guide them in the search4 ,it is plain that our ideals1 our formul1 are being cast aside as inadequate1 but the new century is coming in with no programme as yet announced4 ,it is thoughtful1 silent2 it avoids our drums and shoutings and vociferous over-confidence4 ,what will be its ,time-,spirit1 since ours plainly will not serve8 ,will the wage-earners shear the bourgeoisie of their privileges as we shore the nobles a century ago--or will liberty sell herself to authority again in return for protection against the dry hopelessness of socialism1 or the turmoil of anarchy8 ,or will the new generation evolve some new thought1 undreamed of as yet--some new and happier guess at the great central truth at which we forever grasp and which forever melts and eludes8 ,february #aa4 ,the ,abdication of ,man4 ,in the midst of all these excursions and alarums of war1 and preparation for war1 a sudden and great silence has fallen upon the everlasting discussion of the relations of the sexes4 ,before the stern realities of that final and bloody argument of ,republics1 as well as of ,kings1 further dissection of the ,women ,question has been deferred4 ,the most vociferous of the unquiet sex have been regarding respectfully the sudden transformation of the plain1 unromantic man who went patiently to business every morning in a cable car1 and sat on a stool at a desk1 or weighed tea1 or measured ribbon1 into a hero ready to face violent annihilations before which even her imagination recoils4 ,the grim realisms of life and death have made the realism of such erstwhile burning dramas as ,the ,doll ,house shrink into the triviality of a drama fit only for wooden puppets4 ,sudden and violent readjustments of ideas are apt to be brought about when human relations are jarred into their true place by the thunder of cannon4 ,war legitimatizes man's claim to superiority4 ,when the sword is drawn he is forced to again mount that ancient seat of rule from which he has only recently been evicted2 or rather from which he has himself stepped down4 ,the democracy of sex at once becomes ridiculous--the old feudal relation reasserts itself4 ,it is interesting to note that there has not been one feminine voice raised to protest against the situation4 ,the entire sex1 as represented in this country1 has1 as one woman1 fallen simply and gladly into the old place of nurse1 of binder of wounds1 of soother and helpmeet4 ,not one has claimed the woman's equal right to face villainous saltpetre1 or risk dismemberment by harbour mines4 ,i believe this to be because woman prefers this old relation4 ,i believe that if man were willing she would always maintain it2 that it depends upon him whether she returns to it permanently or not4 ,i believe that her modern attitude is not of her own choosing--that man has thrust that attitude upon her4 ,for the oldest of all empires is that of man2 no royal house is so ancient as his4 ,the ,emperors of ,japan are parvenus of the vulgarest modernity in comparison1 and the claims of long descent of every sovereign in ,europe shrivel into absurdity beside the magnificent antiquity of this potentate4 ,since the very beginning of things1 when our hairy progenitor fought for mastery with the megatherium1 and scratched pictorial epics upon his victim's bones1 the ,house of ,man has reigned and ruled1 descending in an unbroken line from father to son in direct male descent4 ,his legitimacy was always beyond dispute2 his divine right to rule was not even questioned1 and was buttressed against possible criticism not only by the universal concurrence of all religious and philosophic opinion1 but by the joyful loyalty of the whole body of his female subjects4 ,moses and ,zoroaster1 ,st4 ,paul and ,plato all bore witness to his supremacy1 and the jury of women brought in a unanimous verdict in his favour without calling for testimony4 ,women yet living can recall a day when they forgot their pain for joy that a man-child--heir to that famous line of kings--was born into the world4 ,they can remember a time when their own greatest claim to consideration rested upon the fact that they were capable of perpetuating the royal race4 ,they recollect a period when even from his cradle the boy was set apart to be served with that special reverence reserved for those whose brows are bound with the sacred circlet of sovereignty--when a particular divinity did hedge even the meanest male2 a tenfold essence being shed about all those who were of the ,house of ,aaron4 ,why then--since all this is of so recent existence1 since man's rule was founded so deep on woman's loyalty--has he been swelling the melancholy ranks of ,kings in ,exile8 ,for that he has ceased to reign over woman does not require even to be asserted4 ,it is self-evident4 ,when was this amazing revolution effected8 ,who led the emeute that thrust man from his throne8 ,it is a revolt without a history2 without the record of a single battle4 ,not even a barricade can be set up to its credit1 and yet no more important revolution can be found in the pages of the oldest chronicles4 ,so venerable1 so deep-rooted in the eternal verities seemed the authority of man over woman that the female mind1 until the present day1 never doubted its inevitableness4 ,indeed1 as is the case with all loyal natures1 she was jealous for the absolutism of her master1 and was quick to repair any such small omissions as he himself might have made in the completeness of his domination4 ,all of her sex were trained from their earliest infancy to strive for but one end--to make themselves pleasing to their rulers4 ,success in the court of man was the end and aim of their existence1 the only path for their ambition1 and no other courtiers ever rivalled these in the subtle completeness of their flattery4 ,man's despotism1 of course1 like all other tyrannies1 was tempered by his weaknesses1 but while woman wheedled and flattered and secretly bent him to her projects she did not question his real right to govern4 ,here and there through the past there arose a few scattered pioneers in recalcitrance4 ,one of the first to deny the innate supremacy of the male was a woman who herself wore a crown4 ,elizabeth ,tudor had a fashion of laying heavy hands upon her rightful lords whenever they displeased her1 and she appears to have rejected the whole theory of feminine subordination4 ,john ,knox--strong in the power of the priest1 whose sublimated prerogatives man had skilfully retained in his own hands--could and did dominate ,mary ,stuart even upon the throne1 but when he blew from ,geneva his ,first ,blast of the ,trumpet ,against the ,monstrous ,regiment of ,woman1 and called all the ages to witness that the rule of a female was an affront to nature that trenchant lady who held the ,english sceptre forbade him ever again to set foot in her domains1 and before he could do so1 in his need1 he had to digest a most unwholesome dose of humble pie4 ,elizabeth1 however1 was a unique personality and had few imitators4 ,the literature of her day abounds with expressions of supreme humility and loyalty from the one sex to the other4 ,elizabethan poets deigned to play at captivity and subjection to the overwhelming charms of ,saccharissa and her sisters1 and turned pretty phrases about her cruelty1 but this was merely poetic license of expression4 ,all serious1 unaffected expression of conviction1 such as was to be found in the religious writings of the time1 and in the voluminous private correspondence1 which gives us the most accurate description obtainable of the real actions and opinions of our ancestors1 never suggested a doubt of man's natural and inalienable superiority1 mental1 moral1 and physical4 ,so undisturbed was this conviction1 down almost to our own day1 that the heresy of ,mary ,wollstonecraft gave the severest of shocks to her own generation4 ,so heinous seemed her offence of lse-majest in questioning man's divine right that one of the most famous of her contemporaries did not hesitate to stigmatize her as a hyena in petticoats4 ,history gives us but one record of a general outbreak4 ,in the thirteenth century the ,crusades had so drained ,europe of its able-bodied men that the women were forced to apply themselves to the abandoned trades and neglected professions4 ,they shortly became so intoxicated by the sense of their own competency and power that when the weary wearers of the cross returned from the ,east they were at first delighted to discover that their affairs were prospering almost as well as ever1 and then amazed and disgusted to find the women reluctant to yield up to their natural rulers these usurped privileges4 ,stern measures were necessary to oust them4 ,severe laws were enacted against the admission of women into the ,guilds--the labour organizations which at that period governed all the avenues of industrial advancement2 and the doors of the professions were peremptorily slammed in the women's faces4 ,such episodes as these1 however1 were detached and accidental4 ,female treason never dared unrebuked to lift its horrid head until within the present generation4 ,the emancipated new woman has various methods of accounting for the humbling of this hoary sovereignty4 ,some find it only a natural concomitant of the general wreck of thrones and monarchical privilege--in other words1 that it is but one phase of advancing democracy4 ,by some it is supposed that in this ,age of ,interrogation man's supremacy1 along with all other institutions1 has been called upon to produce an adequate reason for being1 and producing no answer that seems satisfactory1 he has been summarily forced to abandon pretensions which rested merely upon use and wont4 ,it is said by some that woman has been examining with coldly unprejudiced eye the claim of man to rule1 has been measuring his powers against her own and has not been daunted by the comparison4 ,the more noisy declare that she has stripped him of his royal robe and that1 like ,louis ,,xiv41 minus his high heels and towering peruke1 she finds him only of medium stature after all2 that she has turned the rays of a cynical democracy upon the mystery encompassing his ,kingship and refuses to be awed by what she sees there2 that it is because of this she begins to usurp his privileges1 thrust herself into his professions1 shoulder him even from the altar1 and brazenly seating herself on the throne beside him she lifts the circlet from his brows to try if it be not a fit for her own head4 ,the weakness of all such explanations is that they do not take into account the fact that woman is not by nature democratic4 ,whatever political principles the occasional or exceptional woman may profess1 the average woman is in all her predilections intensely aristocratic2--is by nature loyal1 idealistic1 an idolater and a hero worshipper4 ,strong as the spirit of democracy may be1 it could not by itself alone in one generation change the nature of woman4 ,the explanation must lie elsewhere4 ,in the language of a now famous arraignment--,j'accuse man himself4 ,no ruler is ever really dethroned by his subjects4 ,no hand but his own ever takes the crown from his head4 ,no agency but his can wash the chrism from his brow4 ,it is his own abdication that drives him from power--abdication of his duties1 his obligations1 his opportunities4 ,ceasing to rule1 he ceases to reign4 ,when he ceases to lead he wants for followers1 and the revolt which casts him from power is only the outward manifestation of his previous abdication of the inward and spiritual grace of kingship4 ,when man ceased to govern1 woman was not long in throwing off the sham of subjection that remained4 ,like other subjects1 woman required of her master two things--panem et circenses1--bread and circuses4 ,when the industrial changes brought about by the introduction of machinery put an end to the old patriarchal system of home manufactures1 man found it less easy to provide for his woman-kind--more especially his collateral woman-kind--and without any very manifest reluctance he turned her out into the world to shift for herself4 ,here was a shock to her faith and loyalty6 ,the all-powerful male admitted his inability to provide for these sisters1 cousins1 aunts1 and more distant kin who had looked up to him as the fount of existence1 and had toiled and fed contentedly under his roof1 yielding to him obedience as the natural provider and master4 ,woman went away sorrowful and--very thoughtful4 ,this alone was not enough to quite alienate her faith1 however4 ,woman was still1 as always1 a creature of imagination--dazzled by colour1 by pomp1 by fanfaronade4 ,she was still a creature of romance1 adoring the picturesque1 yielding her heart to courage1 to power1 to daring and endurance--all the sterner virtues which she herself lacked4 ,the man of the past was often brutal to her--overbearing always1 cruel at times1 but he fascinated her by his masterfulness and his splendour4 ,she might go fine1 but he would still be the finer bird4 ,when she thought of him she was hypnotized by a memory of gold1 a waving of purple1 a glitter of steel1 a flutter of scarlet4 ,he knew that this admiration of hers for beauty and colour was as old as the world4 ,from primordial periods the male has recognized this need of the female4 ,the fish in the sea1 the reptile in the dust1 the bird in the forest1 the wild beast in the jungle are all aware of their mates' passion for gleaming scales1 for glowing plumes1 for dappled hides and orgulous crests of hair4 ,they know1 they have always known1 that no king can reign without splendour4 ,only man1 bent solely upon his own comfort and1 it would seem1 upon the abandonment of his power1 deliberately sets himself against this need of the female1 which has become imbedded in her nature through every successive step up in the scale of evolution4 ,he alone fatuously prides himself on the dark1 bifurcated simplicity of his attire1 intended only for warmth and ease and constructed with a calculated avoidance of adornment4 ,to avoid criticism he has set up a theory that a superior sort of masculinity is demonstrated by the dark tint and unbeautiful shape of garments 7as if the fighting man1 the soldier--who is nothing if not masculine--were not always a colourful creature72 and chooses to ignore or resent woman's weakness for this same gold-laced combatant1 and for the silken1 picturesque actor4 ,j'accuse the man of abandoning his mastership and becoming a bourgeois in appearance and manner through a slothful desire for ease4 ,there can hardly be a question that ,louis le ,grand's red heels and majestic peruke were uncomfortable and a bore1 but his sense of humour and his knowledge of men were such that his bed curtains were never untucked until his lion's mane had been passed in to him on the end of a walking stick1 and was safely in its place4 ,he could imagine how unimposing the ,king of ,beasts might be in nglig4 ,he knew that to be reverenced one must be imposing4 ,louis the ,unfortunate found it far less tedious to abandon stateliness1 and work wigless and leather-aproned at his locksmith's forge1 while his feather-headed queen played at being a dairy-maid at ,trianon1 forgetting that the populace1 which had submitted humbly to the bitter exactions of the man who dazzled them1 seeing the bald head and leathern apron would get abruptly up from its knees and say3 ,what6 submit to the pretensions of a locksmith and a dairy-maid--common folk like ourselves--certainly not6 and proceed to carry their sovereign's suggestion of equality to the distressingly logical conclusion to be found at the mouth of the guillotine4 ,j'accuse man of carrying further this democracy of sex by adding rigid plainness of behaviour to ugliness of appearance1 forgetting that a woman1 like the child and the savage1 love pomp of manner as well as of garment1 and that what she does not see she finds it hard to believe4 ,every wise lover soon learns it is necessary to reinforce the tenderness of his manner by definite assurances of affection several times in every twenty-four hours4 ,then1 and then only1 is a woman sure she is loved4 ,how can she believe man heroic unless he use the appearance and manner of the hero8 ,sir ,hilary of ,agincourt1 returning from ,france1 found his lady from home1 and he and all his weary men-at-arms sat there--mailed cap--pi--throughout the entire night until she returned to welcome them home and receive their homage4 ,what if at other times ,sir ,hilary may have been something of a brute8 ,lady ,hilary1 flattered by this fine piece of steel-clad swagger1 would1 remembering it1 forgive a thousand failures of temper or courtesy4 ,when ,el ,ahmed held the pass all through the darkness while his women fled across the desert1 and his foes feared to come to hand grips with him1 not knowing he stood there dead1--propped against the spear he had thrust into his mortal wound to hold himself erect--there was no female revolt against the domination of men who were capable of deeds that so fired women's imaginations4 ,these may1 after all1 seem to be frivolous accusations--that men do not dress well2 do not behave dramatically2 but the signification of these seemingly capricious charges lies deeper than may appear4 ,man has been seized with a democratic ideal1 and after applying it to political institutions has attempted to carry it into domestic application4 ,he is relentlessly forcing a democracy of sex upon woman2 industrially1 mentally1 and sentimentally4 ,he refuses to gratify her imagination2 he insists upon her development of that logical selfishness which underlies all democracy1 and which is foreign to her nature4 ,now1 nature has inexorably laid upon woman a certain share of the work that must be done in the world4 ,in the course of ages humanity adjusted itself to its shared labours by developing the relation of master and defender1 of dependent and loyal vassal4 ,sentiment had adorned it with a thousand graces and robbed the feudal relation of most of its hardships4 ,mutual responsibilities and mutual duties were cheerfully accepted4 ,woman was obliged to perform certain duties1 and these could only be made easy and agreeable by sentiment1 by unselfishness4 ,man needed her ministrations as much as she needed his4 ,he realized that sentiment was necessary to her happiness and he accepted the duty of preserving that sentiment of loyalty and admiration for himself which made her hard tasks seem easy when performed for a beloved master4 ,he took upon himself that difficult task of being a hero to a person even more intimate than his valet4 ,he took the trouble to please woman's imagination4 ,the hard democracy of to-day will take no note of the relation of master and dependent4 ,each individual has all the rights which do not come violently in contact with other's rights1 and has no duties which are not regulated by the law4 ,unselfishness is not contemplated in its scheme4 ,every individual has a right to all the goods of life he can get4 ,women are beginning to accept these stern theories2 beginning to apply the cruel logic of individualism4 ,so far from the power to win his favour being her one hope of advancement or success1 she does not hesitate to say on occasion that to yield to his affections is likely to hamper her in the race for fame or achievement4 ,so far from the giving of an heir to his greatness being the highest possibility of her existence1 she sometimes complains that such duties are an unfair demand upon her energies1 which she wishes to devote exclusively to her own ends4 ,the universal unpopularity of domestic service proves that the duties of a woman are in themselves neither agreeable nor interesting4 ,where is the man in all the world who would exchange even the most laborious of his occupations for his wife's daily existence8 ,the only considerations that can permanently reconcile human beings to unattractive labours is first the sentiment of loyalty--that such labours are performed for one who is loved and admired--and second the fine1 noble old habit of submission4 ,these incentives to duty1 these helps to happiness1 man has taken from woman by weakly shuffling off his mastership4 ,i accuse man of having wilfully cast from him the noblest crown in the world--of having wrongfully abdicated4 ,war has at least this merit that it forces him to drop the vulgar careless ease of the bourgeois and resume for the time at least those bold and vigorous virtues which made him woman's hero and her cheerfully accepted master4 ,june #ac4 ,life4 ,it is a toy3 a jingling bauble gay1 ,that children grasp with wondering1 wide-eyed pleasure2 ,soil it with too fierce use1 and find their treasure ,but rags and tinsel1 which at close of day ,falls from their weary hands4 ,it is a page ,whereon the child scribbles unmeaning scrawls4 ,youth's glowing pen indites sweet madrigals4 ,man tells a history1 and sad old age-- ,seeing that all the space that he hath writ before ,but wrote in varying ways his folly large-- ,sets ,vanity upon the meagre marge4 ,and last ,time prints ,the ,end and turns it o'er4 ,july #b4 ,portable ,property4 ,the ,chinese pinks are in full bloom now4 ,i have gathered pounds of them and arranged them in vases1 and the mere outline of their feathery grey-green foliage1 set with those fringed flecks of warm colour1 makes existence seem an agreeable thing4 ,the sound of children's voices outside1 the smell of the cut grass1 and the blue of the day1 all seemed freshly sweet and pleasant because of the pleasure the freaked beauty of the bowls full of pinks give me4 ,i am sorry for the people who don't care for flowers4 ,the amiability they always awake in me is one of my most valued bits of secret property4 ,that is the kind of possession that moth and rust cannot corrupt4 ,it is safe from burglars1 and even age does not wither one's satisfaction in such belongings4 ,most of my life ,i have been poor1 as the world reckons poverty1 but in reality ,i have owned more than many millionaires4 ,it seems to me a wise thing to store up private wealth early4 ,my nose to me a kingdom is1 and emperors and any millionaire might envy me the possession of my ears and eyes4 ,there are pale-souled philosophers who declare their contempt for the power of gold1 and some narrow dull-witted folk are really oppressed by luxury--all of which seems nonsense to me2 but if one can't and most of us can't1 have high stepping horses1 good frocks1 paid service1 and expensive homes1 one can at least own tangible treasures of smells and sights and sounds4 ,and1 ah6 the odd bits of poetry ,i possess4444 ,now rising through the rosy wine of thought ,bright-beaded memories sparkle at the brim ,of the mind's chalice4 ,golden phrases wrought ,by the great poets bubble to its brim4 ,my poets--as the patterned skies are mine1 ,the perfumes and the murmurs of the sea ,are all mine own--their cadences divine ,seem as my goodly heritage to me4 ,they trace the measures of all hidden things1 ,and into worded magic can translate ,the hidden harmonies which ,nature sings2 ,her mighty music inarticulate4 ,and who will list hears sonorous vibrations ,as though their thoughts strung harps from earth to heaven ,that rung with golden1 glad reverberations ,as wide-winged dreams breathed through their strings at even4 ,july #aj4 ,are ,american ,parents ,selfish8 ,p---- overwhelmed us last night at dinner by declaring that ,american parents were selfish4 ,we dropped our fish-forks and stared at him in amazement and disgust4 ,h---- said1 severely1 ,you are a foreigner4 ,p---- couldn't truthfully deny it1 and the bare statement seemed sufficient1 but ,h---- likes to clinch any nail he drives and he went on3 ,it is admitted by every unprejudiced person--excepting1 of course1 the ignorant and benighted foreigner--that the ,americans are the people1 and that wisdom and virtue will necessarily die with them2 that all their customs and institutions1 whether social or political1 are the wonder1 the envy1 and despair of other nations1 which makes an assertion like yours seem almost frivolous4 ,selfish6 ,i struck in1 selfish--indeed6 on the contrary1 the ,american is blamed as the most indulgent of parents4 ,surely selfishness is the last charge that can justly be made4 ,p---- tried to defend himself4 ,he admitted that if indulgence invariably implied unselfishness the ,american would certainly have nothing with which to reproach himself in his relations with his children4 ,we fought the question over until late1 and this is about what our discussion came to4 ,there can be no doubt that a fond gentleness of rule is in this country1 the law of the average household4 ,so far as is compatible with common sense1 the children have entire liberty of action1 and1 so far as the means of the parents permit1 the children are provided with every advantage and pleasure4 ,indeed1 to such lengths at one time did fondness go that it too often degenerated into a laxness that made the ,american child a lesson and a warning to other nations4 ,daisy ,miller and her little1 odious toothless brother were supposed to typify the results of this fatuous feebleness of rule in our family life1 but neither ,daisy nor her brother can now be held to be typical pictures1 though their prototypes still exist here and there4 ,the ,american parent of to-day rules more firmly and with greater wisdom4 ,such figures as those of the unhappy girl and the odious boy brought home to us the truth--forgotten in our passion for universal liberty--that a relaxation of wise1 strong government by the parent was cruelty of the most far-reaching and irreparable sort4 ,no doubt ,henry ,james' mordant satire helped to inaugurate a salutary reform1 and it is just possible that a new work of a similar nature is now needed to suggest further serious reflections to ,american parents2 to rouse them to consider whether their whole duty is performed in seeing their children well fed1 well educated1 and raised to man's estate4 ,with most parents the sense of responsibility ceases when the boy begins to earn his own living1 when the girl dons orange blossoms4 ,like the birds1 the ,american parent works hard to feed the nestlings1 carefully teaches them to fly1 and then tumbles them out into the world to fend for themselves4 ,so far in our history this elemental method has worked well1 no doubt4 ,the result of it has been to breed the most precocious1 self-reliant1 vigorous1 irreverent race the earth has yet seen4 ,one may see the whole situation epitomized in the orchard any pleasant ,june day--an astonished fledgling ruffling his feathers upon some retired bough1 ruminating upon the sudden shocks and changes of existence1 and afraid almost to turn his head in the large1 new1 lonesome world surrounding him4 ,as the hours pass his melancholy reflections are pierced by hunger's pangs4 ,heretofore1 a busy parent has always appeared to assuage such poignant sensations1 but now that hard-worked person may be seen--genially oblivious of obligations--refreshing himself with cherries1 and the fledgling1 with a squawk of wounded amazement1 discovers for the first time that even parents are not to be depended upon4 ,his hunger meantime grows4 ,an opportune insect flits by and is snapped at involuntarily4 ,it proves to be of refreshing and sustaining quality1 and digestion brings courage4 ,a hop and a flutter show the usefulness of wing and limb4 ,more luck with insects demonstrates that the world belongs to the bold1 and before the day is done the cocky young nestling of yesterday is shouldering his papa away from the ripest cherries4 ,all this is very well in a world where flies and cherries are free to all1 but ,america is fast ceasing to be a happy uncrowded orchard in which the young find more than enough room and food for the taking4 ,in the past1 the boy--inured to plain living and a certain amount of labour from childhood--had only to take the girl of his choice by the hand and go make a home out of virgin soil1 wheresoever chance or fancy led1 himself and his parents both confident he could not suffer in a land where only industry was needed to ensure conquest4 ,these boundless possibilities relieved the parent of half the cares incident to the relation1 and that sense of freedom from responsibility has remained1 while conditions have altered4 ,the bird-like fashion of refusing further liability once the child has made his first flight is still the rule4 ,to the ,european parent this seems a most flagrant abandonment of duty4 ,there the anxious care for the offspring reaches out to the third and fourth generation1 and every safeguard which law or custom can devise is thrown around the child4 ,from the moment of its birth the parent of ,continental ,europe begins to save1 not only for the education and upbringing1 but for the whole future existence of the child4 ,it is not alone the daughter who is dowered1 but the son also has provision made for his married life1 when1 as his parents keenly realize1 the greatest strain will be made upon his resources and capabilities4 ,in ,america it is the custom--very nearly the universal custom--for the parents to spend upon the luxuries and pleasures of the family life the whole income4 ,the children are educated according to this standard of expenditure1 and are accustomed to all its privileges4 ,no thought is taken of the time when they must set up households for themselves--almost invariably upon a very different scale from the one to which they have been used4 ,to the ,american parent this seems only a natural downfall4 ,he remarks cheerfully that he himself began in a small way1 and it will do the young people no harm to acquire a similar experience--forgetting that in most cases the children have been educated to a much higher standard of ease than that of his own early life4 ,the parents do not consider it obligatory to leave anything to their children at death4 ,they have used all they could accumulate during their own lifetime2 let their children do the same4 ,the results of the system are crystallized in the ,american saying3 ,there are but three generations from shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves4 ,the man who acquires wealth spends what he makes4 ,his children1 brought up in luxury1 struggle unsuccessfully against conditions to which they are unused1 and the grand-children begin in their shirt sleeves to toil for the wealth dissipated by the two preceding generations4 ,europeans frequently and curiously remark upon the ,american's prodigality of ready money4 ,the small change which they part with so reluctantly the ,american flings about with a fine medival profusion4 ,the manner of life of the average well-to-do person in this country permits of it4 ,the average man who earns ten or twenty thousand a year invests none of it4 ,he installs his family in a rented house in the city in winter4 ,several servants are kept2 the children are sent to expensive schools4 ,all the family dress well1 eat rich food1 and indulge in costly amusements4 ,in summer they either travel abroad1 live in a hotel at a watering place1 or rent again4 ,the man's whole income is at his disposal to spend every year4 ,none of it is deducted to be safely stored in property4 ,when his daughters marry he expects their husbands to be solely responsible for their future1 and if they do not succeed in marrying wealth1 why so much the worse for them4 ,when his sons begin their career he looks to them to be self-supporting almost from the first1 and not to undertake the responsibilities of a family until they are able to bear such a burden without aid from him4 ,he cannot assist them without materially altering his own scale of living1 which he is naturally loath to do4 ,at his death the income generally ceases in large part1 and his widow1 and such children as may still be unplaced in life1 are obliged to relinquish the rented houses and the way of life to which they have been used4 ,to a ,frenchman such an existence would seem as uncertain and disturbing as is generally supposed to be that of a person who has built upon the crust of a volcano4 ,he could not contemplate with equanimity the thought of chaos overtaking the ordered existence of his family upon his demise4 ,aprs nous le deluge seems to him the insouciance of a maniac1 or of a monster of selfishness4 ,daily expenditure is regulated within a limit which permits of a constant investment of a margin4 ,when his daughter marries he insures in her carefully guarded dower that she shall continue her existence on somewhat the same scale to which she has been accustomed1 and1 in case of premature widowhood or accident of fortune1 she and her children shall not be called upon to face the desperate strait of absolute pennilessness4 ,he may deny her in her girlhood many of the indulgences common to her ,american prototype1 but he denies himself at the same time in saving to insure the security and comfort of her future4 ,the ,french father would think it terrible that a tenderly nurtured daughter should be suddenly thrust into abject dependence upon a husband who may possibly abuse the power given him by that circumstance1 nor would he be more satisfied to think that she should1 during her first years of married life1 while still young and encountering the strain of motherhood1 be called upon to face narrow means and a perilously uncertain financial condition4 ,when the son arrives at maturity the economies to which he1 in company with his parents1 has submitted1 bear fruit in substantial aid in beginning his career1 and he is not obliged to put out of his mind all thought of marriage during his youth1 since his parents1 and those of the woman of his choice1 have provided for this very contingency through all the years of his minority4 ,the ,french--with the logical inevitableness of their mode of thought--carry this view of life to its extreme limit1 but throughout all ,europe1 including ,england1 the responsibility of the parent is more broadly conceived than in this country1 where the excuse for an infinity of cheap flimsiness is the cynical phrase1 ,it will last my time4 ,men build cheaply1 and forbear to undertake work of which they cannot see the immediate result1 because there is no sense of obligation to the coming generation4 ,the democratic theory is that each man must fight for his own hand2 no debt is owed to either ancestry or posterity4 ,the mind is not shocked by sudden destruction of families1 by the sharp descent in the social scale1 or the flinging of women into the arena of the struggle for life4 ,the parent is quite willing to share with the child the goods of existence as far as he can achieve them1 but he is unwilling to deny either child or himself that the child may benefit alone1 or after he is gone4 ,conditions in ,america are constantly assimilating themselves more and more to those existing in the older countries1 where the conflict for existence is close and intense1 and where the prudent1 the careful1 and the far-sighted inevitably crowd out the weaker and more careless individuals and families4 ,an almost unmistakable sign of an old family in ,america is conservatism in expenditure and modes of life4 ,the newly rich1 who set the pace of public luxury1 are always amazed at the probates of the wills of these quiet citizens4 ,they cannot believe that one who spent so little should have so much1 not realizing that the simplicity of life made it possible to solidly invest a surplus4 ,the heirs of this solid wealth have been bred to prudence and self-denial4 ,such a family survives1 while in all probability the offspring of the other type may in two generations be hopelessly trodden into the mire4 ,there is in the breasts of many parents a half-resentful feeling that they should not be asked to sacrifice themselves to the new generation4 ,they insist upon their own right to all that is to be got out of life1 feeling that what they give to the children is never repaid4 ,this selfish type forgets that in doing their duty they are but returning to their children what they themselves received from the past generation1 and that the children will in turn pay to their descendants the inherited debt of honour with interest4 ,july #cj4 ,a ,question of ,heredity4 ,i was lunching out to-day1 and sat beside ,mrs4 ,c---- ,s----4 ,she told me her daughter was so hoping that the new child would be a girl4 ,four boys seemed a superfluity of masculinity in one household4 ,i wish there was some way of knowing beforehand about such things1 she complained4 ,when ,f---- came1 ,i said1 airily1 there was the same feeling in our family2 we all wanted so that she should be a girl4 ,h---- was so comforting4 ,he said she certainly would be1 if there was anything in heredity2 her mother was a girl1 and all her aunts1 and both her grandmothers4 ,and she did turn out to be a girl1 you see4 ,mrs4 ,c---- ,s---- looked at me with her mild blue eyes1 and said1 happily--,i wonder if there is really anything in that2 for you know it's just the same in our family6 ,october #f4 ,the ,little ,dumb ,brother4 ,i have been reading in one of the magazines a record of travel in the ,rocky ,mountains of the ,arctic regions4 ,it is illustrated with pictures of some ten polar bear skins--two of them evidently mere babies of bears--a dead ram1 a dead caribou--the former killed1 the author explains1 to furnish the first food he had in forty-four hours4 ,he concludes his article with this naive charge3 ,wolves1 when pressed by hunger1 do not hesitate to fall upon one of their own number and sacrifice it to their beastly cravings4 ,they are utterly lacking in conscience1 and the young or weak of every class of land animals suffer from their wanton lack of mercy4 ,such wicked wolves6 ,and how about those baby bears8 ,it is the same point of view as that of the ,spanish bull fighters4 ,they are not ,christians--they have no souls--why consider them8 ,as ,i have said before1 very probably the decent1 well-behaved1 kindly ,roman citizen of ,nero's day1 returning with his family from a pleasant afternoon at the gladiatorial shows1 gathered his children about the household altar1 offered pious libation to the gods1 and went peacefully to bed with a clean and untroubled conscience4 ,it was all simply a question of the point of view4 ,a ,roman citizen was certainly not going to be disturbed by a sense of wrong-doing in watching the pangs of such creatures as ,christians or barbarians4 ,the theory that human beings were each and every one in a spiritual sense1 brothers1 came later to trouble this fine old crusted indifference1 and now after nearly two thousand years the idea has so completely infiltrated human consciousness1 that the death agonies of men can no longer anywhere serve as diversion to the gentle and the good4 ,but behind that sweeping assumption that we of all organic nature alone possess that element of immortality1 binding us together with spiritual ties1 and laying upon all the mutual obligations of justice and mercy1 we have been nourishing a towering and brutal egotism1 that moves blindly and stupidly about amid unreckonable multitudes of sentient fellow creatures2 unaware of their lives1 their passions1 or their languages4 ,contracted inside the shell of this foolish prepossession we miss half the interest and wonder of the world we inhabit1 and--thinking of ourselves all the while as an honest and merciful fellow--we play an unimaginable devil to our unhappy neighbours4 ,and yet ,i think even we at our worst would recoil could there be set before us in plain language the immitigable horrors of man's place in nature written from the point of view of even the most philosophic and amiable of the beasts4 ,it makes the skin upon one's flesh crisp to reflect how black would be that long chronicle of poisonings1 burnings1 slayings1 devourings4 ,those unmentionable tortures upon the vivisector's table2 those maimings and clippings of well-loved pets to gratify a cheerful but perverted fancy2 the treachery1 ingratitude1 and fantastic despotism practised every day1 and always--throughout the whole indictment set forth by the accusing animals1--would be seen a dark1 everflowing stream of innocent blood1 spilled purely for man's idle recreation4 ,the fanged ,nero of the jungle1 the very ,heliogabalus of the cobras would seem spotless saints contrasted with this horrid record of the deeds of what are commonly called kindly and upright men4 ,the beasts had never need to invent a devil myth4 ,the model was always to their hand4 ,cardinal ,newman once remarked1 with a sense of surprise1 that we know less of the animals than we do of the angels1 and when one remembers the disproportionate attention given the two subjects this is hardly cause for wonder4 ,one of the favourite texts of the never-ending debates of the schoolmen of the ,middle ,ages was the question whether sixty thousand angels would have room to stand on the point of a needle2 and upon this and cognate subjects 444 ,doctor and ,saint--they heard great argument ,about it1 and ,about3 and ever more ,came out by that same door wherein they went4 ,but of any study of what we call--in our topping human fashion--the lower orders of creation the history of the schools contains not a single record4 ,even since science has begun to divert the world's mind from the study of the macrocosm1 to the contemplation of the microcosm this same ingrained contempt and misunderstanding of the animals has led to the most amazing ideas4 ,descartes1 whose study of the reflex actions of the muscles curiously anticipated some of the subtlest discoveries made recently in ,chicago by ,professor ,loeb1 propounded the theory1 in his ,rponses1 that animals were mere automata--which ate without pleasure1 cried without pain1 desired nothing1 knew nothing1 and only simulated intelligence as a bee simulates a mathematician4 ,he says3 ,among the movements that take place in us there are many which do not depend upon the mind at all1 such as the beating of the heart1 the digestion of food1 nutrition1 and respiration1 walking1 singing1 and other similar actions when they are performed without the mind thinking of them4 ,and when one1 who falls from a height throws his hands forward to save his head1 it is in virtue of no ratiocination that he performs this action4 ,it does not depend upon his mind1 but takes place merely because his senses being affected by present danger some change arises in his brain which affects the nerves in such a manner as is required to produce the motion1 in the same manner as in a machine1 and without the mind being able to hinder it4 ,now since we observe this in ourselves1 why should we be so astonished if the light reflected from the body of a wolf into the eye of a sheep has the same force to excite it into the motion of flight8 ,why on the other hand should we refuse to think that the light reflected from the body of a lion into the eye of ,descartes himself should have the power of exciting him into the motion of flight1 without his mind being concerned in the matter at all--except that ,descartes himself would assure us with his own lips that this was not so4 ,our ignorance of the dialects of animals1 our inability to understand the medium by which they convey their thoughts1 makes it possible for men of even ,descartes' abilities to generate such childish hypotheses4 ,even ,huxley says blandly of animals that ,since they have no language they can have no trains of thought1 though he admits that most of them possess that part of the brain which we have every reason to suppose to be the organ of consciousness in man4 ,it is one of the most regrettable results of this human egotism1 which has dug so deep and permanent a gulf between ourselves and our fellow creatures1 that we have made no concerted or intelligent effort to find a means of communication with our fellow beings4 ,that such an effort would produce results worth the labour it would entail we have reason to infer from the surprising success that has followed our struggles to elucidate the meaning of the fragments of language sculptured on the broken stones that have been left by races extinct for thousands of years4 ,we know how great are the barriers the varying tongues raise between living peoples3 how much effort must be given to acquire a language foreign to us1 even when surrounded by the sound of it in our daily life1 and assisted by teachers1 yet supreme human ingenuity has1 from these fragments of broken stones1 reconstructed dead tongues and forgotten histories of civilizations that for millenniums have been but dust blown through voiceless deserts4 ,yet in all the great lapse of ages during which man has been living in close intimacy with his domesticated animals not the slightest attempt has been made to cross the width of silence lying between him and his faithful companions4 ,the student who makes the acquaintance of animals only in the trap or upon the vivisection table may well assert that the beast has ,no language but a cry1 but those who approach their fellow beings with a mind divested of this self-righteous cant are well aware that the animals have means of communication as accurate as our own1 and fully sufficient for all the needs of their existence4 ,to an ant the man standing beside him is as a creature three thousand feet high1 would be to us4 ,now let us imagine this colossal person stooping to examine the tiny beings hurrying to and fro in a channel between a row of structures built of fragments that would appear to him no bigger than grains of sand4 ,he would1 of course1 be unaware that this channel was called ,broadway1 or the ,strand1 or the ,avenue de l',opera4 ,do these tiny atoms think1 reason1 or speak8 he would ask himself4 ,his ear1 of course1 would be unable to catch any vibrations of their infinitesimal tones1 but he would notice here and there two of them pausing to touch their forepaws1 remaining opposite one another for some moments moving their minute lips1 and that thereupon one or the other would abandon his travel along this channel and move off in another direction1 apparently led thereto by the communication of a command or suggestion from his companion4 ,if this giant should chance to be an intelligent giant he would certainly infer that these men had a language4 ,now let us step out upon the grass any day in ,june and in our turn use an intelligent eye4 ,here lies a dead grasshopper4 ,a foraging ant comes wandering by4 ,he surveys it carefully and estimates the horse power requisite to move it1 and then hurries away in the direction of home4 ,meeting another ant he stops1 touches antennae for a few moments1 and passes on4 ,the second ant makes straight for the grasshopper and finds it without trouble4 ,nothing can be plainer than that the first ant told the second one where to go4 ,a glorious windfall6 he probably said1 ,there's a dead ,leviathan about two miles from here4 ,keep straight on till you come to a three-cornered rock1 then turn to the left and you will come upon three grains of sand and a straw4 ,climb the straw1 and you can't miss it4 ,it's big enough to be seen a mile away4 ,the second ant1 when it finds the grasshopper1 does not go home4 ,it sits down and waits till the first one returns with a great gang of labourers1 and then every one seizes hold of a leg or wing and the stupendous mass is slowly removed to the nest4 ,would any person with ordinary common-sense suppose these to be automata8 ,had ,huxley pondered the ,scriptures and gone to the ant to consider her ways he would have certainly been cured of his haughty illusions1 for not only has each species of ant a language in which he can communicate with other ants of the same species1 but each nest or clan has1 clearly1 its own brogue2 for an ant knows instantly whether another belongs to its own nest or not4 ,the ants of one nest murder those of another4 ,it is a point of honour with them4 ,we have seen that ,huxley admits reluctantly that most animals have those portions of brain development that we believe to be the seat of consciousness1 but here is an insect with organs and functions as heterogeneous from our own as can well be imagined1 and yet there is no mode of life that men have tried which one or another of the races of ants is not pursuing to-day4 ,beside the agriculturists and herdsmen1 some keep slaves to do everything for them1 some live by hunting and plunder1 while others quarter themselves upon us and live by confounding meum and tuum4 ,any ardent pomologist may study the herdsmen tribes by simply turning over the leaves of his young apple tree in the spring4 ,upon the broad succulent meadows of the under side of his foliage he will discover fat flocks of aphis cows1 tended by brawny ant cow-herds1 who keep a special eye upon the big brown bulls around which the cows and calves gather to feed4 ,the herdsmen conduct them from leaf to leaf as they exhaust the sap1 and at night by the long twig paths and barky roads they carry the milk of the sweet honey dew with which they are swollen4 ,if the horticulturist be hard of heart and smear away a whole herd with a sweep of his thumb1 the horrified herdsmen will rush frantically home1 bursting into the nest to report to some hyksos king of the termites1 that the ,philistines have fallen upon his charge and that ,i1 only ,i1 have escaped to tell the tale6 ,the most interesting of the agricultural races of ants is that one commonly known in the ,west ,indies as the parasol ant1 from its fashion of carrying bits of flower petals over its shoulder at the angle commonly used with a sunshade4 ,this ant erects an enormous structure1 as large in proportion to its size as is the ,city of ,london to any one of its inhabitants4 ,the dwellers in these cities are divided into classes3 farmers1 road-makers1 explorers1 nurses1 soldiers1 street sweepers1 policemen1 and1 of course1 the ,queen4 ,the great town is kept perfectly clean and sanitary by the scavengers1 who remove all refuse every day4 ,in case of death the bodies are removed some distance and buried4 ,the soldiers guard the entrances to the city1 and in case of attack by one of the ,attila hordes of the barbarian hunter ants1 they fight with a fury and courage so great that only after the entire army is destroyed is the city ever given up to pillage4 ,the explorers belonging to the nest scour the surrounding country in search of the material needed by the farmers1 and following their indications1 the road-makers clear paths a quarter of an inch in width and frequently a mile in length1 through the immense tangles of the tropical forests1--roads as straight and useful as those of the ,romans4 ,along these the farmers pass1 often at the end of it to climb a tree fifty feet high in search of the bits of flower petals1 with which they pass so continuously to the nest that the human observer will sometimes see what appears to be a thin trickle of pink or yellow through the jungle grass as far as the eye can reach4 ,these flower petals are packed in the city's cellars1 moistened1 and sown with the spores of a minute fungus upon which the ants live4 ,most curious of all is that these ants also keep pets--several varieties of tiny insects which they feed and protect1 and which apparently serve no purpose save to give pleasure by their playful gambols4 ,in every well established city of the parasol ants there resides a small green snake in a chamber built about him by the ants themselves1 who feed and guard him1 and when by any accident the little reptile is removed they abandon all their affairs until another is found to replace him4 ,unless this snake serves them as a fetish or deity there is no means of accounting for their desire for his presence1 for as far as can be discovered he fills no purpose of utility4 ,mark ,twain declares that the ants vote1 keep drilled armies1 hold slaves and dispute about religion1 and for all we know this little snake may be the centre of a complex system of theology4 ,consider too ,maeterlinck's ,life of the ,bee1 that remarkable study of a civilization so unlike our own4 ,it is common to dismiss the bee's geometrical abilities with the futile word instinct1 but honest students of the work of these astonishing insects have shown that1 given a new situation to deal with1 they first hold active counsel together concerning it1 and then adapt their means to new conditions with all the skill and flexibility that suggest powers of trained reasoning4 ,here is a race that works for an ideal4 ,the general good of the hive inspires in them as inflexible a severity1 as ardent an abandonment of the desires of the individual as did the ,roman patriotism of the elder ,brutus1 or of the young ,scaevola4 ,no more remarkable story is to be found in literature than ,maeterlinck's description of the nuptial flight of the ,queen ,bee4 ,choosing a warm and perfect day in the very prime of the season's glow1 distilling as she goes some intoxicating aroma--impalpable to our grosser senses--a perfume of love that drives every drone of the hives in passionate ardour to that deadly encounter1 to which only he may obtain who can follow her arrowy course into the blue1 where1 out of sight of our feeble eyes1 that one lethal embrace occurs after which the lover comes hurtling from the skies1 dead and eviscerated4 ,to provide this lover1 whose potent tenderness shall ensure a myriad generation--this lover with greater wing flight than any of his fellows--with countless facetted eyes1 with greater body and stronger limbs1 this creature of such passion as to sacrifice his life for one moment of joy--the unflagging life work of not less than five of the sexless workers must be given1 and hundreds of drones are raised each year that among them one may prove strong enough to attain to that dizzy aerial love4 ,beside the stern1 homogeneous1 self-sacrificing civilization of the bees that of even the ,japanese shows but clumsy1 disordered and inadequate4 ,many of the doings of these small brothers of ours seem incomprehensible and unreasonable to us1 but imagine that three thousand foot giant looking down upon the mites in ,france and ,germany in #ahgj without an inkling as to the ,spanish succession2 upon the recent incredible scufflings and passagings back and forth over the veldts of ,south ,africa without being instructed as to the term of residence required to obtain the franchise4 ,to his ignorant eye how purposeless1 how amazingly futile the whole affair would have seemed4 ,and it is thus we move1 stupid and contemptuous1 amid great races and events1 heavily indifferent to their meaning1 to their significance to ourselves4 ,we walk surrounded by powers whose forces we ignore1 who work out their ends independent of us1 yet against whom we are sometimes forced to battle mightily for existence4 ,to the unreflecting man in the street the cinch bug seems a matter of small interest4 ,no one interviews the coddling moth to inquire his intentions4 ,war correspondents pass by the locust and ignore the cotton worm2 the fly weevil and the ox bot seem to such an one but a feeble folk1 yet every year in the ,united ,states alone these small races cost us more than three hundred and fifty millions of dollars1 destroy one tenth of our agricultural wealth1 and are more expensive to us than was the yearly cost of the ,boer war to ,england4 ,we are the victims of pigmy captains of pernicious industries1 beside whose gigantic operations such magnates as ,carnegie or ,mr4 ,morgan look--in the language of the streets--like thirty cents4 ,darwin discovered that human and plant life would perish from the face of the earth were it not for the labours of that humble annelid1 commonly known as the angle worm1 through whose body the entire superficial soil of the globe passes periodically1 and by whose digestive processes it is made amenable for agriculture4 ,the termites subserve the angle worm's efforts by turning over and aerating the soil to an extent very nearly incredible to those who have given no attention to their industry4 ,our very existence is made possible by the myriad beings for whom our bodies serve as homes and battlefields1 and whose dimensions are so minute as to be invisible save under the most powerful microscopes4 ,ferocious struggles take place within our own tissues between the germs of disease and the white corpuscles of the blood1 those brave and sleepless warriors who patrol our veins1 and who die by thousands with unreflecting courage in combats with malignant bacteria4 ,when their ranks are thinned1 their columns crushed1 we succumb helplessly to our invisible foes4 ,how many of the great and good have fallen victims to those ,brinvilliers of the swamps--the anopheles mosquitoes8 ,and a greater number of the young flower of the armies of ,america and ,england were slaughtered by the enteric germs carried by flies than fell victims to ,boer or ,spanish bullets4 ,how little have we regarded the fly1 and yet the facts about this little brother stagger the imagination6 ,it is said to be certain that he came to this country in the ,mayflower2 but compare his conquests and fertility with that of the ,pilgrims4 ,linnus said that three flies and the generations that could spring from them could eat a dead horse more rapidly than could a lion1 but later knowledge shows that1 barring mortality1 the number of flies resulting from one female in a summer would be something like seven hundred sextillions1 and would in mere bulk outweigh every man1 woman1 and child on earth4 ,happily the fly has enemies4 ,in speaking of these smaller races an idea of their relations to us can only be conveyed by figures2 with the larger forms of life the individual may be studied as a type of the race4 ,we1 secure in a conviction of a unique value through the immortality we claim1 broadly stigmatize our living fellows as of the lower orders of life4 ,they are different1 it is true1 but in what respect lower8 ,their development is as commensurate with their needs as is ours4 ,the shibboleth of the ,socialists--,to each according to his needs1 from each according to his abilities1 has plainly been the rule with nature4 ,whatever we boast of achieving has been accomplished as well or better by these lower orders when their necessities have demanded it4 ,even the ,japanese create inferior paper to that made by the wasps1 who number among the species the most skilled of carpenters and masons4 ,who can spin or weave as can the arachn and their cognate families8 ,the beautiful manufactures of the mollusks--even of the diatoms1 invisible save with the microscope--leave us beggared of admiration and envy4 ,if it be a question of physical qualities let us compare the eye of the eagle1 or of a fly1 with our own--pit our dull sense of smell with the subtle olfactories of a dog or a wolf--or let one of us test our sense of hearing against that of a mouse or a robin4 ,the albatross loafs in indolent circles about the swiftest of our turbine ships2 the porpoise can pass from point to point in his dense element with greater speed than that of our swiftest express engine4 ,the wild goose can do his eighty miles an hour for ten hours without rest4 ,scare up little ,molly ,cottontail from your path1 and as she flies through the autumn grasses like a light leaf blown before the wind1 her delicate and harmonious play of muscular powers leaves our most skilled athletes but clumsy cripples by comparison4 ,in sight1 smell1 hearing1 speed1 strength1 grace1 and endurance we are immeasurably the inferiors of our dumb brothers4 ,and turning from the material to the spiritual and the ideal1 we find that in industry1 courage1 patriotism1 loyalty1 fidelity1 friendship1 chivalry1 maternal love1 and racial solidity the lower orders have nothing to learn from us4 ,indeed some races we find advanced in moral progress in certain directions far beyond our most hopeful endeavours4 ,the needs and laws of their being have developed their morals in differing degree1 and the virtues of individuals vary as greatly as among ourselves4 ,of the characters and ideals of wild creatures we can snatch but brief and tantalizing glimpses2 from the larger domestic animals our daily life is too removed to make intimacy possible1 but dogs and cats1 the free birds1 and our caged pets--if considered with a seeing eye--open a door through which we can learn much1 though our indolence and stupidity still shut us off from the free community of speech4 ,carlyle says3 ,no nobler feeling than that of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of man4 ,it is at this hour1 and at all hours the unifying influence in man's life4 ,religion1 ,i find1 stands upon it 444 what1 therefore1 is loyalty proper1 the life breath of all society1 but an effluence of hero worship2 submissive admiration for the truly great6 ,society is founded upon hero worship4 ,lockhart in his ,life of ,scot tells of a little pig who conceived a passion of admiration and affection for ,scott which much embarrassed the great story teller4 ,this susceptible little porker would lurk about1 waiting for ,scott's appearance1 squealing with joy when he came1 and trotting patiently all day at his heels through miles of wandering1 proud and contented at merely being allowed to attend on ,scott4 ,what was this but ,carlyle's hero worship4 ,it is not by the way recorded that any pig ever made a hero of ,carlyle4 ,i once had the pleasure of knowing a goose who abandoned his kind for just such a human friendship1 and the same love of the admirable is mutual among the animals themselves4 ,a small green paroquet1 who lived in the freedom of a bird fancier's room with a canary1 was possessed of a passionate admiration for his more gifted companion4 ,his every waking moment was spent in the most touching efforts to imitate the thrilling songs and graceful airiness of his more gifted friend1 in no way discouraged by the contumely with which the yellow tenor treated his lumberingly pathetic failures4 ,but there is no more confirmed hero worshipper than your dog4 ,stevenson says of a dog whom he knew and loved3 ,it was no sinecure to be ,coolin's idol4 ,he was exacting like a rigid parent2 and at every sign of levity in the man whom he respected he announced loudly the death of virtue and the proximate fall of the pillars of the earth4 ,and1 he adds1 for every station the dog has an ideal to which the master--under pain of derogation--will do wisely to conform4 ,how often has not a cold glance informed me that my dog was disappointed1 and how much more gladly would he not have taken a beating than to be thus wounded in the seat of piety4 ,because of all animals the dog is our nearest intimate we know more of his ideals and of his moral traits than of those of the other races4 ,we know that he is vainer than man1 singularly greedy of notice1 singularly intolerant of ridicule1 suspicious like the deaf1 jealous to the degree of frenzy4 ,to quote ,stevenson again3 ,to the dog of gentlemanly feeling theft and falsehood are disgraceful vices4 ,the canine like the human gentleman1 demands in his misdemeanours ,montaigne's 'je ne sais quoi de genereux6' ,he is never more than half ashamed of having barked or bitten1 and for those faults into which he has been led by a desire to shine before a lady of his race1 he retains1 even under physical correction1 a share of pride4 ,but to be caught lying1 if he understands it1 instantly uncurls his fleece4 ,among dull observers the dog has been credited with modesty4 ,it is amazing how the use of language blunts the faculties of man4 ,that because vain glory finds no vent in words1 creatures supplied with eyes have been unable to detect a fault so gross and obvious is amazing4 ,if a small spoiled dog were to be endowed with speech he would prate interminably and still about himself4 ,in a year's time he would have gone far to weary out our love4 ,hans ,christian ,andersen1 as we behold him in his startling memoirs--thrilling from top to toe with excruciating vanity--scouting the streets for cause of offence--here was your talking dog4 ,while an egregious1 incurable snob the dog is yet the very flower of chivalry4 ,the beggar maid of his kind is sure of as distinguished a consideration from him as is the queen of his race4 ,indeed he carries his gallantry to so exquisite a point of quixotism that even a female wolf is safe from his teeth4 ,gratitude is the keynote of his character2 to its claims he will subdue even his innate snobbishness1 and his devotion to the mysterious laws of his canine etiquette amount to slavishness4 ,in the elaborate and conscious manners of the dog1 moral opinions and the love of the ideal stand confessed4 ,to follow for ten minutes in the street some swaggering canine cavalier is to receive a lesson in dramatic art and the cultured conduct of the body2 and in every act and gesture you see him true to a refined conception4 ,for to be a high-mannered and high-minded gentleman1 careless1 affable1 and gay1 is the inborn pretension of the dog4 ,of all persons now living ,i personally should most prefer to be enabled to converse freely with that high-bred1 subtle-natured lady who follows me in my walks1 who shares my meals and lies beside my fire4 ,she has learned with ease to understand my speech1 but ,i1 in my gross sluggishness1 have neglected to acquire her tongue1 and yet how different a place this dull world would appear could ,i learn all she might tell me4 ,what sights1 sounds1 and odours1 what significances escaping my dull senses1 might become open to me6 ,a thousand times ,i have been aware of her pitying impatience of my slow-wittedness in matters so obvious to her keener intelligence4 ,a whole world lies outside of my apprehension with which she is familiar1 and all my life ,i shall suffer unappeased curiosity as to how she becomes aware of approaching changes in the weather2 why a certain part of the wood is taboo4 ,what is it that warns her of a death in my family8 ,why does a certain good and gentle woman fill her with loathing distrust1 and what was the peculiar refinement of insult she received in her puppyhood from the family butcher1 which has made it possible for her daily for six years to detect the sound of the butcher's wheels among many others while he is still not in sight1 and daily produces in her a rage of resentment that no punishment1 no offer of tidbits1 has ever been able to allay8 ,all these things ,i shall never know4 ,she shares my life1 but ,i1 regretfully1 protestingly1 must stand almost wholly outside of hers4 ,when we at last seriously take up the great task of articulate communication with the animals1 a new world will swim into our ken beside which the discovery of ,america will seem but an unimportant event4 ,half of the unexplained puzzles of science will be solved with ease1 and whole departments of knowledge as yet undreamed of will be opened to our astonished understandings4 ,perhaps by our little dumb brothers we are still compassionately reckoned as the deaf and blind giant4 ,august #e4 ,fever ,dreams4 ,a thousand times the great clock's heart has beat-- ,a thousand1 thousand times1 ,and ever at the hours the sudden1 sweet1 ,low1 unexpected ringing of the chimes ,tells how the night doth slowly pass away4 ,the hissing snow fell through the air all day1 ,but with the dark did cease-- ,i hear the shivers of the frozen trees4 ,the night-lamp's gleam--though weak the flame and small-- ,casts shadows giant tall ,that to the ceiling crawl-- ,the cap-frill of the sleeping nurse doth fall ,and nod this way and that against the wall4 ,quiet the great dark house1 and deeply sleep they all-- ,they held me fast1 they could not hear the call ,that ,i heard always--chill the winds did blow-- ,the skies were dark--the ways were white with snow-- ,he did not call--,i wandered to think so4 ,but now they sleep1 ,i will arise and go4 ,they think him dead1 but his sweet voice ,i know4 ,i stretch my hands1 my heart beats hard--his voice is sweet and low1 ,but muffled by the weight of earth1 and hath a note of woe-- ,he calls to me3 ,i cannot stay2 ,i must arise and go-- ,i step out on the floor-- 7,how loud that nurse doth snore7 ,but ,i softly close the door4 ,i quickly pass from the outer door4 ,it is very1 very cold6-- ,but he will me closely fold ,with a tender clasping arm1 ,and still my deep alarm-- ,in his heart ,i shall be warm6 ,the snow is smooth as glass4 ,i scarcely leave a foot-print as ,i pass-- ,it is very cold1 and the way is long1 alas6 ,and they have buried him deep1 so deep under the frozen grass4 ,it was cruel to bury him so deep2 ,he was not dead1 he was only asleep-- ,he was not dead2 it makes me weep ,to think he is in this frozen ground-- ,why does the moon whirl round and round6 ,my head is dizzy2 ,i'm faint and ill-- ,will no one make the moon stand still8 ,the foolish moon whirls round and round-- ,what is it that the pine trees know1 ,that they rustle and whisper together so8 ,someone was buried under the snow ,more than a thousand years ago6-- ,my long black shadow runs by my side4 ,was it ,i1 or my love that died ,and was buried deeply under the snow ,so many hundred years ago8 ,oh6 how can ,i reach him under the ground8 ,i am burning with fire1 my head turns round4 ,he does not call me1 ,i hear no sound-- ,ah6--will no one come to me8 ,i'm all alone1 ,the nurse does not hear1 she's as deaf as a stone1 ,the walls of the grave together have grown1 ,the dead man lies still and makes no moan1 ,they have left me here with this corpse alone--6 ,his golden hair is tarnished with rust2 ,his eyes have withered and fallen to dust-- ,his subtle1 secret1 amber eyes2 ,the worms might have spared those amber eyes-- ,his lips are grey with dust and sunken2 ,his heart is cold1 and his cheeks are shrunken-- ,he must be dead1 so still he lies6 99 99 99 99 99 ,i lay in my bed and he called to me1 ,they held me1 but it might not be ,that we should rest so far apart1 ,and we have lain here1 heart to heart1 ,since ,i came out across the snow ,more than a thousand years ago4 ,september #g4 ,a ,misunderstood ,moralist4 ,mary ,r---- was telling us to-day the details of ,zola's accidental death--if it was an accident4 ,there are a few1 she tells me1 who whisper privately that the enemies he made by ,lourdes and ,rome are of the sort who wait long and patiently1 and strike hard1 and strike at the back when the time of vengeance comes4 ,that sounds rather sensational1 and certainly the general public have heard no such suggestion4 ,the story of the death-chamber is like a chapter from one of his own books1 and one can't but feel how gruesome and vivid he would have made the account of the tragedy could he have recorded it4 ,it's rather odd how the multitude still judge ,zola at the rating of twenty years since1 before he had developed the meaning of his methods and proved himself one of the greatest of the moral teachers4 ,it was certainly as long ago as that when a battered1 grimy copy of ,nana drifted by some swirl of chance into my youthful hands4 ,i was quite old enough to realize that my pastors and masters would be convulsed with horror did they at all suspect what ,i was at1 but being in those days as omnivorous as ,lamb--,shaftesbury was not too genteel for me1 nor ,jonathan ,wild too low--everything on which a hand could be laid passed into my greedy mental maw1 from ,locke ,on the ,human ,understanding to the novels of the ,duchess1 and ,i had intelligence enough not to chatter about every book ,i opened4 ,i remember with perfect vividness the moral revelation given me by the chapter descriptive of the drunken orgie in ,nana's rooms1 where they wound up the gaieties of the evening by the spirited jest of pouring the champagne into the piano4 ,in a flash was made clear to me what ,i had never previously suspected1 that vice was tedious and unamusing6 ,until that moment ,i had accepted in perfect good faith the insistence of the moralists upon the delicious1 exciting1 irresistible nature of vice1 which1 though deplorable in its eventual effects1 was too agreeable to be refrained from unless fortified by either religion or the choicest collection of moral maxims4 ,we were the contented owners1 at that same period1 of a large engraving of a popular painting entitled ,the ,prodigal ,son2 one of those pictures supposed to have a good moral and help silently1 in season and out of season1 to point towards virtue like a sign at the crossroads4 ,the engraving was divided into three parts1 like a triptych2 the central1 and by far the largest portion1 showed the famous ne'er-do-weel prodigalling with all his might in a sort of lordly pleasure dome1 all columns and sweeping curtains and steps1 open to the sunshine on every side1 and decorated with the most expensive cut flowers4 ,a meal1 which plainly deserved to be called by no meaner name than a banquet1 was toward1 and the naughty young gentleman1 bedecked in velvet and soothed by the music of viols1 was feasting amid a medley of young ladies of the most dazzling physical charms1 all attired in those sketchy toilets which have no visible means of support1 and which allow the artist to prove his inexhaustible talent for drawing arms and busts4 ,so vivacious and sumptuous was this scene that at first one hardly noticed the narrow panels to right and left1 in one of which the profuse prodigal was on a subsequent occasion dining en famille with the swine1 and later journeying toward forgiveness and veal4 ,the moralists1 from ,isaiah down1 have so dearly loved to show their talent for drawing arms and busts4 ,the delineation of vice always usurps all the foreground of the canvas4 ,according to them1 the broad road is unfailing in its crops of flowers1 the wine is always red in the cup1 with beaded bubbles winking at the brim4 ,the frisky enchantresses are without exception young and charming4 ,the reverse of the picture is depressingly bleak--by way of proper dramatic contrast1 perhaps1 though to any one less austere than a moralist it would seem unintelligent to point out that in one direction all was gay1 brilliant1 and agreeable1 yet one must follow the gloomy1 tedious1 and unpleasant road in order to find some intangible spiritual satisfaction1 which to youthful and ardent minds seems drearily remote1 and unsatisfying when reached4 ,besides it really isn't true4 ,life as a matter of fact is certainly more agreeable when one behaves one's self decently4 ,nothing was ever more blatantly untrue than the cynical proverb which declares that everything pleasant is either indigestible1 expensive1 or immoral4 ,but the mind of youth is almost touchingly credulous4 ,it rarely questions the accuracy of the descriptions of the moralists1 who claim to be experts1 though instinctively it develops a necessity for experimenting a little with those forbidden sweets of which it has heard so much praise4 ,until ,i read ,nana it never occurred to me to question that vice was in itself agreeable1 since ,i had never heard aught to the contrary2 but that champagne poured into the piano washed away the conviction forever4 ,it seemed so squalid1 so unimaginative1 so dull2 and all the vice ,i have observed since has shared its lack of charm4 ,i found that the broad road had no patent on flowers and sunshine1 that dishonesty nine times out of ten failed of returns at all commensurate with the energy devoted to it2 that loose behaviour was nearly always noisome and fatiguing2 that the prodigal1 instead of being a beautiful young person in velvet1 generally had a red nose and a waist1 and borrowed from his acquaintances1 and that the enchantresses had not nearly as good figures as the painters credited them with1 and as a rule had no real feeling for soap and water4 ,the truth is that all forms of vice are for the most part not only repulsive but intolerably unamusing1 and ,zola was the first of the moralists who had the courage to be original and speak disrespectfully of it4 ,september #aj4 ,the ,pleasures of ,pessimism4 ,a man who took me in to dinner ,wednesday night said1 pityingly1 ,you seem to be a pessimist4 ,why is that8 ,are you unhappy8 ,that sort of remark is a shot between wind and water1 and leaves one speechless4 ,i crossly denied being an ----ist of any sort1 and changed the subject4 ,possibly he was led to his banal personality by some remark ,i had made1 of the sort that is commonly called cynical because it is true4 ,the optimists have a theory that those who don't take the same view of life as themselves must therefore be unhappy4 ,it's an amazing conclusion4 ,they seem to have no idea how the pessimists enjoy their own sense of superiority4 ,it is as if the blind should say to the man with eyes3 ,how unhappy you must be to see things just as they are4 ,now ,i can imagine them to be anything ,i please6 ,the man with eyes could1 of course1 only smile2 it being obviously impossible to discuss such a proposition4 ,the believers in personal immortality labour under the same curious illusion apparently4 ,they are so sorry for those who don't believe in it1 and imagine them frightened at the thought of death4 ,to their minds the universe is inconceivable without their presence1 seemingly forgetful of the fact that it got on quite well before they came4 ,it is rather an imposing bit of egotism1 after all4 ,it rises to the level of grandeur4 ,catholics1 ,i know1 have the same pity and astonishment about the state of mind of ,protestants that the optimists feel for pessimists1 the religious for the unbelieving4 ,each thinks the heretic in parlous state and fancies he must be secretly disturbed by it1 when of a truth the heretic is simply amused by this anxiety for his welfare1 and cheerfully certain of his own superiority4 ,september #ah4 ,moral ,pauperism4 ,m----1 who has1 with some flourish of trumpet and tuck of drum1 gone over to ,rome1 is the daughter of a ,presbyterian minister1 ,i am told1 and1 what is odder still1 is a very clever and humorous creature4 ,one can discount the parson and the cleverness1 but a humorous ,protestant 'verting is more difficult to understand4 ,i tried hard to get some explanation from her as to her point of view1 but she was entirely vague4 ,fancy--she has a patron saint1 beads1 etc46 ,one can only gape4 ,very probably every one is at birth--no matter what the environment--either ,catholic or ,protestant by nature4 ,to many it is an absolute necessity that someone else should furnish their spiritual and mental support4 ,with these1 no matter how frequently one sets them on their feet their knees will give under them2 no matter how often one starts them in spiritual business one has eventually to come again to the rescue4 ,to such an one the perpetual supervision and personal tyranny of the ,catholic ,church must seem deliciously comfortable and protecting4 ,no wonder they are drawn to it across all barriers4 ,to the born ,protestant such bondage is as intolerable as spoon feeding and a wheeled chair would be to an athlete4 ,whatever the moral or mental situation may be he must deal with it for himself--must stand on his own feet--use his own moral muscles4 ,neither can ever understand the other4 ,their whole attitude toward life is directly opposed4 ,each seeks what his nature demands4 ,september #cj4 ,on a ,certain ,lack of ,humour in ,frenchmen4 ,the book-club has eliminated ,marcel ,prevost's ,mariage de ,julianne as too naughty for our perusal--though not until we had all read it1 to see how undesirable it was4 ,to what ,h---- calls my robust nature it seemed merely deliciously funny and human1 and ,i am not fond of ,french fiction as a rule4 ,most of it leaves in my mind only a sense of dreary nastiness--a sort of more closely knit ,hall ,caine-ism1 with his sloppiness of style left out4 ,yet a good many of one's contemporaries profess to find ,french fiction vastly superior to ,english literature of the same sort3 to find ,balzac a greater artist than ,thackeray2 but those who make this assertion are1 ,i find1 generally lacking in humour and imagination themselves1 and therefore blind to a whole side of life4 ,they1 of nature1 think marionettes liker life than beings of flesh and blood4 ,balzac's dry1 minute descriptions give them an impression of reality4 ,to hear that a man had a red nose1 had iron-grey hair growing thin on top1 and that his bottle-green trousers wrinkled at the knees1 gives them the sensation that ,balzac is presenting them with a slice of life--not being aware1 it would seem1 that this might be equally truthful a description of a wax figure at ,madame ,tussaud's4 ,such matters as these are not the essentials that differentiate a man from his fellows4 ,henry ,james thinks this elaboration of detail is ,balzac's strongest gift and adds1 ,dickens often sets a figure before us with extraordinary vividness1 but the outline is fantastic and arbitrary--we but half believe in it4 ,it seems to me that ,james has1 like ,balzac1 but a half developed sense of life4 ,he too is meticulous in his efforts to make one see and feel what he wishes to convey1 because he only half feels and sees it himself2 though he is concerned rather with emotions than objects1 and in spite of the labour and care expended by each1 but a shadowy impression remains4 ,dickens can dash in a few broad1 half caricatured lines of a portrait because the figure he wishes to show is so vivid to his own eye he feels it only necessary to indicate it broadly to make others recognize it4 ,uncle ,pumblechook in ,great ,expectations is suggested1 as far as written description goes1 in merest outline--,a large1 hard-breathing1 middle-aged1 slow man1 with a mouth like a fish1 dull staring eyes1 and sandy hair standing upright on his head--yet after half a page of his conversation and his welcome to ,pip at the funeral1 breathing sherry and crumbs1 one needs no more4 ,the man lives and moves4 ,one knows him inside and out4 ,james speaks again of ,balzac's choking one with his bricks and mortar1 and thinks his houses1 his rooms1 his towns1 unequalled for vividness of presentation1 of realization4 ,to an imaginative reader they are as dry and superfluous as a real-estate agent's pamphlets2 one has a sense of the author's heavy straining effort to make the places palpable to his own mental vision4 ,it is the weary iteration of the bore1 who having no imagination can leave nothing to that of his hearer4 ,dickens somewhere describes a room merely by telling how the winking fire was reflected in every smooth object4 ,the fire winks cheerily2 the pewters winking dully1 as if afraid of being suspected of not seeing the joke2 the furniture twinkling slyly from every polished point1 etc41 etc41 in ,dickens's well-known fashion of pursuing a happy fancy round and round4 ,there is not one word of catalogue of the room's contents1 yet it remains forever as vivid in the reader's memory as a chamber with which one is intimately familiar4 ,bulwer says that ,french nature is not human nature1 and if human nature was necessarily the ,anglo-,saxon conception of life it would be true4 ,nothing so points ,french heterogeneousness from ourselves as the attitude of our two chosen masters of the novel1 ,balzac and ,thackeray4 ,not a gleam of humour ever irradiates for a moment the pages of the former4 ,a mere glimmer would make impossible his story of the young man who endeavours to compromise a pretty woman1 whose refusal to yield to his dishonourable suggestions so puzzles and disgusts him that he can only explain her coldness as being the probable results of some secret but mortal disease6444 ,a lover abducts a reluctant fair by mingled force and stratagem1 and attempts to brand her with hot irons2 accompanying this gentle gallantry with the mummeries of a thirteenth-century ,inquisition4 ,this picturesque proof of devotion so touches the lady that she promptly grovels in an agony of affection for this chivalrous admirer4444 ,all this is told with perfect gravity1 the author having not the smallest suspicion of its absurdity--and yet there be actually ,anglo-,saxons who solemnly announce that ,balzac knew human nature to its depths4 ,french nature1 perhaps2 certainly not ours4444 ,a spinster lives twenty years in a family1 all of whose members she venomously hates1 and not one of them suspect her unselfish devotion until she aids in humiliating them and wrecking their fortunes4444 ,madame ,hulot is a saint1 and yet at fifty years of age offers her person to a repulsive scoundrel in order to provide a marriage portion for her daughter2 ,balzac evidently considering this one of her noblest acts4 ,the point at which one finds the widest divergence of the ,french and ,english attitudes toward life is in the essay made by each of these chosen spokesmen to show us the adventuress4 ,taine1 who honestly tried to see ,english literature from ,english eyes and interpret it to his countrymen1 breaks down entirely when he reaches this angle of vision4 ,he says3 ,there is a personage unanimously recognized as ,thackeray's masterpiece1 ,becky ,sharp4444 ,let us compare her with a similar personage of ,balzac in ',les ,parents ,pauvre1' ,valerie ,marneff4 ,the difference in the two works will exhibit the difference in the two literatures--and they do indeed4 ,valerie to the ,english reader is the old commonplace1 stereotyped adventuress of the melodrama4 ,one can imagine none save those as vile and stupid as herself being deceived by such a greedy1 outrageous creature4 ,the descriptions of her looks and behaviour smack of the unhumorous shilling shocker4 ,she gives glances from beneath her long eyelids like the glare of cannon seen through smoke6 444 and again her eyes flashed like daggers4 ,such figures of speech sound like the pompous rhodomontade of a ,laura ,jean ,libby1 yet ,taine quotes them with much admiration4 ,becky1 ,taine finds incomprehensible4 ,he complains that ,thackeray degrades her when he laughingly reveals her secret vulgar shifts4 ,also he is resentful because her carefully built schemes crumble one by one like houses of cards1 being ignorant1 apparently1 of that choice old utilitarian proverb as to ,honesty being the best policy1 founded upon a very general observation that the same cleverness and energy employed by adventurers in their nefarious schemes pays a far higher rate of interest when turned to legitimate pursuits4 ,the half affectionate1 half contemptuous humour with which her creator regards ,becky shocks ,taine4 ,with his ,french passion for logical completeness he cannot comprehend that ,thackeray's vision for truth should make him capable of admitting and admiring that arch-adventuress's good qualities1--the very qualities of her defects which made her career of deception possible4 ,the consistent monster ,valerie could delude no one1 while ,becky's patience1 gaiety1 and good nature made ,rawdon ,crawley's devotion plausible1 and forced even ,lord ,steyne1 who recognized her baseness1 after a fashion to respect and like her1 and consent to be used by her1 until--by a fundamental impulse of womanliness--she admired her husband standing there1 grand1 brave1 victorious1 above the prostrate body of her seducer4 ,it is that same underlying womanliness in ,becky--of which ,valerie lacked even an intimation--which makes her human and real4 ,its absence leaves ,valerie incredible and shadowy4 ,take again ,lear and ,goriot4 ,the latter's children have no excuse whatever for their crimes of greed and selfishness4 ,they are grotesque succubi1 while the astounding wickedness of ,regan and ,goneril is made credible by ,lear's own violent foolishness and vanity4 ,his tempestuous senility is of the sort that wakes the blindest revolt of youth1 which is always restless under the dominance of age1 a restlessness likely to deepen to cruelty when age is unrestrained by wisdom or dignity4 ,a ,frenchman once complained to me bitterly of the comic porter in ,macbeth1 who comes grumbling to unlock the gate so soon after the horror of the murder of ,duncan4 ,to him the touch of comedy seemed vulgar and inept4 ,it was impossible to make him understand how to the ,anglo-,saxon mind this veracious touch of comedy jostling tragedy but heightened the dramatic poignancy of the play4 ,this incapacity to see the humorous contrasts of life and character is generally characteristic of youth with its narrow inexperience of realities1 and the ,french and the unhumorous of our own race seem never to outgrow this juvenility4 ,october #ae4 ,the ,value of a ,soul4 ,i wonder if anyone will ever muster up sufficient courage to write the true history of the ferocious egotism engendered in the human heart by a belief in human immortality4 ,the most cynical might well shrink from the sorrowful task4 ,self-preservation1 supposedly the first law of nature1 is but a feeble instinct when placed in comparison1 for motherhood1 patriotism1 sexual love2 a thousand minor passions will induce human beings to abandon their inheritance in the warm precincts of the cheerful day1 but all that a man hath1 and all that his friends1 and the wife of his bosom1 and the children of his loins have1 will he give for that wretched little flyspecked object he calls his soul4 ,buckle rather shocked a pious world when he announced that in many cases the best kings1 considered from the point of view of their private characters1 made the worst rulers2 but all history is loud with this truth4 ,the moment anyone in power began to consider the question of his soul with seriousness1 tears and blood soon began to flow4 ,a ruler who had strong secular tendencies usually had some sort of consideration for human happiness1 but one who turned his mind to what was called higher things waded through the wretchedness of those in his power with noble insouciance4 ,henri ,,iv41 who was cheerfully indifferent as to whether he heard preaching by parsons or the mass of priests1 provided he might have ,paris for his capital1 quieted the fratricidal religious conflicts of ,france and made life happy for his subjects2 and ,henry ,,ii4 of ,england1 who was the only one of the ,angevin ,kings entirely unconcerned about his immortal future1 did more for ,england than any ruler since ,alfred1 and would have trebled those wise secular benefits had -,becket and the rest of the troublesome clergy permitted it4 ,i have been roused to these moral generalizations by ,quiller-,couch's novel1 ,hetty ,wesley4 ,it's a poignant book4 ,hetty was the sister of the founders of ,methodism1 and ,quiller-,couch has availed himself1 in writing the book1 of the letters and papers of that remarkable family4 ,he has told his tale very simply and with an artist's comprehension and sympathy1 setting down nothing in malice and leaving the reader to draw his own inferences4 ,the picture of that damp ,epworth ,rectory where ,charles and ,john were born 7two out of the ten living children1 several others had died early7 makes the ,bront ,parsonage1 over which it is the fashion to shiver1 seem like an amiable idyl by contrast4 ,samuel ,wesley1 the father1 was passionately religious4 ,the first of his concerns was the saving of his own soul for immortal happiness1 the second was the saving of as many other like heirs to bliss as possible1 and a part of this second ambition implied the training of his sons for the ministry4 ,in pursuit of these ends he sacrificed the comfort and happiness of his wife and seven lovely daughters with a ruthless persistency and consistency that would be incredible did we not have his own complacent writings in testimony thereto4 ,the sons found his example worthy of imitation1 it appears4 ,of late1 apropos of the ,wesley ,centennial1 one has heard much of ,john ,wesley1 of his tangled love affairs and his amazing marriage1 and one can't but be conscious of a secret liking for that tempestuous termagant1 ,mrs4 ,john1 because that she after a fashion avenged those eight unlucky kinswomen whose lives he so complacently sucked dry to nourish his religious aspirations4 ,one has wondered1 when reading them1 if those meek and loyal addresses from the scaffold1 made to ,henry ,,viii4 by the innocent victims of his bloodthirstiness1 could have been genuine documents4 ,they contradict all one knows of human nature in their humble acquiescence and submissive affection2 but here in this book we have ,hetty ,wesley's own tender appeal to her father--a father who had ruthlessly cast her into a lifelong hell--to forgive what he called a sin1 really only a girl's generous foolish mistake1 and we have also his answer4 ,an answer which would have made even ,tudor ,henry blush for its cruelty4 ,one could almost wish that there was somewhere an immortal part of ,samuel ,wesley1 burning eternally in the knowledge of himself as he really was4 ,mrs4 ,john ,wesley saves us the need of wishing that ,hetty's brother had a soul4 ,after all1 this is but one of thousands of grim stories of human beings trampling upon the lives and hearts of their fellows in the endeavour to achieve for themselves an infinity of bliss4 ,to my heretical mind such behaviour for such an end seems inexpressibly sordid1 vulgar1 and selfish4 ,i at least prefer to be one with the dumb beasts that perish1 but who pass away knowing that no creature has ever suffered a pang in order that they may have saved their souls alive4 ,a ,grateful ,spaniard4 ,time is not long enough for me ,to hate mine enemy perfectly1 ,but ,god is of infinite mercy and he ,to ,time has added ,eternity4 ,october #af4 ,bores4 ,i reproached ,j---- last night for sending me to dinner with ,e----4 ,this is the third time you have done it1 ,i grumbled1 and it is just twice too often4 ,none of the other women will talk to him1 and because ,i treat him decently you take advantage of my good nature4 ,oh1 but my dear1 she countered impishly1 you know you are so juicy with bores6 ,of course1 that was true1 though there is nothing ,i envy more than the courage of ruthlessness--one of the first laws of social self-preservation4 ,i am always the helpless prey of bores4 ,they drink as they choose from my sacred fount1 though it is shallow enough1 heaven knows6 for me to need all its contents for myself4 ,if this condition of affairs arose from good nature ,i should not be ashamed of it1 but it is all sheer cowardliness4 ,my imagination is so vivid that ,i can feel the corroding humiliation of neglect and indifference to the poor souls as if it were being applied to my own skin1 and ,i labour on1 crying protests inwardly1 rather than free myself by a moment of brutality4 ,tell bores who waste my time and me that the best hours of my life have been burned in their dull fires4 ,again and again have ,i lost my opportunity to seek the friendship of some adorably amusing creature while sweating to pull the oar that was the bore's own proper task4 ,this indolent cowardice enfeebles me in a dozen ways2 makes it impossible for me to train my dogs for fear of hurting their feelings1 and to discharge a servant costs me a white night and a fausse digestion4 ,it is not kindliness1 it is only that ,i feel their discomfort more than they do themselves4 ,november #g4 ,emotions and ,oxydization4 ,h---- told a curious story last night of the bobstay on his yacht1 which time after time rusted1 broke1 and betrayed him at critical moments of racing4 ,replacing with the best material and by the best workmen was futile1 though all the rest of the wire rigging remained intact4 ,it seemed a hoodoo until it was discovered to be due to oxydization from a bolt which touched a copper plate on the stem4 ,f---- said it was easy to see how1 before the chemical action of steel and copper were understood1 the most sensible and logical mind might be driven to attribute such a thing to witchcraft1 and it occurred to me that perhaps when we know more of the chemistry of psychology1 many of our emotional puzzles will be more easily solved4 ,jealousy1 anger1 suspicion1 ingratitude1 it will then be easy to correct by some simple act of insulation4 ,we know that many evil moral tendencies are caused by pressure upon certain portions of the brain1 and my own personal experience and long observation makes me confident that half the baser passions are due to acidity in the blood4 ,it makes one slow to indulge one's emotions when one realizes they may simply be the result of a lack of a therapeutic alkali4 ,with such a conviction one will generally wait for the slower and more balanced action of reason4 ,what a great alteration would take place in the history of the world if it could be rewritten from the point of view of what the doctors describe as the gouty acid diathesis4 ,bess of ,hardwicke's marital troubles1 which convulsed all ,england1 and even drew ,elizabeth and ,burleigh into the turmoil1 were due entirely to the unhappy ,earl's gout1 as no one can doubt after reading his letters4 ,charles ,v4 was driven from his throne by it1 and ,napoleon's gout lost him the battle of ,leipsic and set his feet in slippery places4 ,henry ,,viii4's shoes were not slashed without reason1 and ,pitt was lost to ,england when she most needed him by the same agent4 ,these are but a few of the notorious examples1 but how many wars1 revolutions1 massacres1 had their origin in that same corroding oxydization of the spirit of man we will probably never fully determine4 ,november #aj4 ,abelard to ,heloise4 ,dear ,sister in ,christ3 ,god send you peace from ,heaven6 ,i would that to your restless heart ,his blessed peace was given1 ,and that you found ,in contemplation of ,his love ,balm for that wound ,that ever frets you sore4 ',twere meet you wore ,much sack cloth1 ,and with scourge and fasting drove ,this passion from your soul4444 ,christ's ,bride thou art2 ,therefore give ,him the whole4 ,i charge thou keep'st back not any part ,of ,his just due to spend upon a worm4444 ,nay1 woman6 would'st thou bring on me a curse ,for that ,i stand between thy soul and ,god8444 ,thy love for me is but a thing perverse4 ,cast it forth from thee1 or a heavy rod ,may prove that ,god is still a jealous ,god4 ,but that you are a woman1 and infirm ,of will and purpose1 ,i should say ,some bitter words to purge you of this sin6 ,natheless each day ,i painful penance do ,for that 'twas ,i who led you first astray-- 7,for which great sin may ,he my soul assoil67 ,and wrestle mightily each night in prayer ,that ,christ may yet your stubborn heart subdue ,to ,his sweet will1 and--the sharp fret and coil ,of earth cast forth--,he then may enter in ,to find a garnished chamber1 and an altar fair4444 --,nay1 now1 bethink you6 ,love like yours is grievous sin1 ,and the time wasteth swift toward death4 ,all love is but a breath ,which clouds the glass that we see darkly through-- ,when you to ,heaven shall win ,and there see face to face your risen ,lord1 ,wilt know 'twas but the hot fume of a word ,spake by a devil1 dimmed your earthly glass4444 ,in essence love is sin6-- ,save only love of ,god4 ,it is a gin1 ,set by the ,evil ,one to snare the feet ,of those who haste toward ,heaven1 ,by its false likeness to the spiritual love1 ,and by it man is driven ,down the steep slope to ,hell4 ',tis thus when sanctioned by the ,church2 how then ,of love like thine1 which is accursed of men1 ,and doubly cursed by ,god8444 ,last night in dreams ,i trod ,up the long windings of the heavenly stair1 ,and heard the angels singing loud and sweet1 ,and neared the gate1 when sudden both my feet ,were caught amid the tangles of thy hair1-- ,spread like a cruel web across my path1-- ,in which ,i struggled1 mad with woe and wrath1 ,and could not free me2 so at last ,i fell1 ,stumbling and plunging down to blackest ,hell1 ,wherein ,i cursed the hour ,i saw thy face1 ,and most ,i cursed the hour1 the day1 the place ,when thou didst give me love4444 ,waking then1 ,i strove ,for holier thoughts1 and could at last forgive ,the wrong thou didst me4 ,but no more1 ,i prithee1 vex me with thy tale ,of love4 ,it wearieth me1 and henceforth ,i must live ,in larger peace1 or ,i may not prevail ,within the ,schools ,against the babbling of the narrow fools ,who blindly are withstanding my new light ,upon the ,divine ,essence's nature1 and my clasp ,of the ringed ,trinitarian mysteries4 ,matters your slight ,woman's comprehension may not grasp4444 ,farewell4 ,neglect not prayer4 ,helose to ,abelard4 ,my good ,lord ,abbot3--,but this once ,i speak1 and then no more4 ,i must not 'gainst the lore ,of the great ,schools ,set my weak cries ,for warmth and life and love4 ,the snow now lies ,deep round the ,paraclete1 ,where from my pale nuns rise ,in never ceasing chant of nones and primes ,incense of prayers to ease the need of ,god ,for broken contrite hearts and dropping tears4 ,and sometimes ,i have fears ,that each one wears ',neath her long habit ,as sad a heart as mine1 ,for in their eyes1 ,which each unto the skies ,lifts many times each day1 ,i see desire for love1 ,a gift they pray ,from ,god1 since man gives not ,that which they need4 ,i watch them from my carven chair1 ,while lingering on a bead1 ,and add1 beneath my hood1 ,beads to my rosary of tears ,to think how good ,to each 'twould seem to change ,this ,latin drone and censer's clank ,for the dear homely noise ,around the hearth ,of little girls and boys-- ,for all these weary prayers ,the daily household cares ,for some tired labourer ,who earned their bread4 ,oh1 little hands and feet6-- ,there is no room ,within this cloistered tomb ,wherein we worship ,god1 ,for one dear curly head4 99 99 99 99 99 ,sometimes at prayers ,a vision seems to rise-- ,borne on an air ,mayhap that blows from ,hell4 ,and then ,i see the great ,lord ,jove ,and all ,his mighty peers ,who ruled so many years ,above the ancient heavens1 ,dwindle1 and fade1 and pass away1 ,and only ,love remains-- ,i see the doctors of the ancient schools1 ,great ,egypt's sages1 those who made the rules ,of wisdom in the ,academe1 ,fade also like a dream2 ,all their wise thoughts grow foolishness ,and all their learning turns to dust1 ,and only ,love remains ,forever young1 forever wise and great1 ,and in the time to come ,i see the same strong fate ,seize on our ,mighty ,god ,who binds us in his chains1 ,and makes our love a sin ,to drive our souls to ,hell1 ,he too1 with all his doctors ,fades--and only ,love remains ,forever and forever4 ,fare you well4 ,november #cj4 ,yumei ,mujitsu4 ,the ,japanese possess a delightful word--,yumei ,mujitsu--which signifies ,having-the-,name-but-not-the-,reality4 ,they use it to express certain assumptions--such1 for example1 as the claim of the ,mikado's descent from the ,sun ,goddess1 which1 like the formul of ,algebra1 achieve desired results though they recognize that in itself it has no existence4 ,how valuable such a word would be to express the attitude of the ,sentimentalist regarding a coloured man named ,booker ,washington1 much discussed of late4 ,now if there is one creature more than a saint whom ,i fear and distrust it is the ,sentimentalist1 whom ,hawthorne pungently characterizes as that steel machine of the ,devil's own make4 ,the ruthless heartlessness of the ,sentimentalist would be unbelievable if one had not seen it with one's own eyes4 ,take1 for example1 the ,abolitionists4 ,to gratify their own emotions they caused the death of a million men1 the infliction of wounds and pain that make the imagination shudder1 and all that long succeeding anguish of a people--the grief1 the poverty1 humiliation1 and despair that burned itself indelibly upon the hearts of those who shared it4 ,stevenson--that misunderstood moralist now chiefly remembered as a story teller6--put his finger upon the enigma of the ,sentimentalist's cruelty3 ,everywhere some virtue cherished or affected1 everywhere some decency of thought or carriage1 everywhere the ensign of man's ineffectual goodness3--,ah1 if ,i could show you these6 if ,i could show you these men and women all the world over 444 clinging in the brothel and on the scaffold to some rag of honour1 the poor jewel of their souls6444 ,they may seek to escape and yet they cannot 444 they are condemned to some nobility1 all their lives the desire of good is at their heels1 the implacable hunter4444 ,to touch the heart of his mystery we find in him the thought of something owing to himself1 to his neighbour1 to his ,god4 ,the ,sentimentalist1 along with all his kind1 is hunted by that implacable need of virtue4 ,to satisfy it he seizes upon the wrongs done by others1 and in his hot denunciation of another's sin1 in his clamour for its punishment1 he experiences the warm ennobling glow of personal merit4 ,the pietist will meticulously perform rites and ceremonies in this same need to soothe the imperious call within him for some justification of his life4 ,having washed and bowed and recited1 his sins of practice trouble him but little--those genuflections have made his balance good in the book of virtue4 ,but the ,sentimentalist cannot content himself with pale ceremonies4 ,he is by instinct devouring and bloody1 but his soul cringes before his inward monitor4 ,by fierce denunciation of the sins he has no mind to he can soothe his desire to inflict pain in perfect content1 upborne by a consciousness of his own righteousness4 ,torquemada was a type1 ,john ,brown of ,ossawatamie another2 both were criminal paranoics tortured by desire for blood and for self-justification4 ,real goodness does not stimulate the ,sentimentalist's emotions--it gives no opportunity for the outcries that warm his heart with a consciousness of rectitude4 ,the ,boer war was a great opportunity for the ,american ,sentimentalist4 ,protesting against the suppression of a ,republic1 he could forget his own suppression of the ,confederate ,republic and of the nascent government of the ,philippines4 ,execrating the burning of farmhouses in the ,veldt1 he could ignore the track of smoking desolation that marked ,sherman's march through ,georgia or ,sheridan's raid in ,virginia4 ,criticism of ,british greed for gold kept him cheerfully superior to the contrast of the gift of fifteen millions and the patient labour spent by the ,english to repatriate the ,boer and start him again in life1 with the protest he and his kind made against ,general ,grant's willingness to leave to the ,southern soldier his starved horse as a means of reaching his ruined home4 ,conscience1 demanding of the ,sentimentalist the bread of uprightness1 he prodigally offers it a stone upon which to break its gnawing teeth4 ,the ,african brother has long been one of the most valued of the ,sentimentalist's resources4 ,passionately generous demands for the negro's equality have made it possible for him to cordially and contentedly insult and oppress his white fellow countrymen4 ,it is in this relation that the ,sentimentalists find ,booker ,washington so greatly to their taste4 ,washington1 innocent of their purposes1 of course is an admirable and sensible man1 who has established an excellent school for the young people of his race4 ,a school far wiser and more merciful in conception than any attempt made by the negrophiles to benefit their protgs1 and all honour is due this enlightened ex-slave for his own astonishing progress and his generous sharing of his fruitful labours with his own people4 ,the ,sentimentalist professes to find in it something godlike1 a touch of the divine1 as one of them recently characterized what is1 reduced to simple facts1 the establishing of an industrial school for negroes by a negro4 ,december #a4 ,the ,real ,thing4 ,the man who has educated the negro1 the man who has had in him really a touch of the divine1 would never appeal to the ,sentimentalist4 ,booker ,washington1 very properly1 of course1 lives and lives well upon the results of his school4 ,he has claimed from the rich1 and justly has received1 lavish aid for his enterprise4 ,he dresses well1 lives amply1 travels in comfort1 is entertained by ,royalty and ,chief ,magistrates1 and with his family1 is put beyond even a chance of narrow means by his sympathizers' lavishness4 ,but who heeds the man who has really educated the negro8 ,what crowned head or ,president entertains the small farmer in rough brogans and faded jeans1 who sweats over his hoe in the cotton and tobacco fields1 or in the steaming rice and sugar-cane swamps1 and who has in forty years spent more than a hundred millions upon the education of the negro8 ,this is the man1 and the son of the man who turned heart-brokenly home on the begrudged horse to fields overgrown and laid waste--fields to which his conquerors1 unlike the ,english1 contributed no seeds or implements or stock--and from that land he has wrung by the hard labour of his hands that hundred millions which has been spent in educating his ex-slave4 ,he has lived hardly1 in dingy1 decaying houses1 he has eaten of the coarsest1 he has known no beauty or grace1 and but scant comfort1 he has been clothed in the plainest1 he has politically known little but injury and contempt from the larger and wealthier half of his country1 and worst of all he has seen his sons grow to manhood but partially and inadequately equipped with learning1 because so large a portion of their birthright must be shared in the teaching of the negro in whose name he had been plundered and slaughtered4 ,the touching point of the story is that it has all been done without any consciousness of special merit4 ,the duty was to be done1 and was done without trumpets or drums4 ,such silent1 patient1 unreflecting1 unadvertised goodness would1 of course1 never appeal to the ,sentimentalist4 ,if he could be brought to see it 'twould merely disturb his self-satisfaction4 ,it is only to the fantastic mind of a heretic that its meaning appeals1 only the heart of a cynic is touched by the instinctive heroism of the white man of the ,south4 ,december #ae4 ,oh1 ,eloquent1 ,just1 and ,mighty ,death4 ,i am just home from a meeting of one of those literary clubs we ,american women so much affect1 in the absence of any masculine society1 and we have been talking about ,stevenson as the poet most typical of the mind of the nineteenth century4 ,it was all that delicious welter in the sentimentalities of the domestic affections which any assemblage of females finds it impossible to avoid2 and we read aloud to one another--with the vox humana lilt turned on--all those decidedly dull little lyrics in the ,child's ,garden of ,verses1 and came away with just that moist brightness of the eye1 that wistful1 tender mother-smile1 which was correct of the occasion4 ,i say we1 but of course my wicked old eyes were as hard as horn1 yet1 thank heaven6 my unruly tongue uttered not a note out of tune with the ,domestic ,symphony4 ,who will say that social slappings have taught me nothing8 ,even ,i can be daunted by the unhappy silences that so often greet my blurted comments1 and by the soft rustles of relief that respond to the rising of some gentle lady1 who will obliquely but certainly crush me with her pious phrases1 that throb with the warm sweetness of the dear old human platitudes1 and which are rewarded by applause which politely accentuates my disgrace4444 ,oh1 amiable and philosophic white page6 ,to you ,i can be a tiresome and protesting bore1 sure of no strictures in your silence4 ,here ,i can unpack my heart with words1 unrebuked4 ,here ,i can whisper safely my suspicion that dear ,r4 ,l4 ,s4 himself would have been consumed with cheerful amusement at our gentle comments upon his doughty spirit4 ,the world says all sorts of absurd things about ,stevenson4 ,some one the other day called him an unquenchable ,calvinist6--,he who was all pagan and ,roman4 ,the ,calvinist was the ,european most subdued by the ,semitic beliefs1 most merged into ,oriental preconceptions of life4 ,certainly the ,european mind in its natural state faced its consciousness of existence with no preconceived theories4 ,its attitude was that of the child4 ,it found itself face to face with a great1 astonishing1 beautiful universe1 and asked itself what it must think of this universe2 how use its opportunities therein4 ,the child stumbled into a thousand infantile delusions and misconceptions1 but its eyes were unclouded1 its intelligence good4 ,he soon discovered that though many things were pleasant1 these pleasant things1 when used indiscreetly1 had a hidden potentiality of pain4 ,with this second discovery1 however--being a wise child--came no foolish horror of all pleasant things2 only an illumination as to the value of moderation4 ,the phenomena of age1 death1 and decay left the child serious1 but not depressed4 ,these were not pleasant things1 admittedly2 but since they appeared inevitable1 there was plainly no use in attempting to escape them4 ,the proper attitude toward such solemnities was a manly courage1 a brave submission4 ,in any case1 the child concluded1 with all the sufferings1 contradictions1 and puzzling inequalities of existence1 at least for all those called upon to face these griefs1 there remained some small space of clear1 warm1 beautiful life2 sunshine1 food1 love1 and--more and better than all--that tingling1 exquisite quiver of the senses which he agreed to call by the divine name of ,beauty4 ,he saw that the pains1 the joys1 the growth and blight1 decay and extinction1 were not of his lot only1 but were shared by all his surroundings4 ,feeling himself alone neither in his opportunities nor his inevitable doom1 he accepted his fate with the courageous calm1 the uncomplaining resignation1 of his fellow-creatures4 ,he lived and he died as unresentfully as did the summer leaves1 whose season of existence was so much briefer than his own4 ,his kinship with encompassing nature was so close that it touched him on every side4 ,he became as aware of the souls of all things about him as he was aware of his own4 ,he felt a similar spirit of life in the trees of the forest1 the stones of the mountains1 in the sea winds1 in the brooks1 the rivers and their reeds4 ,he guessed at their names1 their loves1 their histories1 as one guesses at those of unknown passers-by travelling the same road4 ,out of these speculations arose all his arts1 his poetry1 his legends1 and his myths4 ,when the moon stooped toward the western hills she leaned in a passion like his own toward youth and desire4 ,the blood of a slain love became visible to him as it returned to the upper air in dim1 faint-scented blossoms1 bearing written on their purple leaves the plaintive ai6 ai6 of her left mourning for dead beauty4 ,the very breeze that sighed through the rushes was the wistful voice of one unwisely reluctant of earthly joy and pain4 ,it is almost impossible for us--so long saturated with ,semitic thought--to recreate for ourselves the mind of the ,greeks and ,romans fed upon the strength and beauty of a noble pantheism--whose interpretation of life knit their souls to the wholesome earth1 and filled them with zest to live and patience to die--whose gods embodied their own lovely ideals of youth immortal1 beauty unfading1 serene wisdom1 the soil's natural wealth1 the vine's purple joy4 ,their attention was fixed upon the present life--their problem how to live it bravely1 wisely1 richly4 ,all beyond this were uncertain shadows1 about which it was impossible to know1 and useless to speculate4 ,upon the ,etruscan tombs1 of all mortuary monuments the most lovely1 is to be found a revelation clearer than words of the ,european attitude toward death--those recumbent figures1 all grace and peace1 carved by the hands of forgotten genius with so inexplicable a skill that the immemorial stone grows deliquescent before one's eyes as if melting and sinking into the mother earth4 ,in them is no sense of struggle or rebellion4 ,they consent to extinction as gently as autumn's last day fades into the silence and darkness of winter4 ,their season has been fulfilled4 ,they have lived and loved1 and they are proudly willing to sink into the elements from which they rose4 ,it was not until the ,asiatic conquests of ,alexander brought the mind of ,europe into contact with the religions of the ,east1 that this sane attitude was darkened by a conception as radically opposite as the antipodes4 ,nor did the ,roman civilization suffer a shadow upon its manhood until it in turn brought home with its eastern captives that fierce egotism that feared extinction as an irremediable horror4 ,this mind of the other hemisphere could never reconcile itself to the inevitable blotting out of its own individuality4 ,impossible as it was to deny the incontrovertible fact of death1 it conceived1 as an escape from the greatest of evils1 the idea of the continuance of its identity either in an endless round of reincarnations1 or as an impalpable essence triumphant in heaven or defeated in hell4 ,the shadow of their own terror cast upon their imagination the figures of monstrous deities--thousand-armed1 myriad-eyed1 maleficent1 and unakin to themselves4 ,gods not to be propitiated by song and dance1 or the offering of fruit and flowers1 but loving to snuff at altars drenched in blood2 placated for the sins of the guilty only by the anguish of the innocent1 and so meticulous in their tyranny as to require not only the abandonment of all natural appetites1 but pursuing even unwitting lapses from submission with eternal and malignant penalties4 ,oriental egotism flung itself with equal persistence against the limitations of time1 space1 and character4 ,in the ,east arose the systems of magic which sought philosopher's stones1 elixirs of youth2 which endeavoured to overcome all obstacles through pure intensity of will1 and undertook to constrain even the prodigious gods it had itself created by sheer force of its own asceticism and determination4 ,rome had been completely honeycombed and corrupted by ,eastern mysticism before the final fatal clash of faiths occurred under ,constantine1 and the ,semitic conception of the immortal importance of the human individual overthrew ,european nature-worship4 ,so potent was this idea that for more than a thousand years ,europe lent itself to scorn and repression of nature1 and attempted to deal with life as only a pathway to death and the infinitely more important future beyond4 ,the miserable confusion of the ,dark ,ages was the result of this struggle of the materialistic spirit of the ,european race in the bonds of a mysticism foreign to its genius4 ,the ,renaissance was rightly named a new birth4 ,out of the womb of this long night arose once again the mind of the ,west in its natural shape4 ,slowly beauty1 knowledge1 health1 regained their old empire4 ,life grew in importance1 and the futile1 millennial-long struggle against death began to seem what it truly was--a mere terrified dream of the darkness4 ,all this appears a long way around to ,stevenson1 but it is by this avenue ,i travelled--amid all those soft declamations--to find him the typical poet of the nineteenth century4 ,stevenson is pure ,roman1 not a touch of the ,semitic is upon him4 ,every line of his prose and verse attests it4 ,someone said the other day that ,hardy was not so much a pagan as a revolted ,christian1 and brought as a charge against him that he did not resent the hard fates of the characters in his books4 ,the second charge1 of course1 contradicts the first4 ,it was the ,eastern rebellion against ,fate--against things as they are--that nourished its mysticism4 ,but however one may decide as to ,hardy there is no uncertainty as to ,stevenson4 ,his relish for life--life with all its pains and limitations--was keen to ecstasy4 ,he leaves no dubiety on that head4 ,here was no wish for a city of gold and pearl1 fenced from care1 in which to take the refuge of ease in an impossible ,elysium4 ,his ,house ,beautiful was ,a naked house1 a naked moor and --the incomparable pomp of ,eve was all he asked to make desirable this earth1 our hermitage4 ,that this life leads to nothing more does not daunt him4 ,on every hand the roads begin1 ,and people walk with zeal therein1 ,but wheresoe'er the highways tend ,be sure there's nothing at the end4 ,to which he adds cheerfully3 ,hail and farewell6 ,i must arise1 ,leave here the fatted cattle1 ,and paint on foreign lands and skies ,my ,odyssey of battle4 ,the untented ,cosmos my abode1 ,i pass1 a wilful stranger2 ,my mistress still the open road ,and the bright eyes of danger4 ,come ill or well1 the ,cross1 the ,crown1 ,the rainbow1 or the thunder1 ,i fling my soul and body down ,for ,god to plow them under4 ,he will allow no mistake as to the purpose of his existence4 ,he cares not what may lie beyond the portals of an undreaded death1 but this bright1 present existence is for manful struggle2 a struggle not maintained in hope of future1 or terror of punishment1 but because he loves not only ,flowers in the garden1 meat in the hall1 ,a bin of wine1 a spice of wit1 ,a house with lawns enclosing it1 ,a living river by the door1 ,a nightingale in the sycamore-- but loves also to ---- ,climb ,where no undubbed civilian dares1 ,in my war-harness1 the loud stairs ,of honour ---- ,nothing so moves his scorn as the lazy maggot who shuts himself into the snug nut of his religion and concern himself only to save his own poor1 unimportant little soul4 ,hear the call of his ,lady of the ,snows to the pallid monks uttering prayers and memento mori4 ,and ,stevenson speaks as does he who knows4 ,it is easy enough for those sitting cozily at home to talk loudly of war and danger1 but this was a man who literally fought with death daily4 ,an extract from one of his private letters1 written shortly before the end1 says3 ,for fourteen years1 ,i have not had a day's real health2 ,i have wakened sick and gone to bed weary2 and ,i have done my work unflinchingly4 ,i have written in bed1 and written out of it1 written in hemorrhages1 written in sickness1 written torn by coughing1 written when my head swam for weakness2 and for so long1 it seems to me ,i have won my wager and recovered my glove4 ,i am better now1 have been1 rightly speaking1 since first ,i came to the ,pacific2 and still1 few are the days when ,i am not in some physical distress4 ,and the battle goes on--ill or well1 is a trifle2 so as it goes4 ,i was made for a contest1 and the ,powers have so willed that my battlefield should be this dingy1 inglorious one of the bed and the physic bottle4 ,at least ,i have not failed1 but ,i would have preferred a place of trumpetings and the open air over my head4 ,and after a desperate illness1 when he rose gasping from the waters of extinction1 his first cry on feeling the earth beneath his feet once more were those brave verses ,not ,yet my ,soul4 ,he was not upborne by any of that so amazing sense of superiority to the rest of the universe which has aided vain humanity to minimize its defeats4 ,he knew how small was his place in what ,carlyle calls the centre of immensities1 the conflux of eternities4 ,hear him paint what he calls his ,portrait1 and he reiterated that his noblest impulses were akin to a similar point of honour which sways the elephant1 the oyster1 and the louse1 of whom we know so little4 ,finally1 in the famous ,christmas ,sermon he sums up in prose the thoughts that breathe through all the varying cadence of his verse-- ,whether we regard life as a lane leading to a dead wall--a mere bag's end1 as the ,french say--or whether we think of it as a vestibule or gymnasium where we wait our turn and prepare our faculties for some nobler destiny 444 whether we look justly for years of health and vigour1 or are about to mount into a bath chair as a step towards the hearse1--in each and all of these situations there is but one conclusion possible2 that a man should stop his ears to paralyzing terror1 and run the race that is set before him with a single mind4 ,in that ,sermon is all the philosophy of ,greece1 the stern courage of ,rome4 ,december #bc4 ,philistia1 be ,thou ,glad of ,me4 ,strange things rise up to us out of the deeps4 ,because ,i am a heathen1 and ,apollo is my god rather than any other1 ,i have never been quite able to comprehend the powerful appeal the ,hebrew ,messiah makes to the hearts of so many4 ,the solution is to be found in this ,de ,profundis--,oscar ,wilde's posthumous volume4 ,it is a beautiful book3 likely to become a classic of our language by reason of its beautiful1 limpid ,english1 its amazing exposition of the course of reasoning by which an outcast of humanity reaches peace and reconciliation with his own soul4 ,the man's crime1 ,i think1 was the result of his reluctance to relinquish youth1 with its passions and stimulations of the senses4 ,we all find its relinquishment a tragedy4 ,some of us refuse to accept the slow1 cold enveloping of that cruel serpent of ,time1 which squeezes out of us our beauty1 our vigour1 our warmth1 and leaves us pallid and eviscerated before devouring us entirely4 ,wilde1 whose whole existence was the pursuit of passion and beauty1 violently resenting the fact that with the lapse of years he was no longer able to wake the old thrill of existence by any of the old methods--finding that poetry1 art1 and the beauty of women all left him more and more jaded and cold1 he grasped at vice as a means of heat1 and brought himself within the iron clutch of the law4 ,one can guess1 even without the aid of his own confessions1 at the hysterical rage of this sybaritic dandy caught in the grim trap of the reprobation of ,society4 ,not only the physical discomforts and restraints bore heavily1 but more intolerable was the contempt and disgust of the average man--the ,philistine--to whom he had always held himself airily and scornfully superior4 ,the old primal laws of the struggle for life lie too deep for even the boldest of us to lightly face universal condemnation4 ,the worst of rebels and cynics is so dependent upon the countenance of his fellows that when good-will is withdrawn a sort of madness of despair falls upon him1 and this vain1 sensitive poet makes it plain how the passionate protest of the ordinary criminal was in his case intensified to ecstasy4 ,one sees the poor creature1 like a rat in a cage1 darting hither and thither1 and shivering with sick and furious helplessness at the rigidity of the barriers by which the world had shut him away from any further part in the body corporate4 ,in the last exhaustion of his grief a light dawned for him4 ,there was one who had protested against these laws of reprobation which ,society had codified--one who had mercy for the sinner2 who had insisted that the suffering and sorrow experienced by those not conforming themselves to the pattern ,society demanded regenerated the victims of sorrow1 and they became of more worth than those who condemned them4 ,here was a means of regaining his own peace with himself4 ,here was a way out of his imprisonment in the scorn of his fellows4 ,mary ,magdalen1 because of her sumptuous repentance1 was of more value than the busy and virtuous ,martha4 ,the ,prodigal ,son was more welcome than the patient home-keeper4 ,the lost sheep was the really important member of the flock4 ,the repentant thief was the heir of ,paradise4 ,the sinning woman was bid go in peace4 ,all the offenders against the laws of ,society were welcomed3 the dull walkers in the beaten path were contumeliously branded as ,philistines and ,pharisees4 ,at once1 by this point of view1 the prisoner was freed from his cell4 ,it was possible to stand upright once more and return frown for frown with his judges4 ,all these were redeemed by their beautiful moment--8 ,well1 let him too have his beautiful moment and he was really of more worth than those who had condemned him4 ,here is the secret of the hold the ,hebrew thinker has had upon humanity4 ,when our race slowly began to stand up on their hind legs and to live a life in common1 they found--as the ants and bees had done before them--that the common life was only to be made feasible by adopting some general law of behaviour which would enable individuals to assimilate2 and so morals and conscience had their generation4 ,a man might never leave his home if the tribe would not accept it as an evil to steal2 might never sleep in peace if murder were not a crime2 would not feed his children were there not a rule against adultery which ensured him against assuming duties to cuckoos4 ,how bitter1 slow1 and toilsome was that upward struggle to subdue for the good of the mass the lusts of the individual all history relates4 ,always a remnant have protested against these hard exactions of the general good at their expense4 ,always the tribe has1 for its own safety1 slain1 imprisoned1 cast out the rebels4 ,the war is not over yet2 will1 possibly1 never end4 ,always those who prefer their own ends will strive to find justification for their wilfulness2 will seek some ground for answering scorn with scorn--and their vociferousness1 their lofty1 sentimental phrases confuse the minds of the slow-witted4 ,alas6 dear ,philistine--what contumely you suffer at the hands of the revolted6 ,you have grown apologetic for your virtues1 which the idealists cast in your teeth as a reproach4 ,you are so foolish you cannot eat of the fruit of desire and at once make it as though it had never been by one beautiful moment of emotion4 ,you are so stupid you cannot content the neighbour who owned the fruit by accusing him of being hard because your repentance does not satisfy him for his loss4 ,you are stodgy2 you are narrow4 ,you are bitter and untender because you worship the ,god of ,things as ,they ,are1 instead of accepting a theism of ,things as ,they ,might ,be4 ,of course you really rule the world1 and when your critics become too aggressive your logic of stone walls and iron bars makes a trenchant reply1 but you are very inarticulate4 ,no one gives you credit for your patient1 dull self-restraint4 ,you almost apologize to the scoffers for your persistent moral drudgery4 ,you talk very little about the temptations you have resisted--so much less dramatic than sins against your fellows histrionically washed away by repentant tears4 ,your painful drudging up the path of obvious duty dazzles and touches no one4--,but ,i1 at least1 love and respect you--you poor old self-denying ,pharisee6 ,december #bd4 ,oh ,king ,live ,forever6 ,oh1 ,king6--great ,king ,afar in that pleasant place-- 7,sleeping in ,avalon1 ,island of ,queens--7 ,what are thy dreams8 ,where no sound cometh at all ,save the lapping of waves1 ,of the lake's waves lapping the shore2 ,and the moving of winds ,stirring a rustle and ripple of leaves-- ,an infinite rustle and ripple of leaves-- ,and lifting a little1 a little thy wide-strewn hair ,fadeless and gold-- ,what are thy dreams8 ,there where no bird sings1 ,nor is any bruit by thy head ,save only the singing of ,queens-- ,seven and sad-- ,singing of swords and of war1 ,singing of ,carleon-- ,singing a magical lay1 ,sweeter than lutes1 ,a song made of magic by ,merlin ,dead in the wood4444 ,what are thy dreams1 oh ,king6-- ,arthur--thy dreams8 ,tristram is dead1 and ,gawain4 ,galahad gone1 and ,sir ,bors4 ,merlin is dead in the wood4 ,the base peasant tramples the mire ,that once was the heart and the lips ,of ,mordred the base and the liar4 ,the wind of the ,breton coast1 ,stormy and sad1 ,has blown for a thousand years ,the dust of that ,knight-- ,launcelot's dust-- ,dust of his bones-- ,to and fro in the roads-- ,and the dust of his sword ,blows in the eyes of brave men passing that way ,and stings them to tears4 ,oh1 dread ,king1 what are thy dreams8 ,guinevere is but a name-- ,frail1 and lovely1 and sad4 ,all whom thou lovedst are gone4 ,beauty availed them not2 ,courage1 nor pride1 nor desire4 ,the sound of their singing is dumb2 ,the sword is broken in twain2 ,magic to folly is turned2 ,even love might not avail4 ,only the ,king liveth still-- ,only the ,king ,liveth and dreams4 ,only the heart above self-- ,only the heart steadfast and wise ,liveth forever in ,avalon1 ,hearing a song ,always of swords and of war1 ,but dreaming of ,peace1 ,dreaming of ,honour1 oh ,king6 ,dreaming great dreams4 ,january #a4 ,the ,little ,room4 ,i remember that long ago when ,i used to be made to memorize ,campbell's sentimental lines on ,the ,exile1 beginning1 ,there came to the beach a poor exile of ,erin-- they only called forth my unsympathetic infantile jeers2 but last spring ,i went home4 ,suddenly1 as we passed along the tawny marshes lying like great dun lions by the edge of the misty gulf1 ,i realized that for twenty discontented years ,i too had been suffering the pangs of the ,exile4 ,memories and emotions1 so long disused as to be almost forgotten1 boiled up with the impetuosity of geysers4 ,possessions of my secret life that ,i think ,i was never really conscious of at all came to life4 ,i haven't the least idea1 for example1 why the buoyant feathery boughs of the first ,southern cedar ,i saw made me strongly wish to weep lovely1 sentimental tears1 but ,i knew at once why ,i had invariably felt bored with the conventional admiration of mountains4 ,why1 indeed1 should scenery only be important when perpendicular8 ,to my mind1 to have the landscape getting up on its hind legs and hiding the view is simply tiresome4 ,here one could see everything--could open one's lungs and breathe what the ,creoles used to call la grande air1 and let one's heart go out to the land4 ,you blessed mother country6 ,those people where ,i have lived so long seem not to care particularly for their birthplaces4 ,their patriotism is satisfied by an immense political abstraction and a striped flag4 ,i have always suspected that if one took off the heads of such folk and looked down inside one would find inside only wheels and coiled springs1 instead of flesh and blood4 ,david ,yandell used to say1 ,i'm for the ,yandells against the whole world1 but if it's between the ,yandells and ,dave1 then ,i'm for ,dave6 ,one might be for that political abstraction against the world1 but between that abstraction and ,louisiana1 then ,i'm for ,louisiana4 ,i began to suspect too that some of my heresies and revolts had really been caused by the bitterness of exile1 though from the very beginning ,i have seen the ,king without his mantle4 ,when my elders handed out to me the accepted platitudes in answer to my early attempts to realize the world in which ,i moved1 ,i stared at them in a wild surmise1 the aforesaid conventionalities appearing to me to be so at variance with the facts as ,i saw them4 ,they appeared to me--these elders--to be imagining a ,king's cloak to cover the world as it really was2 to be neglecting and minimizing the things really worth while2 to be inventing ideals and standards not in themselves noble4 ,i struggled long against the mask and domino which muffled words and impeded action1 but time and the years have made me more patient4 ,i have grown to see that they may have their uses4 ,the average man shrinks aghast from the naked truth1 even when it is beautiful4 ,there is a sort of universal prudery that shrinks from the nude in life as well as in art4 ,perhaps these universal draperies cover as much that is repulsive as it does of the beautiful4 ,verestchagin1 the ,russian painter who was blown up on the ,petropalovsk1 had three pictures with him when he was in this country that conveyed to me a much needed lesson4 ,he called them ,christ in the ,wilderness1 ,the ,sermon on the ,mount1 and ,the ,cursing of ,jerusalem4--,a haggard boy fleeing to the desert for meditation upon the tragedies of existence1 for which he is sure there must be some panacea if one could only think it out2 the triumphant youth announcing to humanity the solution of all its difficulties2 and the disappointed man crying reproachfully to the heedless multitude preferring its own old way--how often would ,i have gathered thy children together as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings1 and ye would not6 ,as time cools our cocksureness1 more and more is one willing to let the world go its own gait and retire into one's secret life2 and there comes at last one day a revelation of the meaning of it all1 and this revelation brings peace and poise4 ,the four walls of character and environment are an unescapable prison4 ,heroic effort will not open a door or break through its blank solidity4 ,one may look out upon the world from one's little room1 but there one must live one's appointed time4 ,in youth one does not understand or accept this3 then anything seems possible of expansion or change1 but veillesse savait4 ,once this is accepted--not by word alone1 but mentally grasped and realized--the disordered1 confusing bits of existence fall at once into an ordered pattern4 ,life must be lived in the ,little ,room4 ,others may not enter2 one's self may not escape4 ,action falls within its space and can1 therefore1 be calmly ordered and planned4 ,one will not undertake aught that is impossible within its compass1 and struggle1 discontent1 and confusion are therefore at an end4 ,and within this inviolate enclosure one is safe and private4 ,to those regarding it from without its appearance is much like that of all the other cubicles1 but inside1 if one chooses1 it may be richly hung1 sumptuously adorned1 with the treasures of one's secret life4 ,odd1 outworn weapons of opinion may give a martial touch to the walls here and there2 treasures brought up from the deep may speak of the wild winds of young fancy1 and taste yet of the salt of long dried tears4 ,soft imaginings may invite the weary head1 fine embroideries wrought from the many-coloured threads of life may lie beneath the foot4 ,the prison is1 should one choose it1 a palace4 ,long ago1 of a summer morning1 threading with soundless paddle and slow-sliding canoe one of the quiet streams that wound like a blue vein across the sunburned breast of those marshes1 ,i found in the deep grasses1 that everywhere grew breast high1 an illimitable garden of flowers4 ,looked at from above there was but the smooth1 deep fleece of verdure--but thus intimate1 close to the warm skin of these vast salt prairies1 thousands of beautiful freakish blossoms revealed themselves--many-tinted1 heavy as wax1 fragile as cobwebs1 perfumed1 fantastic1 multitudinous4444 ,i stared a little1 pondering1 and then passed on carelessly about my childish business1 unrealizing that ,i had found a picture and a parable to hang1 after many years1 upon the walls of my ,little ,room4 ,january #b4 ,aftermath4 ,if it might be1 ,life's harvest being past1 ,and past the perfect fruitage of the soul1 ,i yet might gather up some small sweet dole ,from out ,time's fingers in the wide fields cast-- ,if it might be that though from out the vast ,blue spaces all the tides of light did roll1 ,there yet might linger some pale aureole ,to faintly flush my western sky at last-- ,i would forbear youth's lordly large demands1 ,nor swallow tears at sight of loaded wains ,of others who all full and rich did go2 ,content that ,i1 no more with empty hands1 ,might bear across the level darkening lands ,my sweet few sheaves home through the afterglow4 99 99 99 99 99 ,transcriber's note3 ,obvious punctuation errors were corrected4 ,the ,greek quotation on p#gj preceded by the phrase ,achilles1 blackly melancholy in his tent1 heard the old voice cry is from ,homer's ,iliad1 ,book #i1 line #cai4 ,one possible translation is3 and in one honour are held both the coward and the brave4