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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of What Is Man? And Other Stories, by
+Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: What Is Man? And Other Stories
+
+Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
+
+Release Date: June, 1993  [Etext #70]
+Last Updated: February 24, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT IS MAN? AND OTHER STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer; HTML file by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WHAT IS MAN? AND OTHER ESSAYS
+
+
+By Mark Twain
+
+(Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910)
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+
+     What Is Man?
+
+     The Death of Jean
+
+     The Turning-Point of My Life
+
+     How to Make History Dates Stick
+
+     The Memorable Assassination
+
+     A Scrap of Curious History
+
+     Switzerland, the Cradle of Liberty
+
+     At the Shrine of St. Wagner
+
+     William Dean Howells
+
+     English as She is Taught
+
+     A Simplified Alphabet
+
+     As Concerns Interpreting the Deity
+
+     Concerning Tobacco
+
+     Taming the Bicycle
+
+     Is Shakespeare Dead?
+
+
+
+
+
+WHAT IS MAN?
+
+
+I
+
+a. Man the Machine. b. Personal Merit
+
+[The Old Man and the Young Man had been conversing. The Old Man had
+asserted that the human being is merely a machine, and nothing more. The
+Young Man objected, and asked him to go into particulars and furnish his
+reasons for his position.]
+
+Old Man. What are the materials of which a steam-engine is made?
+
+Young Man. Iron, steel, brass, white-metal, and so on.
+
+O.M. Where are these found?
+
+Y.M. In the rocks.
+
+O.M. In a pure state?
+
+Y.M. No--in ores.
+
+O.M. Are the metals suddenly deposited in the ores?
+
+Y.M. No--it is the patient work of countless ages.
+
+O.M. You could make the engine out of the rocks themselves?
+
+Y.M. Yes, a brittle one and not valuable.
+
+O.M. You would not require much, of such an engine as that?
+
+Y.M. No--substantially nothing.
+
+O.M. To make a fine and capable engine, how would you proceed?
+
+Y.M. Drive tunnels and shafts into the hills; blast out the iron ore;
+crush it, smelt it, reduce it to pig-iron; put some of it through
+the Bessemer process and make steel of it. Mine and treat and combine
+several metals of which brass is made.
+
+O.M. Then?
+
+Y.M. Out of the perfected result, build the fine engine.
+
+O.M. You would require much of this one?
+
+Y.M. Oh, indeed yes.
+
+O.M. It could drive lathes, drills, planers, punches, polishers, in a
+word all the cunning machines of a great factory?
+
+Y.M. It could.
+
+O.M. What could the stone engine do?
+
+Y.M. Drive a sewing-machine, possibly--nothing more, perhaps.
+
+O.M. Men would admire the other engine and rapturously praise it?
+
+Y.M. Yes.
+
+O.M. But not the stone one?
+
+Y.M. No.
+
+O.M. The merits of the metal machine would be far above those of the
+stone one?
+
+Y.M. Of course.
+
+O.M. Personal merits?
+
+Y.M. _Personal_ merits? How do you mean?
+
+O.M. It would be personally entitled to the credit of its own
+performance?
+
+Y.M. The engine? Certainly not.
+
+O.M. Why not?
+
+Y.M. Because its performance is not personal. It is the result of the
+law of construction. It is not a _merit_ that it does the things which
+it is set to do--it can't _help_ doing them.
+
+O.M. And it is not a personal demerit in the stone machine that it does
+so little?
+
+Y.M. Certainly not. It does no more and no less than the law of its make
+permits and compels it to do. There is nothing _personal_ about it; it
+cannot choose. In this process of “working up to the matter” is it your
+idea to work up to the proposition that man and a machine are about the
+same thing, and that there is no personal merit in the performance of
+either?
+
+O.M. Yes--but do not be offended; I am meaning no offense. What makes
+the grand difference between the stone engine and the steel one? Shall
+we call it training, education? Shall we call the stone engine a savage
+and the steel one a civilized man? The original rock contained the stuff
+of which the steel one was built--but along with a lot of sulphur and
+stone and other obstructing inborn heredities, brought down from the old
+geologic ages--prejudices, let us call them. Prejudices which nothing
+within the rock itself had either _power_ to remove or any _desire_ to
+remove. Will you take note of that phrase?
+
+Y.M. Yes. I have written it down; “Prejudices which nothing within the
+rock itself had either power to remove or any desire to remove.” Go on.
+
+O.M. Prejudices must be removed by _outside influences_ or not at all.
+Put that down.
+
+Y.M. Very well; “Must be removed by outside influences or not at all.”
+ Go on.
+
+O.M. The iron's prejudice against ridding itself of the cumbering rock.
+To make it more exact, the iron's absolute _indifference_ as to whether
+the rock be removed or not. Then comes the _outside influence_ and
+grinds the rock to powder and sets the ore free. The _iron_ in the ore
+is still captive. An _outside influence_ smelts it free of the clogging
+ore. The iron is emancipated iron, now, but indifferent to further
+progress. An _outside influence_ beguiles it into the Bessemer furnace
+and refines it into steel of the first quality. It is educated, now--its
+training is complete. And it has reached its limit. By no possible
+process can it be educated into _gold_. Will you set that down?
+
+Y.M. Yes. “Everything has its limit--iron ore cannot be educated into
+gold.”
+
+O.M. There are gold men, and tin men, and copper men, and leaden men,
+and steel men, and so on--and each has the limitations of his nature,
+his heredities, his training, and his environment. You can build engines
+out of each of these metals, and they will all perform, but you must
+not require the weak ones to do equal work with the strong ones. In
+each case, to get the best results, you must free the metal from its
+obstructing prejudicial ones by education--smelting, refining, and so
+forth.
+
+Y.M. You have arrived at man, now?
+
+O.M. Yes. Man the machine--man the impersonal engine. Whatsoever a man
+is, is due to his _make_, and to the _influences_ brought to bear
+upon it by his heredities, his habitat, his associations. He is moved,
+directed, COMMANDED, by _exterior_ influences--_solely_. He _originates_
+nothing, not even a thought.
+
+Y.M. Oh, come! Where did I get my opinion that this which you are
+talking is all foolishness?
+
+O.M. It is a quite natural opinion--indeed an inevitable opinion--but
+_you _did not create the materials out of which it is formed. They are
+odds and ends of thoughts, impressions, feelings, gathered unconsciously
+from a thousand books, a thousand conversations, and from streams of
+thought and feeling which have flowed down into your heart and brain out
+of the hearts and brains of centuries of ancestors. _Personally_ you did
+not create even the smallest microscopic fragment of the materials out
+of which your opinion is made; and personally you cannot claim even the
+slender merit of _putting the borrowed materials together_. That was
+done _automatically_--by your mental machinery, in strict accordance
+with the law of that machinery's construction. And you not only did not
+make that machinery yourself, but you have _not even any command over
+it_.
+
+Y.M. This is too much. You think I could have formed no opinion but that
+one?
+
+O.M. Spontaneously? No. And _you did not form that one_; your machinery
+did it for you--automatically and instantly, without reflection or the
+need of it.
+
+Y.M. Suppose I had reflected? How then?
+
+O.M. Suppose you try?
+
+Y.M. (_After a quarter of an hour_.) I have reflected.
+
+O.M. You mean you have tried to change your opinion--as an experiment?
+
+Y.M. Yes.
+
+O.M. With success?
+
+Y.M. No. It remains the same; it is impossible to change it.
+
+O.M. I am sorry, but you see, yourself, that your mind is merely a
+machine, nothing more. You have no command over it, it has no command
+over itself--it is worked _solely from the outside_. That is the law of
+its make; it is the law of all machines.
+
+Y.M. Can't I _ever_ change one of these automatic opinions?
+
+O.M. No. You can't yourself, but _exterior influences_ can do it.
+
+Y.M. And exterior ones _only_?
+
+O.M. Yes--exterior ones only.
+
+Y.M. That position is untenable--I may say ludicrously untenable.
+
+O.M. What makes you think so?
+
+Y.M. I don't merely think it, I know it. Suppose I resolve to enter upon
+a course of thought, and study, and reading, with the deliberate purpose
+of changing that opinion; and suppose I succeed. _That _is not the work
+of an exterior impulse, the whole of it is mine and personal; for I
+originated the project.
+
+O.M. Not a shred of it. _It grew out of this talk with me_. But for that
+it would not have occurred to you. No man ever originates anything. All
+his thoughts, all his impulses, come _from the outside_.
+
+Y.M. It's an exasperating subject. The _first_ man had original
+thoughts, anyway; there was nobody to draw from.
+
+O.M. It is a mistake. Adam's thoughts came to him from the outside.
+_You_ have a fear of death. You did not invent that--you got it from
+outside, from talking and teaching. Adam had no fear of death--none in
+the world.
+
+Y.M. Yes, he had.
+
+O.M. When he was created?
+
+Y.M. No.
+
+O.M. When, then?
+
+Y.M. When he was threatened with it.
+
+O.M. Then it came from _outside_. Adam is quite big enough; let us not
+try to make a god of him. _None but gods have ever had a thought which
+did not come from the outside_. Adam probably had a good head, but it
+was of no sort of use to him until it was filled up _from the outside_.
+He was not able to invent the triflingest little thing with it. He had
+not a shadow of a notion of the difference between good and evil--he
+had to get the idea _from the outside_. Neither he nor Eve was able to
+originate the idea that it was immodest to go naked; the knowledge came
+in with the apple _from the outside_. A man's brain is so constructed
+that _it can originate nothing whatsoever_. It can only use material
+obtained _outside_. It is merely a machine; and it works automatically,
+not by will-power. _It has no command over itself, its owner has no
+command over it_.
+
+Y.M. Well, never mind Adam: but certainly Shakespeare's creations--
+
+O.M. No, you mean Shakespeare's _imitations_. Shakespeare created
+nothing. He correctly observed, and he marvelously painted. He exactly
+portrayed people whom _God_ had created; but he created none himself.
+Let us spare him the slander of charging him with trying. Shakespeare
+could not create. _He was a machine, and machines do not create_.
+
+Y.M. Where _was_ his excellence, then?
+
+O.M. In this. He was not a sewing-machine, like you and me; he was
+a Gobelin loom. The threads and the colors came into him _from the
+outside_; outside influences, suggestions, _experiences_ (reading,
+seeing plays, playing plays, borrowing ideas, and so on), framed the
+patterns in his mind and started up his complex and admirable machinery,
+and _it automatically_ turned out that pictured and gorgeous fabric
+which still compels the astonishment of the world. If Shakespeare had
+been born and bred on a barren and unvisited rock in the ocean his
+mighty intellect would have had no _outside material_ to work with,
+and could have invented none; and _no outside influences_, teachings,
+moldings, persuasions, inspirations, of a valuable sort, and could have
+invented none; and so Shakespeare would have produced nothing. In Turkey
+he would have produced something--something up to the highest limit of
+Turkish influences, associations, and training. In France he would have
+produced something better--something up to the highest limit of the
+French influences and training. In England he rose to the highest limit
+attainable through the _outside helps afforded by that land's ideals,
+influences, and training_. You and I are but sewing-machines. We must
+turn out what we can; we must do our endeavor and care nothing at all
+when the unthinking reproach us for not turning out Gobelins.
+
+Y.M. And so we are mere machines! And machines may not boast, nor
+feel proud of their performance, nor claim personal merit for it, nor
+applause and praise. It is an infamous doctrine.
+
+O.M. It isn't a doctrine, it is merely a fact.
+
+Y.M. I suppose, then, there is no more merit in being brave than in
+being a coward?
+
+O.M. _Personal_ merit? No. A brave man does not _create_ his bravery. He
+is entitled to no personal credit for possessing it. It is born to him.
+A baby born with a billion dollars--where is the personal merit in that?
+A baby born with nothing--where is the personal demerit in that? The
+one is fawned upon, admired, worshiped, by sycophants, the other is
+neglected and despised--where is the sense in it?
+
+Y.M. Sometimes a timid man sets himself the task of conquering his
+cowardice and becoming brave--and succeeds. What do you say to that?
+
+O.M. That it shows the value of _training in right directions over
+training in wrong ones_. Inestimably valuable is training, influence,
+education, in right directions--_training one's self-approbation to
+elevate its ideals_.
+
+Y.M. But as to merit--the personal merit of the victorious coward's
+project and achievement?
+
+O.M. There isn't any. In the world's view he is a worthier man than he
+was before, but _he_ didn't achieve the change--the merit of it is not
+his.
+
+Y.M. Whose, then?
+
+O.M. His _make_, and the influences which wrought upon it from the
+outside.
+
+Y.M. His make?
+
+O.M. To start with, he was _not_ utterly and completely a coward, or the
+influences would have had nothing to work upon. He was not afraid of a
+cow, though perhaps of a bull: not afraid of a woman, but afraid of a
+man. There was something to build upon. There was a _seed_. No seed, no
+plant. Did he make that seed himself, or was it born in him? It was no
+merit of _his_ that the seed was there.
+
+Y.M. Well, anyway, the idea of _cultivating_ it, the resolution to
+cultivate it, was meritorious, and he originated that.
+
+O.M. He did nothing of the kind. It came whence _all_ impulses, good or
+bad, come--from _outside_. If that timid man had lived all his life in
+a community of human rabbits, had never read of brave deeds, had never
+heard speak of them, had never heard any one praise them nor express
+envy of the heroes that had done them, he would have had no more idea of
+bravery than Adam had of modesty, and it could never by any possibility
+have occurred to him to _resolve_ to become brave. He _could not
+originate the idea_--it had to come to him from the _outside_. And so,
+when he heard bravery extolled and cowardice derided, it woke him up. He
+was ashamed. Perhaps his sweetheart turned up her nose and said, “I am
+told that you are a coward!” It was not _he_ that turned over the new
+leaf--she did it for him. _He_ must not strut around in the merit of it
+--it is not his.
+
+Y.M. But, anyway, he reared the plant after she watered the seed.
+
+O.M. No. _Outside influences_ reared it. At the command--and
+trembling--he marched out into the field--with other soldiers and in the
+daytime, not alone and in the dark. He had the _influence of example_,
+he drew courage from his comrades' courage; he was afraid, and wanted
+to run, but he did not dare; he was _afraid_ to run, with all those
+soldiers looking on. He was progressing, you see--the moral fear of
+shame had risen superior to the physical fear of harm. By the end of
+the campaign experience will have taught him that not _all_ who go into
+battle get hurt--an outside influence which will be helpful to him; and
+he will also have learned how sweet it is to be praised for courage and
+be huzza'd at with tear-choked voices as the war-worn regiment marches
+past the worshiping multitude with flags flying and the drums beating.
+After that he will be as securely brave as any veteran in the army--and
+there will not be a shade nor suggestion of _personal merit_ in it
+anywhere; it will all have come from the _outside_. The Victoria Cross
+breeds more heroes than--
+
+Y.M. Hang it, where is the sense in his becoming brave if he is to get
+no credit for it?
+
+O.M. Your question will answer itself presently. It involves an
+important detail of man's make which we have not yet touched upon.
+
+Y.M. What detail is that?
+
+O.M. The impulse which moves a person to do things--the only impulse
+that ever moves a person to do a thing.
+
+Y.M. The _only_ one! Is there but one?
+
+O.M. That is all. There is only one.
+
+Y.M. Well, certainly that is a strange enough doctrine. What is the sole
+impulse that ever moves a person to do a thing?
+
+O.M. The impulse to _content his own spirit_--the _necessity_ of
+contenting his own spirit and _winning its approval_.
+
+Y.M. Oh, come, that won't do!
+
+O.M. Why won't it?
+
+Y.M. Because it puts him in the attitude of always looking out for his
+own comfort and advantage; whereas an unselfish man often does a thing
+solely for another person's good when it is a positive disadvantage to
+himself.
+
+O.M. It is a mistake. The act must do _him_ good, _first_; otherwise
+he will not do it. He may _think_ he is doing it solely for the other
+person's sake, but it is not so; he is contenting his own spirit
+first--the other's person's benefit has to always take _second_ place.
+
+Y.M. What a fantastic idea! What becomes of self--sacrifice? Please
+answer me that.
+
+O.M. What is self-sacrifice?
+
+Y.M. The doing good to another person where no shadow nor suggestion of
+benefit to one's self can result from it.
+
+
+
+II
+
+Man's Sole Impulse--the Securing of His Own Approval
+
+Old Man. There have been instances of it--you think?
+
+Young Man. _Instances_? Millions of them!
+
+O.M. You have not jumped to conclusions? You have examined
+them--critically?
+
+Y.M. They don't need it: the acts themselves reveal the golden impulse
+back of them.
+
+O.M. For instance?
+
+Y.M. Well, then, for instance. Take the case in the book here. The man
+lives three miles up-town. It is bitter cold, snowing hard, midnight.
+He is about to enter the horse-car when a gray and ragged old woman, a
+touching picture of misery, puts out her lean hand and begs for rescue
+from hunger and death. The man finds that he has a quarter in his
+pocket, but he does not hesitate: he gives it her and trudges home
+through the storm. There--it is noble, it is beautiful; its grace is
+marred by no fleck or blemish or suggestion of self-interest.
+
+O.M. What makes you think that?
+
+Y.M. Pray what else could I think? Do you imagine that there is some
+other way of looking at it?
+
+O.M. Can you put yourself in the man's place and tell me what he felt
+and what he thought?
+
+Y.M. Easily. The sight of that suffering old face pierced his generous
+heart with a sharp pain. He could not bear it. He could endure the
+three-mile walk in the storm, but he could not endure the tortures his
+conscience would suffer if he turned his back and left that poor old
+creature to perish. He would not have been able to sleep, for thinking
+of it.
+
+O.M. What was his state of mind on his way home?
+
+Y.M. It was a state of joy which only the self-sacrificer knows. His
+heart sang, he was unconscious of the storm.
+
+O.M. He felt well?
+
+Y.M. One cannot doubt it.
+
+O.M. Very well. Now let us add up the details and see how much he got
+for his twenty-five cents. Let us try to find out the _real_ why of his
+making the investment. In the first place _he_ couldn't bear the pain
+which the old suffering face gave him. So he was thinking of _his_
+pain--this good man. He must buy a salve for it. If he did not succor
+the old woman _his_ conscience would torture him all the way home.
+Thinking of _his_ pain again. He must buy relief for that. If he didn't
+relieve the old woman _he_ would not get any sleep. He must buy some
+sleep--still thinking of _himself_, you see. Thus, to sum up, he bought
+himself free of a sharp pain in his heart, he bought himself free of the
+tortures of a waiting conscience, he bought a whole night's sleep--all
+for twenty-five cents! It should make Wall Street ashamed of itself. On
+his way home his heart was joyful, and it sang--profit on top of profit!
+The impulse which moved the man to succor the old woman was--_first_--to
+_content his own spirit_; secondly to relieve _her_ sufferings. Is it
+your opinion that men's acts proceed from one central and unchanging and
+inalterable impulse, or from a variety of impulses?
+
+Y.M. From a variety, of course--some high and fine and noble, others
+not. What is your opinion?
+
+O.M. Then there is but _one_ law, one source.
+
+Y.M. That both the noblest impulses and the basest proceed from that one
+source?
+
+O.M. Yes.
+
+Y.M. Will you put that law into words?
+
+O.M. Yes. This is the law, keep it in your mind. _From his cradle to his
+grave a man never does a single thing which has any_ FIRST AND FOREMOST
+_object_ _but one_--_to secure peace of mind, spiritual comfort_,
+_for_ HIMSELF.
+
+Y.M. Come! He never does anything for any one else's comfort, spiritual
+or physical?
+
+O.M. No. _except on those distinct terms_--that it shall _first_ secure
+_his own_ spiritual comfort. Otherwise he will not do it.
+
+Y.M. It will be easy to expose the falsity of that proposition.
+
+O.M. For instance?
+
+Y.M. Take that noble passion, love of country, patriotism. A man who
+loves peace and dreads pain, leaves his pleasant home and his weeping
+family and marches out to manfully expose himself to hunger, cold,
+wounds, and death. Is that seeking spiritual comfort?
+
+O.M. He loves peace and dreads pain?
+
+Y.M. Yes.
+
+O.M. Then perhaps there is something that he loves _more_ than he loves
+peace--_the approval of his neighbors and the public_. And perhaps there
+is something which he dreads more than he dreads pain--the _disapproval_
+of his neighbors and the public. If he is sensitive to shame he will
+go to the field--not because his spirit will be _entirely_ comfortable
+there, but because it will be more comfortable there than it would be
+if he remained at home. He will always do the thing which will bring him
+the _most_ mental comfort--for that is _the sole law of his life_.
+He leaves the weeping family behind; he is sorry to make them
+uncomfortable, but not sorry enough to sacrifice his _own_ comfort to
+secure theirs.
+
+Y.M. Do you really believe that mere public opinion could force a timid
+and peaceful man to--
+
+O.M. Go to war? Yes--public opinion can force some men to do _anything_.
+
+Y.M. _Anything_?
+
+O.M. Yes--anything.
+
+Y.M. I don't believe that. Can it force a right-principled man to do a
+wrong thing?
+
+O.M. Yes.
+
+Y.M. Can it force a kind man to do a cruel thing?
+
+O.M. Yes.
+
+Y.M. Give an instance.
+
+O.M. Alexander Hamilton was a conspicuously high-principled man.
+He regarded dueling as wrong, and as opposed to the teachings of
+religion--but in deference to _public opinion_ he fought a duel. He
+deeply loved his family, but to buy public approval he treacherously
+deserted them and threw his life away, ungenerously leaving them to
+lifelong sorrow in order that he might stand well with a foolish world.
+In the then condition of the public standards of honor he could not have
+been comfortable with the stigma upon him of having refused to fight.
+The teachings of religion, his devotion to his family, his kindness of
+heart, his high principles, all went for nothing when they stood in the
+way of his spiritual comfort. A man will do _anything_, no matter what
+it is, _to secure his spiritual comfort_; and he can neither be forced
+nor persuaded to any act which has not that goal for its object.
+Hamilton's act was compelled by the inborn necessity of contenting his
+own spirit; in this it was like all the other acts of his life, and
+like all the acts of all men's lives. Do you see where the kernel of the
+matter lies? A man cannot be comfortable without _his own_ approval.
+He will secure the largest share possible of that, at all costs, all
+sacrifices.
+
+Y.M. A minute ago you said Hamilton fought that duel to get _public_
+approval.
+
+O.M. I did. By refusing to fight the duel he would have secured his
+family's approval and a large share of his own; but the public approval
+was more valuable in his eyes than all other approvals put together--in
+the earth or above it; to secure that would furnish him the _most_
+comfort of mind, the most _self_--approval; so he sacrificed all other
+values to get it.
+
+Y.M. Some noble souls have refused to fight duels, and have manfully
+braved the public contempt.
+
+O.M. They acted _according to their make_. They valued their principles
+and the approval of their families _above_ the public approval. They
+took the thing they valued _most_ and let the rest go. They took
+what would give them the _largest_ share of _personal contentment and
+approval_--a man _always_ does. Public opinion cannot force that kind
+of men to go to the wars. When they go it is for other reasons. Other
+spirit-contenting reasons.
+
+Y.M. Always spirit-contenting reasons?
+
+O.M. There are no others.
+
+Y.M. When a man sacrifices his life to save a little child from a
+burning building, what do you call that?
+
+O.M. When he does it, it is the law of _his_ make. _He_ can't bear to
+see the child in that peril (a man of a different make _could_), and so
+he tries to save the child, and loses his life. But he has got what he
+was after--_his own approval_.
+
+Y.M. What do you call Love, Hate, Charity, Revenge, Humanity,
+Magnanimity, Forgiveness?
+
+O.M. Different results of the one Master Impulse: the necessity of
+securing one's self approval. They wear diverse clothes and are subject
+to diverse moods, but in whatsoever ways they masquerade they are the
+_same person_ all the time. To change the figure, the _compulsion_ that
+moves a man--and there is but the one--is the necessity of securing the
+contentment of his own spirit. When it stops, the man is dead.
+
+Y.M. That is foolishness. Love--
+
+O.M. Why, love is that impulse, that law, in its most uncompromising
+form. It will squander life and everything else on its object. Not
+_primarily_ for the object's sake, but for _its own_. When its object is
+happy _it_ is happy--and that is what it is unconsciously after.
+
+Y.M. You do not even except the lofty and gracious passion of
+mother-love?
+
+O.M. No, _it _is the absolute slave of that law. The mother will go
+naked to clothe her child; she will starve that it may have food; suffer
+torture to save it from pain; die that it may live. She takes a
+living _pleasure_ in making these sacrifices. _She does it for that
+reward_--that self-approval, that contentment, that peace, that comfort.
+_She would do it for your child_ IF SHE COULD GET THE SAME PAY.
+
+Y.M. This is an infernal philosophy of yours.
+
+O.M. It isn't a philosophy, it is a fact.
+
+Y.M. Of course you must admit that there are some acts which--
+
+O.M. No. There is _no_ act, large or small, fine or mean, which springs
+from any motive but the one--the necessity of appeasing and contenting
+one's own spirit.
+
+Y.M. The world's philanthropists--
+
+O.M. I honor them, I uncover my head to them--from habit and training;
+and _they_ could not know comfort or happiness or self-approval if they
+did not work and spend for the unfortunate. It makes _them_ happy to
+see others happy; and so with money and labor they buy what they are
+after--_happiness, self-approval_. Why don't miners do the same thing?
+Because they can get a thousandfold more happiness by _not_ doing it.
+There is no other reason. They follow the law of their make.
+
+Y.M. What do you say of duty for duty's sake?
+
+O.M. That _it does not exist_. Duties are not performed for duty's
+_sake_, but because their _neglect_ would make the man _uncomfortable_.
+A man performs but _one_ duty--the duty of contenting his spirit, the
+duty of making himself agreeable to himself. If he can most satisfyingly
+perform this sole and only duty by _helping_ his neighbor, he will do
+it; if he can most satisfyingly perform it by _swindling_ his neighbor,
+he will do it. But he always looks out for Number One--_first_;
+the effects upon others are a _secondary_ matter. Men pretend to
+self-sacrifices, but this is a thing which, in the ordinary value of
+the phrase, _does not exist and has not existed_. A man often honestly
+_thinks_ he is sacrificing himself merely and solely for some one else,
+but he is deceived; his bottom impulse is to content a requirement of
+his nature and training, and thus acquire peace for his soul.
+
+Y.M. Apparently, then, all men, both good and bad ones, devote their
+lives to contenting their consciences.
+
+O.M. Yes. That is a good enough name for it: Conscience--that
+independent Sovereign, that insolent absolute Monarch inside of a man
+who is the man's Master. There are all kinds of consciences, because
+there are all kinds of men. You satisfy an assassin's conscience in one
+way, a philanthropist's in another, a miser's in another, a burglar's
+in still another. As a _guide_ or _incentive_ to any authoritatively
+prescribed line of morals or conduct (leaving _training_ out of the
+account), a man's conscience is totally valueless. I know a kind-hearted
+Kentuckian whose self-approval was lacking--whose conscience was
+troubling him, to phrase it with exactness--_because he had neglected
+to kill a certain man_--a man whom he had never seen. The stranger had
+killed this man's friend in a fight, this man's Kentucky training made
+it a duty to kill the stranger for it. He neglected his duty--kept
+dodging it, shirking it, putting it off, and his unrelenting conscience
+kept persecuting him for this conduct. At last, to get ease of mind,
+comfort, self-approval, he hunted up the stranger and took his life. It
+was an immense act of _self-sacrifice_ (as per the usual definition),
+for he did not want to do it, and he never would have done it if he
+could have bought a contented spirit and an unworried mind at
+smaller cost. But we are so made that we will pay _anything_ for that
+contentment--even another man's life.
+
+Y.M. You spoke a moment ago of _trained_ consciences. You mean that we
+are not _born_ with consciences competent to guide us aright?
+
+O.M. If we were, children and savages would know right from wrong, and
+not have to be taught it.
+
+Y.M. But consciences can be _trained_?
+
+O.M. Yes.
+
+Y.M. Of course by parents, teachers, the pulpit, and books.
+
+O.M. Yes--they do their share; they do what they can.
+
+Y.M. And the rest is done by--
+
+O.M. Oh, a million unnoticed influences--for good or bad: influences
+which work without rest during every waking moment of a man's life, from
+cradle to grave.
+
+Y.M. You have tabulated these?
+
+O.M. Many of them--yes.
+
+Y.M. Will you read me the result?
+
+O.M. Another time, yes. It would take an hour.
+
+Y.M. A conscience can be trained to shun evil and prefer good?
+
+O.M. Yes.
+
+Y.M. But will it for spirit-contenting reasons only?
+
+O.M. It _can't_ be trained to do a thing for any _other_ reason. The
+thing is impossible.
+
+Y.M. There _must_ be a genuinely and utterly self-sacrificing act
+recorded in human history somewhere.
+
+O.M. You are young. You have many years before you. Search one out.
+
+Y.M. It does seem to me that when a man sees a fellow-being struggling
+in the water and jumps in at the risk of his life to save him--
+
+O.M. Wait. Describe the _man_. Describe the _fellow-being_. State if
+there is an _audience_ present; or if they are _alone_.
+
+Y.M. What have these things to do with the splendid act?
+
+O.M. Very much. Shall we suppose, as a beginning, that the two are
+alone, in a solitary place, at midnight?
+
+Y.M. If you choose.
+
+O.M. And that the fellow-being is the man's daughter?
+
+Y.M. Well, n-no--make it someone else.
+
+O.M. A filthy, drunken ruffian, then?
+
+Y.M. I see. Circumstances alter cases. I suppose that if there was no
+audience to observe the act, the man wouldn't perform it.
+
+O.M. But there is here and there a man who _would_. People, for
+instance, like the man who lost his life trying to save the child from
+the fire; and the man who gave the needy old woman his twenty-five cents
+and walked home in the storm--there are here and there men like that who
+would do it. And why? Because they couldn't _bear_ to see a fellow-being
+struggling in the water and not jump in and help. It would give _them_
+pain. They would save the fellow-being on that account. _They wouldn't
+do it otherwise_. They strictly obey the law which I have been insisting
+upon. You must remember and always distinguish the people who _can't
+bear_ things from people who _can_. It will throw light upon a number of
+apparently “self-sacrificing” cases.
+
+Y.M. Oh, dear, it's all so disgusting.
+
+O.M. Yes. And so true.
+
+Y.M. Come--take the good boy who does things he doesn't want to do, in
+order to gratify his mother.
+
+O.M. He does seven-tenths of the act because it gratifies _him_ to
+gratify his mother. Throw the bulk of advantage the other way and the
+good boy would not do the act. He _must_ obey the iron law. None can
+escape it.
+
+Y.M. Well, take the case of a bad boy who--
+
+O.M. You needn't mention it, it is a waste of time. It is no matter
+about the bad boy's act. Whatever it was, he had a spirit-contenting
+reason for it. Otherwise you have been misinformed, and he didn't do it.
+
+Y.M. It is very exasperating. A while ago you said that man's conscience
+is not a born judge of morals and conduct, but has to be taught and
+trained. Now I think a conscience can get drowsy and lazy, but I don't
+think it can go wrong; if you wake it up--
+
+_A Little Story_
+
+O.M. I will tell you a little story:
+
+Once upon a time an Infidel was guest in the house of a Christian widow
+whose little boy was ill and near to death. The Infidel often watched
+by the bedside and entertained the boy with talk, and he used these
+opportunities to satisfy a strong longing in his nature--that desire
+which is in us all to better other people's condition by having them
+think as we think. He was successful. But the dying boy, in his last
+moments, reproached him and said:
+
+“_I believed, and was happy in it; you have taken my belief away, and
+my comfort. Now I have nothing left, and I die miserable; for the
+things which you have told me do not take the place of that which I have
+lost_.”
+
+And the mother, also, reproached the Infidel, and said:
+
+“_My child is forever lost, and my heart is broken. How could you do
+this cruel thing? We have done you no harm, but only kindness; we made
+our house your home, you were welcome to all we had, and this is our
+reward.”_
+
+The heart of the Infidel was filled with remorse for what he had done,
+and he said:
+
+“_It was wrong--I see it now; but I was only trying to do him good. In
+my view he was in error; it seemed my duty to teach him the truth_.”
+
+Then the mother said:
+
+“_I had taught him, all his little life, what I believed to be the
+truth, and in his believing faith both of us were happy. Now he is
+dead,--and lost; and I am miserable. Our faith came down to us through
+centuries of believing ancestors; what right had you, or any one, to
+disturb it? Where was your honor, where was your shame_?”
+
+Y.M. He was a miscreant, and deserved death!
+
+O.M. He thought so himself, and said so.
+
+Y.M. Ah--you see, _his conscience was awakened_!
+
+O.M. Yes, his Self-Disapproval was. It _pained_ him to see the mother
+suffer. He was sorry he had done a thing which brought _him_ pain. It
+did not occur to him to think of the mother when he was misteaching
+the boy, for he was absorbed in providing _pleasure_ for himself, then.
+Providing it by satisfying what he believed to be a call of duty.
+
+Y.M. Call it what you please, it is to me a case of _awakened
+conscience_. That awakened conscience could never get itself into that
+species of trouble again. A cure like that is a _permanent_ cure.
+
+O.M. Pardon--I had not finished the story. We are creatures of _outside
+influences_--we originate _nothing_ within. Whenever we take a new line
+of thought and drift into a new line of belief and action, the impulse
+is _always_ suggested from the _outside_. Remorse so preyed upon the
+Infidel that it dissolved his harshness toward the boy's religion and
+made him come to regard it with tolerance, next with kindness, for the
+boy's sake and the mother's. Finally he found himself examining it.
+From that moment his progress in his new trend was steady and rapid. He
+became a believing Christian. And now his remorse for having robbed the
+dying boy of his faith and his salvation was bitterer than ever. It gave
+him no rest, no peace. He _must_ have rest and peace--it is the law of
+nature. There seemed but one way to get it; he must devote himself to
+saving imperiled souls. He became a missionary. He landed in a pagan
+country ill and helpless. A native widow took him into her humble home
+and nursed him back to convalescence. Then her young boy was taken
+hopelessly ill, and the grateful missionary helped her tend him. Here
+was his first opportunity to repair a part of the wrong done to the
+other boy by doing a precious service for this one by undermining his
+foolish faith in his false gods. He was successful. But the dying boy in
+his last moments reproached him and said:
+
+“_I believed, and was happy in it; you have taken my belief away, and
+my comfort. Now I have nothing left, and I die miserable; for the
+things which you have told me do not take the place of that which I have
+lost_.”
+
+And the mother, also, reproached the missionary, and said:
+
+“_My child is forever lost, and my heart is broken. How could you do
+this cruel thing? We had done you no harm, but only kindness; we made
+our house your home, you were welcome to all we had, and this is our
+reward_.”
+
+The heart of the missionary was filled with remorse for what he had
+done, and he said:
+
+“_It was wrong--I see it now; but I was only trying to do him good. In
+my view he was in error; it seemed my duty to teach him the truth_.”
+
+Then the mother said:
+
+“_I had taught him, all his little life, what I believed to be the
+truth, and in his believing faith both of us were happy. Now he is
+dead--and lost; and I am miserable. Our faith came down to us through
+centuries of believing ancestors; what right had you, or any one, to
+disturb it? Where was your honor, where was your shame_?”
+
+The missionary's anguish of remorse and sense of treachery were as
+bitter and persecuting and unappeasable, now, as they had been in the
+former case. The story is finished. What is your comment?
+
+Y.M. The man's conscience is a fool! It was morbid. It didn't know right
+from wrong.
+
+O.M. I am not sorry to hear you say that. If you grant that _one_ man's
+conscience doesn't know right from wrong, it is an admission that there
+are others like it. This single admission pulls down the whole doctrine
+of infallibility of judgment in consciences. Meantime there is one thing
+which I ask you to notice.
+
+Y.M. What is that?
+
+O.M. That in both cases the man's _act_ gave him no spiritual
+discomfort, and that he was quite satisfied with it and got pleasure out
+of it. But afterward when it resulted in _pain_ to _him_, he was sorry.
+Sorry it had inflicted pain upon the others, _but for no reason under
+the sun except that their pain gave him pain_. Our consciences take _no_
+notice of pain inflicted upon others until it reaches a point where it
+gives pain to _us_. In _all_ cases without exception we are absolutely
+indifferent to another person's pain until his sufferings make us
+uncomfortable. Many an infidel would not have been troubled by that
+Christian mother's distress. Don't you believe that?
+
+Y.M. Yes. You might almost say it of the _average_ infidel, I think.
+
+O.M. And many a missionary, sternly fortified by his sense of duty,
+would not have been troubled by the pagan mother's distress--Jesuit
+missionaries in Canada in the early French times, for instance; see
+episodes quoted by Parkman.
+
+Y.M. Well, let us adjourn. Where have we arrived?
+
+O.M. At this. That we (mankind) have ticketed ourselves with a number of
+qualities to which we have given misleading names. Love, Hate, Charity,
+Compassion, Avarice, Benevolence, and so on. I mean we attach misleading
+_meanings_ to the names. They are all forms of self-contentment,
+self-gratification, but the names so disguise them that they distract
+our attention from the fact. Also we have smuggled a word into the
+dictionary which ought not to be there at all--Self-Sacrifice. It
+describes a thing which does not exist. But worst of all, we ignore and
+never mention the Sole Impulse which dictates and compels a man's every
+act: the imperious necessity of securing his own approval, in every
+emergency and at all costs. To it we owe all that we are. It is our
+breath, our heart, our blood. It is our only spur, our whip, our goad,
+our only impelling power; we have no other. Without it we should be
+mere inert images, corpses; no one would do anything, there would be
+no progress, the world would stand still. We ought to stand reverently
+uncovered when the name of that stupendous power is uttered.
+
+Y.M. I am not convinced.
+
+O.M. You will be when you think.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Instances in Point
+
+Old Man. Have you given thought to the Gospel of Self--Approval since we
+talked?
+
+Young Man. I have.
+
+O.M. It was I that moved you to it. That is to say an _outside
+influence_ moved you to it--not one that originated in your head. Will
+you try to keep that in mind and not forget it?
+
+Y.M. Yes. Why?
+
+O.M. Because by and by in one of our talks, I wish to further impress
+upon you that neither you, nor I, nor any man ever originates a thought
+in his own head. _The utterer of a thought always utters a second-hand
+one_.
+
+Y.M. Oh, now--
+
+O.M. Wait. Reserve your remark till we get to that part of our
+discussion--tomorrow or next day, say. Now, then, have you been
+considering the proposition that no act is ever born of any but a
+self-contenting impulse--(primarily). You have sought. What have you
+found?
+
+Y.M. I have not been very fortunate. I have examined many fine and
+apparently self-sacrificing deeds in romances and biographies, but--
+
+O.M. Under searching analysis the ostensible self-sacrifice disappeared?
+It naturally would.
+
+Y.M. But here in this novel is one which seems to promise. In the
+Adirondack woods is a wage-earner and lay preacher in the lumber-camps
+who is of noble character and deeply religious. An earnest and practical
+laborer in the New York slums comes up there on vacation--he is leader
+of a section of the University Settlement. Holme, the lumberman, is
+fired with a desire to throw away his excellent worldly prospects and
+go down and save souls on the East Side. He counts it happiness to make
+this sacrifice for the glory of God and for the cause of Christ. He
+resigns his place, makes the sacrifice cheerfully, and goes to the East
+Side and preaches Christ and Him crucified every day and every night to
+little groups of half-civilized foreign paupers who scoff at him. But he
+rejoices in the scoffings, since he is suffering them in the great
+cause of Christ. You have so filled my mind with suspicions that I was
+constantly expecting to find a hidden questionable impulse back of all
+this, but I am thankful to say I have failed. This man saw his duty, and
+for _duty's sake_ he sacrificed self and assumed the burden it imposed.
+
+O.M. Is that as far as you have read?
+
+Y.M. Yes.
+
+O.M. Let us read further, presently. Meantime, in sacrificing
+himself--_not_ for the glory of God, _primarily_, as _he_ imagined, but
+_first_ to content that exacting and inflexible master within him--_did
+he sacrifice anybody else_?
+
+Y.M. How do you mean?
+
+O.M. He relinquished a lucrative post and got mere food and lodging in
+place of it. Had he dependents?
+
+Y.M. Well--yes.
+
+O.M. In what way and to what extend did his self-sacrifice affect
+_them_?
+
+Y.M. He was the support of a superannuated father. He had a young sister
+with a remarkable voice--he was giving her a musical education, so that
+her longing to be self-supporting might be gratified. He was furnishing
+the money to put a young brother through a polytechnic school and
+satisfy his desire to become a civil engineer.
+
+O.M. The old father's comforts were now curtailed?
+
+Y.M. Quite seriously. Yes.
+
+O.M. The sister's music-lessens had to stop?
+
+Y.M. Yes.
+
+O.M. The young brother's education--well, an extinguishing blight fell
+upon that happy dream, and he had to go to sawing wood to support the
+old father, or something like that?
+
+Y.M. It is about what happened. Yes.
+
+O.M. What a handsome job of self-sacrificing he did do! It seems to me
+that he sacrificed everybody _except_ himself. Haven't I told you that
+no man _ever_ sacrifices himself; that there is no instance of it upon
+record anywhere; and that when a man's Interior Monarch requires a thing
+of its slave for either its _momentary_ or its _permanent_ contentment,
+that thing must and will be furnished and that command obeyed, no matter
+who may stand in the way and suffer disaster by it? That man _ruined his
+family_ to please and content his Interior Monarch--
+
+Y.M. And help Christ's cause.
+
+O.M. Yes--_secondly_. Not firstly. _He_ thought it was firstly.
+
+Y.M. Very well, have it so, if you will. But it could be that he argued
+that if he saved a hundred souls in New York--
+
+O.M. The sacrifice of the _family_ would be justified by that great
+profit upon the--the--what shall we call it?
+
+Y.M. Investment?
+
+O.M. Hardly. How would _speculation_ do? How would _gamble_ do? Not
+a solitary soul-capture was sure. He played for a possible
+thirty-three-hundred-per-cent profit. It was _gambling_--with his
+family for “chips.” However let us see how the game came out. Maybe we
+can get on the track of the secret original impulse, the _real_ impulse,
+that moved him to so nobly self--sacrifice his family in the Savior's
+cause under the superstition that he was sacrificing himself. I will
+read a chapter or so.... Here we have it! It was bound to expose itself
+sooner or later. He preached to the East-Side rabble a season, then went
+back to his old dull, obscure life in the lumber-camps “_hurt to the
+heart, his pride humbled_.” Why? Were not his efforts acceptable to the
+Savior, for Whom alone they were made? Dear me, that detail is _lost
+sight of_, is not even referred to, the fact that it started out as a
+motive is entirely forgotten! Then what is the trouble? The authoress
+quite innocently and unconsciously gives the whole business away. The
+trouble was this: this man merely _preached_ to the poor; that is not
+the University Settlement's way; it deals in larger and better things
+than that, and it did not enthuse over that crude Salvation-Army
+eloquence. It was courteous to Holme--but cool. It did not pet him,
+did not take him to its bosom. “_Perished were all his dreams of
+distinction, the praise and grateful approval_--” Of whom? The
+Savior? No; the Savior is not mentioned. Of whom, then? Of “his
+_fellow-workers_.” Why did he want that? Because the Master inside of
+him wanted it, and would not be content without it. That emphasized
+sentence quoted above, reveals the secret we have been seeking, the
+original impulse, the _real_ impulse, which moved the obscure and
+unappreciated Adirondack lumberman to sacrifice his family and go on
+that crusade to the East Side--which said original impulse was this,
+to wit: without knowing it _he went there to show a neglected world the
+large talent that was in him, and rise to distinction_. As I have warned
+you before, _no_ act springs from any but the one law, the one motive.
+But I pray you, do not accept this law upon my say-so; but diligently
+examine for yourself. Whenever you read of a self-sacrificing act or
+hear of one, or of a duty done for _duty's sake_, take it to pieces and
+look for the _real_ motive. It is always there.
+
+Y.M. I do it every day. I cannot help it, now that I have gotten
+started upon the degrading and exasperating quest. For it is hatefully
+interesting!--in fact, fascinating is the word. As soon as I come across
+a golden deed in a book I have to stop and take it apart and examine it,
+I cannot help myself.
+
+O.M. Have you ever found one that defeated the rule?
+
+Y.M. No--at least, not yet. But take the case of servant--tipping in
+Europe. You pay the _hotel_ for service; you owe the servants _nothing_,
+yet you pay them besides. Doesn't that defeat it?
+
+O.M. In what way?
+
+Y.M. You are not _obliged_ to do it, therefore its source is compassion
+for their ill-paid condition, and--
+
+O.M. Has that custom ever vexed you, annoyed you, irritated you?
+
+Y.M. Well, yes.
+
+O.M. Still you succumbed to it?
+
+Y.M. Of course.
+
+O.M. Why of course?
+
+Y.M. Well, custom is law, in a way, and laws must be submitted
+to--everybody recognizes it as a _duty_.
+
+O.M. Then you pay for the irritating tax for _duty's_ sake?
+
+Y.M. I suppose it amounts to that.
+
+O.M. Then the impulse which moves you to submit to the tax is not _all_
+compassion, charity, benevolence?
+
+Y.M. Well--perhaps not.
+
+O.M. Is _any_ of it?
+
+Y.M. I--perhaps I was too hasty in locating its source.
+
+O.M. Perhaps so. In case you ignored the custom would you get prompt and
+effective service from the servants?
+
+Y.M. Oh, hear yourself talk! Those European servants? Why, you wouldn't
+get any at all, to speak of.
+
+O.M. Couldn't _that_ work as an impulse to move you to pay the tax?
+
+Y.M. I am not denying it.
+
+O.M. Apparently, then, it is a case of for-duty's-sake with a little
+self-interest added?
+
+Y.M. Yes, it has the look of it. But here is a point: we pay that tax
+knowing it to be unjust and an extortion; yet we go away with a pain at
+the heart if we think we have been stingy with the poor fellows; and we
+heartily wish we were back again, so that we could do the right thing,
+and _more_ than the right thing, the _generous_ thing. I think it will
+be difficult for you to find any thought of self in that impulse.
+
+O.M. I wonder why you should think so. When you find service charged in
+the _hotel_ bill does it annoy you?
+
+Y.M. No.
+
+O.M. Do you ever complain of the amount of it?
+
+Y.M. No, it would not occur to me.
+
+O.M. The _expense_, then, is not the annoying detail. It is a fixed
+charge, and you pay it cheerfully, you pay it without a murmur. When you
+came to pay the servants, how would you like it if each of the men and
+maids had a fixed charge?
+
+Y.M. Like it? I should rejoice!
+
+O.M. Even if the fixed tax were a shade _more_ than you had been in the
+habit of paying in the form of tips?
+
+Y.M. Indeed, yes!
+
+O.M. Very well, then. As I understand it, it isn't really compassion nor
+yet duty that moves you to pay the tax, and it isn't the _amount_ of the
+tax that annoys you. Yet _something_ annoys you. What is it?
+
+Y.M. Well, the trouble is, you never know _what_ to pay, the tax varies
+so, all over Europe.
+
+O.M. So you have to guess?
+
+Y.M. There is no other way. So you go on thinking and thinking, and
+calculating and guessing, and consulting with other people and getting
+their views; and it spoils your sleep nights, and makes you distraught
+in the daytime, and while you are pretending to look at the sights you
+are only guessing and guessing and guessing all the time, and being
+worried and miserable.
+
+O.M. And all about a debt which you don't owe and don't have to pay
+unless you want to! Strange. What is the purpose of the guessing?
+
+Y.M. To guess out what is right to give them, and not be unfair to any
+of them.
+
+O.M. It has quite a noble look--taking so much pains and using up so
+much valuable time in order to be just and fair to a poor servant to
+whom you owe nothing, but who needs money and is ill paid.
+
+Y.M. I think, myself, that if there is any ungracious motive back of it
+it will be hard to find.
+
+O.M. How do you know when you have not paid a servant fairly?
+
+Y.M. Why, he is silent; does not thank you. Sometimes he gives you a
+look that makes you ashamed. You are too proud to rectify your mistake
+there, with people looking, but afterward you keep on wishing and
+wishing you _had_ done it. My, the shame and the pain of it! Sometimes
+you see, by the signs, that you have it _just right_, and you go away
+mightily satisfied. Sometimes the man is so effusively thankful that you
+know you have given him a good deal _more_ than was necessary.
+
+O.M. _Necessary_? Necessary for what?
+
+Y.M. To content him.
+
+O.M. How do you feel _then_?
+
+Y.M. Repentant.
+
+O.M. It is my belief that you have _not_ been concerning yourself
+in guessing out his just dues, but only in ciphering out what would
+_content_ him. And I think you have a self-deluding reason for that.
+
+Y.M. What was it?
+
+O.M. If you fell short of what he was expecting and wanting, you would
+get a look which would _shame you before folk_. That would give you
+_pain_. _You_--for you are only working for yourself, not _him_. If you
+gave him too much you would be _ashamed of yourself_ for it, and
+that would give _you_ pain--another case of thinking of _yourself_,
+protecting yourself, _saving yourself from discomfort_. You never think
+of the servant once--except to guess out how to get _his approval_. If
+you get that, you get your _own _approval, and that is the sole and
+only thing you are after. The Master inside of you is then satisfied,
+contented, comfortable; there was _no other_ thing at stake, as a matter
+of _first_ interest, anywhere in the transaction.
+
+_Further Instances_
+
+Y.M. Well, to think of it; Self-Sacrifice for others, the grandest thing
+in man, ruled out! non-existent!
+
+O.M. Are you accusing me of saying that?
+
+Y.M. Why, certainly.
+
+O.M. I haven't said it.
+
+Y.M. What did you say, then?
+
+O.M. That no man has ever sacrificed himself in the common meaning of
+that phrase--which is, self-sacrifice for another _alone_. Men make
+daily sacrifices for others, but it is for their own sake _first_. The
+act must content their own spirit _first_. The other beneficiaries come
+second.
+
+Y.M. And the same with duty for duty's sake?
+
+O.M. Yes. No man performs a duty for mere duty's sake; the act must
+content his spirit _first_. He must feel better for _doing_ the duty
+than he would for shirking it. Otherwise he will not do it.
+
+Y.M. Take the case of the _Berkeley Castle_.
+
+O.M. It was a noble duty, greatly performed. Take it to pieces and
+examine it, if you like.
+
+Y.M. A British troop-ship crowded with soldiers and their wives and
+children. She struck a rock and began to sink. There was room in the
+boats for the women and children only. The colonel lined up his regiment
+on the deck and said “it is our duty to die, that they may be saved.”
+ There was no murmur, no protest. The boats carried away the women and
+children. When the death-moment was come, the colonel and his officers
+took their several posts, the men stood at shoulder-arms, and so, as on
+dress-parade, with their flag flying and the drums beating, they went
+down, a sacrifice to duty for duty's sake. Can you view it as other than
+that?
+
+O.M. It was something as fine as that, as exalted as that. Could
+you have remained in those ranks and gone down to your death in that
+unflinching way?
+
+Y.M. Could I? No, I could not.
+
+O.M. Think. Imagine yourself there, with that watery doom creeping
+higher and higher around you.
+
+Y.M. I can imagine it. I feel all the horror of it. I could not have
+endured it, I could not have remained in my place. I know it.
+
+O.M. Why?
+
+Y.M. There is no why about it: I know myself, and I know I couldn't _do_
+it.
+
+O.M. But it would be your _duty_ to do it.
+
+Y.M. Yes, I know--but I couldn't.
+
+O.M. It was more than thousand men, yet not one of them flinched. Some
+of them must have been born with your temperament; if they could do that
+great duty for duty's _sake_, why not you? Don't you know that you could
+go out and gather together a thousand clerks and mechanics and put them
+on that deck and ask them to die for duty's sake, and not two dozen of
+them would stay in the ranks to the end?
+
+Y.M. Yes, I know that.
+
+O.M. But you _train_ them, and put them through a campaign or two; then
+they would be soldiers; soldiers, with a soldier's pride, a soldier's
+self-respect, a soldier's ideals. They would have to content a
+_soldier's_ spirit then, not a clerk's, not a mechanic's. They could not
+content that spirit by shirking a soldier's duty, could they?
+
+Y.M. I suppose not.
+
+O.M. Then they would do the duty not for the _duty's_ sake, but for
+their _own _sake--primarily. The _duty_ was _just the same_, and just
+as imperative, when they were clerks, mechanics, raw recruits, but they
+wouldn't perform it for that. As clerks and mechanics they had other
+ideals, another spirit to satisfy, and they satisfied it. They _had_ to;
+it is the law. _Training _is potent. Training toward higher and
+higher, and ever higher ideals is worth any man's thought and labor and
+diligence.
+
+Y.M. Consider the man who stands by his duty and goes to the stake
+rather than be recreant to it.
+
+O.M. It is his make and his training. He has to content the spirit that
+is in him, though it cost him his life. Another man, just as sincerely
+religious, but of different temperament, will fail of that duty, though
+recognizing it as a duty, and grieving to be unequal to it: but he
+must content the spirit that is in him--he cannot help it. He could
+not perform that duty for duty's _sake_, for that would not content his
+spirit, and the contenting of his spirit must be looked to _first_. It
+takes precedence of all other duties.
+
+Y.M. Take the case of a clergyman of stainless private morals who votes
+for a thief for public office, on his own party's ticket, and against an
+honest man on the other ticket.
+
+O.M. He has to content his spirit. He has no public morals; he has no
+private ones, where his party's prosperity is at stake. He will always
+be true to his make and training.
+
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+Training
+
+Young Man. You keep using that word--training. By it do you particularly
+mean--
+
+Old Man. Study, instruction, lectures, sermons? That is a part of
+it--but not a large part. I mean _all _the outside influences. There are
+a million of them. From the cradle to the grave, during all his waking
+hours, the human being is under training. In the very first rank of
+his trainers stands _association_. It is his human environment which
+influences his mind and his feelings, furnishes him his ideals, and sets
+him on his road and keeps him in it. If he leave[s] that road he will
+find himself shunned by the people whom he most loves and esteems, and
+whose approval he most values. He is a chameleon; by the law of his
+nature he takes the color of his place of resort. The influences about
+him create his preferences, his aversions, his politics, his tastes, his
+morals, his religion. He creates none of these things for himself.
+He _thinks _he does, but that is because he has not examined into the
+matter. You have seen Presbyterians?
+
+Y.M. Many.
+
+O.M. How did they happen to be Presbyterians and not Congregationalists?
+And why were the Congregationalists not Baptists, and the Baptists Roman
+Catholics, and the Roman Catholics Buddhists, and the Buddhists Quakers,
+and the Quakers Episcopalians, and the Episcopalians Millerites and
+the Millerites Hindus, and the Hindus Atheists, and the Atheists
+Spiritualists, and the Spiritualists Agnostics, and the Agnostics
+Methodists, and the Methodists Confucians, and the Confucians
+Unitarians, and the Unitarians Mohammedans, and the Mohammedans
+Salvation Warriors, and the Salvation Warriors Zoroastrians, and
+the Zoroastrians Christian Scientists, and the Christian Scientists
+Mormons--and so on?
+
+Y.M. You may answer your question yourself.
+
+O.M. That list of sects is not a record of _studies_, searchings,
+seekings after light; it mainly (and sarcastically) indicates what
+_association _can do. If you know a man's nationality you can come
+within a split hair of guessing the complexion of his religion:
+English--Protestant; American--ditto; Spaniard, Frenchman, Irishman,
+Italian, South American--Roman Catholic; Russian--Greek Catholic;
+Turk--Mohammedan; and so on. And when you know the man's religious
+complexion, you know what sort of religious books he reads when he wants
+some more light, and what sort of books he avoids, lest by accident he
+get more light than he wants. In America if you know which party-collar
+a voter wears, you know what his associations are, and how he came by
+his politics, and which breed of newspaper he reads to get light, and
+which breed he diligently avoids, and which breed of mass-meetings he
+attends in order to broaden his political knowledge, and which breed
+of mass-meetings he doesn't attend, except to refute its doctrines with
+brickbats. We are always hearing of people who are around _seeking after
+truth_. I have never seen a (permanent) specimen. I think he had never
+lived. But I have seen several entirely sincere people who _thought
+_they were (permanent) Seekers after Truth. They sought diligently,
+persistently, carefully, cautiously, profoundly, with perfect honesty
+and nicely adjusted judgment--until they believed that without doubt or
+question they had found the Truth. _That was the end of the search. _The
+man spent the rest of his life hunting up shingles wherewith to protect
+his Truth from the weather. If he was seeking after political Truth he
+found it in one or another of the hundred political gospels which govern
+men in the earth; if he was seeking after the Only True Religion he
+found it in one or another of the three thousand that are on the market.
+In any case, when he found the Truth _he sought no further; _but from
+that day forth, with his soldering-iron in one hand and his bludgeon in
+the other he tinkered its leaks and reasoned with objectors. There have
+been innumerable Temporary Seekers of Truth--have you ever heard of a
+permanent one? In the very nature of man such a person is impossible.
+However, to drop back to the text--training: all training is one form
+or another of _outside influence, _and _association _is the largest part
+of it. A man is never anything but what his outside influences have made
+him. They train him downward or they train him upward--but they _train
+_him; they are at work upon him all the time.
+
+Y.M. Then if he happen by the accidents of life to be evilly placed
+there is no help for him, according to your notions--he must train
+downward.
+
+O.M. No help for him? No help for this chameleon? It is a mistake. It is
+in his chameleonship that his greatest good fortune lies. He has only
+to change his habitat--his _associations_. But the impulse to do it
+must come from the _outside _--he cannot originate it himself, with that
+purpose in view. Sometimes a very small and accidental thing can furnish
+him the initiatory impulse and start him on a new road, with a new idea.
+The chance remark of a sweetheart, “I hear that you are a coward,” may
+water a seed that shall sprout and bloom and flourish, and ended in
+producing a surprising fruitage--in the fields of war. The history of
+man is full of such accidents. The accident of a broken leg brought a
+profane and ribald soldier under religious influences and furnished him
+a new ideal. From that accident sprang the Order of the Jesuits, and it
+has been shaking thrones, changing policies, and doing other tremendous
+work for two hundred years--and will go on. The chance reading of a book
+or of a paragraph in a newspaper can start a man on a new track and
+make him renounce his old associations and seek new ones that are _in
+sympathy with his new ideal_: and the result, for that man, can be an
+entire change of his way of life.
+
+Y.M. Are you hinting at a scheme of procedure?
+
+O.M. Not a new one--an old one. Old as mankind.
+
+Y.M. What is it?
+
+O.M. Merely the laying of traps for people. Traps baited
+with _initiatory impulses toward high ideals. _It is what the
+tract-distributor does. It is what the missionary does. It is what
+governments ought to do.
+
+Y.M. Don't they?
+
+O.M. In one way they do, in another they don't. They separate the
+smallpox patients from the healthy people, but in dealing with crime
+they put the healthy into the pest-house along with the sick. That is to
+say, they put the beginners in with the confirmed criminals. This would
+be well if man were naturally inclined to good, but he isn't, and so
+_association _makes the beginners worse than they were when they
+went into captivity. It is putting a very severe punishment upon the
+comparatively innocent at times. They hang a man--which is a trifling
+punishment; this breaks the hearts of his family--which is a heavy one.
+They comfortably jail and feed a wife-beater, and leave his innocent
+wife and family to starve.
+
+Y.M. Do you believe in the doctrine that man is equipped with an
+intuitive perception of good and evil?
+
+O.M. Adam hadn't it.
+
+Y.M. But has man acquired it since?
+
+O.M. No. I think he has no intuitions of any kind. He gets _all _his
+ideas, all his impressions, from the outside. I keep repeating this, in
+the hope that I may impress it upon you that you will be interested to
+observe and examine for yourself and see whether it is true or false.
+
+Y.M. Where did you get your own aggravating notions?
+
+O.M. From the _outside_. I did not invent them. They are gathered from a
+thousand unknown sources. Mainly _unconsciously _gathered.
+
+Y.M. Don't you believe that God could make an inherently honest man?
+
+O.M. Yes, I know He could. I also know that He never did make one.
+
+Y.M. A wiser observer than you has recorded the fact that “an honest
+man's the noblest work of God.”
+
+O.M. He didn't record a fact, he recorded a falsity. It is windy,
+and sounds well, but it is not true. God makes a man with honest
+and dishonest _possibilities _in him and stops there. The man's
+_associations _develop the possibilities--the one set or the other. The
+result is accordingly an honest man or a dishonest one.
+
+Y.M. And the honest one is not entitled to--
+
+O.M. Praise? No. How often must I tell you that? _He _is not the
+architect of his honesty.
+
+Y.M. Now then, I will ask you where there is any sense in training
+people to lead virtuous lives. What is gained by it?
+
+O.M. The man himself gets large advantages out of it, and that is the
+main thing--to _him_. He is not a peril to his neighbors, he is not a
+damage to them--and so _they _get an advantage out of his virtues.
+That is the main thing to _them_. It can make this life comparatively
+comfortable to the parties concerned; the _neglect _of this training can
+make this life a constant peril and distress to the parties concerned.
+
+Y.M. You have said that training is everything; that training is the man
+_himself_, for it makes him what he is.
+
+O.M. I said training and _another _thing. Let that other thing pass, for
+the moment. What were you going to say?
+
+Y.M. We have an old servant. She has been with us twenty--two years. Her
+service used to be faultless, but now she has become very forgetful. We
+are all fond of her; we all recognize that she cannot help the infirmity
+which age has brought her; the rest of the family do not scold her for
+her remissnesses, but at times I do--I can't seem to control myself.
+Don't I try? I do try. Now, then, when I was ready to dress, this
+morning, no clean clothes had been put out. I lost my temper; I lose it
+easiest and quickest in the early morning. I rang; and immediately began
+to warn myself not to show temper, and to be careful and speak gently.
+I safe-guarded myself most carefully. I even chose the very word I would
+use: “You've forgotten the clean clothes, Jane.” When she appeared in
+the door I opened my mouth to say that phrase--and out of it, moved by
+an instant surge of passion which I was not expecting and hadn't time to
+put under control, came the hot rebuke, “You've forgotten them again!”
+ You say a man always does the thing which will best please his Interior
+Master. Whence came the impulse to make careful preparation to save the
+girl the humiliation of a rebuke? Did that come from the Master, who is
+always primarily concerned about _himself_?
+
+O.M. Unquestionably. There is no other source for any impulse.
+_Secondarily _you made preparation to save the girl, but _primarily _its
+object was to save yourself, by contenting the Master.
+
+Y.M. How do you mean?
+
+O.M. Has any member of the family ever implored you to watch your temper
+and not fly out at the girl?
+
+Y.M. Yes. My mother.
+
+O.M. You love her?
+
+Y.M. Oh, more than that!
+
+O.M. You would always do anything in your power to please her?
+
+Y.M. It is a delight to me to do anything to please her!
+
+O.M. Why? _You would do it for pay, solely _--for _profit_. What profit
+would you expect and certainly receive from the investment?
+
+Y.M. Personally? None. To please _her _is enough.
+
+O.M. It appears, then, that your object, primarily, _wasn't _to save the
+girl a humiliation, but to _please your mother. _It also appears that to
+please your mother gives _you _a strong pleasure. Is not that the profit
+which you get out of the investment? Isn't that the _real _profits and
+_first _profit?
+
+Y.M. Oh, well? Go on.
+
+O.M. In _all _transactions, the Interior Master looks to it that _you
+get the first profit. _Otherwise there is no transaction.
+
+Y.M. Well, then, if I was so anxious to get that profit and so intent
+upon it, why did I throw it away by losing my temper?
+
+O.M. In order to get _another _profit which suddenly superseded it in
+value.
+
+Y.M. Where was it?
+
+O.M. Ambushed behind your born temperament, and waiting for a chance.
+Your native warm temper suddenly jumped to the front, and _for the
+moment its influence _was more powerful than your mother's, and
+abolished it. In that instance you were eager to flash out a hot rebuke
+and enjoy it. You did enjoy it, didn't you?
+
+Y.M. For--for a quarter of a second. Yes--I did.
+
+O.M. Very well, it is as I have said: the thing which will give you the
+_most _pleasure, the most satisfaction, in any moment or _fraction _of
+a moment, is the thing you will always do. You must content the Master's
+_latest _whim, whatever it may be.
+
+Y.M. But when the tears came into the old servant's eyes I could have
+cut my hand off for what I had done.
+
+O.M. Right. You had humiliated _yourself_, you see, you had given
+yourself _pain_. Nothing is of _first _importance to a man except
+results which damage _him _or profit him--all the rest is _secondary_.
+Your Master was displeased with you, although you had obeyed him. He
+required a prompt _repentance_; you obeyed again; you_ had _to--there is
+never any escape from his commands. He is a hard master and fickle; he
+changes his mind in the fraction of a second, but you must be ready
+to obey, and you will obey, _always_. If he requires repentance, you
+content him, you will always furnish it. He must be nursed, petted,
+coddled, and kept contented, let the terms be what they may.
+
+Y.M. Training! Oh, what's the use of it? Didn't I, and didn't my mother
+try to train me up to where I would no longer fly out at that girl?
+
+O.M. Have you never managed to keep back a scolding?
+
+Y.M. Oh, certainly--many times.
+
+O.M. More times this year than last?
+
+Y.M. Yes, a good many more.
+
+O.M. More times last year than the year before?
+
+Y.M. Yes.
+
+O.M. There is a large improvement, then, in the two years?
+
+Y.M. Yes, undoubtedly.
+
+O.M. Then your question is answered. You see there _is _use in training.
+Keep on. Keeping faithfully on. You are doing well.
+
+Y.M. Will my reform reach perfection?
+
+O.M. It will. Up to _your _limit.
+
+Y.M. My limit? What do you mean by that?
+
+O.M. You remember that you said that I said training was _everything_. I
+corrected you, and said “training and _another _thing.” That other thing
+is _temperament _--that is, the disposition you were born with. _You
+can't eradicate your disposition nor any rag of it _--you can only put a
+pressure on it and keep it down and quiet. You have a warm temper?
+
+Y.M. Yes.
+
+O.M. You will never get rid of it; but by watching it you can keep it
+down nearly all the time. _Its presence is your limit. _Your reform
+will never quite reach perfection, for your temper will beat you now and
+then, but you come near enough. You have made valuable progress and can
+make more. There _is _use in training. Immense use. Presently you will
+reach a new stage of development, then your progress will be easier;
+will proceed on a simpler basis, anyway.
+
+Y.M. Explain.
+
+O.M. You keep back your scoldings now, to please _yourself _by pleasing
+your _mother_; presently the mere triumphing over your temper
+will delight your vanity and confer a more delicious pleasure and
+satisfaction upon you than even the approbation of your _mother _confers
+upon you now. You will then labor for yourself directly and at _first
+hand, _not by the roundabout way through your mother. It simplifies the
+matter, and it also strengthens the impulse.
+
+Y.M. Ah, dear! But I sha'n't ever reach the point where I will spare the
+girl for _her _sake _primarily_, not mine?
+
+O.M. Why--yes. In heaven.
+
+Y.M. (_After a reflective pause) _Temperament. Well, I see one must
+allow for temperament. It is a large factor, sure enough. My mother is
+thoughtful, and not hot-tempered. When I was dressed I went to her room;
+she was not there; I called, she answered from the bathroom. I heard the
+water running. I inquired. She answered, without temper, that Jane had
+forgotten her bath, and she was preparing it herself. I offered to
+ring, but she said, “No, don't do that; it would only distress her to
+be confronted with her lapse, and would be a rebuke; she doesn't deserve
+that--she is not to blame for the tricks her memory serves her.” I
+say--has my mother an Interior Master?--and where was he?
+
+O.M. He was there. There, and looking out for his own peace and pleasure
+and contentment. The girl's distress would have pained _your mother.
+_Otherwise the girl would have been rung up, distress and all. I know
+women who would have gotten a No. 1 _pleasure _out of ringing Jane
+up--and so they would infallibly have pushed the button and obeyed the
+law of their make and training, which are the servants of their Interior
+Masters. It is quite likely that a part of your mother's forbearance
+came from training. The _good _kind of training--whose best and highest
+function is to see to it that every time it confers a satisfaction upon
+its pupil a benefit shall fall at second hand upon others.
+
+Y.M. If you were going to condense into an admonition your plan for the
+general betterment of the race's condition, how would you word it?
+
+
+
+_Admonition_
+
+O.M. Diligently train your ideals _upward _and _still upward _toward
+a summit where you will find your chiefest pleasure in conduct which,
+while contenting you, will be sure to confer benefits upon your neighbor
+and the community.
+
+Y.M. Is that a new gospel?
+
+O.M. No.
+
+Y.M. It has been taught before?
+
+O.M. For ten thousand years.
+
+Y.M. By whom?
+
+O.M. All the great religions--all the great gospels.
+
+Y.M. Then there is nothing new about it?
+
+O.M. Oh yes, there is. It is candidly stated, this time. That has not
+been done before.
+
+Y.M. How do you mean?
+
+O.M. Haven't I put _you first, _and your neighbor and the community
+afterward?
+
+Y.M. Well, yes, that is a difference, it is true.
+
+O.M. The difference between straight speaking and crooked; the
+difference between frankness and shuffling.
+
+Y.M. Explain.
+
+O.M. The others offer you a hundred bribes to be good, thus conceding
+that the Master inside of you must be conciliated and contented first,
+and that you will do nothing at _first hand _but for his sake; then
+they turn square around and require you to do good for _other's _sake
+_chiefly_; and to do your duty for duty's _sake_, chiefly; and to do
+acts of _self_-_sacrifice_. Thus at the outset we all stand upon the
+same ground--recognition of the supreme and absolute Monarch that
+resides in man, and we all grovel before him and appeal to him; then
+those others dodge and shuffle, and face around and unfrankly and
+inconsistently and illogically change the form of their appeal and
+direct its persuasions to man's _second-place _powers and to powers
+which have _no existence _in him, thus advancing them to _first _place;
+whereas in my Admonition I stick logically and consistently to the
+original position: I place the Interior Master's requirements _first_,
+and keep them there.
+
+Y.M. If we grant, for the sake of argument, that your scheme and the
+other schemes aim at and produce the same result--_right living--_has
+yours an advantage over the others?
+
+O.M. One, yes--a large one. It has no concealments, no deceptions. When
+a man leads a right and valuable life under it he is not deceived as to
+the _real _chief motive which impels him to it--in those other cases he
+is.
+
+Y.M. Is that an advantage? Is it an advantage to live a lofty life for
+a mean reason? In the other cases he lives the lofty life under the
+_impression _that he is living for a lofty reason. Is not that an
+advantage?
+
+O.M. Perhaps so. The same advantage he might get out of thinking
+himself a duke, and living a duke's life and parading in ducal fuss
+and feathers, when he wasn't a duke at all, and could find it out if he
+would only examine the herald's records.
+
+Y.M. But anyway, he is obliged to do a duke's part; he puts his hand in
+his pocket and does his benevolences on as big a scale as he can stand,
+and that benefits the community.
+
+O.M. He could do that without being a duke.
+
+Y.M. But would he?
+
+O.M. Don't you see where you are arriving?
+
+Y.M. Where?
+
+O.M. At the standpoint of the other schemes: That it is good morals
+to let an ignorant duke do showy benevolences for his pride's sake, a
+pretty low motive, and go on doing them unwarned, lest if he were made
+acquainted with the actual motive which prompted them he might shut up
+his purse and cease to be good?
+
+Y.M. But isn't it best to leave him in ignorance, as long as he _thinks
+_he is doing good for others' sake?
+
+O.M. Perhaps so. It is the position of the other schemes. They think
+humbug is good enough morals when the dividend on it is good deeds and
+handsome conduct.
+
+Y.M. It is my opinion that under your scheme of a man's doing a good
+deed for his _own _sake first-off, instead of first for the _good deed's
+_sake, no man would ever do one.
+
+O.M. Have you committed a benevolence lately?
+
+Y.M. Yes. This morning.
+
+O.M. Give the particulars.
+
+Y.M. The cabin of the old negro woman who used to nurse me when I was a
+child and who saved my life once at the risk of her own, was burned last
+night, and she came mourning this morning, and pleading for money to
+build another one.
+
+O.M. You furnished it?
+
+Y.M. Certainly.
+
+O.M. You were glad you had the money?
+
+Y.M. Money? I hadn't. I sold my horse.
+
+O.M. You were glad you had the horse?
+
+Y.M. Of course I was; for if I hadn't had the horse I should have been
+incapable, and my _mother _would have captured the chance to set old
+Sally up.
+
+O.M. You were cordially glad you were not caught out and incapable?
+
+Y.M. Oh, I just was!
+
+O.M. Now, then--
+
+Y.M. Stop where you are! I know your whole catalog of questions, and
+I could answer every one of them without your wasting the time to ask
+them; but I will summarize the whole thing in a single remark: I did
+the charity knowing it was because the act would give _me _a splendid
+pleasure, and because old Sally's moving gratitude and delight would
+give _me _another one; and because the reflection that she would be
+happy now and out of her trouble would fill _me _full of happiness. I
+did the whole thing with my eyes open and recognizing and realizing that
+I was looking out for _my _share of the profits _first_. Now then, I
+have confessed. Go on.
+
+O.M. I haven't anything to offer; you have covered the whole ground.
+Can you have been any _more _strongly moved to help Sally out of her
+trouble--could you have done the deed any more eagerly--if you had been
+under the delusion that you were doing it for _her _sake and profit
+only?
+
+Y.M. No! Nothing in the world could have made the impulse which moved
+me more powerful, more masterful, more thoroughly irresistible. I played
+the limit!
+
+O.M. Very well. You begin to suspect--and I claim to _know _--that when
+a man is a shade _more strongly moved _to do _one _of two things or
+of two dozen things than he is to do any one of the _others_, he will
+infallibly do that _one _thing, be it good or be it evil; and if it be
+good, not all the beguilements of all the casuistries can increase the
+strength of the impulse by a single shade or add a shade to the comfort
+and contentment he will get out of the act.
+
+Y.M. Then you believe that such tendency toward doing good as is in
+men's hearts would not be diminished by the removal of the delusion that
+good deeds are done primarily for the sake of No. 2 instead of for the
+sake of No. 1?
+
+O.M. That is what I fully believe.
+
+Y.M. Doesn't it somehow seem to take from the dignity of the deed?
+
+O.M. If there is dignity in falsity, it does. It removes that.
+
+Y.M. What is left for the moralists to do?
+
+O.M. Teach unreservedly what he already teaches with one side of his
+mouth and takes back with the other: Do right _for your own sake, _and
+be happy in knowing that your _neighbor _will certainly share in the
+benefits resulting.
+
+Y.M. Repeat your Admonition.
+
+O.M. _Diligently train your ideals upward and still upward toward a
+summit where you will find your chiefest pleasure in conduct which,
+while contenting you, will be sure to confer benefits upon your neighbor
+and the community._
+
+Y.M. One's _every _act proceeds from _exterior influences_, you think?
+
+O.M. Yes.
+
+Y.M. If I conclude to rob a person, I am not the _originator _of the
+idea, but it comes in from the _outside_? I see him handling money--for
+instance--and _that _moves me to the crime?
+
+O.M. That, by itself? Oh, certainly not. It is merely the _latest
+_outside influence of a procession of preparatory influences stretching
+back over a period of years. No _single _outside influence can make a
+man do a thing which is at war with his training. The most it can do is
+to start his mind on a new tract and open it to the reception of _new
+_influences--as in the case of Ignatius Loyola. In time these influences
+can train him to a point where it will be consonant with his new
+character to yield to the _final _influence and do that thing. I will
+put the case in a form which will make my theory clear to you, I think.
+Here are two ingots of virgin gold. They shall represent a couple of
+characters which have been refined and perfected in the virtues by
+years of diligent right training. Suppose you wanted to break down these
+strong and well-compacted characters--what influence would you bring to
+bear upon the ingots?
+
+Y.M. Work it out yourself. Proceed.
+
+O.M. Suppose I turn upon one of them a steam-jet during a long
+succession of hours. Will there be a result?
+
+Y.M. None that I know of.
+
+O.M. Why?
+
+Y.M. A steam-jet cannot break down such a substance.
+
+O.M. Very well. The steam is an _outside influence, _but it is
+ineffective because the gold _takes no interest in it. _The ingot
+remains as it was. Suppose we add to the steam some quicksilver in a
+vaporized condition, and turn the jet upon the ingot, will there be an
+instantaneous result?
+
+Y.M. No.
+
+O.M. The _quicksilver _is an outside influence which gold (by its
+peculiar nature--say _temperament, disposition) cannot be indifferent
+to. _It stirs up the interest of the gold, although we do not perceive
+it; but a _single _application of the influence works no damage. Let
+us continue the application in a steady stream, and call each minute
+a year. By the end of ten or twenty minutes--ten or twenty years--the
+little ingot is sodden with quicksilver, its virtues are gone, its
+character is degraded. At last it is ready to yield to a temptation
+which it would have taken no notice of, ten or twenty years ago. We will
+apply that temptation in the form of a pressure of my finger. You note
+the result?
+
+Y.M. Yes; the ingot has crumbled to sand. I understand, now. It is not
+the _single _outside influence that does the work, but only the _last
+_one of a long and disintegrating accumulation of them. I see, now, how
+my _single _impulse to rob the man is not the one that makes me do it,
+but only the _last _one of a preparatory series. You might illustrate
+with a parable.
+
+_A Parable_
+
+O.M. I will. There was once a pair of New England boys--twins.
+They were alike in good dispositions, feckless morals, and personal
+appearance. They were the models of the Sunday--school. At fifteen
+George had the opportunity to go as cabin-boy in a whale-ship, and
+sailed away for the Pacific. Henry remained at home in the village. At
+eighteen George was a sailor before the mast, and Henry was teacher of
+the advanced Bible class. At twenty-two George, through fighting-habits
+and drinking-habits acquired at sea and in the sailor boarding-houses
+of the European and Oriental ports, was a common rough in Hong-Kong,
+and out of a job; and Henry was superintendent of the Sunday-school. At
+twenty-six George was a wanderer, a tramp, and Henry was pastor of
+the village church. Then George came home, and was Henry's guest. One
+evening a man passed by and turned down the lane, and Henry said, with
+a pathetic smile, “Without intending me a discomfort, that man is always
+keeping me reminded of my pinching poverty, for he carries heaps of
+money about him, and goes by here every evening of his life.” That
+_outside influence _--that remark--was enough for George, but _it
+_was not the one that made him ambush the man and rob him, it merely
+represented the eleven years' accumulation of such influences, and gave
+birth to the act for which their long gestation had made preparation. It
+had never entered the head of Henry to rob the man--his ingot had
+been subjected to clean steam only; but George's had been subjected to
+vaporized quicksilver.
+
+V
+
+More About the Machine
+
+Note.--When Mrs. W. asks how can a millionaire give a single dollar to
+colleges and museums while one human being is destitute of bread, she
+has answered her question herself. Her feeling for the poor shows
+that she has a standard of benevolence; there she has conceded the
+millionaire's privilege of having a standard; since she evidently
+requires him to adopt her standard, she is by that act requiring herself
+to adopt his. The human being always looks down when he is examining
+another person's standard; he never find one that he has to examine by
+looking up.
+
+
+
+_The Man-Machine Again_
+
+Young Man. You really think man is a mere machine?
+
+Old Man. I do.
+
+Y.M. And that his mind works automatically and is independent of his
+control--carries on thought on its own hook?
+
+O.M. Yes. It is diligently at work, unceasingly at work, during every
+waking moment. Have you never tossed about all night, imploring,
+beseeching, commanding your mind to stop work and let you go to
+sleep?--you who perhaps imagine that your mind is your servant and must
+obey your orders, think what you tell it to think, and stop when you
+tell it to stop. When it chooses to work, there is no way to keep it
+still for an instant. The brightest man would not be able to supply it
+with subjects if he had to hunt them up. If it needed the man's help it
+would wait for him to give it work when he wakes in the morning.
+
+Y.M. Maybe it does.
+
+O.M. No, it begins right away, before the man gets wide enough awake to
+give it a suggestion. He may go to sleep saying, “The moment I wake I
+will think upon such and such a subject,” but he will fail. His mind
+will be too quick for him; by the time he has become nearly enough
+awake to be half conscious, he will find that it is already at work upon
+another subject. Make the experiment and see.
+
+Y.M. At any rate, he can make it stick to a subject if he wants to.
+
+O.M. Not if it find another that suits it better. As a rule it will
+listen to neither a dull speaker nor a bright one. It refuses all
+persuasion. The dull speaker wearies it and sends it far away in idle
+dreams; the bright speaker throws out stimulating ideas which it goes
+chasing after and is at once unconscious of him and his talk. You cannot
+keep your mind from wandering, if it wants to; it is master, not you.
+
+
+
+
+
+_After an Interval of Days_
+
+O.M. Now, dreams--but we will examine that later. Meantime, did you
+try commanding your mind to wait for orders from you, and not do any
+thinking on its own hook?
+
+Y.M. Yes, I commanded it to stand ready to take orders when I should
+wake in the morning.
+
+O.M. Did it obey?
+
+Y.M. No. It went to thinking of something of its own initiation, without
+waiting for me. Also--as you suggested--at night I appointed a theme for
+it to begin on in the morning, and commanded it to begin on that one and
+no other.
+
+O.M. Did it obey?
+
+Y.M. No.
+
+O.M. How many times did you try the experiment?
+
+Y.M. Ten.
+
+O.M. How many successes did you score?
+
+Y.M. Not one.
+
+O.M. It is as I have said: the mind is independent of the man. He has
+no control over it; it does as it pleases. It will take up a subject
+in spite of him; it will stick to it in spite of him; it will throw it
+aside in spite of him. It is entirely independent of him.
+
+Y.M. Go on. Illustrate.
+
+O.M. Do you know chess?
+
+Y.M. I learned it a week ago.
+
+O.M. Did your mind go on playing the game all night that first night?
+
+Y.M. Don't mention it!
+
+O.M. It was eagerly, unsatisfiably interested; it rioted in the
+combinations; you implored it to drop the game and let you get some
+sleep?
+
+Y.M. Yes. It wouldn't listen; it played right along. It wore me out and
+I got up haggard and wretched in the morning.
+
+O.M. At some time or other you have been captivated by a ridiculous
+rhyme-jingle?
+
+Y.M. Indeed, yes!
+
+ “I saw Esau kissing Kate,
+
+ And she saw I saw Esau;
+
+ I saw Esau, he saw Kate,
+
+ And she saw--”
+
+
+And so on. My mind went mad with joy over it. It repeated it all day
+and all night for a week in spite of all I could do to stop it, and it
+seemed to me that I must surely go crazy.
+
+O.M. And the new popular song?
+
+Y.M. Oh yes! “In the Swee-eet By and By”; etc. Yes, the new popular song
+with the taking melody sings through one's head day and night, asleep
+and awake, till one is a wreck. There is no getting the mind to let it
+alone.
+
+O.M. Yes, asleep as well as awake. The mind is quite independent. It is
+master. You have nothing to do with it. It is so apart from you that
+it can conduct its affairs, sing its songs, play its chess, weave its
+complex and ingeniously constructed dreams, while you sleep. It has
+no use for your help, no use for your guidance, and never uses either,
+whether you be asleep or awake. You have imagined that you could
+originate a thought in your mind, and you have sincerely believed you
+could do it.
+
+Y.M. Yes, I have had that idea.
+
+O.M. Yet you can't originate a dream-thought for it to work out, and get
+it accepted?
+
+Y.M. No.
+
+O.M. And you can't dictate its procedure after it has originated a
+dream-thought for itself?
+
+Y.M. No. No one can do it. Do you think the waking mind and the dream
+mind are the same machine?
+
+O.M. There is argument for it. We have wild and fantastic day-thoughts?
+Things that are dream-like?
+
+Y.M. Yes--like Mr. Wells's man who invented a drug that made him
+invisible; and like the Arabian tales of the Thousand Nights.
+
+O.M. And there are dreams that are rational, simple, consistent, and
+unfantastic?
+
+Y.M. Yes. I have dreams that are like that. Dreams that are just like
+real life; dreams in which there are several persons with distinctly
+differentiated characters--inventions of my mind and yet strangers
+to me: a vulgar person; a refined one; a wise person; a fool; a
+cruel person; a kind and compassionate one; a quarrelsome person; a
+peacemaker; old persons and young; beautiful girls and homely ones. They
+talk in character, each preserves his own characteristics. There are
+vivid fights, vivid and biting insults, vivid love-passages; there are
+tragedies and comedies, there are griefs that go to one's heart, there
+are sayings and doings that make you laugh: indeed, the whole thing is
+exactly like real life.
+
+O.M. Your dreaming mind originates the scheme, consistently and
+artistically develops it, and carries the little drama creditably
+through--all without help or suggestion from you?
+
+Y.M. Yes.
+
+O.M. It is argument that it could do the like awake without help or
+suggestion from you--and I think it does. It is argument that it is the
+same old mind in both cases, and never needs your help. I think the
+mind is purely a machine, a thoroughly independent machine, an automatic
+machine. Have you tried the other experiment which I suggested to you?
+
+Y.M. Which one?
+
+O.M. The one which was to determine how much influence you have over
+your mind--if any.
+
+Y.M. Yes, and got more or less entertainment out of it. I did as you
+ordered: I placed two texts before my eyes--one a dull one and barren
+of interest, the other one full of interest, inflamed with it, white-hot
+with it. I commanded my mind to busy itself solely with the dull one.
+
+O.M. Did it obey?
+
+Y.M. Well, no, it didn't. It busied itself with the other one.
+
+O.M. Did you try hard to make it obey?
+
+Y.M. Yes, I did my honest best.
+
+O.M. What was the text which it refused to be interested in or think
+about?
+
+Y.M. It was this question: If A owes B a dollar and a half, and B owes
+C two and three-quarter, and C owes A thirty--five cents, and D and A
+together owe E and B three-sixteenths of--of--I don't remember the
+rest, now, but anyway it was wholly uninteresting, and I could not force
+my mind to stick to it even half a minute at a time; it kept flying off
+to the other text.
+
+O.M. What was the other text?
+
+Y.M. It is no matter about that.
+
+O.M. But what was it?
+
+Y.M. A photograph.
+
+O.M. Your own?
+
+Y.M. No. It was hers.
+
+O.M. You really made an honest good test. Did you make a second trial?
+
+Y.M. Yes. I commanded my mind to interest itself in the morning paper's
+report of the pork-market, and at the same time I reminded it of an
+experience of mine of sixteen years ago. It refused to consider the pork
+and gave its whole blazing interest to that ancient incident.
+
+O.M. What was the incident?
+
+Y.M. An armed desperado slapped my face in the presence of twenty
+spectators. It makes me wild and murderous every time I think of it.
+
+O.M. Good tests, both; very good tests. Did you try my other suggestion?
+
+Y.M. The one which was to prove to me that if I would leave my mind to
+its own devices it would find things to think about without any of my
+help, and thus convince me that it was a machine, an automatic machine,
+set in motion by exterior influences, and as independent of me as it
+could be if it were in some one else's skull. Is that the one?
+
+O.M. Yes.
+
+Y.M. I tried it. I was shaving. I had slept well, and my mind was very
+lively, even gay and frisky. It was reveling in a fantastic and joyful
+episode of my remote boyhood which had suddenly flashed up in my
+memory--moved to this by the spectacle of a yellow cat picking its
+way carefully along the top of the garden wall. The color of this
+cat brought the bygone cat before me, and I saw her walking along the
+side-step of the pulpit; saw her walk on to a large sheet of sticky
+fly-paper and get all her feet involved; saw her struggle and fall
+down, helpless and dissatisfied, more and more urgent, more and more
+unreconciled, more and more mutely profane; saw the silent congregation
+quivering like jelly, and the tears running down their faces. I saw
+it all. The sight of the tears whisked my mind to a far distant and a
+sadder scene--in Terra del Fuego--and with Darwin's eyes I saw a naked
+great savage hurl his little boy against the rocks for a trifling fault;
+saw the poor mother gather up her dying child and hug it to her breast
+and weep, uttering no word. Did my mind stop to mourn with that nude
+black sister of mine? No--it was far away from that scene in an instant,
+and was busying itself with an ever-recurring and disagreeable dream of
+mine. In this dream I always find myself, stripped to my shirt, cringing
+and dodging about in the midst of a great drawing-room throng of finely
+dressed ladies and gentlemen, and wondering how I got there. And so on
+and so on, picture after picture, incident after incident, a drifting
+panorama of ever-changing, ever-dissolving views manufactured by my mind
+without any help from me--why, it would take me two hours to merely name
+the multitude of things my mind tallied off and photographed in fifteen
+minutes, let alone describe them to you.
+
+O.M. A man's mind, left free, has no use for his help. But there is one
+way whereby he can get its help when he desires it.
+
+Y.M. What is that way?
+
+O.M. When your mind is racing along from subject to subject and
+strikes an inspiring one, open your mouth and begin talking upon that
+matter--or--take your pen and use that. It will interest your mind and
+concentrate it, and it will pursue the subject with satisfaction. It
+will take full charge, and furnish the words itself.
+
+Y.M. But don't I tell it what to say?
+
+O.M. There are certainly occasions when you haven't time. The words leap
+out before you know what is coming.
+
+Y.M. For instance?
+
+O.M. Well, take a “flash of wit”--repartee. Flash is the right word.
+It is out instantly. There is no time to arrange the words. There is no
+thinking, no reflecting. Where there is a wit-mechanism it is automatic
+in its action and needs no help. Where the wit-mechanism is lacking, no
+amount of study and reflection can manufacture the product.
+
+Y.M. You really think a man originates nothing, creates nothing.
+
+_The Thinking-Process_
+
+O.M. I do. Men perceive, and their brain-machines automatically combine
+the things perceived. That is all.
+
+Y.M. The steam-engine?
+
+O.M. It takes fifty men a hundred years to invent it. One meaning of
+invent is discover. I use the word in that sense. Little by little they
+discover and apply the multitude of details that go to make the perfect
+engine. Watt noticed that confined steam was strong enough to lift the
+lid of the teapot. He didn't create the idea, he merely discovered the
+fact; the cat had noticed it a hundred times. From the teapot he evolved
+the cylinder--from the displaced lid he evolved the piston-rod. To
+attach something to the piston-rod to be moved by it, was a simple
+matter--crank and wheel. And so there was a working engine.
+
+One by one, improvements were discovered by men who used their eyes,
+not their creating powers--for they hadn't any--and now, after a hundred
+years the patient contributions of fifty or a hundred observers stand
+compacted in the wonderful machine which drives the ocean liner.
+
+Y.M. A Shakespearean play?
+
+O.M. The process is the same. The first actor was a savage. He
+reproduced in his theatrical war-dances, scalp--dances, and so on,
+incidents which he had seen in real life. A more advanced civilization
+produced more incidents, more episodes; the actor and the story-teller
+borrowed them. And so the drama grew, little by little, stage by stage.
+It is made up of the facts of life, not creations. It took centuries to
+develop the Greek drama. It borrowed from preceding ages; it lent to the
+ages that came after. Men observe and combine, that is all. So does a
+rat.
+
+Y.M. How?
+
+O.M. He observes a smell, he infers a cheese, he seeks and finds.
+The astronomer observes this and that; adds his this and that to the
+this-and-thats of a hundred predecessors, infers an invisible planet,
+seeks it and finds it. The rat gets into a trap; gets out with trouble;
+infers that cheese in traps lacks value, and meddles with that trap no
+more. The astronomer is very proud of his achievement, the rat is proud
+of his. Yet both are machines; they have done machine work, they have
+originated nothing, they have no right to be vain; the whole credit
+belongs to their Maker. They are entitled to no honors, no praises, no
+monuments when they die, no remembrance. One is a complex and elaborate
+machine, the other a simple and limited machine, but they are alike in
+principle, function, and process, and neither of them works otherwise
+than automatically, and neither of them may righteously claim a
+_personal _superiority or a personal dignity above the other.
+
+Y.M. In earned personal dignity, then, and in personal merit for what he
+does, it follows of necessity that he is on the same level as a rat?
+
+O.M. His brother the rat; yes, that is how it seems to me. Neither of
+them being entitled to any personal merit for what he does, it follows
+of necessity that neither of them has a right to arrogate to himself
+(personally created) superiorities over his brother.
+
+Y.M. Are you determined to go on believing in these insanities? Would
+you go on believing in them in the face of able arguments backed by
+collated facts and instances?
+
+O.M. I have been a humble, earnest, and sincere Truth-Seeker.
+
+Y.M. Very well?
+
+O.M. The humble, earnest, and sincere Truth-Seeker is always convertible
+by such means.
+
+Y.M. I am thankful to God to hear you say this, for now I know that your
+conversion--
+
+O.M. Wait. You misunderstand. I said I have _been _a Truth-Seeker.
+
+Y.M. Well?
+
+O.M. I am not that now. Have your forgotten? I told you that there
+are none but temporary Truth-Seekers; that a permanent one is a human
+impossibility; that as soon as the Seeker finds what he is thoroughly
+convinced is the Truth, he seeks no further, but gives the rest of his
+days to hunting junk to patch it and caulk it and prop it with, and
+make it weather-proof and keep it from caving in on him. Hence the
+Presbyterian remains a Presbyterian, the Mohammedan a Mohammedan, the
+Spiritualist a Spiritualist, the Democrat a Democrat, the Republican a
+Republican, the Monarchist a Monarchist; and if a humble, earnest, and
+sincere Seeker after Truth should find it in the proposition that the
+moon is made of green cheese nothing could ever budge him from that
+position; for he is nothing but an automatic machine, and must obey the
+laws of his construction.
+
+Y.M. And so--
+
+O.M. Having found the Truth; perceiving that beyond question man has but
+one moving impulse--the contenting of his own spirit--and is merely a
+machine and entitled to no personal merit for anything he does, it is
+not humanly possible for me to seek further. The rest of my days will
+be spent in patching and painting and puttying and caulking my priceless
+possession and in looking the other way when an imploring argument or a
+damaging fact approaches.
+
+1. The Marquess of Worcester had done all of this more than a century
+earlier.
+
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Instinct and Thought
+
+Young Man. It is odious. Those drunken theories of yours, advanced a
+while ago--concerning the rat and all that--strip Man bare of all his
+dignities, grandeurs, sublimities.
+
+Old Man. He hasn't any to strip--they are shams, stolen clothes. He
+claims credits which belong solely to his Maker.
+
+Y.M. But you have no right to put him on a level with a rat.
+
+O.M. I don't--morally. That would not be fair to the rat. The rat is
+well above him, there.
+
+Y.M. Are you joking?
+
+O.M. No, I am not.
+
+Y.M. Then what do you mean?
+
+O.M. That comes under the head of the Moral Sense. It is a large
+question. Let us finish with what we are about now, before we take it
+up.
+
+Y.M. Very well. You have seemed to concede that you place Man and the
+rat on a level. What is it? The intellectual?
+
+O.M. In form--not a degree.
+
+Y.M. Explain.
+
+O.M. I think that the rat's mind and the man's mind are the same
+machine, but of unequal capacities--like yours and Edison's; like the
+African pygmy's and Homer's; like the Bushman's and Bismarck's.
+
+Y.M. How are you going to make that out, when the lower animals have no
+mental quality but instinct, while man possesses reason?
+
+O.M. What is instinct?
+
+Y.M. It is merely unthinking and mechanical exercise of inherited habit.
+
+O.M. What originated the habit?
+
+Y.M. The first animal started it, its descendants have inherited it.
+
+O.M. How did the first one come to start it?
+
+Y.M. I don't know; but it didn't _think _it out.
+
+O.M. How do you know it didn't?
+
+Y.M. Well--I have a right to suppose it didn't, anyway.
+
+O.M. I don't believe you have. What is thought?
+
+Y.M. I know what you call it: the mechanical and automatic putting
+together of impressions received from outside, and drawing an inference
+from them.
+
+O.M. Very good. Now my idea of the meaningless term “instinct” is,
+that it is merely _petrified thought; _solidified and made inanimate
+by habit; thought which was once alive and awake, but is become
+unconscious--walks in its sleep, so to speak.
+
+Y.M. Illustrate it.
+
+O.M. Take a herd of cows, feeding in a pasture. Their heads are all
+turned in one direction. They do that instinctively; they gain nothing
+by it, they have no reason for it, they don't know why they do it. It
+is an inherited habit which was originally thought--that is to say,
+observation of an exterior fact, and a valuable inference drawn from
+that observation and confirmed by experience. The original wild ox
+noticed that with the wind in his favor he could smell his enemy in time
+to escape; then he inferred that it was worth while to keep his nose
+to the wind. That is the process which man calls reasoning. Man's
+thought-machine works just like the other animals', but it is a better
+one and more Edisonian. Man, in the ox's place, would go further, reason
+wider: he would face part of the herd the other way and protect both
+front and rear.
+
+Y.M. Did you stay the term instinct is meaningless?
+
+O.M. I think it is a bastard word. I think it confuses us; for as a rule
+it applies itself to habits and impulses which had a far-off origin in
+thought, and now and then breaks the rule and applies itself to habits
+which can hardly claim a thought-origin.
+
+Y.M. Give an instance.
+
+O.M. Well, in putting on trousers a man always inserts the same old leg
+first--never the other one. There is no advantage in that, and no sense
+in it. All men do it, yet no man thought it out and adopted it of set
+purpose, I imagine. But it is a habit which is transmitted, no doubt,
+and will continue to be transmitted.
+
+Y.M. Can you prove that the habit exists?
+
+O.M. You can prove it, if you doubt. If you will take a man to a
+clothing-store and watch him try on a dozen pairs of trousers, you will
+see.
+
+Y.M. The cow illustration is not--
+
+O.M. Sufficient to show that a dumb animal's mental machine is just the
+same as a man's and its reasoning processes the same? I will illustrate
+further. If you should hand Mr. Edison a box which you caused to fly
+open by some concealed device he would infer a spring, and would hunt
+for it and find it. Now an uncle of mine had an old horse who used to
+get into the closed lot where the corn-crib was and dishonestly take
+the corn. I got the punishment myself, as it was supposed that I had
+heedlessly failed to insert the wooden pin which kept the gate closed.
+These persistent punishments fatigued me; they also caused me to infer
+the existence of a culprit, somewhere; so I hid myself and watched the
+gate. Presently the horse came and pulled the pin out with his teeth and
+went in. Nobody taught him that; he had observed--then thought it out
+for himself. His process did not differ from Edison's; he put this and
+that together and drew an inference--and the peg, too; but I made him
+sweat for it.
+
+Y.M. It has something of the seeming of thought about it. Still it is
+not very elaborate. Enlarge.
+
+O.M. Suppose Mr. Edison has been enjoying some one's hospitalities. He
+comes again by and by, and the house is vacant. He infers that his host
+has moved. A while afterward, in another town, he sees the man enter
+a house; he infers that that is the new home, and follows to inquire.
+Here, now, is the experience of a gull, as related by a naturalist. The
+scene is a Scotch fishing village where the gulls were kindly treated.
+This particular gull visited a cottage; was fed; came next day and was
+fed again; came into the house, next time, and ate with the family; kept
+on doing this almost daily, thereafter. But, once the gull was away on
+a journey for a few days, and when it returned the house was vacant.
+Its friends had removed to a village three miles distant. Several months
+later it saw the head of the family on the street there, followed him
+home, entered the house without excuse or apology, and became a daily
+guest again. Gulls do not rank high mentally, but this one had memory
+and the reasoning faculty, you see, and applied them Edisonially.
+
+Y.M. Yet it was not an Edison and couldn't be developed into one.
+
+O.M. Perhaps not. Could you?
+
+Y.M. That is neither here nor there. Go on.
+
+O.M. If Edison were in trouble and a stranger helped him out of it and
+next day he got into the same difficulty again, he would infer the wise
+thing to do in case he knew the stranger's address. Here is a case of a
+bird and a stranger as related by a naturalist. An Englishman saw a bird
+flying around about his dog's head, down in the grounds, and uttering
+cries of distress. He went there to see about it. The dog had a young
+bird in his mouth--unhurt. The gentleman rescued it and put it on a bush
+and brought the dog away. Early the next morning the mother bird came
+for the gentleman, who was sitting on his veranda, and by its maneuvers
+persuaded him to follow it to a distant part of the grounds--flying a
+little way in front of him and waiting for him to catch up, and so on;
+and keeping to the winding path, too, instead of flying the near way
+across lots. The distance covered was four hundred yards. The same dog
+was the culprit; he had the young bird again, and once more he had
+to give it up. Now the mother bird had reasoned it all out: since the
+stranger had helped her once, she inferred that he would do it
+again; she knew where to find him, and she went upon her errand with
+confidence. Her mental processes were what Edison's would have been. She
+put this and that together--and that is all that thought _is _--and out
+of them built her logical arrangement of inferences. Edison couldn't
+have done it any better himself.
+
+Y.M. Do you believe that many of the dumb animals can think?
+
+O.M. Yes--the elephant, the monkey, the horse, the dog, the parrot, the
+macaw, the mocking-bird, and many others. The elephant whose mate fell
+into a pit, and who dumped dirt and rubbish into the pit till bottom was
+raised high enough to enable the captive to step out, was equipped with
+the reasoning quality. I conceive that all animals that can learn things
+through teaching and drilling have to know how to observe, and put this
+and that together and draw an inference--the process of thinking. Could
+you teach an idiot the manual of arms, and to advance, retreat, and go
+through complex field maneuvers at the word of command?
+
+Y.M. Not if he were a thorough idiot.
+
+O.M. Well, canary-birds can learn all that; dogs and elephants learn all
+sorts of wonderful things. They must surely be able to notice, and to
+put things together, and say to themselves, “I get the idea, now: when I
+do so and so, as per order, I am praised and fed; when I do differently
+I am punished.” Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman
+can.
+
+Y.M. Granting, then, that dumb animals are able to think upon a low
+plane, is there any that can think upon a high one? Is there one that is
+well up toward man?
+
+O.M. Yes. As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage
+race of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is
+the superior of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental
+qualities she is above the reach of any man, savage or civilized!
+
+Y.M. Oh, come! you are abolishing the intellectual frontier which
+separates man and beast.
+
+O.M. I beg your pardon. One cannot abolish what does not exist.
+
+Y.M. You are not in earnest, I hope. You cannot mean to seriously say
+there is no such frontier.
+
+O.M. I do say it seriously. The instances of the horse, the gull, the
+mother bird, and the elephant show that those creatures put their this's
+and thats together just as Edison would have done it and drew the same
+inferences that he would have drawn. Their mental machinery was just
+like his, also its manner of working. Their equipment was as inferior
+to the Strasburg clock, but that is the only difference--there is no
+frontier.
+
+Y.M. It looks exasperatingly true; and is distinctly offensive. It
+elevates the dumb beasts to--to--
+
+O.M. Let us drop that lying phrase, and call them the Unrevealed
+Creatures; so far as we can know, there is no such thing as a dumb
+beast.
+
+Y.M. On what grounds do you make that assertion?
+
+O.M. On quite simple ones. “Dumb” beast suggests an animal that has no
+thought-machinery, no understanding, no speech, no way of communicating
+what is in its mind. We know that a hen _has _speech. We cannot
+understand everything she says, but we easily learn two or three of her
+phrases. We know when she is saying, “I have laid an egg”; we know when
+she is saying to the chicks, “Run here, dears, I've found a worm”; we
+know what she is saying when she voices a warning: “Quick! hurry! gather
+yourselves under mamma, there's a hawk coming!” We understand the cat
+when she stretches herself out, purring with affection and contentment
+and lifts up a soft voice and says, “Come, kitties, supper's ready”; we
+understand her when she goes mourning about and says, “Where can they
+be? They are lost. Won't you help me hunt for them?” and we understand
+the disreputable Tom when he challenges at midnight from his shed, “You
+come over here, you product of immoral commerce, and I'll make your fur
+fly!” We understand a few of a dog's phrases and we learn to understand
+a few of the remarks and gestures of any bird or other animal that we
+domesticate and observe. The clearness and exactness of the few of the
+hen's speeches which we understand is argument that she can communicate
+to her kind a hundred things which we cannot comprehend--in a word, that
+she can converse. And this argument is also applicable in the case of
+others of the great army of the Unrevealed. It is just like man's vanity
+and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull
+perceptions. Now as to the ant--
+
+Y.M. Yes, go back to the ant, the creature that--as you seem to
+think--sweeps away the last vestige of an intellectual frontier between
+man and the Unrevealed.
+
+O.M. That is what she surely does. In all his history the aboriginal
+Australian never thought out a house for himself and built it. The ant
+is an amazing architect. She is a wee little creature, but she builds a
+strong and enduring house eight feet high--a house which is as large
+in proportion to her size as is the largest capitol or cathedral in the
+world compared to man's size. No savage race has produced architects
+who could approach the ant in genius or culture. No civilized race has
+produced architects who could plan a house better for the uses proposed
+than can hers. Her house contains a throne-room; nurseries for her
+young; granaries; apartments for her soldiers, her workers, etc.; and
+they and the multifarious halls and corridors which communicate with
+them are arranged and distributed with an educated and experienced eye
+for convenience and adaptability.
+
+Y.M. That could be mere instinct.
+
+O.M. It would elevate the savage if he had it. But let us look further
+before we decide. The ant has soldiers--battalions, regiments, armies;
+and they have their appointed captains and generals, who lead them to
+battle.
+
+Y.M. That could be instinct, too.
+
+O.M. We will look still further. The ant has a system of government; it
+is well planned, elaborate, and is well carried on.
+
+Y.M. Instinct again.
+
+O.M. She has crowds of slaves, and is a hard and unjust employer of
+forced labor.
+
+Y.M. Instinct.
+
+O.M. She has cows, and milks them.
+
+Y.M. Instinct, of course.
+
+O.M. In Texas she lays out a farm twelve feet square, plants it, weeds
+it, cultivates it, gathers the crop and stores it away.
+
+Y.M. Instinct, all the same.
+
+O.M. The ant discriminates between friend and stranger. Sir John Lubbock
+took ants from two different nests, made them drunk with whiskey and
+laid them, unconscious, by one of the nests, near some water. Ants from
+the nest came and examined and discussed these disgraced creatures, then
+carried their friends home and threw the strangers overboard. Sir John
+repeated the experiment a number of times. For a time the sober ants
+did as they had done at first--carried their friends home and threw the
+strangers overboard. But finally they lost patience, seeing that
+their reformatory efforts went for nothing, and threw both friends and
+strangers overboard. Come--is this instinct, or is it thoughtful
+and intelligent discussion of a thing new--absolutely new--to their
+experience; with a verdict arrived at, sentence passed, and judgment
+executed? Is it instinct?--thought petrified by ages of habit--or
+isn't it brand-new thought, inspired by the new occasion, the new
+circumstances?
+
+Y.M. I have to concede it. It was not a result of habit; it has all
+the look of reflection, thought, putting this and that together, as you
+phrase it. I believe it was thought.
+
+O.M. I will give you another instance of thought. Franklin had a cup
+of sugar on a table in his room. The ants got at it. He tried several
+preventives; and ants rose superior to them. Finally he contrived one
+which shut off access--probably set the table's legs in pans of water,
+or drew a circle of tar around the cup, I don't remember. At any
+rate, he watched to see what they would do. They tried various
+schemes--failures, every one. The ants were badly puzzled. Finally they
+held a consultation, discussed the problem, arrived at a decision--and
+this time they beat that great philosopher. They formed in procession,
+cross the floor, climbed the wall, marched across the ceiling to a point
+just over the cup, then one by one they let go and fell down into it!
+Was that instinct--thought petrified by ages of inherited habit?
+
+Y.M. No, I don't believe it was. I believe it was a newly reasoned
+scheme to meet a new emergency.
+
+O.M. Very well. You have conceded the reasoning power in two instances.
+I come now to a mental detail wherein the ant is a long way the superior
+of any human being. Sir John Lubbock proved by many experiments that an
+ant knows a stranger ant of her own species in a moment, even when the
+stranger is disguised--with paint. Also he proved that an ant knows
+every individual in her hive of five hundred thousand souls. Also, after
+a year's absence one of the five hundred thousand she will straightway
+recognize the returned absentee and grace the recognition with an
+affectionate welcome. How are these recognitions made? Not by color,
+for painted ants were recognized. Not by smell, for ants that had been
+dipped in chloroform were recognized. Not by speech and not by antennae
+signs nor contacts, for the drunken and motionless ants were recognized
+and the friend discriminated from the stranger. The ants were all of
+the same species, therefore the friends had to be recognized by form and
+feature--friends who formed part of a hive of five hundred thousand!
+Has any man a memory for form and feature approaching that?
+
+Y.M. Certainly not.
+
+O.M. Franklin's ants and Lubbuck's ants show fine capacities of putting
+this and that together in new and untried emergencies and deducting
+smart conclusions from the combinations--a man's mental process
+exactly. With memory to help, man preserves his observations and
+reasonings, reflects upon them, adds to them, recombines, and so
+proceeds, stage by stage, to far results--from the teakettle to the
+ocean greyhound's complex engine; from personal labor to slave labor;
+from wigwam to palace; from the capricious chase to agriculture and
+stored food; from nomadic life to stable government and concentrated
+authority; from incoherent hordes to massed armies. The ant has
+observation, the reasoning faculty, and the preserving adjunct of
+a prodigious memory; she has duplicated man's development and the
+essential features of his civilization, and you call it all instinct!
+
+Y.M. Perhaps I lacked the reasoning faculty myself.
+
+O.M. Well, don't tell anybody, and don't do it again.
+
+Y.M. We have come a good way. As a result--as I understand it--I am
+required to concede that there is absolutely no intellectual frontier
+separating Man and the Unrevealed Creatures?
+
+O.M. That is what you are required to concede. There is no such
+frontier--there is no way to get around that. Man has a finer and more
+capable machine in him than those others, but it is the same machine and
+works in the same way. And neither he nor those others can command the
+machine--it is strictly automatic, independent of control, works when it
+pleases, and when it doesn't please, it can't be forced.
+
+Y.M. Then man and the other animals are all alike, as to mental
+machinery, and there isn't any difference of any stupendous magnitude
+between them, except in quality, not in kind.
+
+O.M. That is about the state of it--intellectuality. There are
+pronounced limitations on both sides. We can't learn to understand much
+of their language, but the dog, the elephant, etc., learn to understand
+a very great deal of ours. To that extent they are our superiors. On the
+other hand, they can't learn reading, writing, etc., nor any of our fine
+and high things, and there we have a large advantage over them.
+
+Y.M. Very well, let them have what they've got, and welcome; there is
+still a wall, and a lofty one. They haven't got the Moral Sense; we have
+it, and it lifts us immeasurably above them.
+
+O.M. What makes you think that?
+
+Y.M. Now look here--let's call a halt. I have stood the other infamies
+and insanities and that is enough; I am not going to have man and the
+other animals put on the same level morally.
+
+O.M. I wasn't going to hoist man up to that.
+
+Y.M. This is too much! I think it is not right to jest about such
+things.
+
+O.M. I am not jesting, I am merely reflecting a plain and simple
+truth--and without uncharitableness. The fact that man knows right from
+wrong proves his _intellectual _superiority to the other creatures; but
+the fact that he can _do _wrong proves his _moral _inferiority to
+any creature that _cannot_. It is my belief that this position is not
+assailable.
+
+
+
+_Free Will_
+
+Y.M. What is your opinion regarding Free Will?
+
+O.M. That there is no such thing. Did the man possess it who gave the
+old woman his last shilling and trudged home in the storm?
+
+Y.M. He had the choice between succoring the old woman and leaving her
+to suffer. Isn't it so?
+
+O.M. Yes, there was a choice to be made, between bodily comfort on the
+one hand and the comfort of the spirit on the other. The body made a
+strong appeal, of course--the body would be quite sure to do that; the
+spirit made a counter appeal. A choice had to be made between the two
+appeals, and was made. Who or what determined that choice?
+
+Y.M. Any one but you would say that the man determined it, and that in
+doing it he exercised Free Will.
+
+O.M. We are constantly assured that every man is endowed with Free
+Will, and that he can and must exercise it where he is offered a choice
+between good conduct and less-good conduct. Yet we clearly saw that
+in that man's case he really had no Free Will: his temperament, his
+training, and the daily influences which had molded him and made him
+what he was, _compelled _him to rescue the old woman and thus save
+_himself _--save himself from spiritual pain, from unendurable
+wretchedness. He did not make the choice, it was made _for _him by
+forces which he could not control. Free Will has always existed in
+_words_, but it stops there, I think--stops short of _fact_. I would not
+use those words--Free Will--but others.
+
+Y.M. What others?
+
+O.M. Free Choice.
+
+Y.M. What is the difference?
+
+O.M. The one implies untrammeled power to _act _as you please, the other
+implies nothing beyond a mere _mental process: _the critical ability to
+determine which of two things is nearest right and just.
+
+Y.M. Make the difference clear, please.
+
+O.M. The mind can freely _select, choose, point out _the right and just
+one--its function stops there. It can go no further in the matter. It
+has no authority to say that the right one shall be acted upon and the
+wrong one discarded. That authority is in other hands.
+
+Y.M. The man's?
+
+O.M. In the machine which stands for him. In his born disposition
+and the character which has been built around it by training and
+environment.
+
+Y.M. It will act upon the right one of the two?
+
+O.M. It will do as it pleases in the matter. George Washington's machine
+would act upon the right one; Pizarro would act upon the wrong one.
+
+Y.M. Then as I understand it a bad man's mental machinery calmly and
+judicially points out which of two things is right and just--
+
+O.M. Yes, and his _moral _machinery will freely act upon the one
+or the other, according to its make, and be quite indifferent to the
+_mind's _feeling concerning the matter--that is, _would _be, if the
+mind had any feelings; which it hasn't. It is merely a thermometer: it
+registers the heat and the cold, and cares not a farthing about either.
+
+Y.M. Then we must not claim that if a man _knows _which of two things is
+right he is absolutely _bound _to do that thing?
+
+O.M. His temperament and training will decide what he shall do, and he
+will do it; he cannot help himself, he has no authority over the matter.
+Wasn't it right for David to go out and slay Goliath?
+
+Y.M. Yes.
+
+O.M. Then it would have been equally _right _for any one else to do it?
+
+Y.M. Certainly.
+
+O.M. Then it would have been _right _for a born coward to attempt it?
+
+Y.M. It would--yes.
+
+O.M. You know that no born coward ever would have attempted it, don't
+you?
+
+Y.M. Yes.
+
+O.M. You know that a born coward's make and temperament would be an
+absolute and insurmountable bar to his ever essaying such a thing, don't
+you?
+
+Y.M. Yes, I know it.
+
+O.M. He clearly perceives that it would be _right _to try it?
+
+Y.M. Yes.
+
+O.M. His mind has Free Choice in determining that it would be _right _to
+try it?
+
+Y.M. Yes.
+
+O.M. Then if by reason of his inborn cowardice he simply can _not _essay
+it, what becomes of his Free Will? Where is his Free Will? Why claim
+that he has Free Will when the plain facts show that he hasn't? Why
+contend that because he and David _see _the right alike, both must _act
+_alike? Why impose the same laws upon goat and lion?
+
+Y.M. There is really no such thing as Free Will?
+
+O.M. It is what I think. There is _will_. But it has nothing to do with
+_intellectual perceptions of right and wrong, _and is not under their
+command. David's temperament and training had Will, and it was a
+compulsory force; David had to obey its decrees, he had no choice. The
+coward's temperament and training possess Will, and _it _is compulsory;
+it commands him to avoid danger, and he obeys, he has no choice. But
+neither the Davids nor the cowards possess Free Will--will that may do
+the right or do the wrong, as their _mental _verdict shall decide.
+
+_Not Two Values, But Only One_
+
+Y.M. There is one thing which bothers me: I can't tell where you draw
+the line between _material _covetousness and _spiritual _covetousness.
+
+O.M. I don't draw any.
+
+Y.M. How do you mean?
+
+O.M. There is no such thing as _material _covetousness. All covetousness
+is spiritual.
+
+Y.M. _All _longings, desires, ambitions _spiritual, _never material?
+
+O.M. Yes. The Master in you requires that in _all _cases you shall
+content his _spirit _--that alone. He never requires anything else, he
+never interests himself in any other matter.
+
+Y.M. Ah, come! When he covets somebody's money--isn't that rather
+distinctly material and gross?
+
+O.M. No. The money is merely a symbol--it represents in visible and
+concrete form a _spiritual desire. _Any so-called material thing that
+you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for _itself_, but because
+it will content your spirit for the moment.
+
+Y.M. Please particularize.
+
+O.M. Very well. Maybe the thing longed for is a new hat. You get it
+and your vanity is pleased, your spirit contented. Suppose your friends
+deride the hat, make fun of it: at once it loses its value; you are
+ashamed of it, you put it out of your sight, you never want to see it
+again.
+
+Y.M. I think I see. Go on.
+
+O.M. It is the same hat, isn't it? It is in no way altered. But it
+wasn't the _hat _you wanted, but only what it stood for--a something to
+please and content your _spirit_. When it failed of that, the whole
+of its value was gone. There are no _material _values; there are only
+spiritual ones. You will hunt in vain for a material value that is
+_actual, real--_there is no such thing. The only value it possesses, for
+even a moment, is the spiritual value back of it: remove that end and it
+is at once worthless--like the hat.
+
+Y.M. Can you extend that to money?
+
+O.M. Yes. It is merely a symbol, it has no _material _value; you think
+you desire it for its own sake, but it is not so. You desire it for the
+spiritual content it will bring; if it fail of that, you discover that
+its value is gone. There is that pathetic tale of the man who labored
+like a slave, unresting, unsatisfied, until he had accumulated a
+fortune, and was happy over it, jubilant about it; then in a single week
+a pestilence swept away all whom he held dear and left him desolate. His
+money's value was gone. He realized that his joy in it came not from
+the money itself, but from the spiritual contentment he got out of his
+family's enjoyment of the pleasures and delights it lavished upon them.
+Money has no _material _value; if you remove its spiritual value nothing
+is left but dross. It is so with all things, little or big, majestic
+or trivial--there are no exceptions. Crowns, scepters, pennies, paste
+jewels, village notoriety, world-wide fame--they are all the same,
+they have no _material _value: while they content the _spirit _they are
+precious, when this fails they are worthless.
+
+_A Difficult Question_
+
+Y.M. You keep me confused and perplexed all the time by your elusive
+terminology. Sometimes you divide a man up into two or three
+separate personalities, each with authorities, jurisdictions, and
+responsibilities of its own, and when he is in that condition I can't
+grasp it. Now when _I_ speak of a man, he is _the whole thing in one,
+_and easy to hold and contemplate.
+
+O.M. That is pleasant and convenient, if true. When you speak of “my
+body” who is the “my”?
+
+Y.M. It is the “me.”
+
+O.M. The body is a property then, and the Me owns it. Who is the Me?
+
+Y.M. The Me is _the whole thing; _it is a common property; an undivided
+ownership, vested in the whole entity.
+
+O.M. If the Me admires a rainbow, is it the whole Me that admires it,
+including the hair, hands, heels, and all?
+
+Y.M. Certainly not. It is my _mind _that admires it.
+
+O.M. So _you _divide the Me yourself. Everybody does; everybody must.
+What, then, definitely, is the Me?
+
+Y.M. I think it must consist of just those two parts--the body and the
+mind.
+
+O.M. You think so? If you say “I believe the world is round,” who is the
+“I” that is speaking?
+
+Y.M. The mind.
+
+O.M. If you say “I grieve for the loss of my father,” who is the “I”?
+
+Y.M. The mind.
+
+O.M. Is the mind exercising an intellectual function when it examines
+and accepts the evidence that the world is round?
+
+Y.M. Yes.
+
+O.M. Is it exercising an intellectual function when it grieves for the
+loss of your father?
+
+Y.M. That is not cerebration, brain-work, it is a matter of _feeling_.
+
+O.M. Then its source is not in your mind, but in your _moral _territory?
+
+Y.M. I have to grant it.
+
+O.M. Is your mind a part of your _physical _equipment?
+
+Y.M. No. It is independent of it; it is spiritual.
+
+O.M. Being spiritual, it cannot be affected by physical influences?
+
+Y.M. No.
+
+O.M. Does the mind remain sober with the body is drunk?
+
+Y.M. Well--no.
+
+O.M. There _is _a physical effect present, then?
+
+Y.M. It looks like it.
+
+O.M. A cracked skull has resulted in a crazy mind. Why should it happen
+if the mind is spiritual, and _independent _of physical influences?
+
+Y.M. Well--I don't know.
+
+O.M. When you have a pain in your foot, how do you know it?
+
+Y.M. I feel it.
+
+O.M. But you do not feel it until a nerve reports the hurt to the brain.
+Yet the brain is the seat of the mind, is it not?
+
+Y.M. I think so.
+
+O.M. But isn't spiritual enough to learn what is happening in the
+outskirts without the help of the _physical _messenger? You perceive
+that the question of who or what the Me is, is not a simple one at all.
+You say “I admire the rainbow,” and “I believe the world is round,” and
+in these cases we find that the Me is not speaking, but only the _mental
+_part. You say, “I grieve,” and again the Me is not all speaking, but
+only the _moral _part. You say the mind is wholly spiritual; then
+you say “I have a pain” and find that this time the Me is mental _and
+_spiritual combined. We all use the “I” in this indeterminate fashion,
+there is no help for it. We imagine a Master and King over what you call
+The Whole Thing, and we speak of him as “I,” but when we try to define
+him we find we cannot do it. The intellect and the feelings can act
+quite _independently _of each other; we recognize that, and we look
+around for a Ruler who is master over both, and can serve as a _definite
+and indisputable “I,” _and enable us to know what we mean and who or
+what we are talking about when we use that pronoun, but we have to give
+it up and confess that we cannot find him. To me, Man is a machine, made
+up of many mechanisms, the moral and mental ones acting automatically in
+accordance with the impulses of an interior Master who is built out of
+born-temperament and an accumulation of multitudinous outside influences
+and trainings; a machine whose _one _function is to secure the spiritual
+contentment of the Master, be his desires good or be they evil; a
+machine whose Will is absolute and must be obeyed, and always _is
+_obeyed.
+
+Y.M. Maybe the Me is the Soul?
+
+O.M. Maybe it is. What is the Soul?
+
+Y.M. I don't know.
+
+O.M. Neither does any one else.
+
+_The Master Passion_
+
+Y.M. What is the Master?--or, in common speech, the Conscience? Explain
+it.
+
+O.M. It is that mysterious autocrat, lodged in a man, which compels the
+man to content its desires. It may be called the Master Passion--the
+hunger for Self-Approval.
+
+Y.M. Where is its seat?
+
+O.M. In man's moral constitution.
+
+Y.M. Are its commands for the man's good?
+
+O.M. It is indifferent to the man's good; it never concerns itself about
+anything but the satisfying of its own desires. It can be _trained _to
+prefer things which will be for the man's good, but it will prefer them
+only because they will content _it _better than other things would.
+
+Y.M. Then even when it is trained to high ideals it is still looking out
+for its own contentment, and not for the man's good.
+
+O.M. True. Trained or untrained, it cares nothing for the man's good,
+and never concerns itself about it.
+
+Y.M. It seems to be an _immoral _force seated in the man's moral
+constitution.
+
+O.M. It is a _colorless _force seated in the man's moral constitution.
+Let us call it an instinct--a blind, unreasoning instinct, which cannot
+and does not distinguish between good morals and bad ones, and cares
+nothing for results to the man provided its own contentment be secured;
+and it will _always _secure that.
+
+Y.M. It seeks money, and it probably considers that that is an advantage
+for the man?
+
+O.M. It is not always seeking money, it is not always seeking power, nor
+office, nor any other _material _advantage. In _all _cases it seeks a
+_spiritual _contentment, let the _means _be what they may. Its desires
+are determined by the man's temperament--and it is lord over that.
+Temperament, Conscience, Susceptibility, Spiritual Appetite, are, in
+fact, the same thing. Have you ever heard of a person who cared nothing
+for money?
+
+Y.M. Yes. A scholar who would not leave his garret and his books to take
+a place in a business house at a large salary.
+
+O.M. He had to satisfy his master--that is to say, his temperament, his
+Spiritual Appetite--and it preferred books to money. Are there other
+cases?
+
+Y.M. Yes, the hermit.
+
+O.M. It is a good instance. The hermit endures solitude, hunger, cold,
+and manifold perils, to content his autocrat, who prefers these things,
+and prayer and contemplation, to money or to any show or luxury that
+money can buy. Are there others?
+
+Y.M. Yes. The artist, the poet, the scientist.
+
+O.M. Their autocrat prefers the deep pleasures of these occupations,
+either well paid or ill paid, to any others in the market, at any
+price. You _realize _that the Master Passion--the contentment of the
+spirit--concerns itself with many things besides so-called material
+advantage, material prosperity, cash, and all that?
+
+Y.M. I think I must concede it.
+
+O.M. I believe you must. There are perhaps as many Temperaments that
+would refuse the burdens and vexations and distinctions of public office
+as there are that hunger after them. The one set of Temperaments seek
+the contentment of the spirit, and that alone; and this is exactly
+the case with the other set. Neither set seeks anything _but _the
+contentment of the spirit. If the one is sordid, both are sordid; and
+equally so, since the end in view is precisely the same in both cases.
+And in both cases Temperament decides the preference--and Temperament is
+_born_, not made.
+
+_Conclusion_
+
+O.M. You have been taking a holiday?
+
+Y.M. Yes; a mountain tramp covering a week. Are you ready to talk?
+
+O.M. Quite ready. What shall we begin with?
+
+Y.M. Well, lying abed resting up, two days and nights, I have thought
+over all these talks, and passed them carefully in review. With this
+result: that... that... are you intending to publish your notions about
+Man some day?
+
+O.M. Now and then, in these past twenty years, the Master inside of me
+has half-intended to order me to set them to paper and publish them.
+Do I have to tell you why the order has remained unissued, or can you
+explain so simple a thing without my help?
+
+Y.M. By your doctrine, it is simplicity itself: outside influences moved
+your interior Master to give the order; stronger outside influences
+deterred him. Without the outside influences, neither of these impulses
+could ever have been born, since a person's brain is incapable or
+originating an idea within itself.
+
+O.M. Correct. Go on.
+
+Y.M. The matter of publishing or withholding is still in your Master's
+hands. If some day an outside influence shall determine him to publish,
+he will give the order, and it will be obeyed.
+
+O.M. That is correct. Well?
+
+Y.M. Upon reflection I have arrived at the conviction that the
+publication of your doctrines would be harmful. Do you pardon me?
+
+O.M. Pardon _you_? You have done nothing. You are an instrument--a
+speaking-trumpet. Speaking-trumpets are not responsible for what is said
+through them. Outside influences--in the form of lifelong teachings,
+trainings, notions, prejudices, and other second-hand importations--have
+persuaded the Master within you that the publication of these doctrines
+would be harmful. Very well, this is quite natural, and was to be
+expected; in fact, was inevitable. Go on; for the sake of ease and
+convenience, stick to habit: speak in the first person, and tell me what
+your Master thinks about it.
+
+Y.M. Well, to begin: it is a desolating doctrine; it is not inspiring,
+enthusing, uplifting. It takes the glory out of man, it takes the pride
+out of him, it takes the heroism out of him, it denies him all personal
+credit, all applause; it not only degrades him to a machine, but allows
+him no control over the machine; makes a mere coffee-mill of him, and
+neither permits him to supply the coffee nor turn the crank, his sole
+and piteously humble function being to grind coarse or fine, according
+to his make, outside impulses doing the rest.
+
+O.M. It is correctly stated. Tell me--what do men admire most in each
+other?
+
+Y.M. Intellect, courage, majesty of build, beauty of countenance,
+charity, benevolence, magnanimity, kindliness, heroism, and--and--
+
+O.M. I would not go any further. These are _elementals_. Virtue,
+fortitude, holiness, truthfulness, loyalty, high ideals--these, and all
+the related qualities that are named in the dictionary, are _made of the
+elementals, _by blendings, combinations, and shadings of the elementals,
+just as one makes green by blending blue and yellow, and makes several
+shades and tints of red by modifying the elemental red. There are
+several elemental colors; they are all in the rainbow; out of them we
+manufacture and name fifty shades of them. You have named the elementals
+of the human rainbow, and also one _blend _--heroism, which is made out
+of courage and magnanimity. Very well, then; which of these elements
+does the possessor of it manufacture for himself? Is it intellect?
+
+Y.M. No.
+
+O.M. Why?
+
+Y.M. He is born with it.
+
+O.M. Is it courage?
+
+Y.M. No. He is born with it.
+
+O.M. Is it majesty of build, beauty of countenance?
+
+Y.M. No. They are birthrights.
+
+O.M. Take those others--the elemental moral qualities--charity,
+benevolence, magnanimity, kindliness; fruitful seeds, out of which
+spring, through cultivation by outside influences, all the manifold
+blends and combinations of virtues named in the dictionaries: does man
+manufacture any of those seeds, or are they all born in him?
+
+Y.M. Born in him.
+
+O.M. Who manufactures them, then?
+
+Y.M. God.
+
+O.M. Where does the credit of it belong?
+
+Y.M. To God.
+
+O.M. And the glory of which you spoke, and the applause?
+
+Y.M. To God.
+
+O.M. Then it is _you _who degrade man. You make him claim glory, praise,
+flattery, for every valuable thing he possesses--_borrowed _finery, the
+whole of it; no rag of it earned by himself, not a detail of it produced
+by his own labor. _You _make man a humbug; have I done worse by him?
+
+Y.M. You have made a machine of him.
+
+O.M. Who devised that cunning and beautiful mechanism, a man's hand?
+
+Y.M. God.
+
+O.M. Who devised the law by which it automatically hammers out of a
+piano an elaborate piece of music, without error, while the man is
+thinking about something else, or talking to a friend?
+
+Y.M. God.
+
+O.M. Who devised the blood? Who devised the wonderful machinery which
+automatically drives its renewing and refreshing streams through the
+body, day and night, without assistance or advice from the man? Who
+devised the man's mind, whose machinery works automatically, interests
+itself in what it pleases, regardless of its will or desire, labors
+all night when it likes, deaf to his appeals for mercy? God devised all
+these things. _I_ have not made man a machine, God made him a machine.
+I am merely calling attention to the fact, nothing more. Is it wrong to
+call attention to the fact? Is it a crime?
+
+Y.M. I think it is wrong to _expose _a fact when harm can come of it.
+
+O.M. Go on.
+
+Y.M. Look at the matter as it stands now. Man has been taught that he is
+the supreme marvel of the Creation; he believes it; in all the ages
+he has never doubted it, whether he was a naked savage, or clothed in
+purple and fine linen, and civilized. This has made his heart buoyant,
+his life cheery. His pride in himself, his sincere admiration of
+himself, his joy in what he supposed were his own and unassisted
+achievements, and his exultation over the praise and applause which they
+evoked--these have exalted him, enthused him, ambitioned him to higher
+and higher flights; in a word, made his life worth the living. But by
+your scheme, all this is abolished; he is degraded to a machine, he is
+a nobody, his noble prides wither to mere vanities; let him strive as
+he may, he can never be any better than his humblest and stupidest
+neighbor; he would never be cheerful again, his life would not be worth
+the living.
+
+O.M. You really think that?
+
+Y.M. I certainly do.
+
+O.M. Have you ever seen me uncheerful, unhappy.
+
+Y.M. No.
+
+O.M. Well, _I_ believe these things. Why have they not made me unhappy?
+
+Y.M. Oh, well--temperament, of course! You never let _that _escape from
+your scheme.
+
+O.M. That is correct. If a man is born with an unhappy temperament,
+nothing can make him happy; if he is born with a happy temperament,
+nothing can make him unhappy.
+
+Y.M. What--not even a degrading and heart-chilling system of beliefs?
+
+O.M. Beliefs? Mere beliefs? Mere convictions? They are powerless. They
+strive in vain against inborn temperament.
+
+Y.M. I can't believe that, and I don't.
+
+O.M. Now you are speaking hastily. It shows that you have not studiously
+examined the facts. Of all your intimates, which one is the happiest?
+Isn't it Burgess?
+
+Y.M. Easily.
+
+O.M. And which one is the unhappiest? Henry Adams?
+
+Y.M. Without a question!
+
+O.M. I know them well. They are extremes, abnormals; their temperaments
+are as opposite as the poles. Their life-histories are about alike--but
+look at the results! Their ages are about the same--about around fifty.
+Burgess had always been buoyant, hopeful, happy; Adams has always been
+cheerless, hopeless, despondent. As young fellows both tried country
+journalism--and failed. Burgess didn't seem to mind it; Adams couldn't
+smile, he could only mourn and groan over what had happened and torture
+himself with vain regrets for not having done so and so instead of so
+and so--_then _he would have succeeded. They tried the law--and
+failed. Burgess remained happy--because he couldn't help it. Adams was
+wretched--because he couldn't help it. From that day to this, those two
+men have gone on trying things and failing: Burgess has come out happy
+and cheerful every time; Adams the reverse. And we do absolutely know
+that these men's inborn temperaments have remained unchanged through all
+the vicissitudes of their material affairs. Let us see how it is with
+their immaterials. Both have been zealous Democrats; both have been
+zealous Republicans; both have been zealous Mugwumps. Burgess has always
+found happiness and Adams unhappiness in these several political
+beliefs and in their migrations out of them. Both of these men have been
+Presbyterians, Universalists, Methodists, Catholics--then Presbyterians
+again, then Methodists again. Burgess has always found rest in these
+excursions, and Adams unrest. They are trying Christian Science, now,
+with the customary result, the inevitable result. No political or
+religious belief can make Burgess unhappy or the other man happy.
+I assure you it is purely a matter of temperament. Beliefs are
+_acquirements_, temperaments are _born_; beliefs are subject to change,
+nothing whatever can change temperament.
+
+Y.M. You have instanced extreme temperaments.
+
+O.M. Yes, the half-dozen others are modifications of the extremes.
+But the law is the same. Where the temperament is two-thirds happy, or
+two-thirds unhappy, no political or religious beliefs can change the
+proportions. The vast majority of temperaments are pretty equally
+balanced; the intensities are absent, and this enables a nation to learn
+to accommodate itself to its political and religious circumstances and
+like them, be satisfied with them, at last prefer them. Nations do
+not _think_, they only _feel_. They get their feelings at second
+hand through their temperaments, not their brains. A nation can be
+brought--by force of circumstances, not argument--to reconcile itself
+to _any kind of government or religion that can be devised; _in time it
+will fit itself to the required conditions; later, it will prefer them
+and will fiercely fight for them. As instances, you have all history:
+the Greeks, the Romans, the Persians, the Egyptians, the Russians, the
+Germans, the French, the English, the Spaniards, the Americans, the
+South Americans, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Hindus, the Turks--a
+thousand wild and tame religions, every kind of government that can be
+thought of, from tiger to house-cat, each nation _knowing _it has
+the only true religion and the only sane system of government, each
+despising all the others, each an ass and not suspecting it, each proud
+of its fancied supremacy, each perfectly sure it is the pet of God, each
+without undoubting confidence summoning Him to take command in time of
+war, each surprised when He goes over to the enemy, but by habit able
+to excuse it and resume compliments--in a word, the whole human race
+content, always content, persistently content, indestructibly content,
+happy, thankful, proud, _no matter what its religion is, nor whether its
+master be tiger or house-cat. _Am I stating facts? You know I am. Is the
+human race cheerful? You know it is. Considering what it can stand, and
+be happy, you do me too much honor when you think that _I_ can place
+before it a system of plain cold facts that can take the cheerfulness
+out of it. Nothing can do that. Everything has been tried. Without
+success. I beg you not to be troubled.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE DEATH OF JEAN
+
+
+
+The death of Jean Clemens occurred early in the morning of December 24,
+1909. Mr. Clemens was in great stress of mind when I first saw him, but
+a few hours later I found him writing steadily.
+
+“I am setting it down,” he said, “everything. It is a relief to me to
+write it. It furnishes me an excuse for thinking.” At intervals during
+that day and the next I looked in, and usually found him writing. Then
+on the evening of the 26th, when he knew that Jean had been laid to rest
+in Elmira, he came to my room with the manuscript in his hand.
+
+“I have finished it,” he said; “read it. I can form no opinion of it
+myself. If you think it worthy, some day--at the proper time--it can end
+my autobiography. It is the final chapter.”
+
+Four months later--almost to the day--(April 21st) he was with Jean.
+
+Albert Bigelow Paine.
+
+
+
+Stormfield, Christmas Eve, 11 A.M., 1909.
+
+JEAN IS DEAD!
+
+Has any one ever tried to put upon paper all the little happenings
+connected with a dear one--happenings of the twenty-four hours preceding
+the sudden and unexpected death of that dear one? Would a book contain
+them? Would two books contain them? I think not. They pour into the mind
+in a flood. They are little things that have been always happening every
+day, and were always so unimportant and easily forgettable before--but
+now! Now, how different! how precious they are, how dear, how
+unforgettable, how pathetic, how sacred, how clothed with dignity!
+
+Last night Jean, all flushed with splendid health, and I the same, from
+the wholesome effects of my Bermuda holiday, strolled hand in hand from
+the dinner-table and sat down in the library and chatted, and planned,
+and discussed, cheerily and happily (and how unsuspectingly!)--until
+nine--which is late for us--then went upstairs, Jean's friendly German
+dog following. At my door Jean said, “I can't kiss you good night,
+father: I have a cold, and you could catch it.” I bent and kissed her
+hand. She was moved--I saw it in her eyes--and she impulsively kissed my
+hand in return. Then with the usual gay “Sleep well, dear!” from both,
+we parted.
+
+At half past seven this morning I woke, and heard voices outside my
+door. I said to myself, “Jean is starting on her usual horseback flight
+to the station for the mail.” Then Katy (1) entered, stood quaking and
+gasping at my bedside a moment, then found her tongue:
+
+“MISS JEAN IS DEAD!”
+
+Possibly I know now what the soldier feels when a bullet crashes through
+his heart.
+
+In her bathroom there she lay, the fair young creature, stretched upon
+the floor and covered with a sheet. And looking so placid, so natural,
+and as if asleep. We knew what had happened. She was an epileptic: she
+had been seized with a convulsion and heart failure in her bath. The
+doctor had to come several miles. His efforts, like our previous ones,
+failed to bring her back to life.
+
+It is noon, now. How lovable she looks, how sweet and how tranquil! It
+is a noble face, and full of dignity; and that was a good heart that
+lies there so still.
+
+In England, thirteen years ago, my wife and I were stabbed to the heart
+with a cablegram which said, “Susy was mercifully released today.” I
+had to send a like shot to Clara, in Berlin, this morning. With the
+peremptory addition, “You must not come home.” Clara and her husband
+sailed from here on the 11th of this month. How will Clara bear it?
+Jean, from her babyhood, was a worshiper of Clara.
+
+Four days ago I came back from a month's holiday in Bermuda in perfected
+health; but by some accident the reporters failed to perceive this. Day
+before yesterday, letters and telegrams began to arrive from friends
+and strangers which indicated that I was supposed to be dangerously
+ill. Yesterday Jean begged me to explain my case through the Associated
+Press. I said it was not important enough; but she was distressed and
+said I must think of Clara. Clara would see the report in the German
+papers, and as she had been nursing her husband day and night for four
+months (2) and was worn out and feeble, the shock might be disastrous.
+There was reason in that; so I sent a humorous paragraph by telephone to
+the Associated Press denying the “charge” that I was “dying,” and saying
+“I would not do such a thing at my time of life.”
+
+Jean was a little troubled, and did not like to see me treat the matter
+so lightly; but I said it was best to treat it so, for there was nothing
+serious about it. This morning I sent the sorrowful facts of this day's
+irremediable disaster to the Associated Press. Will both appear in this
+evening's papers?--the one so blithe, the other so tragic?
+
+I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother--her incomparable
+mother!--five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in
+Europe; and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich!
+Seven months ago Mr. Rogers died--one of the best friends I ever had, and
+the nearest perfect, as man and gentleman, I have yet met among my race;
+within the last six weeks Gilder has passed away, and Laffan--old, old
+friends of mine. Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under
+our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night--and
+it was forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, and I sit
+here--writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How
+dazzlingly the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a
+mockery.
+
+Seventy-four years old twenty-four days ago. Seventy-four years old
+yesterday. Who can estimate my age today?
+
+I have looked upon her again. I wonder I can bear it. She looks just
+as her mother looked when she lay dead in that Florentine villa so long
+ago. The sweet placidity of death! it is more beautiful than sleep.
+
+I saw her mother buried. I said I would never endure that horror again;
+that I would never again look into the grave of any one dear to me. I
+have kept to that. They will take Jean from this house tomorrow, and
+bear her to Elmira, New York, where lie those of us that have been
+released, but I shall not follow.
+
+Jean was on the dock when the ship came in, only four days ago. She
+was at the door, beaming a welcome, when I reached this house the next
+evening. We played cards, and she tried to teach me a new game called
+“Mark Twain.” We sat chatting cheerily in the library last night, and
+she wouldn't let me look into the loggia, where she was making Christmas
+preparations. She said she would finish them in the morning, and then
+her little French friend would arrive from New York--the surprise would
+follow; the surprise she had been working over for days. While she was
+out for a moment I disloyally stole a look. The loggia floor was clothed
+with rugs and furnished with chairs and sofas; and the uncompleted
+surprise was there: in the form of a Christmas tree that was drenched
+with silver film in a most wonderful way; and on a table was a prodigal
+profusion of bright things which she was going to hang upon it today.
+What desecrating hand will ever banish that eloquent unfinished surprise
+from that place? Not mine, surely. All these little matters have
+happened in the last four days. “Little.” Yes--THEN. But not now.
+Nothing she said or thought or did is little now. And all the lavish
+humor!--what is become of it? It is pathos, now. Pathos, and the thought
+of it brings tears.
+
+All these little things happened such a few hours ago--and now she
+lies yonder. Lies yonder, and cares for nothing any more.
+Strange--marvelous--incredible! I have had this experience before; but
+it would still be incredible if I had had it a thousand times.
+
+“MISS JEAN IS DEAD!”
+
+That is what Katy said. When I heard the door open behind the bed's head
+without a preliminary knock, I supposed it was Jean coming to kiss me
+good morning, she being the only person who was used to entering without
+formalities.
+
+And so--
+
+I have been to Jean's parlor. Such a turmoil of Christmas presents for
+servants and friends! They are everywhere; tables, chairs, sofas, the
+floor--everything is occupied, and over-occupied. It is many and many a
+year since I have seen the like. In that ancient day Mrs. Clemens and
+I used to slip softly into the nursery at midnight on Christmas Eve and
+look the array of presents over. The children were little then. And now
+here is Jean's parlor looking just as that nursery used to look. The
+presents are not labeled--the hands are forever idle that would have
+labeled them today. Jean's mother always worked herself down with her
+Christmas preparations. Jean did the same yesterday and the preceding
+days, and the fatigue has cost her her life. The fatigue caused the
+convulsion that attacked her this morning. She had had no attack for
+months.
+
+Jean was so full of life and energy that she was constantly in danger
+of overtaxing her strength. Every morning she was in the saddle by
+half past seven, and off to the station for her mail. She examined the
+letters and I distributed them: some to her, some to Mr. Paine, the
+others to the stenographer and myself. She dispatched her share and then
+mounted her horse again and went around superintending her farm and
+her poultry the rest of the day. Sometimes she played billiards with me
+after dinner, but she was usually too tired to play, and went early to
+bed.
+
+Yesterday afternoon I told her about some plans I had been devising
+while absent in Bermuda, to lighten her burdens. We would get a
+housekeeper; also we would put her share of the secretary-work into Mr.
+Paine's hands.
+
+No--she wasn't willing. She had been making plans herself. The matter
+ended in a compromise, I submitted. I always did. She wouldn't audit the
+bills and let Paine fill out the checks--she would continue to attend to
+that herself. Also, she would continue to be housekeeper, and let Katy
+assist. Also, she would continue to answer the letters of personal
+friends for me. Such was the compromise. Both of us called it by that
+name, though I was not able to see where any formidable change had been
+made.
+
+However, Jean was pleased, and that was sufficient for me. She was proud
+of being my secretary, and I was never able to persuade her to give up
+any part of her share in that unlovely work.
+
+In the talk last night I said I found everything going so smoothly
+that if she were willing I would go back to Bermuda in February and get
+blessedly out of the clash and turmoil again for another month. She was
+urgent that I should do it, and said that if I would put off the trip
+until March she would take Katy and go with me. We struck hands upon
+that, and said it was settled. I had a mind to write to Bermuda by
+tomorrow's ship and secure a furnished house and servants. I meant to
+write the letter this morning. But it will never be written, now.
+
+For she lies yonder, and before her is another journey than that.
+
+Night is closing down; the rim of the sun barely shows above the
+sky-line of the hills.
+
+I have been looking at that face again that was growing dearer and
+dearer to me every day. I was getting acquainted with Jean in these last
+nine months. She had been long an exile from home when she came to us
+three-quarters of a year ago. She had been shut up in sanitariums,
+many miles from us. How eloquently glad and grateful she was to cross her
+father's threshold again!
+
+Would I bring her back to life if I could do it? I would not. If a word
+would do it, I would beg for strength to withhold the word. And I would
+have the strength; I am sure of it. In her loss I am almost bankrupt,
+and my life is a bitterness, but I am content: for she has been enriched
+with the most precious of all gifts--that gift which makes all other
+gifts mean and poor--death. I have never wanted any released friend of
+mine restored to life since I reached manhood. I felt in this way when
+Susy passed away; and later my wife, and later Mr. Rogers. When Clara
+met me at the station in New York and told me Mr. Rogers had
+died suddenly that morning, my thought was, Oh, favorite of
+fortune--fortunate all his long and lovely life--fortunate to his
+latest moment! The reporters said there were tears of sorrow in my eyes.
+True--but they were for ME, not for him. He had suffered no loss. All
+the fortunes he had ever made before were poverty compared with this
+one.
+
+Why did I build this house, two years ago? To shelter this vast
+emptiness? How foolish I was! But I shall stay in it. The spirits of
+the dead hallow a house, for me. It was not so with other members of my
+family. Susy died in the house we built in Hartford. Mrs. Clemens would
+never enter it again. But it made the house dearer to me. I have entered
+it once since, when it was tenantless and silent and forlorn, but to me
+it was a holy place and beautiful. It seemed to me that the spirits of
+the dead were all about me, and would speak to me and welcome me if
+they could: Livy, and Susy, and George, and Henry Robinson, and Charles
+Dudley Warner. How good and kind they were, and how lovable their lives!
+In fancy I could see them all again, I could call the children back
+and hear them romp again with George--that peerless black ex-slave and
+children's idol who came one day--a flitting stranger--to wash windows,
+and stayed eighteen years. Until he died. Clara and Jean would never
+enter again the New York hotel which their mother had frequented in
+earlier days. They could not bear it. But I shall stay in this house. It
+is dearer to me tonight than ever it was before. Jean's spirit will make
+it beautiful for me always. Her lonely and tragic death--but I will not
+think of that now.
+
+Jean's mother always devoted two or three weeks to Christmas shopping,
+and was always physically exhausted when Christmas Eve came. Jean was
+her very own child--she wore herself out present-hunting in New York
+these latter days. Paine has just found on her desk a long list of
+names--fifty, he thinks--people to whom she sent presents last night.
+Apparently she forgot no one. And Katy found there a roll of bank-notes,
+for the servants.
+
+Her dog has been wandering about the grounds today, comradeless and
+forlorn. I have seen him from the windows. She got him from Germany. He
+has tall ears and looks exactly like a wolf. He was educated in Germany,
+and knows no language but the German. Jean gave him no orders save
+in that tongue. And so when the burglar-alarm made a fierce clamor at
+midnight a fortnight ago, the butler, who is French and knows no German,
+tried in vain to interest the dog in the supposed burglar. Jean wrote
+me, to Bermuda, about the incident. It was the last letter I was ever to
+receive from her bright head and her competent hand. The dog will not be
+neglected.
+
+There was never a kinder heart than Jean's. From her childhood up she
+always spent the most of her allowance on charities of one kind and
+another. After she became secretary and had her income doubled she spent
+her money upon these things with a free hand. Mine too, I am glad and
+grateful to say.
+
+She was a loyal friend to all animals, and she loved them all, birds,
+beasts, and everything--even snakes--an inheritance from me. She knew
+all the birds; she was high up in that lore. She became a member of
+various humane societies when she was still a little girl--both here and
+abroad--and she remained an active member to the last. She founded two
+or three societies for the protection of animals, here and in Europe.
+
+She was an embarrassing secretary, for she fished my correspondence out
+of the waste-basket and answered the letters. She thought all letters
+deserved the courtesy of an answer. Her mother brought her up in that
+kindly error.
+
+She could write a good letter, and was swift with her pen. She had but
+an indifferent ear for music, but her tongue took to languages with an easy
+facility. She never allowed her Italian, French, and German to get rusty
+through neglect.
+
+The telegrams of sympathy are flowing in, from far and wide, now, just
+as they did in Italy five years and a half ago, when this child's mother
+laid down her blameless life. They cannot heal the hurt, but they take
+away some of the pain. When Jean and I kissed hands and parted at
+my door last, how little did we imagine that in twenty-two hours the
+telegraph would be bringing words like these:
+
+“From the bottom of our hearts we send our sympathy, dearest of
+friends.”
+
+For many and many a day to come, wherever I go in this house,
+remembrancers of Jean will mutely speak to me of her. Who can count the
+number of them?
+
+She was in exile two years with the hope of healing her
+malady--epilepsy. There are no words to express how grateful I am that
+she did not meet her fate in the hands of strangers, but in the loving
+shelter of her own home.
+
+“MISS JEAN IS DEAD!”
+
+It is true. Jean is dead.
+
+A month ago I was writing bubbling and hilarious articles for magazines
+yet to appear, and now I am writing--this.
+
+CHRISTMAS DAY. NOON.--Last night I went to Jean's room at intervals, and
+turned back the sheet and looked at the peaceful face, and kissed the
+cold brow, and remembered that heartbreaking night in Florence so long
+ago, in that cavernous and silent vast villa, when I crept downstairs so
+many times, and turned back a sheet and looked at a face just like this
+one--Jean's mother's face--and kissed a brow that was just like this
+one. And last night I saw again what I had seen then--that strange and
+lovely miracle--the sweet, soft contours of early maidenhood restored
+by the gracious hand of death! When Jean's mother lay dead, all trace of
+care, and trouble, and suffering, and the corroding years had vanished
+out of the face, and I was looking again upon it as I had known and
+worshiped it in its young bloom and beauty a whole generation before.
+
+About three in the morning, while wandering about the house in the deep
+silences, as one does in times like these, when there is a dumb sense
+that something has been lost that will never be found again, yet must
+be sought, if only for the employment the useless seeking gives, I came
+upon Jean's dog in the hall downstairs, and noted that he did not
+spring to greet me, according to his hospitable habit, but came slow and
+sorrowfully; also I remembered that he had not visited Jean's apartment
+since the tragedy. Poor fellow, did he know? I think so. Always when
+Jean was abroad in the open he was with her; always when she was in the
+house he was with her, in the night as well as in the day. Her parlor
+was his bedroom. Whenever I happened upon him on the ground floor he
+always followed me about, and when I went upstairs he went too--in a
+tumultuous gallop. But now it was different: after patting him a little
+I went to the library--he remained behind; when I went upstairs he did
+not follow me, save with his wistful eyes. He has wonderful eyes--big,
+and kind, and eloquent. He can talk with them. He is a beautiful
+creature, and is of the breed of the New York police-dogs. I do not like
+dogs, because they bark when there is no occasion for it; but I have
+liked this one from the beginning, because he belonged to Jean, and
+because he never barks except when there is occasion--which is not
+oftener than twice a week.
+
+In my wanderings I visited Jean's parlor. On a shelf I found a pile of
+my books, and I knew what it meant. She was waiting for me to come home
+from Bermuda and autograph them, then she would send them away. If I
+only knew whom she intended them for! But I shall never know. I will
+keep them. Her hand has touched them--it is an accolade--they are noble,
+now.
+
+And in a closet she had hidden a surprise for me--a thing I have often
+wished I owned: a noble big globe. I couldn't see it for the tears.
+She will never know the pride I take in it, and the pleasure. Today the
+mails are full of loving remembrances for her: full of those old, old
+kind words she loved so well, “Merry Christmas to Jean!” If she could
+only have lived one day longer!
+
+At last she ran out of money, and would not use mine. So she sent to
+one of those New York homes for poor girls all the clothes she could
+spare--and more, most likely.
+
+CHRISTMAS NIGHT.--This afternoon they took her away from her room. As
+soon as I might, I went down to the library, and there she lay, in her
+coffin, dressed in exactly the same clothes she wore when she stood at
+the other end of the same room on the 6th of October last, as Clara's
+chief bridesmaid. Her face was radiant with happy excitement then; it
+was the same face now, with the dignity of death and the peace of God
+upon it.
+
+They told me the first mourner to come was the dog. He came uninvited,
+and stood up on his hind legs and rested his fore paws upon the trestle,
+and took a last long look at the face that was so dear to him, then went
+his way as silently as he had come. HE KNOWS.
+
+At mid-afternoon it began to snow. The pity of it--that Jean could not
+see it! She so loved the snow.
+
+The snow continued to fall. At six o'clock the hearse drew up to the
+door to bear away its pathetic burden. As they lifted the casket, Paine
+began playing on the orchestrelle Schubert's “Impromptu,” which was
+Jean's favorite. Then he played the Intermezzo; that was for Susy;
+then he played the Largo; that was for their mother. He did this at my
+request. Elsewhere in my Autobiography I have told how the Intermezzo
+and the Largo came to be associated in my heart with Susy and Livy in
+their last hours in this life.
+
+From my windows I saw the hearse and the carriages wind along the road
+and gradually grow vague and spectral in the falling snow, and presently
+disappear. Jean was gone out of my life, and would not come back any
+more. Jervis, the cousin she had played with when they were babies
+together--he and her beloved old Katy--were conducting her to her
+distant childhood home, where she will lie by her mother's side once
+more, in the company of Susy and Langdon.
+
+DECEMBER 26TH. The dog came to see me at eight o'clock this morning.
+He was very affectionate, poor orphan! My room will be his quarters
+hereafter.
+
+The storm raged all night. It has raged all the morning. The snow drives
+across the landscape in vast clouds, superb, sublime--and Jean not here
+to see.
+
+2:30 P.M.--It is the time appointed. The funeral has begun. Four hundred
+miles away, but I can see it all, just as if I were there. The scene
+is the library in the Langdon homestead. Jean's coffin stands where her
+mother and I stood, forty years ago, and were married; and where Susy's
+coffin stood thirteen years ago; where her mother's stood five years and
+a half ago; and where mine will stand after a little time.
+
+FIVE O'CLOCK.--It is all over.
+
+When Clara went away two weeks ago to live in Europe, it was hard, but I
+could bear it, for I had Jean left. I said WE would be a family. We said
+we would be close comrades and happy--just we two. That fair dream was
+in my mind when Jean met me at the steamer last Monday; it was in my
+mind when she received me at the door last Tuesday evening. We were
+together; WE WERE A FAMILY! the dream had come true--oh, precisely true,
+contentedly, true, satisfyingly true! and remained true two whole days.
+
+And now? Now Jean is in her grave!
+
+In the grave--if I can believe it. God rest her sweet spirit!
+
+     1.  Katy Leary, who had been in the service of the Clemens
+     family for twenty-nine years.
+
+     2.  Mr. Gabrilowitsch had been operated on for appendicitis.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE
+
+I
+
+If I understand the idea, the BAZAR invites several of us to write upon
+the above text. It means the change in my life's course which introduced
+what must be regarded by me as the most IMPORTANT condition of my
+career. But it also implies--without intention, perhaps--that that
+turning-point ITSELF was the creator of the new condition. This gives it
+too much distinction, too much prominence, too much credit. It is only
+the LAST link in a very long chain of turning-points commissioned to
+produce the cardinal result; it is not any more important than the
+humblest of its ten thousand predecessors. Each of the ten thousand did
+its appointed share, on its appointed date, in forwarding the scheme,
+and they were all necessary; to have left out any one of them would have
+defeated the scheme and brought about SOME OTHER result. I know we have
+a fashion of saying “such and such an event was the turning-point in my
+life,” but we shouldn't say it. We should merely grant that its place
+as LAST link in the chain makes it the most CONSPICUOUS link; in real
+importance it has no advantage over any one of its predecessors.
+
+Perhaps the most celebrated turning-point recorded in history was the
+crossing of the Rubicon. Suetonius says:
+
+Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, he halted for a
+while, and, revolving in his mind the importance of the step he was
+on the point of taking, he turned to those about him and said, “We may
+still retreat; but if we pass this little bridge, nothing is left for us
+but to fight it out in arms.”
+
+This was a stupendously important moment. And all the incidents, big and
+little, of Caesar's previous life had been leading up to it, stage by
+stage, link by link. This was the LAST link--merely the last one, and no
+bigger than the others; but as we gaze back at it through the inflating
+mists of our imagination, it looks as big as the orbit of Neptune.
+
+You, the reader, have a PERSONAL interest in that link, and so have
+I; so has the rest of the human race. It was one of the links in your
+life-chain, and it was one of the links in mine. We may wait, now, with
+bated breath, while Caesar reflects. Your fate and mine are involved in
+his decision.
+
+While he was thus hesitating, the following incident occurred. A person
+remarked for his noble mien and graceful aspect appeared close at hand,
+sitting and playing upon a pipe. When not only the shepherds, but a
+number of soldiers also, flocked to listen to him, and some trumpeters
+among them, he snatched a trumpet from one of them, ran to the river
+with it, and, sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to the
+other side. Upon this, Caesar exclaimed: “Let us go whither the omens of
+the gods and the iniquity of our enemies call us. THE DIE IS CAST.”
+
+So he crossed--and changed the future of the whole human race, for all
+time. But that stranger was a link in Caesar's life-chain, too; and a
+necessary one. We don't know his name, we never hear of him again; he
+was very casual; he acts like an accident; but he was no accident, he
+was there by compulsion of HIS life-chain, to blow the electrifying
+blast that was to make up Caesar's mind for him, and thence go piping
+down the aisles of history forever.
+
+If the stranger hadn't been there! But he WAS. And Caesar crossed.
+With such results! Such vast events--each a link in the HUMAN RACE'S
+life-chain; each event producing the next one, and that one the next
+one, and so on: the destruction of the republic; the founding of the
+empire; the breaking up of the empire; the rise of Christianity upon
+its ruins; the spread of the religion to other lands--and so on; link
+by link took its appointed place at its appointed time, the discovery of
+America being one of them; our Revolution another; the inflow of English
+and other immigrants another; their drift westward (my ancestors among
+them) another; the settlement of certain of them in Missouri, which
+resulted in ME. For I was one of the unavoidable results of the crossing
+of the Rubicon. If the stranger, with his trumpet blast, had stayed away
+(which he COULDN'T, for he was an appointed link) Caesar would not have
+crossed. What would have happened, in that case, we can never guess. We
+only know that the things that did happen would not have happened. They
+might have been replaced by equally prodigious things, of course, but
+their nature and results are beyond our guessing. But the matter that
+interests me personally is that I would not be HERE now, but somewhere
+else; and probably black--there is no telling. Very well, I am glad he
+crossed. And very really and thankfully glad, too, though I never cared
+anything about it before.
+
+
+
+II
+
+To me, the most important feature of my life is its literary feature. I
+have been professionally literary something more than forty years. There
+have been many turning-points in my life, but the one that was the last link
+in the chain appointed to conduct me to the literary guild is the most
+CONSPICUOUS link in that chain. BECAUSE it was the last one. It was not
+any more important than its predecessors. All the other links have an
+inconspicuous look, except the crossing of the Rubicon; but as factors
+in making me literary they are all of the one size, the crossing of the
+Rubicon included.
+
+I know how I came to be literary, and I will tell the steps that lead up
+to it and brought it about.
+
+The crossing of the Rubicon was not the first one, it was hardly even
+a recent one; I should have to go back ages before Caesar's day to find
+the first one. To save space I will go back only a couple of generations
+and start with an incident of my boyhood. When I was twelve and a half
+years old, my father died. It was in the spring. The summer came, and
+brought with it an epidemic of measles. For a time a child died almost
+every day. The village was paralyzed with fright, distress, despair.
+Children that were not smitten with the disease were imprisoned in
+their homes to save them from the infection. In the homes there were no
+cheerful faces, there was no music, there was no singing but of solemn
+hymns, no voice but of prayer, no romping was allowed, no noise, no
+laughter, the family moved spectrally about on tiptoe, in a
+ghostly hush. I was a prisoner. My soul was steeped in this awful
+dreariness--and in fear. At some time or other every day and every night
+a sudden shiver shook me to the marrow, and I said to myself, “There,
+I've got it! and I shall die.” Life on these miserable terms was not
+worth living, and at last I made up my mind to get the disease and have
+it over, one way or the other. I escaped from the house and went to
+the house of a neighbor where a playmate of mine was very ill with the
+malady. When the chance offered I crept into his room and got into bed
+with him. I was discovered by his mother and sent back into captivity.
+But I had the disease; they could not take that from me. I came near to
+dying. The whole village was interested, and anxious, and sent for news
+of me every day; and not only once a day, but several times. Everybody
+believed I would die; but on the fourteenth day a change came for the
+worse and they were disappointed.
+
+This was a turning-point of my life. (Link number one.) For when I got
+well my mother closed my school career and apprenticed me to a printer.
+She was tired of trying to keep me out of mischief, and the adventure of
+the measles decided her to put me into more masterful hands than hers.
+
+I became a printer, and began to add one link after another to the chain
+which was to lead me into the literary profession. A long road, but I
+could not know that; and as I did not know what its goal was, or even
+that it had one, I was indifferent. Also contented.
+
+A young printer wanders around a good deal, seeking and finding work;
+and seeking again, when necessity commands. N. B. Necessity is a
+CIRCUMSTANCE; Circumstance is man's master--and when Circumstance
+commands, he must obey; he may argue the matter--that is his privilege,
+just as it is the honorable privilege of a falling body to argue with
+the attraction of gravitation--but it won't do any good, he must OBEY.
+I wandered for ten years, under the guidance and dictatorship of
+Circumstance, and finally arrived in a city of Iowa, where I worked
+several months. Among the books that interested me in those days was one
+about the Amazon. The traveler told an alluring tale of his long voyage
+up the great river from Para to the sources of the Madeira, through the
+heart of an enchanted land, a land wastefully rich in tropical wonders,
+a romantic land where all the birds and flowers and animals were of
+the museum varieties, and where the alligator and the crocodile and the
+monkey seemed as much at home as if they were in the Zoo. Also, he
+told an astonishing tale about COCA, a vegetable product of miraculous
+powers, asserting that it was so nourishing and so strength-giving that
+the native of the mountains of the Madeira region would tramp up hill
+and down all day on a pinch of powdered coca and require no other
+sustenance.
+
+I was fired with a longing to ascend the Amazon. Also with a longing to
+open up a trade in coca with all the world. During months I dreamed
+that dream, and tried to contrive ways to get to Para and spring that
+splendid enterprise upon an unsuspecting planet. But all in vain. A
+person may PLAN as much as he wants to, but nothing of consequence is
+likely to come of it until the magician CIRCUMSTANCE steps in and takes
+the matter off his hands. At last Circumstance came to my help. It was
+in this way. Circumstance, to help or hurt another man, made him lose
+a fifty-dollar bill in the street; and to help or hurt me, made me find
+it. I advertised the find, and left for the Amazon the same day. This
+was another turning-point, another link.
+
+Could Circumstance have ordered another dweller in that town to go to
+the Amazon and open up a world-trade in coca on a fifty-dollar basis
+and been obeyed? No, I was the only one. There were other fools
+there--shoals and shoals of them--but they were not of my kind. I was
+the only one of my kind.
+
+Circumstance is powerful, but it cannot work alone; it has to have a
+partner. Its partner is man's TEMPERAMENT--his natural disposition.
+His temperament is not his invention, it is BORN in him, and he has no
+authority over it, neither is he responsible for its acts. He cannot
+change it, nothing can change it, nothing can modify it--except
+temporarily. But it won't stay modified. It is permanent, like the
+color of the man's eyes and the shape of his ears. Blue eyes are gray
+in certain unusual lights; but they resume their natural color when that
+stress is removed.
+
+A Circumstance that will coerce one man will have no effect upon a man
+of a different temperament. If Circumstance had thrown the bank-note
+in Caesar's way, his temperament would not have made him start for the
+Amazon. His temperament would have compelled him to do something with
+the money, but not that. It might have made him advertise the note--and
+WAIT. We can't tell. Also, it might have made him go to New York and
+buy into the Government, with results that would leave Tweed nothing to
+learn when it came his turn.
+
+Very well, Circumstance furnished the capital, and my temperament told
+me what to do with it. Sometimes a temperament is an ass. When that is
+the case the owner of it is an ass, too, and is going to remain
+one. Training, experience, association, can temporarily so polish him,
+improve him, exalt him that people will think he is a mule, but they
+will be mistaken. Artificially he IS a mule, for the time being, but at
+bottom he is an ass yet, and will remain one.
+
+By temperament I was the kind of person that DOES things. Does them, and
+reflects afterward. So I started for the Amazon without reflecting and
+without asking any questions. That was more than fifty years ago. In all
+that time my temperament has not changed, by even a shade. I have
+been punished many and many a time, and bitterly, for doing things and
+reflecting afterward, but these tortures have been of no value to me;
+I still do the thing commanded by Circumstance and Temperament, and
+reflect afterward. Always violently. When I am reflecting, on those
+occasions, even deaf persons can hear me think.
+
+I went by the way of Cincinnati, and down the Ohio and Mississippi.
+My idea was to take ship, at New Orleans, for Para. In New Orleans I
+inquired, and found there was no ship leaving for Para. Also, that there
+never had BEEN one leaving for Para. I reflected. A policeman came and
+asked me what I was doing, and I told him. He made me move on, and said
+if he caught me reflecting in the public street again he would run me
+in.
+
+After a few days I was out of money. Then Circumstance arrived, with
+another turning-point of my life--a new link. On my way down, I had made
+the acquaintance of a pilot. I begged him to teach me the river, and he
+consented. I became a pilot.
+
+By and by Circumstance came again--introducing the Civil War, this
+time, in order to push me ahead another stage or two toward the literary
+profession. The boats stopped running, my livelihood was gone.
+
+Circumstance came to the rescue with a new turning-point and a fresh
+link. My brother was appointed secretary to the new Territory of Nevada,
+and he invited me to go with him and help him in his office. I accepted.
+
+In Nevada, Circumstance furnished me the silver fever and I went into
+the mines to make a fortune, as I supposed; but that was not the idea.
+The idea was to advance me another step toward literature. For amusement
+I scribbled things for the Virginia City ENTERPRISE. One isn't a printer
+ten years without setting up acres of good and bad literature, and
+learning--unconsciously at first, consciously later--to discriminate
+between the two, within his mental limitations; and meantime he is
+unconsciously acquiring what is called a “style.” One of my efforts
+attracted attention, and the ENTERPRISE sent for me and put me on its
+staff.
+
+And so I became a journalist--another link. By and by Circumstance and
+the Sacramento UNION sent me to the Sandwich Islands for five or
+six months, to write up sugar. I did it; and threw in a good deal of
+extraneous matter that hadn't anything to do with sugar. But it was this
+extraneous matter that helped me to another link.
+
+It made me notorious, and San Francisco invited me to lecture. Which
+I did. And profitably. I had long had a desire to travel and see the
+world, and now Circumstance had most kindly and unexpectedly hurled me
+upon the platform and furnished me the means. So I joined the “Quaker
+City Excursion.”
+
+When I returned to America, Circumstance was waiting on the pier--with
+the LAST link--the conspicuous, the consummating, the victorious link:
+I was asked to WRITE A BOOK, and I did it, and called it THE INNOCENTS
+ABROAD. Thus I became at last a member of the literary guild. That was
+forty-two years ago, and I have been a member ever since. Leaving the
+Rubicon incident away back where it belongs, I can say with truth that
+the reason I am in the literary profession is because I had the measles
+when I was twelve years old.
+
+III
+
+Now what interests me, as regards these details, is not the details
+themselves, but the fact that none of them was foreseen by me, none of
+them was planned by me, I was the author of none of them. Circumstance,
+working in harness with my temperament, created them all and compelled
+them all. I often offered help, and with the best intentions, but it was
+rejected--as a rule, uncourteously. I could never plan a thing and get
+it to come out the way I planned it. It came out some other way--some
+way I had not counted upon.
+
+And so I do not admire the human being--as an intellectual marvel--as
+much as I did when I was young, and got him out of books, and did not
+know him personally. When I used to read that such and such a general
+did a certain brilliant thing, I believed it. Whereas it was not so.
+Circumstance did it by help of his temperament. The circumstance would
+have failed of effect with a general of another temperament: he might
+see the chance, but lose the advantage by being by nature too slow or
+too quick or too doubtful. Once General Grant was asked a question about
+a matter which had been much debated by the public and the newspapers;
+he answered the question without any hesitancy. “General, who planned
+the march through Georgia?” “The enemy!” He added that the enemy
+usually makes your plans for you. He meant that the enemy by neglect or
+through force of circumstances leaves an opening for you, and you see
+your chance and take advantage of it.
+
+Circumstances do the planning for us all, no doubt, by help of our
+temperaments. I see no great difference between a man and a watch,
+except that the man is conscious and the watch isn't, and the man TRIES
+to plan things and the watch doesn't. The watch doesn't wind itself
+and doesn't regulate itself--these things are done exteriorly. Outside
+influences, outside circumstances, wind the MAN and regulate him. Left
+to himself, he wouldn't get regulated at all, and the sort of time he
+would keep would not be valuable. Some rare men are wonderful watches,
+with gold case, compensation balance, and all those things, and some
+men are only simple and sweet and humble Waterburys. I am a Waterbury. A
+Waterbury of that kind, some say.
+
+A nation is only an individual multiplied. It makes plans and
+Circumstance comes and upsets them--or enlarges them. Some patriots
+throw the tea overboard; some other patriots destroy a Bastille. The
+PLANS stop there; then Circumstance comes in, quite unexpectedly, and
+turns these modest riots into a revolution.
+
+And there was poor Columbus. He elaborated a deep plan to find a new
+route to an old country. Circumstance revised his plan for him, and he
+found a new WORLD. And HE gets the credit of it to this day. He hadn't
+anything to do with it.
+
+Necessarily the scene of the real turning-point of my life (and of
+yours) was the Garden of Eden. It was there that the first link was
+forged of the chain that was ultimately to lead to the emptying of me
+into the literary guild. Adam's TEMPERAMENT was the first command the
+Deity ever issued to a human being on this planet. And it was the only
+command Adam would NEVER be able to disobey. It said, “Be weak, be
+water, be characterless, be cheaply persuadable.” The latter command, to
+let the fruit alone, was certain to be disobeyed. Not by Adam himself,
+but by his TEMPERAMENT--which he did not create and had no authority
+over. For the TEMPERAMENT is the man; the thing tricked out with clothes
+and named Man is merely its Shadow, nothing more. The law of the tiger's
+temperament is, Thou shalt kill; the law of the sheep's temperament is
+Thou shalt not kill. To issue later commands requiring the tiger to let
+the fat stranger alone, and requiring the sheep to imbue its hands in
+the blood of the lion is not worth while, for those commands CAN'T be
+obeyed. They would invite to violations of the law of TEMPERAMENT, which
+is supreme, and takes precedence of all other authorities. I cannot help
+feeling disappointed in Adam and Eve. That is, in their temperaments.
+Not in THEM, poor helpless young creatures--afflicted with temperaments
+made out of butter; which butter was commanded to get into contact with
+fire and BE MELTED. What I cannot help wishing is, that Adam and EVE had been
+postponed, and Martin Luther and Joan of Arc put in their place--that
+splendid pair equipped with temperaments not made of butter, but of
+asbestos. By neither sugary persuasions nor by hell fire could Satan
+have beguiled THEM to eat the apple. There would have been results!
+Indeed, yes. The apple would be intact today; there would be no human
+race; there would be no YOU; there would be no ME. And the old, old
+creation-dawn scheme of ultimately launching me into the literary guild
+would have been defeated.
+
+
+
+
+
+HOW TO MAKE HISTORY DATES STICK
+
+These chapters are for children, and I shall try to make the words large
+enough to command respect. In the hope that you are listening, and that
+you have confidence in me, I will proceed. Dates are difficult things to
+acquire; and after they are acquired it is difficult to keep them in
+the head. But they are very valuable. They are like the cattle-pens of a
+ranch--they shut in the several brands of historical cattle, each within
+its own fence, and keep them from getting mixed together. Dates are hard
+to remember because they consist of figures; figures are monotonously
+unstriking in appearance, and they don't take hold, they form no
+pictures, and so they give the eye no chance to help. Pictures are the
+thing. Pictures can make dates stick. They can make nearly anything
+stick--particularly IF YOU MAKE THE PICTURES YOURSELF. Indeed, that
+is the great point--make the pictures YOURSELF. I know about this from
+experience. Thirty years ago I was delivering a memorized lecture every
+night, and every night I had to help myself with a page of notes to
+keep from getting myself mixed. The notes consisted of beginnings of
+sentences, and were eleven in number, and they ran something like this:
+
+“IN THAT REGION THE WEATHER--”
+
+“AT THAT TIME IT WAS A CUSTOM--”
+
+“BUT IN CALIFORNIA ONE NEVER HEARD--”
+
+Eleven of them. They initialed the brief divisions of the lecture and
+protected me against skipping. But they all looked about alike on the
+page; they formed no picture; I had them by heart, but I could never
+with certainty remember the order of their succession; therefore I
+always had to keep those notes by me and look at them every little
+while. Once I mislaid them; you will not be able to imagine the terrors
+of that evening. I now saw that I must invent some other protection. So
+I got ten of the initial letters by heart in their proper order--I,
+A, B, and so on--and I went on the platform the next night with these
+marked in ink on my ten finger-nails. But it didn't answer. I kept track
+of the fingers for a while; then I lost it, and after that I was never
+quite sure which finger I had used last. I couldn't lick off a letter
+after using it, for while they would have made success certain it would
+also have provoked too much curiosity. There was curiosity enough
+without that. To the audience I seemed more interested in my fingernails
+than I was in my subject; one or two persons asked me afterward what was
+the matter with my hands.
+
+It was now that the idea of pictures occurred to me; then my troubles
+passed away. In two minutes I made six pictures with a pen, and they did
+the work of the eleven catch-sentences, and did it perfectly. I threw
+the pictures away as soon as they were made, for I was sure I could shut
+my eyes and see them any time. That was a quarter of a century ago; the
+lecture vanished out of my head more than twenty years ago, but I could
+rewrite it from the pictures--for they remain. Here are three of them:
+(Fig. 1).
+
+The first one is a haystack--below it a rattlesnake--and it told me
+where to begin to talk ranch-life in Carson Valley. The second one told
+me where to begin the talk about a strange and violent wind that used
+to burst upon Carson City from the Sierra Nevadas every afternoon at two
+o'clock and try to blow the town away. The third picture, as you easily
+perceive, is lightning; its duty was to remind me when it was time
+to begin to talk about San Francisco weather, where there IS no
+lightning--nor thunder, either--and it never failed me.
+
+I will give you a valuable hint. When a man is making a speech and you
+are to follow him don't jot down notes to speak from, jot down PICTURES.
+It is awkward and embarrassing to have to keep referring to notes; and
+besides it breaks up your speech and makes it ragged and non-coherent;
+but you can tear up your pictures as soon as you have made them--they
+will stay fresh and strong in your memory in the order and sequence in
+which you scratched them down. And many will admire to see what a good
+memory you are furnished with, when perhaps your memory is not any
+better than mine.
+
+Sixteen years ago when my children were little creatures the governess
+was trying to hammer some primer histories into their heads. Part of
+this fun--if you like to call it that--consisted in the memorizing of
+the accession dates of the thirty-seven personages who had ruled over England
+from the Conqueror down. These little people found it a bitter, hard
+contract. It was all dates, they all looked alike, and they wouldn't
+stick. Day after day of the summer vacation dribbled by, and still the
+kings held the fort; the children couldn't conquer any six of them.
+
+With my lecture experience in mind I was aware that I could invent some
+way out of the trouble with pictures, but I hoped a way could be found
+which would let them romp in the open air while they learned the kings.
+I found it, and then they mastered all the monarchs in a day or two.
+
+The idea was to make them SEE the reigns with their eyes; that would be
+a large help. We were at the farm then. From the house-porch the grounds
+sloped gradually down to the lower fence and rose on the right to the
+high ground where my small work-den stood. A carriage-road wound through
+the grounds and up the hill. I staked it out with the English monarchs,
+beginning with the Conqueror, and you could stand on the porch and
+clearly see every reign and its length, from the Conquest down to
+Victoria, then in the forty-sixth year of her reign--EIGHT HUNDRED AND
+SEVENTEEN YEARS OF English history under your eye at once!
+
+English history was an unusually live topic in America just then. The
+world had suddenly realized that while it was not noticing the Queen
+had passed Henry VIII., passed Henry VI. and Elizabeth, and gaining
+in length every day. Her reign had entered the list of the long ones;
+everybody was interested now--it was watching a race. Would she pass
+the long Edward? There was a possibility of it. Would she pass the
+long Henry? Doubtful, most people said. The long George? Impossible!
+Everybody said it. But we have lived to see her leave him two years
+behind.
+
+I measured off 817 feet of the roadway, a foot representing a year, and
+at the beginning and end of each reign I drove a three-foot white-pine
+stake in the turf by the roadside and wrote the name and dates on it.
+Abreast the middle of the porch-front stood a great granite flower-vase
+overflowing with a cataract of bright-yellow flowers--I can't think of
+their name. The vase was William the Conqueror. We put his name on it
+and his accession date, 1066. We started from that and measured off
+twenty-one feet of the road, and drove William Rufus's stake; then
+thirteen feet and drove the first Henry's stake; then thirty-five feet
+and drove Stephen's; then nineteen feet, which brought us just past
+the summer-house on the left; then we staked out thirty-five, ten, and
+seventeen for the second Henry and Richard and John; turned the curve
+and entered upon just what was needed for Henry III.--a level, straight
+stretch of fifty-six feet of road without a crinkle in it. And it lay
+exactly in front of the house, in the middle of the grounds. There
+couldn't have been a better place for that long reign; you could stand
+on the porch and see those two wide-apart stakes almost with your eyes
+shut. (Fig. 2.)
+
+That isn't the shape of the road--I have bunched it up like that to save
+room. The road had some great curves in it, but their gradual sweep was
+such that they were no mar to history. No, in our road one could tell
+at a glance who was who by the size of the vacancy between stakes--with
+LOCALITY to help, of course.
+
+Although I am away off here in a Swedish village (1) and those stakes
+did not stand till the snow came, I can see them today as plainly as
+ever; and whenever I think of an English monarch his stakes rise before
+me of their own accord and I notice the large or small space which he
+takes up on our road. Are your kings spaced off in your mind? When you
+think of Richard III. and of James II. do the durations of their reigns
+seem about alike to you? It isn't so to me; I always notice that there's
+a foot's difference. When you think of Henry III. do you see a great
+long stretch of straight road? I do; and just at the end where it joins
+on to Edward I. I always see a small pear-bush with its green fruit
+hanging down. When I think of the Commonwealth I see a shady little
+group of these small saplings which we called the oak parlor; when
+I think of George III. I see him stretching up the hill, part of him
+occupied by a flight of stone steps; and I can locate Stephen to an inch
+when he comes into my mind, for he just filled the stretch which went
+by the summer-house. Victoria's reign reached almost to my study door on
+the first little summit; there's sixteen feet to be added now; I believe
+that that would carry it to a big pine-tree that was shattered by some
+lightning one summer when it was trying to hit me.
+
+We got a good deal of fun out of the history road; and exercise, too. We
+trotted the course from the conqueror to the study, the children calling
+out the names, dates, and length of reigns as we passed the stakes,
+going a good gait along the long reigns, but slowing down when we
+came upon people like Mary and Edward VI., and the short Stuart and
+Plantagenet, to give time to get in the statistics. I offered prizes,
+too--apples. I threw one as far as I could send it, and the child that
+first shouted the reign it fell in got the apple.
+
+The children were encouraged to stop locating things as being “over by
+the arbor,” or “in the oak parlor,” or “up at the stone steps,” and say
+instead that the things were in Stephen, or in the Commonwealth, or in
+George III. They got the habit without trouble. To have the long road
+mapped out with such exactness was a great boon for me, for I had the
+habit of leaving books and other articles lying around everywhere, and
+had not previously been able to definitely name the place, and so had
+often been obliged to go to fetch them myself, to save time and failure;
+but now I could name the reign I left them in, and send the children.
+
+Next I thought I would measure off the French reigns, and peg them
+alongside the English ones, so that we could always have contemporaneous
+French history under our eyes as we went our English rounds. We pegged
+them down to the Hundred Years' War, then threw the idea aside, I do not
+now remember why. After that we made the English pegs fence in European
+and American history as well as English, and that answered very well.
+English and alien poets, statesmen, artists, heroes, battles, plagues,
+cataclysms, revolutions--we shoveled them all into the English fences
+according to their dates. Do you understand? We gave Washington's birth
+to George II.'s pegs and his death to George III.'s; George II. got
+the Lisbon earthquake and George III. the Declaration of Independence.
+Goethe, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Savonarola, Joan of Arc, the French
+Revolution, the Edict of Nantes, Clive, Wellington, Waterloo, Plassey,
+Patay, Cowpens, Saratoga, the Battle of the Boyne, the invention of the
+logarithms, the microscope, the steam-engine, the telegraph--anything
+and everything all over the world--we dumped it all in among the English
+pegs according to its date and regardless of its nationality.
+
+If the road-pegging scheme had not succeeded I should have lodged the
+kings in the children's heads by means of pictures--that is, I should
+have tried. It might have failed, for the pictures could only be
+effective WHEN MADE BY THE PUPIL; not the master, for it is the work
+put upon the drawing that makes the drawing stay in the memory, and my
+children were too little to make drawings at that time. And, besides,
+they had no talent for art, which is strange, for in other ways they are
+like me.
+
+But I will develop the picture plan now, hoping that you will be able
+to use it. It will come good for indoors when the weather is bad and one
+cannot go outside and peg a road. Let us imagine that the kings are a
+procession, and that they have come out of the Ark and down Ararat for
+exercise and are now starting back again up the zigzag road. This will
+bring several of them into view at once, and each zigzag will represent
+the length of a king's reign.
+
+And so on. You will have plenty of space, for by my project you will use
+the parlor wall. You do not mark on the wall; that would cause trouble.
+You only attach bits of paper to it with pins or thumb-tacks. These will
+leave no mark.
+
+Take your pen now, and twenty-one pieces of white paper, each two inches
+square, and we will do the twenty-one years of the Conqueror's reign.
+On each square draw a picture of a whale and write the dates and term of
+service. We choose the whale for several reasons: its name and William's
+begin with the same letter; it is the biggest fish that swims, and
+William is the most conspicuous figure in English history in the way of
+a landmark; finally, a whale is about the easiest thing to draw. By
+the time you have drawn twenty-one wales and written “William
+I.--1066-1087--twenty-one years” twenty-one times, those details will be
+your property; you cannot dislodge them from your memory with anything
+but dynamite. I will make a sample for you to copy: (Fig. 3).
+
+I have got his chin up too high, but that is no matter; he is looking
+for Harold. It may be that a whale hasn't that fin up there on his back,
+but I do not remember; and so, since there is a doubt, it is best to err
+on the safe side. He looks better, anyway, than he would without it.
+
+Be very careful and ATTENTIVE while you are drawing your first whale
+from my sample and writing the word and figures under it, so that you
+will not need to copy the sample any more. Compare your copy with the
+sample; examine closely; if you find you have got everything right and
+can shut your eyes and see the picture and call the words and figures,
+then turn the sample and copy upside down and make the next copy from
+memory; and also the next and next, and so on, always drawing and
+writing from memory until you have finished the whole twenty-one. This
+will take you twenty minutes, or thirty, and by that time you will find
+that you can make a whale in less time than an unpracticed person can
+make a sardine; also, up to the time you die you will always be able to
+furnish William's dates to any ignorant person that inquires after them.
+
+You will now take thirteen pieces of BLUE paper, each two inches square,
+and do William II. (Fig. 4.)
+
+Make him spout his water forward instead of backward; also make him
+small, and stick a harpoon in him and give him that sick look in the
+eye. Otherwise you might seem to be continuing the other William, and
+that would be confusing and a damage. It is quite right to make him
+small; he was only about a No. 11 whale, or along there somewhere;
+there wasn't room in him for his father's great spirit. The barb of that
+harpoon ought not to show like that, because it is down inside the whale
+and ought to be out of sight, but it cannot be helped; if the barb were
+removed people would think some one had stuck a whip-stock into the
+whale. It is best to leave the barb the way it is, then every one will
+know it is a harpoon and attending to business. Remember--draw from the
+copy only once; make your other twelve and the inscription from memory.
+
+Now the truth is that whenever you have copied a picture and its
+inscription once from my sample and two or three times from memory the
+details will stay with you and be hard to forget. After that, if you
+like, you may make merely the whale's HEAD and WATER-SPOUT for the
+Conqueror till you end his reign, each time SAYING the inscription in
+place of writing it; and in the case of William II. make the HARPOON
+alone, and say over the inscription each time you do it. You see, it
+will take nearly twice as long to do the first set as it will to do
+the second, and that will give you a marked sense of the difference in
+length of the two reigns.
+
+Next do Henry I. on thirty-five squares of RED paper. (Fig. 5.)
+
+That is a hen, and suggests Henry by furnishing the first syllable. When
+you have repeated the hen and the inscription until you are perfectly
+sure of them, draw merely the hen's head the rest of the thirty-five
+times, saying over the inscription each time. Thus: (Fig. 6).
+
+You begin to understand now how this procession is going to look when
+it is on the wall. First there will be the Conqueror's twenty-one whales
+and water-spouts, the twenty-one white squares joined to one another and
+making a white stripe three and one-half feet long; the thirteen blue
+squares of William II. will be joined to that--a blue stripe two feet,
+two inches long, followed by Henry's red stripe five feet, ten inches
+long, and so on. The colored divisions will smartly show to the eye the
+difference in the length of the reigns and impress the proportions on
+the memory and the understanding. (Fig. 7.)
+
+Stephen of Blois comes next. He requires nineteen two-inch squares of
+YELLOW paper. (Fig. 8.)
+
+That is a steer. The sound suggests the beginning of Stephen's name. I
+choose it for that reason. I can make a better steer than that when I
+am not excited. But this one will do. It is a good-enough steer for
+history. The tail is defective, but it only wants straightening out.
+
+Next comes Henry II. Give him thirty-five squares of RED paper. These
+hens must face west, like the former ones. (Fig. 9.)
+
+This hen differs from the other one. He is on his way to inquire what
+has been happening in Canterbury.
+
+Now we arrive at Richard I., called Richard of the Lion-heart because
+he was a brave fighter and was never so contented as when he was leading
+crusades in Palestine and neglecting his affairs at home. Give him ten
+squares of WHITE paper. (Fig. 10).
+
+That is a lion. His office is to remind you of the lion-hearted Richard.
+There is something the matter with his legs, but I do not quite know
+what it is, they do not seem right. I think the hind ones are the most
+unsatisfactory; the front ones are well enough, though it would be
+better if they were rights and lefts.
+
+Next comes King John, and he was a poor circumstance. He was called
+Lackland. He gave his realm to the Pope. Let him have seventeen squares
+of YELLOW paper. (Fig. 11.)
+
+That creature is a jamboree. It looks like a trademark, but that is only
+an accident and not intentional. It is prehistoric and extinct. It used
+to roam the earth in the Old Silurian times, and lay eggs and catch fish
+and climb trees and live on fossils; for it was of a mixed breed, which
+was the fashion then. It was very fierce, and the Old Silurians
+were afraid of it, but this is a tame one. Physically it has no
+representative now, but its mind has been transmitted. First I drew it
+sitting down, but have turned it the other way now because I think it
+looks more attractive and spirited when one end of it is galloping. I
+love to think that in this attitude it gives us a pleasant idea of
+John coming all in a happy excitement to see what the barons have been
+arranging for him at Runnymede, while the other one gives us an idea of
+him sitting down to wring his hands and grieve over it.
+
+We now come to Henry III.; RED squares again, of course--fifty-six of
+them. We must make all the Henrys the same color; it will make their
+long reigns show up handsomely on the wall. Among all the eight Henrys
+there were but two short ones. A lucky name, as far as longevity goes.
+The reigns of six of the Henrys cover 227 years. It might have been well
+to name all the royal princes Henry, but this was overlooked until it
+was too late. (Fig. 12.)
+
+This is the best one yet. He is on his way (1265) to have a look at the
+first House of Commons in English history. It was a monumental event,
+the situation of the House, and was the second great liberty landmark
+which the century had set up. I have made Henry looking glad, but this
+was not intentional.
+
+Edward I. comes next; LIGHT-BROWN paper, thirty-five squares. (Fig. 13.)
+
+That is an editor. He is trying to think of a word. He props his feet on
+the chair, which is the editor's way; then he can think better. I do not
+care much for this one; his ears are not alike; still, editor suggests
+the sound of Edward, and he will do. I could make him better if I had
+a model, but I made this one from memory. But it is no particular matter;
+they all look alike, anyway. They are conceited and troublesome, and
+don't pay enough. Edward was the first really English king that had yet
+occupied the throne. The editor in the picture probably looks just as
+Edward looked when it was first borne in upon him that this was so. His
+whole attitude expressed gratification and pride mixed with stupefaction
+and astonishment.
+
+Edward II. now; twenty BLUE squares. (Fig. 14.)
+
+Another editor. That thing behind his ear is his pencil. Whenever he
+finds a bright thing in your manuscript he strikes it out with that.
+That does him good, and makes him smile and show his teeth, the way he
+is doing in the picture. This one has just been striking out a smart
+thing, and now he is sitting there with his thumbs in his vest-holes,
+gloating. They are full of envy and malice, editors are. This picture
+will serve to remind you that Edward II. was the first English king who
+was DEPOSED. Upon demand, he signed his deposition himself. He had found
+kingship a most aggravating and disagreeable occupation, and you can
+see by the look of him that he is glad he resigned. He has put his blue
+pencil up for good now. He had struck out many a good thing with it in
+his time.
+
+Edward III. next; fifty RED squares. (Fig. 15.)
+
+This editor is a critic. He has pulled out his carving-knife and his
+tomahawk and is starting after a book which he is going to have for
+breakfast. This one's arms are put on wrong. I did not notice it at
+first, but I see it now. Somehow he has got his right arm on his left
+shoulder, and his left arm on the right shoulder, and this shows us
+the back of his hands in both instances. It makes him left-handed all
+around, which is a thing which has never happened before, except perhaps
+in a museum. That is the way with art, when it is not acquired but born
+to you: you start in to make some simple little thing, not suspecting
+that your genius is beginning to work and swell and strain in secret,
+and all of a sudden there is a convulsion and you fetch out something
+astonishing. This is called inspiration. It is an accident; you never
+know when it is coming. I might have tried as much as a year to think
+of such a strange thing as an all-around left-handed man and I could not
+have done it, for the more you try to think of an unthinkable thing the
+more it eludes you; but it can't elude inspiration; you have only
+to bait with inspiration and you will get it every time. Look at
+Botticelli's “Spring.” Those snaky women were unthinkable, but
+inspiration secured them for us, thanks to goodness. It is too late to
+reorganize this editor-critic now; we will leave him as he is. He will
+serve to remind us.
+
+Richard II. next; twenty-two WHITE squares. (Fig. 16.)
+
+We use the lion again because this is another Richard. Like Edward II.,
+he was DEPOSED. He is taking a last sad look at his crown before they
+take it away. There was not room enough and I have made it too small;
+but it never fitted him, anyway.
+
+Now we turn the corner of the century with a new line of monarchs--the
+Lancastrian kings.
+
+Henry IV.; fourteen squares of YELLOW paper. (Fig. 17.)
+
+This hen has laid the egg of a new dynasty and realizes the imposing magnitude
+of the event. She is giving notice in the usual way. You notice I am
+improving in the construction of hens. At first I made them too
+much like other animals, but this one is orthodox. I mention this
+to encourage you. You will find that the more you practice the more
+accurate you will become. I could always draw animals, but before I was
+educated I could not tell what kind they were when I got them done, but
+now I can. Keep up your courage; it will be the same with you, although
+you may not think it. This Henry died the year after Joan of Arc was
+born.
+
+Henry V.; nine BLUE squares. (Fig. 18)
+
+There you see him lost in meditation over the monument which records the
+amazing figures of the battle of Agincourt. French history says 20,000
+Englishmen routed 80,000 Frenchmen there; and English historians say
+that the French loss, in killed and wounded, was 60,000.
+
+Henry VI.; thirty-nine RED squares. (Fig. 19)
+
+This is poor Henry VI., who reigned long and scored many misfortunes and
+humiliations. Also two great disasters: he lost France to Joan of Arc
+and he lost the throne and ended the dynasty which Henry IV. had started
+in business with such good prospects. In the picture we see him sad and
+weary and downcast, with the scepter falling from his nerveless grasp.
+It is a pathetic quenching of a sun which had risen in such splendor.
+
+Edward IV.; twenty-two LIGHT-BROWN squares. (Fig. 20.)
+
+That is a society editor, sitting there elegantly dressed, with his legs
+crossed in that indolent way, observing the clothes the ladies wear,
+so that he can describe them for his paper and make them out finer than
+they are and get bribes for it and become wealthy. That flower which he
+is wearing in his buttonhole is a rose--a white rose, a York rose--and
+will serve to remind us of the War of the Roses, and that the white one
+was the winning color when Edward got the throne and dispossessed the
+Lancastrian dynasty.
+
+Edward V.; one-third of a BLACK square. (Fig. 21.)
+
+His uncle Richard had him murdered in the tower. When you get the
+reigns displayed upon the wall this one will be conspicuous and easily
+remembered. It is the shortest one in English history except Lady Jane
+Grey's, which was only nine days. She is never officially recognized
+as a monarch of England, but if you or I should ever occupy a throne we
+should like to have proper notice taken of it; and it would be only fair
+and right, too, particularly if we gained nothing by it and lost our
+lives besides.
+
+Richard III.; two WHITE squares. (Fig. 22.)
+
+That is not a very good lion, but Richard was not a very good king. You
+would think that this lion has two heads, but that is not so; one is
+only a shadow. There would be shadows for the rest of him, but there was
+not light enough to go round, it being a dull day, with only fleeting
+sun-glimpses now and then. Richard had a humped back and a hard heart,
+and fell at the battle of Bosworth. I do not know the name of that
+flower in the pot, but we will use it as Richard's trade-mark, for it is
+said that it grows in only one place in the world--Bosworth Field--and
+tradition says it never grew there until Richard's royal blood warmed
+its hidden seed to life and made it grow.
+
+Henry VII.; twenty-four BLUE squares. (Fig. 23.)
+
+Henry VII. had no liking for wars and turbulence; he preferred peace and
+quiet and the general prosperity which such conditions create. He liked
+to sit on that kind of eggs on his own private account as well as the
+nation's, and hatch them out and count up the result. When he died he
+left his heir 2,000,000 pounds, which was a most unusual fortune for a
+king to possess in those days. Columbus's great achievement gave him the
+discovery-fever, and he sent Sebastian Cabot to the New World to search
+out some foreign territory for England. That is Cabot's ship up there
+in the corner. This was the first time that England went far abroad to
+enlarge her estate--but not the last.
+
+Henry VIII.; thirty-eight RED squares. (Fig. 24.)
+
+That is Henry VIII. suppressing a monastery in his arrogant fashion.
+
+Edward VI.; six squares of YELLOW paper. (Fig. 25.)
+
+He is the last Edward to date. It is indicated by that thing over his
+head, which is a LAST--shoemaker's last.
+
+Mary; five squares of BLACK paper. (Fig. 26.)
+
+The picture represents a burning martyr. He is in back of the smoke.
+The first three letters of Mary's name and the first three of the word
+martyr are the same. Martyrdom was going out in her day and martyrs were
+becoming scarcer, but she made several. For this reason she is sometimes
+called Bloody Mary.
+
+This brings us to the reign of Elizabeth, after passing through a period
+of nearly five hundred years of England's history--492 to be exact. I
+think you may now be trusted to go the rest of the way without further
+lessons in art or inspirations in the matter of ideas. You have the
+scheme now, and something in the ruler's name or career will suggest the
+pictorial symbol. The effort of inventing such things will not only help
+your memory, but will develop originality in art. See what it has
+done for me. If you do not find the parlor wall big enough for all
+of England's history, continue it into the dining-room and into other
+rooms. This will make the walls interesting and instructive and really
+worth something instead of being just flat things to hold the house
+together.
+
+     1.  Summer of 1899.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MEMORABLE ASSASSINATION
+
+Note.--The assassination of the Empress of Austria at Geneva, September
+10, 1898, occurred during Mark Twain's Austrian residence. The news came
+to him at Kaltenleutgeben, a summer resort a little way out of Vienna.
+To his friend, the Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, he wrote:
+
+“That good and unoffending lady, the Empress, is killed by a madman,
+and I am living in the midst of world-history again. The Queen's Jubilee
+last year, the invasion of the Reichsrath by the police, and now this
+murder, which will still be talked of and described and painted a
+thousand years from now. To have a personal friend of the
+wearer of two crowns burst in at the gate in the deep dusk of the
+evening and say, in a voice broken with tears, 'My God! the Empress is
+murdered,' and fly toward her home before we can utter a question--why,
+it brings the giant event home to you, makes you a part of it and
+personally interested; it is as if your neighbor, Antony, should come
+flying and say, 'Caesar is butchered--the head of the world is fallen!'
+
+“Of course there is no talk but of this. The mourning is universal and
+genuine, the consternation is stupefying. The Austrian Empire is being
+draped with black. Vienna will be a spectacle to see by next Saturday,
+when the funeral cortege marches.”
+
+He was strongly moved by the tragedy, impelled to write concerning
+it. He prepared the article which here follows, but did not offer it for
+publication, perhaps feeling that his own close association with the
+court circles at the moment prohibited this personal utterance. There
+appears no such reason for withholding its publication now.
+
+A. B. P.
+
+The more one thinks of the assassination, the more imposing and
+tremendous the event becomes. The destruction of a city is a large
+event, but it is one which repeats itself several times in a thousand
+years; the destruction of a third part of a nation by plague and famine
+is a large event, but it has happened several times in history; the
+murder of a king is a large event, but it has been frequent.
+
+The murder of an empress is the largest of all large events. One must go back
+about two thousand years to find an instance to put with this one. The
+oldest family of unchallenged descent in Christendom lives in Rome and
+traces its line back seventeen hundred years, but no member of it has
+been present in the earth when an empress was murdered, until now. Many
+a time during these seventeen centuries members of that family have
+been startled with the news of extraordinary events--the destruction
+of cities, the fall of thrones, the murder of kings, the wreck of
+dynasties, the extinction of religions, the birth of new systems of
+government; and their descendants have been by to hear of it and talk
+about it when all these things were repeated once, twice, or a dozen
+times--but to even that family has come news at last which is not staled
+by use, has no duplicates in the long reach of its memory.
+
+It is an event which confers a curious distinction upon every individual
+now living in the world: he has stood alive and breathing in the
+presence of an event such as has not fallen within the experience of any
+traceable or untraceable ancestor of his for twenty centuries, and it
+is not likely to fall within the experience of any descendant of his for
+twenty more.
+
+Time has made some great changes since the Roman days. The murder of
+an empress then--even the assassination of Caesar himself--could not
+electrify the world as this murder has electrified it. For one reason,
+there was then not much of a world to electrify; it was a small world,
+as to known bulk, and it had rather a thin population, besides; and for
+another reason, the news traveled so slowly that its tremendous initial
+thrill wasted away, week by week and month by month, on the journey, and
+by the time it reached the remoter regions there was but little of it
+left. It was no longer a fresh event, it was a thing of the far past;
+it was not properly news, it was history. But the world is enormous
+now, and prodigiously populated--that is one change; and another is the
+lightning swiftness of the flight of tidings, good and bad. “The Empress
+is murdered!” When those amazing words struck upon my ear in this
+Austrian village last Saturday, three hours after the disaster, I knew
+that it was already old news in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, San
+Francisco, Japan, China, Melbourne, Cape Town, Bombay, Madras,
+Calcutta, and that the entire globe with a single voice, was cursing
+the perpetrator of it. Since the telegraph first began to stretch itself
+wider and wider about the earth, larger and increasingly larger areas of
+the world have, as time went on, received simultaneously the shock of
+a great calamity; but this is the first time in history that the entire
+surface of the globe has been swept in a single instant with the thrill
+of so gigantic an event.
+
+And who is the miracle-worker who has furnished to the world this
+spectacle? All the ironies are compacted in the answer. He is at the
+bottom of the human ladder, as the accepted estimates of degree and
+value go: a soiled and patched young loafer, without gifts, without
+talents, without education, without morals, without character, without
+any born charm or any acquired one that wins or beguiles or attracts;
+without a single grace of mind or heart or hand that any tramp or
+prostitute could envy him; an unfaithful private in the ranks, an
+incompetent stone-cutter, an inefficient lackey; in a word, a mangy,
+offensive, empty, unwashed, vulgar, gross, mephitic, timid, sneaking,
+human polecat. And it was within the privileges and powers of this
+sarcasm upon the human race to reach up--up--up--and strike from its far
+summit in the social skies the world's accepted ideal of Glory and Might
+and Splendor and Sacredness! It realizes to us what sorry shows and
+shadows we are. Without our clothes and our pedestals we are poor things
+and much of a size; our dignities are not real, our pomps are shams. At
+our best and stateliest we are not suns, as we pretended, and teach, and
+believe, but only candles; and any bummer can blow us out.
+
+And now we get realized to us once more another thing which we often
+forget--or try to: that no man has a wholly undiseased mind; that in
+one way or another all men are mad. Many are mad for money. When this
+madness is in a mild form it is harmless and the man passes for sane;
+but when it develops powerfully and takes possession of the man, it can
+make him cheat, rob, and kill; and when he has got his fortune and lost
+it again it can land him in the asylum or the suicide's coffin. Love
+is a madness; if thwarted it develops fast; it can grow to a frenzy
+of despair and make an otherwise sane and highly gifted prince, like
+Rudolph, throw away the crown of an empire and snuff out his own life.
+All the whole list of desires, predilections, aversions, ambitions,
+passions, cares, griefs, regrets, remorses, are incipient madness, and
+ready to grow, spread, and consume, when the occasion comes. There are
+no healthy minds, and nothing saves any man but accident--the accident
+of not having his malady put to the supreme test.
+
+One of the commonest forms of madness is the desire to be noticed, the
+pleasure derived from being noticed. Perhaps it is not merely common,
+but universal. In its mildest form it doubtless is universal. Every
+child is pleased at being noticed; many intolerable children put in
+their whole time in distressing and idiotic effort to attract the
+attention of visitors; boys are always “showing off”; apparently all
+men and women are glad and grateful when they find that they have done
+a thing which has lifted them for a moment out of obscurity and caused
+wondering talk. This common madness can develop, by nurture, into a
+hunger for notoriety in one, for fame in another. It is this madness
+for being noticed and talked about which has invented kingship and the
+thousand other dignities, and tricked them out with pretty and showy
+fineries; it has made kings pick one another's pockets, scramble for one
+another's crowns and estates, slaughter one another's subjects; it has
+raised up prize-fighters, and poets, and village mayors, and little
+and big politicians, and big and little charity-founders, and bicycle
+champions, and banditti chiefs, and frontier desperadoes, and Napoleons.
+Anything to get notoriety; anything to set the village, or the township,
+or the city, or the State, or the nation, or the planet shouting,
+“Look--there he goes--that is the man!” And in five minutes' time, at no
+cost of brain, or labor, or genius this mangy Italian tramp has beaten
+them all, transcended them all, outstripped them all, for in time their
+names will perish; but by the friendly help of the insane newspapers and
+courts and kings and historians, his is safe to live and thunder in the
+world all down the ages as long as human speech shall endure! Oh, if it
+were not so tragic how ludicrous it would be!
+
+She was so blameless, the Empress; and so beautiful, in mind and heart,
+in person and spirit; and whether with a crown upon her head or without
+it and nameless, a grace to the human race, and almost a justification
+of its creation; WOULD be, indeed, but that the animal that struck her
+down re-establishes the doubt.
+
+In her character was every quality that in woman invites and engages
+respect, esteem, affection, and homage. Her tastes, her instincts, and
+her aspirations were all high and fine and all her life her heart and
+brain were busy with activities of a noble sort. She had had bitter
+griefs, but they did not sour her spirit, and she had had the highest
+honors in the world's gift, but she went her simple way unspoiled. She
+knew all ranks, and won them all, and made them her friends. An English
+fisherman's wife said, “When a body was in trouble she didn't send
+her help, she brought it herself.” Crowns have adorned others, but she
+adorned her crowns.
+
+It was a swift celebrity the assassin achieved. And it is marked by some
+curious contrasts. At noon last Saturday there was no one in the
+world who would have considered acquaintanceship with him a thing
+worth claiming or mentioning; no one would have been vain of such an
+acquaintanceship; the humblest honest boot-black would not have valued
+the fact that he had met him or seen him at some time or other; he was
+sunk in abysmal obscurity, he was away beneath the notice of the bottom
+grades of officialdom. Three hours later he was the one subject
+of conversation in the world, the gilded generals and admirals and
+governors were discussing him, all the kings and queens and emperors had
+put aside their other interests to talk about him. And wherever there
+was a man, at the summit of the world or the bottom of it, who by chance
+had at some time or other come across that creature, he remembered it
+with a secret satisfaction, and MENTIONED it--for it was a distinction,
+now! It brings human dignity pretty low, and for a moment the thing is
+not quite realizable--but it is perfectly true. If there is a king who
+can remember, now, that he once saw that creature in a time past, he has
+let that fact out, in a more or less studiedly casual and indifferent
+way, some dozens of times during the past week. For a king is merely
+human; the inside of him is exactly like the inside of any other person;
+and it is human to find satisfaction in being in a kind of personal
+way connected with amazing events. We are all privately vain of such a
+thing; we are all alike; a king is a king by accident; the reason the
+rest of us are not kings is merely due to another accident; we are all
+made out of the same clay, and it is a sufficiently poor quality.
+
+Below the kings, these remarks are in the air these days; I know it as
+well as if I were hearing them:
+
+THE COMMANDER: “He was in my army.”
+
+THE GENERAL: “He was in my corps.”
+
+THE COLONEL: “He was in my regiment. A brute. I remember him well.”
+
+THE CAPTAIN: “He was in my company. A troublesome scoundrel. I remember
+him well.”
+
+THE SERGEANT: “Did I know him? As well as I know you. Why, every morning
+I used to--” etc., etc.; a glad, long story, told to devouring ears.
+
+THE LANDLADY: “Many's the time he boarded with me. I can show you his
+very room, and the very bed he slept in. And the charcoal mark there
+on the wall--he made that. My little Johnny saw him do it with his own
+eyes. Didn't you, Johnny?”
+
+It is easy to see, by the papers, that the magistrate and the constables
+and the jailer treasure up the assassin's daily remarks and doings
+as precious things, and as wallowing this week in seas of blissful
+distinction. The interviewer, too; he tries to let on that he is not
+vain of his privilege of contact with this man whom few others are
+allowed to gaze upon, but he is human, like the rest, and can no more
+keep his vanity corked in than could you or I.
+
+Some think that this murder is a frenzied revolt against the criminal
+militarism which is impoverishing Europe and driving the starving poor
+mad. That has many crimes to answer for, but not this one, I think. One
+may not attribute to this man a generous indignation against the wrongs
+done the poor; one may not dignify him with a generous impulse of any
+kind. When he saw his photograph and said, “I shall be celebrated,”
+ he laid bare the impulse that prompted him. It was a mere hunger for
+notoriety. There is another confessed case of the kind which is as old
+as history--the burning of the temple of Ephesus.
+
+Among the inadequate attempts to account for the assassination we must
+concede high rank to the many which have described it as a “peculiarly
+brutal crime” and then added that it was “ordained from above.” I think
+this verdict will not be popular “above.” If the deed was ordained from
+above, there is no rational way of making this prisoner even partially
+responsible for it, and the Genevan court cannot condemn him without
+manifestly committing a crime. Logic is logic, and by disregarding
+its laws even the most pious and showy theologian may be beguiled into
+preferring charges which should not be ventured upon except in the
+shelter of plenty of lightning-rods.
+
+I witnessed the funeral procession, in company with friends, from the
+windows of the Krantz, Vienna's sumptuous new hotel. We came into town
+in the middle of the forenoon, and I went on foot from the station.
+Black flags hung down from all the houses; the aspects were Sunday-like;
+the crowds on the sidewalks were quiet and moved slowly; very few people
+were smoking; many ladies wore deep mourning, gentlemen were in black
+as a rule; carriages were speeding in all directions, with footmen and
+coachmen in black clothes and wearing black cocked hats; the shops were
+closed; in many windows were pictures of the Empress: as a beautiful
+young bride of seventeen; as a serene and majestic lady with added
+years; and finally in deep black and without ornaments--the costume she
+always wore after the tragic death of her son nine years ago, for her
+heart broke then, and life lost almost all its value for her. The people
+stood grouped before these pictures, and now and then one saw women and
+girls turn away wiping the tears from their eyes.
+
+In front of the Krantz is an open square; over the way was the church
+where the funeral services would be held. It is small and old and
+severely plain, plastered outside and whitewashed or painted, and with
+no ornament but a statue of a monk in a niche over the door, and above
+that a small black flag. But in its crypt lie several of the great dead
+of the House of Habsburg, among them Maria Theresa and Napoleon's son,
+the Duke of Reichstadt. Hereabouts was a Roman camp, once, and in it the
+Emperor Marcus Aurelius died a thousand years before the first Habsburg
+ruled in Vienna, which was six hundred years ago and more.
+
+The little church is packed in among great modern stores and houses,
+and the windows of them were full of people. Behind the vast plate-glass
+windows of the upper floors of a house on the corner one glimpsed
+terraced masses of fine-clothed men and women, dim and shimmery, like
+people under water. Under us the square was noiseless, but it was full
+of citizens; officials in fine uniforms were flitting about on errands,
+and in a doorstep sat a figure in the uttermost raggedness of poverty,
+the feet bare, the head bent humbly down; a youth of eighteen or twenty,
+he was, and through the field-glass one could see that he was tearing
+apart and munching riffraff that he had gathered somewhere. Blazing
+uniforms flashed by him, making a sparkling contrast with his drooping
+ruin of moldy rags, but he took no notice; he was not there to grieve
+for a nation's disaster; he had his own cares, and deeper. From two
+directions two long files of infantry came plowing through the pack and
+press in silence; there was a low, crisp order and the crowd vanished,
+the square save the sidewalks was empty, the private mourner was gone.
+Another order, the soldiers fell apart and enclosed the square in a
+double-ranked human fence. It was all so swift, noiseless, exact--like a
+beautifully ordered machine.
+
+It was noon, now. Two hours of stillness and waiting followed. Then
+carriages began to flow past and deliver the two or three hundred court
+personages and high nobilities privileged to enter the church. Then the
+square filled up; not with civilians, but with army and navy officers in
+showy and beautiful uniforms. They filled it compactly, leaving only a
+narrow carriage path in front of the church, but there was no civilian
+among them. And it was better so; dull clothes would have marred the
+radiant spectacle. In the jam in front of the church, on its steps, and
+on the sidewalk was a bunch of uniforms which made a blazing splotch
+of color--intense red, gold, and white--which dimmed the brilliancies
+around them; and opposite them on the other side of the path was a bunch
+of cascaded bright-green plumes above pale-blue shoulders which made
+another splotch of splendor emphatic and conspicuous in its glowing
+surroundings. It was a sea of flashing color all about, but these two
+groups were the high notes. The green plumes were worn by forty or fifty
+Austrian generals, the group opposite them were chiefly Knights of Malta
+and knights of a German order. The mass of heads in the square were
+covered by gilt helmets and by military caps roofed with a mirror-like
+glaze, and the movements of the wearers caused these things to catch the
+sun-rays, and the effect was fine to see--the square was like a garden
+of richly colored flowers with a multitude of blinding and flashing
+little suns distributed over it.
+
+Think of it--it was by command of that Italian loafer yonder on his
+imperial throne in the Geneva prison that this splendid multitude was
+assembled there; and the kings and emperors that were entering the
+church from a side street were there by his will. It is so strange, so
+unrealizable.
+
+At three o'clock the carriages were still streaming by in single
+file. At three-five a cardinal arrives with his attendants; later some
+bishops; then a number of archdeacons--all in striking colors that add
+to the show. At three-ten a procession of priests passes along, with
+crucifix. Another one, presently; after an interval, two more; at
+three-fifty another one--very long, with many crosses, gold-embroidered
+robes, and much white lace; also great pictured banners, at intervals,
+receding into the distance.
+
+A hum of tolling bells makes itself heard, but not sharply. At
+three-fifty-eight a waiting interval. Presently a long procession of
+gentlemen in evening dress comes in sight and approaches until it is
+near to the square, then falls back against the wall of soldiers at the
+sidewalk, and the white shirt-fronts show like snowflakes and are very
+conspicuous where so much warm color is all about.
+
+A waiting pause. At four-twelve the head of the funeral procession comes
+into view at last. First, a body of cavalry, four abreast, to widen the
+path. Next, a great body of lancers, in blue, with gilt helmets. Next,
+three six-horse mourning-coaches; outriders and coachmen in black, with
+cocked hats and white wigs. Next, troops in splendid uniforms, red,
+gold, and white, exceedingly showy.
+
+Now the multitude uncover. The soldiers present arms; there is a low
+rumble of drums; the sumptuous great hearse approaches, drawn at a
+walk by eight black horses plumed with black bunches of nodding ostrich
+feathers; the coffin is borne into the church, the doors are closed.
+
+The multitude cover their heads, and the rest of the procession moves
+by; first the Hungarian Guard in their indescribably brilliant and
+picturesque and beautiful uniform, inherited from the ages of barbaric
+splendor, and after them other mounted forces, a long and showy array.
+
+Then the shining crown in the square crumbled apart, a wrecked rainbow,
+and melted away in radiant streams, and in the turn of a wrist the three
+dirtiest and raggedest and cheerfulest little slum-girls in Austria were
+capering about in the spacious vacancy. It was a day of contrasts.
+
+Twice the Empress entered Vienna in state. The first time was in 1854,
+when she was a bride of seventeen, and then she rode in measureless
+pomp and with blare of music through a fluttering world of gay flags and
+decorations, down streets walled on both hands with a press of shouting
+and welcoming subjects; and the second time was last Wednesday, when she
+entered the city in her coffin and moved down the same streets in the
+dead of the night under swaying black flags, between packed human walls
+again; but everywhere was a deep stillness, now--a stillness emphasized,
+rather than broken, by the muffled hoofbeats of the long cavalcade over
+pavements cushioned with sand, and the low sobbing of gray-headed women
+who had witnessed the first entry forty-four years before, when she and
+they were young--and unaware!
+
+A character in Baron von Berger's recent fairy drama “Habsburg” tells
+about that first coming of the girlish Empress-Queen, and in his history
+draws a fine picture: I cannot make a close translation of it, but will
+try to convey the spirit of the verses:
+
+     I saw the stately pageant pass:
+     In her high place I saw the Empress-Queen:
+     I could not take my eyes away
+     From that fair vision, spirit-like and pure,
+     That rose serene, sublime, and figured to my sense
+     A noble Alp far lighted in the blue,
+     That in the flood of morning rends its veil of cloud
+     And stands a dream of glory to the gaze
+     Of them that in the Valley toil and plod.
+
+
+
+
+
+A SCRAP OF CURIOUS HISTORY
+
+Marion City, on the Mississippi River, in the State of Missouri--a
+village; time, 1845. La Bourboule-les-Bains, France--a village; time,
+the end of June, 1894. I was in the one village in that early time; I
+am in the other now. These times and places are sufficiently wide
+apart, yet today I have the strange sense of being thrust back into that
+Missourian village and of reliving certain stirring days that I lived
+there so long ago.
+
+Last Saturday night the life of the President of the French Republic
+was taken by an Italian assassin. Last night a mob surrounded our hotel,
+shouting, howling, singing the “Marseillaise,” and pelting our windows
+with sticks and stones; for we have Italian waiters, and the mob
+demanded that they be turned out of the house instantly--to be drubbed,
+and then driven out of the village. Everybody in the hotel remained up
+until far into the night, and experienced the several kinds of terror
+which one reads about in books which tell of night attacks by Italians
+and by French mobs: the growing roar of the oncoming crowd; the arrival,
+with rain of stones and a crash of glass; the withdrawal to rearrange
+plans--followed by a silence ominous, threatening, and harder to bear
+than even the active siege and the noise. The landlord and the two
+village policemen stood their ground, and at last the mob was
+persuaded to go away and leave our Italians in peace. Today four of
+the ringleaders have been sentenced to heavy punishment of a public
+sort--and are become local heroes, by consequence.
+
+That is the very mistake which was at first made in the Missourian
+village half a century ago. The mistake was repeated and repeated--just
+as France is doing in these latter months.
+
+In our village we had our Ravochals, our Henrys, our Vaillants; and in
+a humble way our Cesario--I hope I have spelled this name wrong. Fifty
+years ago we passed through, in all essentials, what France has been
+passing through during the past two or three years, in the matter of
+periodical frights, horrors, and shudderings.
+
+In several details the parallels are quaintly exact. In that day, for a
+man to speak out openly and proclaim himself an enemy of negro slavery
+was simply to proclaim himself a madman. For he was blaspheming against
+the holiest thing known to a Missourian, and could NOT be in his right
+mind. For a man to proclaim himself an anarchist in France, three years
+ago, was to proclaim himself a madman--he could not be in his right
+mind.
+
+Now the original old first blasphemer against any institution profoundly
+venerated by a community is quite sure to be in earnest; his followers
+and imitators may be humbugs and self-seekers, but he himself is
+sincere--his heart is in his protest.
+
+Robert Hardy was our first ABOLITIONIST--awful name! He was a journeyman
+cooper, and worked in the big cooper-shop belonging to the great
+pork-packing establishment which was Marion City's chief pride and sole
+source of prosperity. He was a New-Englander, a stranger. And, being a
+stranger, he was of course regarded as an inferior person--for that has
+been human nature from Adam down--and of course, also, he was made
+to feel unwelcome, for this is the ancient law with man and the other
+animals. Hardy was thirty years old, and a bachelor; pale, given to
+reverie and reading. He was reserved, and seemed to prefer the isolation
+which had fallen to his lot. He was treated to many side remarks by
+his fellows, but as he did not resent them it was decided that he was a
+coward.
+
+All of a sudden he proclaimed himself an abolitionist--straight out
+and publicly! He said that negro slavery was a crime, an infamy. For a
+moment the town was paralyzed with astonishment; then it broke into a
+fury of rage and swarmed toward the cooper-shop to lynch Hardy. But
+the Methodist minister made a powerful speech to them and stayed their
+hands. He proved to them that Hardy was insane and not responsible for
+his words; that no man COULD be sane and utter such words.
+
+So Hardy was saved. Being insane, he was allowed to go on talking.
+He was found to be good entertainment. Several nights running he made
+abolition speeches in the open air, and all the town flocked to hear and
+laugh. He implored them to believe him sane and sincere, and have pity
+on the poor slaves, and take measures for the restoration of their
+stolen rights, or in no long time blood would flow--blood, blood, rivers
+of blood!
+
+It was great fun. But all of a sudden the aspect of things changed. A
+slave came flying from Palmyra, the county-seat, a few miles back,
+and was about to escape in a canoe to Illinois and freedom in the dull
+twilight of the approaching dawn, when the town constable seized
+him. Hardy happened along and tried to rescue the negro; there was a
+struggle, and the constable did not come out of it alive. Hardy crossed
+the river with the negro, and then came back to give himself up. All
+this took time, for the Mississippi is not a French brook, like the
+Seine, the Loire, and those other rivulets, but is a real river nearly
+a mile wide. The town was on hand in force by now, but the Methodist
+preacher and the sheriff had already made arrangements in the interest
+of order; so Hardy was surrounded by a strong guard and safely conveyed
+to the village calaboose in spite of all the effort of the mob to get
+hold of him. The reader will have begun to perceive that this Methodist
+minister was a prompt man; a prompt man, with active hands and a good
+headpiece. Williams was his name--Damon Williams; Damon Williams in
+public, Damnation Williams in private, because he was so powerful on
+that theme and so frequent.
+
+The excitement was prodigious. The constable was the first man who
+had ever been killed in the town. The event was by long odds the most
+imposing in the town's history. It lifted the humble village into sudden
+importance; its name was in everybody's mouth for twenty miles around.
+And so was the name of Robert Hardy--Robert Hardy, the stranger, the
+despised. In a day he was become the person of most consequence in the
+region, the only person talked about. As to those other coopers, they
+found their position curiously changed--they were important people, or
+unimportant, now, in proportion as to how large or how small had been
+their intercourse with the new celebrity. The two or three who had
+really been on a sort of familiar footing with him found themselves
+objects of admiring interest with the public and of envy with their
+shopmates.
+
+The village weekly journal had lately gone into new hands. The new man
+was an enterprising fellow, and he made the most of the tragedy. He
+issued an extra. Then he put up posters promising to devote his whole
+paper to matters connected with the great event--there would be a full
+and intensely interesting biography of the murderer, and even a portrait
+of him. He was as good as his word. He carved the portrait himself, on
+the back of a wooden type--and a terror it was to look at. It made a
+great commotion, for this was the first time the village paper had ever
+contained a picture. The village was very proud. The output of the paper
+was ten times as great as it had ever been before, yet every copy was
+sold.
+
+When the trial came on, people came from all the farms around, and from
+Hannibal, and Quincy, and even from Keokuk; and the court-house could
+hold only a fraction of the crowd that applied for admission. The trial
+was published in the village paper, with fresh and still more trying
+pictures of the accused.
+
+Hardy was convicted, and hanged--a mistake. People came from miles
+around to see the hanging; they brought cakes and cider, also the women
+and children, and made a picnic of the matter. It was the largest crowd
+the village had ever seen. The rope that hanged Hardy was eagerly bought
+up, in inch samples, for everybody wanted a memento of the memorable
+event.
+
+Martyrdom gilded with notoriety has its fascinations. Within one week
+afterward four young lightweights in the village proclaimed themselves
+abolitionists! In life Hardy had not been able to make a convert;
+everybody laughed at him; but nobody could laugh at his legacy. The four
+swaggered around with their slouch-hats pulled down over their faces,
+and hinted darkly at awful possibilities. The people were troubled
+and afraid, and showed it. And they were stunned, too; they could
+not understand it. “Abolitionist” had always been a term of shame and
+horror; yet here were four young men who were not only not ashamed to
+bear that name, but were grimly proud of it. Respectable young men they
+were, too--of good families, and brought up in the church. Ed Smith, the
+printer's apprentice, nineteen, had been the head Sunday-school boy,
+and had once recited three thousand Bible verses without making a break.
+Dick Savage, twenty, the baker's apprentice; Will Joyce,
+twenty-two, journeyman blacksmith; and Henry Taylor, twenty-four,
+tobacco-stemmer--were the other three. They were all of a sentimental
+cast; they were all romance-readers; they all wrote poetry, such as
+it was; they were all vain and foolish; but they had never before been
+suspected of having anything bad in them.
+
+They withdrew from society, and grew more and more mysterious and
+dreadful. They presently achieved the distinction of being denounced by
+names from the pulpit--which made an immense stir! This was grandeur,
+this was fame. They were envied by all the other young fellows now. This
+was natural. Their company grew--grew alarmingly. They took a name. It
+was a secret name, and was divulged to no outsider; publicly they were
+simply the abolitionists. They had pass-words, grips, and signs; they
+had secret meetings; their initiations were conducted with gloomy pomps
+and ceremonies, at midnight.
+
+They always spoke of Hardy as “the Martyr,” and every little while
+they moved through the principal street in procession--at midnight,
+black-robed, masked, to the measured tap of the solemn drum--on
+pilgrimage to the Martyr's grave, where they went through with some
+majestic fooleries and swore vengeance upon his murderers. They gave
+previous notice of the pilgrimage by small posters, and warned everybody
+to keep indoors and darken all houses along the route, and leave the
+road empty. These warnings were obeyed, for there was a skull and
+crossbones at the top of the poster.
+
+When this kind of thing had been going on about eight weeks, a quite
+natural thing happened. A few men of character and grit woke up out of
+the nightmare of fear which had been stupefying their faculties, and
+began to discharge scorn and scoffings at themselves and the community
+for enduring this child's-play; and at the same time they proposed to
+end it straightway. Everybody felt an uplift; life was breathed into
+their dead spirits; their courage rose and they began to feel like
+men again. This was on a Saturday. All day the new feeling grew and
+strengthened; it grew with a rush; it brought inspiration and cheer with
+it. Midnight saw a united community, full of zeal and pluck, and with
+a clearly defined and welcome piece of work in front of it. The best
+organizer and strongest and bitterest talker on that great Saturday was
+the Presbyterian clergyman who had denounced the original four from his
+pulpit--Rev. Hiram Fletcher--and he promised to use his pulpit in the
+public interest again now. On the morrow he had revelations to make, he
+said--secrets of the dreadful society.
+
+But the revelations were never made. At half past two in the morning the
+dead silence of the village was broken by a crashing explosion, and
+the town patrol saw the preacher's house spring in a wreck of whirling
+fragments into the sky. The preacher was killed, together with a negro
+woman, his only slave and servant.
+
+The town was paralyzed again, and with reason. To struggle against a
+visible enemy is a thing worth while, and there is a plenty of men who
+stand always ready to undertake it; but to struggle against an invisible
+one--an invisible one who sneaks in and does his awful work in the dark
+and leaves no trace--that is another matter. That is a thing to make the
+bravest tremble and hold back.
+
+The cowed populace were afraid to go to the funeral. The man who was
+to have had a packed church to hear him expose and denounce the common
+enemy had but a handful to see him buried. The coroner's jury had
+brought in a verdict of “death by the visitation of God,” for no witness
+came forward; if any existed they prudently kept out of the way. Nobody
+seemed sorry. Nobody wanted to see the terrible secret society provoked
+into the commission of further outrages. Everybody wanted the tragedy
+hushed up, ignored, forgotten, if possible.
+
+And so there was a bitter surprise and an unwelcome one when Will
+Joyce, the blacksmith's journeyman, came out and proclaimed himself the
+assassin! Plainly he was not minded to be robbed of his glory. He made
+his proclamation, and stuck to it. Stuck to it, and insisted upon
+a trial. Here was an ominous thing; here was a new and peculiarly
+formidable terror, for a motive was revealed here which society could
+not hope to deal with successfully--VANITY, thirst for notoriety. If
+men were going to kill for notoriety's sake, and to win the glory of
+newspaper renown, a big trial, and a showy execution, what possible
+invention of man could discourage or deter them? The town was in a sort
+of panic; it did not know what to do.
+
+However, the grand jury had to take hold of the matter--it had no
+choice. It brought in a true bill, and presently the case went to the
+county court. The trial was a fine sensation. The prisoner was the
+principal witness for the prosecution. He gave a full account of the
+assassination; he furnished even the minutest particulars: how he
+deposited his keg of powder and laid his train--from the house to
+such-and-such a spot; how George Ronalds and Henry Hart came along just
+then, smoking, and he borrowed Hart's cigar and fired the train with it,
+shouting, “Down with all slave-tyrants!” and how Hart and Ronalds made
+no effort to capture him, but ran away, and had never come forward to
+testify yet.
+
+But they had to testify now, and they did--and pitiful it was to see
+how reluctant they were, and how scared. The crowded house listened to
+Joyce's fearful tale with a profound and breathless interest, and in a
+deep hush which was not broken till he broke it himself, in concluding,
+with a roaring repetition of his “Death to all slave-tyrants!”--which
+came so unexpectedly and so startlingly that it made everyone present
+catch his breath and gasp.
+
+The trial was put in the paper, with biography and large portrait,
+with other slanderous and insane pictures, and the edition sold beyond
+imagination.
+
+The execution of Joyce was a fine and picturesque thing. It drew a vast
+crowd. Good places in trees and seats on rail fences sold for half a
+dollar apiece; lemonade and gingerbread-stands had great prosperity.
+Joyce recited a furious and fantastic and denunciatory speech on the
+scaffold which had imposing passages of school-boy eloquence in it, and
+gave him a reputation on the spot as an orator, and his name, later,
+in the society's records, of the “Martyr Orator.” He went to his death
+breathing slaughter and charging his society to “avenge his murder.” If
+he knew anything of human nature he knew that to plenty of young fellows
+present in that great crowd he was a grand hero--and enviably situated.
+
+He was hanged. It was a mistake. Within a month from his death the
+society which he had honored had twenty new members, some of them
+earnest, determined men. They did not court distinction in the same way,
+but they celebrated his martyrdom. The crime which had been obscure and
+despised had become lofty and glorified.
+
+Such things were happening all over the country. Wild-brained martyrdom
+was succeeded by uprising and organization. Then, in natural order,
+followed riot, insurrection, and the wrack and restitutions of war. It
+was bound to come, and it would naturally come in that way. It has been
+the manner of reform since the beginning of the world.
+
+
+
+
+
+SWITZERLAND, THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY
+
+Interlaken, Switzerland, 1891.
+
+It is a good many years since I was in Switzerland last. In that remote
+time there was only one ladder railway in the country. That state of
+things is all changed. There isn't a mountain in Switzerland now that
+hasn't a ladder railroad or two up its back like suspenders; indeed,
+some mountains are latticed with them, and two years hence all will
+be. In that day the peasant of the high altitudes will have to carry a
+lantern when he goes visiting in the night to keep from stumbling over
+railroads that have been built since his last round. And also in that
+day, if there shall remain a high-altitude peasant whose potato-patch
+hasn't a railroad through it, it will make him as conspicuous as
+William Tell.
+
+However, there are only two best ways to travel through Switzerland. The
+first best is afoot. The second best is by open two-horse carriage. One
+can come from Lucerne to Interlaken over the Brunig by ladder railroad
+in an hour or so now, but you can glide smoothly in a carriage in ten,
+and have two hours for luncheon at noon--for luncheon, not for rest.
+There is no fatigue connected with the trip. One arrives fresh in spirit
+and in person in the evening--no fret in his heart, no grime on his
+face, no grit in his hair, not a cinder in his eye. This is the right
+condition of mind and body, the right and due preparation for the solemn
+event which closed the day--stepping with metaphorically uncovered head
+into the presence of the most impressive mountain mass that the globe
+can show--the Jungfrau. The stranger's first feeling, when suddenly
+confronted by that towering and awful apparition wrapped in its shroud
+of snow, is breath-taking astonishment. It is as if heaven's gates had
+swung open and exposed the throne.
+
+It is peaceful here and pleasant at Interlaken. Nothing going on--at
+least nothing but brilliant life-giving sunshine. There are floods and
+floods of that. One may properly speak of it as “going on,” for it is
+full of the suggestion of activity; the light pours down with energy,
+with visible enthusiasm. This is a good atmosphere to be in, morally
+as well as physically. After trying the political atmosphere of the
+neighboring monarchies, it is healing and refreshing to breathe in air that
+has known no taint of slavery for six hundred years, and to come among
+a people whose political history is great and fine, and worthy to be
+taught in all schools and studied by all races and peoples. For the
+struggle here throughout the centuries has not been in the interest of
+any private family, or any church, but in the interest of the whole body
+of the nation, and for shelter and protection of all forms of belief.
+This fact is colossal. If one would realize how colossal it is, and
+of what dignity and majesty, let him contrast it with the purposes and
+objects of the Crusades, the siege of York, the War of the Roses, and
+other historic comedies of that sort and size.
+
+Last week I was beating around the Lake of Four Cantons, and I saw Rutli
+and Altorf. Rutli is a remote little patch of a meadow, but I do not know
+how any piece of ground could be holier or better worth crossing oceans
+and continents to see, since it was there that the great trinity of
+Switzerland joined hands six centuries ago and swore the oath which set
+their enslaved and insulted country forever free; and Altorf is also
+honorable ground and worshipful, since it was there that William,
+surnamed Tell (which interpreted means “The foolish talker”--that is to
+say, the too-daring talker), refused to bow to Gessler's hat. Of late
+years the prying student of history has been delighting himself beyond
+measure over a wonderful find which he has made--to wit, that Tell did
+not shoot the apple from his son's head. To hear the students jubilate,
+one would suppose that the question of whether Tell shot the apple or
+didn't was an important matter; whereas it ranks in importance exactly
+with the question of whether Washington chopped down the cherry-tree or
+didn't. The deeds of Washington, the patriot, are the essential thing;
+the cherry-tree incident is of no consequence. To prove that Tell did
+shoot the apple from his son's head would merely prove that he had
+better nerve than most men and was as skillful with a bow as a million
+others who preceded and followed him, but not one whit more so. But Tell
+was more and better than a mere marksman, more and better than a mere
+cool head; he was a type; he stands for Swiss patriotism; in his person
+was represented a whole people; his spirit was their spirit--the spirit
+which would bow to none but God, the spirit which said this in words
+and confirmed it with deeds. There have always been Tells in
+Switzerland--people who would not bow. There was a sufficiency of them
+at Rutli; there were plenty of them at Murten; plenty at Grandson; there
+are plenty today. And the first of them all--the very first, earliest
+banner-bearer of human freedom in this world--was not a man, but a
+woman--Stauffacher's wife. There she looms dim and great, through the
+haze of the centuries, delivering into her husband's ear that gospel of
+revolt which was to bear fruit in the conspiracy of Rutli and the birth
+of the first free government the world had ever seen.
+
+From this Victoria Hotel one looks straight across a flat of trifling
+width to a lofty mountain barrier, which has a gateway in it shaped like
+an inverted pyramid. Beyond this gateway arises the vast bulk of the
+Jungfrau, a spotless mass of gleaming snow, into the sky. The gateway,
+in the dark-colored barrier, makes a strong frame for the great picture.
+The somber frame and the glowing snow-pile are startlingly contrasted.
+It is this frame which concentrates and emphasizes the glory of the
+Jungfrau and makes it the most engaging and beguiling and fascinating
+spectacle that exists on the earth. There are many mountains of snow
+that are as lofty as the Jungfrau and as nobly proportioned, but they
+lack the frame. They stand at large; they are intruded upon and elbowed
+by neighboring domes and summits, and their grandeur is diminished and
+fails of effect.
+
+It is a good name, Jungfrau--Virgin. Nothing could be whiter; nothing
+could be purer; nothing could be saintlier of aspect. At six yesterday
+evening the great intervening barrier seen through a faint bluish
+haze seemed made of air and substanceless, so soft and rich it was, so
+shimmering where the wandering lights touched it and so dim where the
+shadows lay. Apparently it was a dream stuff, a work of the imagination,
+nothing real about it. The tint was green, slightly varying shades of
+it, but mainly very dark. The sun was down--as far as that barrier was
+concerned, but not for the Jungfrau, towering into the heavens beyond
+the gateway. She was a roaring conflagration of blinding white.
+
+It is said the Fridolin (the old Fridolin), a new saint, but formerly a
+missionary, gave the mountain its gracious name. He was an Irishman, son
+of an Irish king--there were thirty thousand kings reigning in County
+Cork alone in his time, fifteen hundred years ago. It got so that they
+could not make a living, there was so much competition and wages got cut
+so. Some of them were out of work months at a time, with wife and little
+children to feed, and not a crust in the place. At last a particularly
+severe winter fell upon the country, and hundreds of them were reduced
+to mendicancy and were to be seen day after day in the bitterest
+weather, standing barefoot in the snow, holding out their crowns for
+alms. Indeed, they would have been obliged to emigrate or starve but for
+a fortunate idea of Prince Fridolin's, who started a labor-union, the
+first one in history, and got the great bulk of them to join it. He thus
+won the general gratitude, and they wanted to make him emperor--emperor
+over them all--emperor of County Cork, but he said, No, walking delegate
+was good enough for him. For behold! he was modest beyond his years,
+and keen as a whip. To this day in Germany and Switzerland, where
+St. Fridolin is revered and honored, the peasantry speak of him
+affectionately as the first walking delegate.
+
+The first walk he took was into France and Germany, missionarying--for
+missionarying was a better thing in those days than it is in ours. All
+you had to do was to cure the head savage's sick daughter by a “miracle”--a
+miracle like the miracle of Lourdes in our day, for instance--and
+immediately that head savage was your convert, and filled to the eyes
+with a new convert's enthusiasm. You could sit down and make yourself
+easy, now. He would take an ax and convert the rest of the nation
+himself. Charlemagne was that kind of a walking delegate.
+
+Yes, there were great missionaries in those days, for the methods were
+sure and the rewards great. We have no such missionaries now, and no
+such methods.
+
+But to continue the history of the first walking delegate, if you are
+interested. I am interested myself because I have seen his relics in
+Sackingen, and also the very spot where he worked his great miracle--the
+one which won him his sainthood in the papal court a few centuries
+later. To have seen these things makes me feel very near to him,
+almost like a member of the family, in fact. While wandering about the
+Continent he arrived at the spot on the Rhine which is now occupied by
+Sackingen, and proposed to settle there, but the people warned him off.
+He appealed to the king of the Franks, who made him a present of the
+whole region, people and all. He built a great cloister there for women
+and proceeded to teach in it and accumulate more land. There were two
+wealthy brothers in the neighborhood, Urso and Landulph. Urso died and
+Fridolin claimed his estates. Landulph asked for documents and papers.
+Fridolin had none to show. He said the bequest had been made to him by
+word of mouth. Landulph suggested that he produce a witness and said
+it in a way which he thought was very witty, very sarcastic. This shows
+that he did not know the walking delegate. Fridolin was not disturbed.
+He said:
+
+“Appoint your court. I will bring a witness.”
+
+The court thus created consisted of fifteen counts and barons. A day was
+appointed for the trial of the case. On that day the judges took their
+seats in state, and proclamation was made that the court was ready for
+business. Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes passed, and yet
+no Fridolin appeared. Landulph rose, and was in the act of claiming
+judgment by default when a strange clacking sound was heard coming up
+the stairs. In another moment Fridolin entered at the door and came
+walking in a deep hush down the middle aisle, with a tall skeleton
+stalking in his rear.
+
+Amazement and terror sat upon every countenance, for everybody suspected
+that the skeleton was Urso's. It stopped before the chief judge and
+raised its bony arm aloft and began to speak, while all the assembly
+shuddered, for they could see the words leak out between its ribs. It
+said:
+
+“Brother, why dost thou disturb my blessed rest and withhold by robbery
+the gift which I gave thee for the honor of God?”
+
+It seems a strange thing and most irregular, but the verdict was
+actually given against Landulph on the testimony of this wandering
+rack-heap of unidentified bones. In our day a skeleton would not be
+allowed to testify at all, for a skeleton has no moral responsibility,
+and its word could not be believed on oath, and this was probably one
+of them. Most skeletons are not to be believed on oath, and this was
+probably one of them. However, the incident is valuable as preserving
+to us a curious sample of the quaint laws of evidence of that remote
+time--a time so remote, so far back toward the beginning of original
+idiocy, that the difference between a bench of judges and a basket of
+vegetables was as yet so slight that we may say with all confidence
+that it didn't really exist.
+
+During several afternoons I have been engaged in an interesting, maybe
+useful, piece of work--that is to say, I have been trying to make the
+mighty Jungfrau earn her living--earn it in a most humble sphere, but on
+a prodigious scale, on a prodigious scale of necessity, for she couldn't
+do anything in a small way with her size and style. I have been trying
+to make her do service on a stupendous dial and check off the hours as
+they glide along her pallid face up there against the sky, and tell the
+time of day to the populations lying within fifty miles of her and to
+the people in the moon, if they have a good telescope there.
+
+Until late in the afternoon the Jungfrau's aspect is that of a spotless
+desert of snow set upon edge against the sky. But by mid-afternoon some
+elevations which rise out of the western border of the desert, whose
+presence you perhaps had not detected or suspected up to that time,
+began to cast black shadows eastward across the gleaming surface. At
+first there is only one shadow; later there are two. Toward 4 P.M. the
+other day I was gazing and worshiping as usual when I chanced to notice
+that shadow No. 1 was beginning to take itself something of the shape of
+the human profile. By four the back of the head was good, the military
+cap was pretty good, the nose was bold and strong, the upper lip
+sharp, but not pretty, and there was a great goatee that shot straight
+aggressively forward from the chin.
+
+At four-thirty the nose had changed its shape considerably, and the
+altered slant of the sun had revealed and made conspicuous a huge
+buttress or barrier of naked rock which was so located as to answer
+very well for a shoulder or coat-collar to this swarthy and indiscreet
+sweetheart who had stolen out there right before everybody to pillow his
+head on the Virgin's white breast and whisper soft sentimentalities to
+her in the sensuous music of the crashing ice-domes and the boom and
+thunder of the passing avalanche--music very familiar to his ear, for
+he has heard it every afternoon at this hour since the day he first came
+courting this child of the earth, who lives in the sky, and that day
+is far, yes--for he was at this pleasant sport before the Middle Ages
+drifted by him in the valley; before the Romans marched past, and
+before the antique and recordless barbarians fished and hunted here and
+wondered who he might be, and were probably afraid of him; and before
+primeval man himself, just emerged from his four-footed estate, stepped
+out upon this plain, first sample of his race, a thousand centuries ago,
+and cast a glad eye up there, judging he had found a brother human being
+and consequently something to kill; and before the big saurians wallowed
+here, still some eons earlier. Oh yes, a day so far back that the
+eternal son was present to see that first visit; a day so far back that
+neither tradition nor history was born yet and a whole weary eternity
+must come and go before the restless little creature, of whose face this
+stupendous Shadow Face was the prophecy, would arrive in the earth and
+begin his shabby career and think it a big thing. Oh, indeed yes;
+when you talk about your poor Roman and Egyptian day-before-yesterday
+antiquities, you should choose a time when the hoary Shadow Face of the
+Jungfrau is not by. It antedates all antiquities known or imaginable;
+for it was here the world itself created the theater of future
+antiquities. And it is the only witness with a human face that was there
+to see the marvel, and remains to us a memorial of it.
+
+By 4:40 P.M. the nose of the shadow is perfect and is beautiful. It is
+black and is powerfully marked against the upright canvas of glowing
+snow, and covers hundreds of acres of that resplendent surface.
+
+Meantime shadow No. 2 has been creeping out well to the rear of the face
+west of it--and at five o'clock has assumed a shape that has rather a
+poor and rude semblance of a shoe.
+
+Meantime, also, the great Shadow Face has been gradually changing for
+twenty minutes, and now, 5 P.M., it is becoming a quite fair portrait of
+Roscoe Conkling. The likeness is there, and is unmistakable. The goatee
+is shortened, now, and has an end; formerly it hadn't any, but ran off
+eastward and arrived nowhere.
+
+By 6 P.M. the face has dissolved and gone, and the goatee has become
+what looks like the shadow of a tower with a pointed roof, and the shoe
+had turned into what the printers call a “fist” with a finger pointing.
+
+If I were now imprisoned on a mountain summit a hundred miles northward
+of this point, and was denied a timepiece, I could get along well enough
+from four till six on clear days, for I could keep trace of the time by
+the changing shapes of these mighty shadows on the Virgin's front, the
+most stupendous dial I am acquainted with, the oldest clock in the world
+by a couple of million years.
+
+I suppose I should not have noticed the forms of the shadows if I hadn't
+the habit of hunting for faces in the clouds and in mountain crags--a
+sort of amusement which is very entertaining even when you don't find
+any, and brilliantly satisfying when you do. I have searched through
+several bushels of photographs of the Jungfrau here, but found only one
+with the Face in it, and in this case it was not strictly recognizable
+as a face, which was evidence that the picture was taken before four
+o'clock in the afternoon, and also evidence that all the photographers
+have persistently overlooked one of the most fascinating features of
+the Jungfrau show. I say fascinating, because if you once detect a human
+face produced on a great plan by unconscious nature, you never get tired
+of watching it. At first you can't make another person see it at all,
+but after he has made it out once he can't see anything else afterward.
+
+The King of Greece is a man who goes around quietly enough when off
+duty. One day this summer he was traveling in an ordinary first-class
+compartment, just in his other suit, the one which he works the realm
+in when he is at home, and so he was not looking like anybody in
+particular, but a good deal like everybody in general. By and by a
+hearty and healthy German-American got in and opened up a frank and
+interesting and sympathetic conversation with him, and asked him a
+couple of thousand questions about himself, which the king answered
+good-naturedly, but in a more or less indefinite way as to private
+particulars.
+
+“Where do you live when you are at home?”
+
+“In Greece.”
+
+“Greece! Well, now, that is just astonishing! Born there?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Do you speak Greek?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Now, ain't that strange! I never expected to live to see that. What
+is your trade? I mean how do you get your living? What is your line of
+business?”
+
+“Well, I hardly know how to answer. I am only a kind of foreman, on a
+salary; and the business--well, is a very general kind of business.”
+
+“Yes, I understand--general jobbing--little of everything--anything that
+there's money in.”
+
+“That's about it, yes.”
+
+“Are you traveling for the house now?”
+
+“Well, partly; but not entirely. Of course I do a stroke of business if
+it falls in the way--”
+
+“Good! I like that in you! That's me every time. Go on.”
+
+“I was only going to say I am off on my vacation now.”
+
+“Well that's all right. No harm in that. A man works all the better
+for a little let-up now and then. Not that I've been used to having it
+myself; for I haven't. I reckon this is my first. I was born in Germany,
+and when I was a couple of weeks old shipped for America, and I've been
+there ever since, and that's sixty-four years by the watch. I'm
+an American in principle and a German at heart, and it's the boss
+combination. Well, how do you get along, as a rule--pretty fair?”
+
+“I've a rather large family--”
+
+“There, that's it--big family and trying to raise them on a salary. Now,
+what did you go to do that for?”
+
+“Well, I thought--”
+
+“Of course you did. You were young and confident and thought you could
+branch out and make things go with a whirl, and here you are, you see!
+But never mind about that. I'm not trying to discourage you. Dear me!
+I've been just where you are myself! You've got good grit; there's good
+stuff in you, I can see that. You got a wrong start, that's the whole
+trouble. But you hold your grip, and we'll see what can be done. Your
+case ain't half as bad as it might be. You are going to come out all
+right--I'm bail for that. Boys and girls?”
+
+“My family? Yes, some of them are boys--”
+
+“And the rest girls. It's just as I expected. But that's all right, and
+it's better so, anyway. What are the boys doing--learning a trade?”
+
+“Well, no--I thought--”
+
+“It's a great mistake. It's the biggest mistake you ever made. You see
+that in your own case. A man ought always to have a trade to fall back
+on. Now, I was harness-maker at first. Did that prevent me from becoming
+one of the biggest brewers in America? Oh no. I always had the harness
+trick to fall back on in rough weather. Now, if you had learned how to
+make harness--However, it's too late now; too late. But it's no good
+plan to cry over spilt milk. But as to the boys, you see--what's to
+become of them if anything happens to you?”
+
+“It has been my idea to let the eldest one succeed me--”
+
+“Oh, come! Suppose the firm don't want him?”
+
+“I hadn't thought of that, but--”
+
+“Now, look here; you want to get right down to business and stop
+dreaming. You are capable of immense things--man. You can make a perfect
+success in life. All you want is somebody to steady you and boost you
+along on the right road. Do you own anything in the business?”
+
+“No--not exactly; but if I continue to give satisfaction, I suppose I
+can keep my--”
+
+“Keep your place--yes. Well, don't you depend on anything of the kind.
+They'll bounce you the minute you get a little old and worked out;
+they'll do it sure. Can't you manage somehow to get into the firm?
+That's the great thing, you know.”
+
+“I think it is doubtful; very doubtful.”
+
+“Um--that's bad--yes, and unfair, too. Do you suppose that if I should
+go there and have a talk with your people--Look here--do you think you
+could run a brewery?”
+
+“I have never tried, but I think I could do it after I got a little
+familiarity with the business.”
+
+The German was silent for some time. He did a good deal of thinking,
+and the king waited with curiosity to see what the result was going to be.
+Finally the German said:
+
+“My mind's made up. You leave that crowd--you'll never amount to
+anything there. In these old countries they never give a fellow a show.
+Yes, you come over to America--come to my place in Rochester; bring the
+family along. You shall have a show in the business and the foremanship,
+besides. George--you said your name was George?--I'll make a man of you.
+I give you my word. You've never had a chance here, but that's all going
+to change. By gracious! I'll give you a lift that'll make your hair
+curl!”
+
+
+
+
+
+AT THE SHRINE OF ST. WAGNER
+
+Bayreuth, Aug. 2d, 1891
+
+It was at Nuremberg that we struck the inundation of music-mad strangers
+that was rolling down upon Bayreuth. It had been long since we had
+seen such multitudes of excited and struggling people. It took a good
+half-hour to pack them and pair them into the train--and it was the
+longest train we have yet seen in Europe. Nuremberg had been witnessing
+this sort of experience a couple of times a day for about two weeks.
+It gives one an impressive sense of the magnitude of this biennial
+pilgrimage. For a pilgrimage is what it is. The devotees come from the
+very ends of the earth to worship their prophet in his own Kaaba in his
+own Mecca.
+
+If you are living in New York or San Francisco or Chicago or anywhere
+else in America, and you conclude, by the middle of May, that you would
+like to attend the Bayreuth opera two months and a half later, you must
+use the cable and get about it immediately or you will get no seats,
+and you must cable for lodgings, too. Then if you are lucky you will
+get seats in the last row and lodgings in the fringe of the town. If
+you stop to write you will get nothing. There were plenty of people
+in Nuremberg when we passed through who had come on pilgrimage without
+first securing seats and lodgings. They had found neither in Bayreuth;
+they had walked Bayreuth streets a while in sorrow, then had gone to
+Nuremberg and found neither beds nor standing room, and had walked those
+quaint streets all night, waiting for the hotels to open and empty their
+guests into the trains, and so make room for these, their defeated brethren
+and sisters in the faith. They had endured from thirty to forty hours'
+railroading on the continent of Europe--with all which that implies of
+worry, fatigue, and financial impoverishment--and all they had got
+and all they were to get for it was handiness and accuracy in kicking
+themselves, acquired by practice in the back streets of the two
+towns when other people were in bed; for back they must go over
+that unspeakable journey with their pious mission unfulfilled. These
+humiliated outcasts had the frowsy and unbrushed and apologetic look of
+wet cats, and their eyes were glazed with drowsiness, their bodies were
+adroop from crown to sole, and all kind-hearted people refrained from
+asking them if they had been to Bayreuth and failed to connect, as
+knowing they would lie.
+
+We reached here (Bayreuth) about mid-afternoon of a rainy Saturday. We
+were of the wise, and had secured lodgings and opera seats months in
+advance.
+
+I am not a musical critic, and did not come here to write essays about
+the operas and deliver judgment upon their merits. The little
+children of Bayreuth could do that with a finer sympathy and a broader
+intelligence than I. I only care to bring four or five pilgrims to the
+operas, pilgrims able to appreciate them and enjoy them. What I write
+about the performance to put in my odd time would be offered to the
+public as merely a cat's view of a king, and not of didactic value.
+
+Next day, which was Sunday, we left for the opera-house--that is to say,
+the Wagner temple--a little after the middle of the afternoon. The
+great building stands all by itself, grand and lonely, on a high ground
+outside the town. We were warned that if we arrived after four o'clock
+we should be obliged to pay two dollars and a half apiece extra by way of
+fine. We saved that; and it may be remarked here that this is the only
+opportunity that Europe offers of saving money. There was a big crowd
+in the grounds about the building, and the ladies' dresses took the sun
+with fine effect. I do not mean to intimate that the ladies were in full
+dress, for that was not so. The dresses were pretty, but neither sex was
+in evening dress.
+
+The interior of the building is simple--severely so; but there is no
+occasion for color and decoration, since the people sit in the dark.
+The auditorium has the shape of a keystone, with the stage at the narrow
+end. There is an aisle on each side, but no aisle in the body of the
+house. Each row of seats extends in an unbroken curve from one side of
+the house to the other. There are seven entrance doors on each side of
+the theater and four at the butt, eighteen doors to admit and emit 1,650
+persons. The number of the particular door by which you are to enter the
+house or leave it is printed on your ticket, and you can use no door but
+that one. Thus, crowding and confusion are impossible. Not so many as
+a hundred people use any one door. This is better than having the usual
+(and useless) elaborate fireproof arrangements. It is the model theater
+of the world. It can be emptied while the second hand of a watch makes
+its circuit. It would be entirely safe, even if it were built of lucifer
+matches.
+
+If your seat is near the center of a row and you enter late you must
+work your way along a rank of about twenty-five ladies and gentlemen to
+get to it. Yet this causes no trouble, for everybody stands up until
+all the seats are full, and the filling is accomplished in a very few
+minutes. Then all sit down, and you have a solid mass of fifteen hundred
+heads, making a steep cellar-door slant from the rear of the house down
+to the stage.
+
+All the lights were turned low, so low that the congregation sat in a
+deep and solemn gloom. The funereal rustling of dresses and the low buzz
+of conversation began to die swiftly down, and presently not the ghost
+of a sound was left. This profound and increasingly impressive stillness
+endured for some time--the best preparation for music, spectacle, or
+speech conceivable. I should think our show people would have invented
+or imported that simple and impressive device for securing and
+solidifying the attention of an audience long ago; instead of which
+they continue to this day to open a performance against a deadly
+competition in the form of noise, confusion, and a scattered interest.
+
+Finally, out of darkness and distance and mystery soft rich notes rose
+upon the stillness, and from his grave the dead magician began to
+weave his spells about his disciples and steep their souls in his
+enchantments. There was something strangely impressive in the fancy
+which kept intruding itself that the composer was conscious in his grave
+of what was going on here, and that these divine sounds were the clothing
+of thoughts which were at this moment passing through his brain, and
+not recognized and familiar ones which had issued from it at some former
+time.
+
+The entire overture, long as it was, was played to a dark house with
+the curtain down. It was exquisite; it was delicious. But straightway
+thereafter, of course, came the singing, and it does seem to me that
+nothing can make a Wagner opera absolutely perfect and satisfactory to
+the untutored but to leave out the vocal parts. I wish I could see a
+Wagner opera done in pantomime once. Then one would have the lovely
+orchestration unvexed to listen to and bathe his spirit in, and the
+bewildering beautiful scenery to intoxicate his eyes with, and the dumb
+acting couldn't mar these pleasures, because there isn't often anything
+in the Wagner opera that one would call by such a violent name as
+acting; as a rule all you would see would be a couple of silent people,
+one of them standing still, the other catching flies. Of course I do not
+really mean that he would be catching flies; I only mean that the usual
+operatic gestures which consist in reaching first one hand out into
+the air and then the other might suggest the sport I speak of if the
+operator attended strictly to business and uttered no sound.
+
+This present opera was “Parsifal.” Madame Wagner does not permit its
+representation anywhere but in Bayreuth. The first act of the three
+occupied two hours, and I enjoyed that in spite of the singing.
+
+I trust that I know as well as anybody that singing is one of the most
+entrancing and bewitching and moving and eloquent of all the vehicles
+invented by man for the conveying of feeling; but it seems to me that
+the chief virtue in song is melody, air, tune, rhythm, or what you
+please to call it, and that when this feature is absent what remains is
+a picture with the color left out. I was not able to detect in the vocal
+parts of “Parsifal” anything that might with confidence be called rhythm
+or tune or melody; one person performed at a time--and a long time,
+too--often in a noble, and always in a high-toned, voice; but he only
+pulled out long notes, then some short ones, then another long one, then
+a sharp, quick, peremptory bark or two--and so on and so on; and when
+he was done you saw that the information which he had conveyed had not
+compensated for the disturbance. Not always, but pretty often. If two of
+them would but put in a duet occasionally and blend the voices; but no,
+they don't do that. The great master, who knew so well how to make
+a hundred instruments rejoice in unison and pour out their souls in
+mingled and melodious tides of delicious sound, deals only in barren
+solos when he puts in the vocal parts. It may be that he was deep, and
+only added the singing to his operas for the sake of the contrast it
+would make with the music. Singing! It does seem the wrong name to
+apply to it. Strictly described, it is a practicing of difficult and
+unpleasant intervals, mainly. An ignorant person gets tired of listening
+to gymnastic intervals in the long run, no matter how pleasant they may
+be. In “Parsifal” there is a hermit named Gurnemanz who stands on the
+stage in one spot and practices by the hour, while first one and then
+another character of the cast endures what he can of it and then retires
+to die.
+
+During the evening there was an intermission of three-quarters of an
+hour after the first act and one an hour long after the second. In both
+instances the theater was totally emptied. People who had previously
+engaged tables in the one sole eating-house were able to put in their
+time very satisfactorily; the other thousand went hungry. The opera was
+concluded at ten in the evening or a little later. When we reached home
+we had been gone more than seven hours. Seven hours at five dollars a
+ticket is almost too much for the money.
+
+While browsing about the front yard among the crowd between the acts I
+encountered twelve or fifteen friends from different parts of America,
+and those of them who were most familiar with Wagner said that
+“Parsifal” seldom pleased at first, but that after one had heard
+it several times it was almost sure to become a favorite. It seemed
+impossible, but it was true, for the statement came from people whose
+word was not to be doubted.
+
+And I gathered some further information. On the ground I found part of
+a German musical magazine, and in it a letter written by Uhlic
+thirty-three years ago, in which he defends the scorned and abused
+Wagner against people like me, who found fault with the comprehensive
+absence of what our kind regards as singing. Uhlic says Wagner despised
+“JENE PLAPPERUDE MUSIC,” and therefore “runs, trills, and SCHNORKEL are
+discarded by him.” I don't know what a SCHNORKEL is, but now that I know
+it has been left out of these operas I never have missed so much in
+my life. And Uhlic further says that Wagner's song is true: that it
+is “simply emphasized intoned speech.” That certainly describes it--in
+“Parsifal” and some of the other operas; and if I understand Uhlic's elaborate
+German he apologizes for the beautiful airs in “Tannhauser.” Very well;
+now that Wagner and I understand each other, perhaps we shall get along
+better, and I shall stop calling Waggner, on the American plan, and
+thereafter call him Waggner as per German custom, for I feel entirely
+friendly now. The minute we get reconciled to a person, how willing
+we are to throw aside little needless punctilios and pronounce his name
+right!
+
+Of course I came home wondering why people should come from all corners
+of America to hear these operas, when we have lately had a season or two
+of them in New York with these same singers in the several parts,
+and possibly this same orchestra. I resolved to think that out at all
+hazards.
+
+TUESDAY.--Yesterday they played the only operatic favorite I have ever
+had--an opera which has always driven me mad with ignorant delight
+whenever I have heard it--“Tannhauser.” I heard it first when I was a
+youth; I heard it last in the last German season in New York. I was
+busy yesterday and I did not intend to go, knowing I should have another
+“Tannhauser” opportunity in a few days; but after five o'clock I found
+myself free and walked out to the opera-house and arrived about the
+beginning of the second act. My opera ticket admitted me to the grounds
+in front, past the policeman and the chain, and I thought I would take a
+rest on a bench for an hour and two and wait for the third act.
+
+In a moment or so the first bugles blew, and the multitude began to
+crumble apart and melt into the theater. I will explain that this
+bugle-call is one of the pretty features here. You see, the theater
+is empty, and hundreds of the audience are a good way off in the
+feeding-house; the first bugle-call is blown about a quarter of an
+hour before time for the curtain to rise. This company of buglers, in
+uniform, march out with military step and send out over the landscape
+a few bars of the theme of the approaching act, piercing the distances
+with the gracious notes; then they march to the other entrance and
+repeat. Presently they do this over again. Yesterday only about two
+hundred people were still left in front of the house when the second
+call was blown; in another half-minute they would have been in the
+house, but then a thing happened which delayed them--the only solitary
+thing in this world which could be relied on with certainty to
+accomplish this, I suppose--an imperial princess appeared in the balcony
+above them. They stopped dead in their tracks and began to gaze in a
+stupor of gratitude and satisfaction. The lady presently saw that she
+must disappear or the doors would be closed upon these worshipers, so
+she returned to her box. This daughter-in-law of an emperor was pretty;
+she had a kind face; she was without airs; she is known to be full of
+common human sympathies. There are many kinds of princesses, but this
+kind is the most harmful of all, for wherever they go they reconcile
+people to monarchy and set back the clock of progress. The valuable
+princes, the desirable princes, are the czars and their sort. By their
+mere dumb presence in the world they cover with derision every argument
+that can be invented in favor of royalty by the most ingenious casuist.
+In his time the husband of this princess was valuable. He led a degraded
+life, he ended it with his own hand in circumstances and surroundings of
+a hideous sort, and was buried like a god.
+
+In the opera-house there is a long loft back of the audience, a kind of
+open gallery, in which princes are displayed. It is sacred to them;
+it is the holy of holies. As soon as the filling of the house is
+about complete the standing multitude turn and fix their eyes upon
+the princely layout and gaze mutely and longingly and adoringly
+and regretfully like sinners looking into heaven. They become rapt,
+unconscious, steeped in worship. There is no spectacle anywhere that is
+more pathetic than this. It is worth crossing many oceans to see. It
+is somehow not the same gaze that people rivet upon a Victor Hugo,
+or Niagara, or the bones of the mastodon, or the guillotine of the
+Revolution, or the great pyramid, or distant Vesuvius smoking in the
+sky, or any man long celebrated to you by his genius and achievements,
+or thing long celebrated to you by the praises of books and
+pictures--no, that gaze is only the gaze of intense curiosity, interest,
+wonder, engaged in drinking delicious deep draughts that taste good all
+the way down and appease and satisfy the thirst of a lifetime. Satisfy
+it--that is the word. Hugo and the mastodon will still have a degree
+of intense interest thereafter when encountered, but never anything
+approaching the ecstasy of that first view. The interest of a prince is
+different. It may be envy, it may be worship, doubtless it is a mixture
+of both--and it does not satisfy its thirst with one view, or even
+noticeably diminish it. Perhaps the essence of the thing is the value
+which men attach to a valuable something which has come by luck and not
+been earned. A dollar picked up in the road is more satisfaction to you
+than the ninety-and-nine which you had to work for, and money won at
+faro or in stocks snuggles into your heart in the same way. A prince
+picks up grandeur, power, and a permanent holiday and gratis support by
+a pure accident, the accident of birth, and he stands always before
+the grieved eye of poverty and obscurity a monumental representative of
+luck. And then--supremest value of all-his is the only high fortune
+on the earth which is secure. The commercial millionaire may become
+a beggar; the illustrious statesman can make a vital mistake and be
+dropped and forgotten; the illustrious general can lose a decisive
+battle and with it the consideration of men; but once a prince always a
+prince--that is to say, an imitation god, and neither hard fortune nor
+an infamous character nor an addled brain nor the speech of an ass can
+undeify him. By common consent of all the nations and all the ages the
+most valuable thing in this world is the homage of men, whether deserved
+or undeserved. It follows without doubt or question, then, that the most
+desirable position possible is that of a prince. And I think it also
+follows that the so-called usurpations with which history is littered
+are the most excusable misdemeanors which men have committed. To usurp a
+usurpation--that is all it amounts to, isn't it?
+
+A prince is not to us what he is to a European, of course. We have
+not been taught to regard him as a god, and so one good look at him is
+likely to so nearly appease our curiosity as to make him an object of
+no greater interest the next time. We want a fresh one. But it is not so
+with the European. I am quite sure of it. The same old one will answer;
+he never stales. Eighteen years ago I was in London and I called at an
+Englishman's house on a bleak and foggy and dismal December afternoon
+to visit his wife and married daughter by appointment. I waited half an
+hour and then they arrived, frozen. They explained that they had
+been delayed by an unlooked-for circumstance: while passing in the
+neighborhood of Marlborough House they saw a crowd gathering and were
+told that the Prince of Wales was about to drive out, so they stopped
+to get a sight of him. They had waited half an hour on the sidewalk,
+freezing with the crowd, but were disappointed at last--the Prince had
+changed his mind. I said, with a good deal of surprise, “Is it possible
+that you two have lived in London all your lives and have never seen the
+Prince of Wales?”
+
+Apparently it was their turn to be surprised, for they exclaimed: “What
+an idea! Why, we have seen him hundreds of times.”
+
+They had seen him hundreds of times, yet they had waited half an hour
+in the gloom and the bitter cold, in the midst of a jam of patients from
+the same asylum, on the chance of seeing him again. It was a stupefying
+statement, but one is obliged to believe the English, even when they say
+a thing like that. I fumbled around for a remark, and got out this one:
+
+“I can't understand it at all. If I had never seen General Grant I doubt
+if I would do that even to get a sight of him.” With a slight emphasis
+on the last word.
+
+Their blank faces showed that they wondered where the parallel came in.
+Then they said, blankly: “Of course not. He is only a President.”
+
+It is doubtless a fact that a prince is a permanent interest, an
+interest not subject to deterioration. The general who was never
+defeated, the general who never held a council of war, the only general
+who ever commanded a connected battle-front twelve hundred miles long,
+the smith who welded together the broken parts of a great republic and
+re-established it where it is quite likely to outlast all the monarchies
+present and to come, was really a person of no serious consequence to
+these people. To them, with their training, my General was only a man,
+after all, while their Prince was clearly much more than that--a being
+of a wholly unsimilar construction and constitution, and being of no
+more blood and kinship with men than are the serene eternal lights of
+the firmament with the poor dull tallow candles of commerce that sputter
+and die and leave nothing behind but a pinch of ashes and a stink.
+
+I saw the last act of “Tannhauser.” I sat in the gloom and the deep
+stillness, waiting--one minute, two minutes, I do not know exactly how
+long--then the soft music of the hidden orchestra began to breathe its
+rich, long sighs out from under the distant stage, and by and by the
+drop-curtain parted in the middle and was drawn softly aside, disclosing
+the twilighted wood and a wayside shrine, with a white-robed girl
+praying and a man standing near. Presently that noble chorus of men's
+voices was heard approaching, and from that moment until the closing
+of the curtain it was music, just music--music to make one drunk with
+pleasure, music to make one take scrip and staff and beg his way round
+the globe to hear it.
+
+To such as are intending to come here in the Wagner season next year I
+wish to say, bring your dinner-pail with you. If you do, you will never
+cease to be thankful. If you do not, you will find it a hard fight to
+save yourself from famishing in Bayreuth. Bayreuth is merely a large
+village, and has no very large hotels or eating-houses. The principal
+inns are the Golden Anchor and the Sun. At either of these places you
+can get an excellent meal--no, I mean you can go there and see other
+people get it. There is no charge for this. The town is littered with
+restaurants, but they are small and bad, and they are overdriven with
+custom. You must secure a table hours beforehand, and often when you
+arrive you will find somebody occupying it. We have had this experience.
+We have had a daily scramble for life; and when I say we, I include
+shoals of people. I have the impression that the only people who do
+not have to scramble are the veterans--the disciples who have been here
+before and know the ropes. I think they arrive about a week before the
+first opera, and engage all the tables for the season. My tribe had
+tried all kinds of places--some outside of the town, a mile or two--and
+have captured only nibblings and odds and ends, never in any instance
+a complete and satisfying meal. Digestible? No, the reverse. These odds
+and ends are going to serve as souvenirs of Bayreuth, and in that regard
+their value is not to be overestimated. Photographs fade, bric-a-brac
+gets lost, busts of Wagner get broken, but once you absorb a
+Bayreuth-restaurant meal it is your possession and your property until
+the time comes to embalm the rest of you. Some of these pilgrims here
+become, in effect, cabinets; cabinets of souvenirs of Bayreuth. It is
+believed among scientists that you could examine the crop of a dead
+Bayreuth pilgrim anywhere in the earth and tell where he came from.
+But I like this ballast. I think a “Hermitage” scrap-up at eight in the
+evening, when all the famine-breeders have been there and laid in their
+mementoes and gone, is the quietest thing you can lay on your keelson
+except gravel.
+
+THURSDAY.--They keep two teams of singers in stock for the chief roles,
+and one of these is composed of the most renowned artists in the
+world, with Materna and Alvary in the lead. I suppose a double team is
+necessary; doubtless a single team would die of exhaustion in a week,
+for all the plays last from four in the afternoon till ten at night.
+Nearly all the labor falls upon the half-dozen head singers, and
+apparently they are required to furnish all the noise they can for
+the money. If they feel a soft, whispery, mysterious feeling they are
+required to open out and let the public know it. Operas are given only
+on Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, with three days of
+ostensible rest per week, and two teams to do the four operas; but the
+ostensible rest is devoted largely to rehearsing. It is said that the
+off days are devoted to rehearsing from some time in the morning till
+ten at night. Are there two orchestras also? It is quite likely, since
+there are one hundred and ten names in the orchestra list.
+
+Yesterday the opera was “Tristan and Isolde.” I have seen all sorts
+of audiences--at theaters, operas, concerts, lectures, sermons,
+funerals--but none which was twin to the Wagner audience of Bayreuth
+for fixed and reverential attention. Absolute attention and petrified
+retention to the end of an act of the attitude assumed at the beginning
+of it. You detect no movement in the solid mass of heads and shoulders.
+You seem to sit with the dead in the gloom of a tomb. You know that they
+are being stirred to their profoundest depths; that there are times when
+they want to rise and wave handkerchiefs and shout their approbation,
+and times when tears are running down their faces, and it would be a
+relief to free their pent emotions in sobs or screams; yet you hear not
+one utterance till the curtain swings together and the closing strains
+have slowly faded out and died; then the dead rise with one impulse and
+shake the building with their applause. Every seat is full in the
+first act; there is not a vacant one in the last. If a man would be
+conspicuous, let him come here and retire from the house in the midst of
+an act. It would make him celebrated.
+
+This audience reminds me of nothing I have ever seen and of nothing
+I have read about except the city in the Arabian tale where all the
+inhabitants have been turned to brass and the traveler finds them after
+centuries mute, motionless, and still retaining the attitudes which they
+last knew in life. Here the Wagner audience dress as they please, and
+sit in the dark and worship in silence. At the Metropolitan in New York
+they sit in a glare, and wear their showiest harness; they hum airs,
+they squeak fans, they titter, and they gabble all the time. In some
+of the boxes the conversation and laughter are so loud as to divide the
+attention of the house with the stage. In large measure the Metropolitan
+is a show-case for rich fashionables who are not trained in Wagnerian
+music and have no reverence for it, but who like to promote art and show
+their clothes.
+
+Can that be an agreeable atmosphere to persons in whom this music
+produces a sort of divine ecstasy and to whom its creator is a very
+deity, his stage a temple, the works of his brain and hands consecrated
+things, and the partaking of them with eye and ear a sacred solemnity?
+Manifestly, no. Then, perhaps the temporary expatriation, the tedious
+traversing of seas and continents, the pilgrimage to Bayreuth stands
+explained. These devotees would worship in an atmosphere of devotion.
+It is only here that they can find it without fleck or blemish or any
+worldly pollution. In this remote village there are no sights to see,
+there is no newspaper to intrude the worries of the distant world,
+there is nothing going on, it is always Sunday. The pilgrim wends to his
+temple out of town, sits out his moving service, returns to his bed with
+his heart and soul and his body exhausted by long hours of tremendous
+emotion, and he is in no fit condition to do anything but to lie torpid
+and slowly gather back life and strength for the next service. This
+opera of “Tristan and Isolde” last night broke the hearts of all
+witnesses who were of the faith, and I know of some who have heard of
+many who could not sleep after it, but cried the night away. I feel
+strongly out of place here. Sometimes I feel like the sane person in a
+community of the mad; sometimes I feel like the one blind man where all
+others see; the one groping savage in the college of the learned, and
+always, during service, I feel like a heretic in heaven.
+
+But by no means do I ever overlook or minify the fact that this is one
+of the most extraordinary experiences of my life. I have never seen
+anything like this before. I have never seen anything so great and fine
+and real as this devotion.
+
+FRIDAY.--Yesterday's opera was “Parsifal” again. The others went and
+they show marked advance in appreciation; but I went hunting for relics
+and reminders of the Margravine Wilhelmina, she of the imperishable
+“Memoirs.” I am properly grateful to her for her (unconscious) satire
+upon monarchy and nobility, and therefore nothing which her hand touched
+or her eye looked upon is indifferent to me. I am her pilgrim; the rest
+of this multitude here are Wagner's.
+
+TUESDAY.--I have seen my last two operas; my season is ended, and we
+cross over into Bohemia this afternoon. I was supposing that my musical
+regeneration was accomplished and perfected, because I enjoyed both
+of these operas, singing and all, and, moreover, one of them was
+“Parsifal,” but the experts have disenchanted me. They say:
+
+“Singing! That wasn't singing; that was the wailing, screeching of
+third-rate obscurities, palmed off on us in the interest of economy.”
+
+Well, I ought to have recognized the sign--the old, sure sign that has
+never failed me in matters of art. Whenever I enjoy anything in art it
+means that it is mighty poor. The private knowledge of this fact has
+saved me from going to pieces with enthusiasm in front of many and many
+a chromo. However, my base instinct does bring me profit sometimes; I
+was the only man out of thirty-two hundred who got his money back on
+those two operas.
+
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
+
+
+Is it true that the sun of a man's mentality touches noon at forty and
+then begins to wane toward setting? Doctor Osler is charged with saying
+so. Maybe he said it, maybe he didn't; I don't know which it is. But if
+he said it, I can point him to a case which proves his rule. Proves it
+by being an exception to it. To this place I nominate Mr. Howells.
+
+I read his VENETIAN DAYS about forty years ago. I compare it with his
+paper on Machiavelli in a late number of HARPER, and I cannot find that
+his English has suffered any impairment. For forty years his English
+has been to me a continual delight and astonishment. In the sustained
+exhibition of certain great qualities--clearness, compression,
+verbal exactness, and unforced and seemingly unconscious felicity of
+phrasing--he is, in my belief, without his peer in the English-writing
+world. SUSTAINED. I entrench myself behind that protecting word. There
+are others who exhibit those great qualities as greatly as he does, but
+only by intervaled distributions of rich moonlight, with stretches
+of veiled and dimmer landscape between; whereas Howells's moon sails
+cloudless skies all night and all the nights.
+
+In the matter of verbal exactness Mr. Howells has no superior, I
+suppose. He seems to be almost always able to find that elusive and
+shifty grain of gold, the RIGHT WORD. Others have to put up with
+approximations, more or less frequently; he has better luck. To me, the
+others are miners working with the gold-pan--of necessity some of the
+gold washes over and escapes; whereas, in my fancy, he is quicksilver
+raiding down a riffle--no grain of the metal stands much chance of
+eluding him. A powerful agent is the right word: it lights the reader's
+way and makes it plain; a close approximation to it will answer, and
+much traveling is done in a well-enough fashion by its help, but we do
+not welcome it and applaud it and rejoice in it as we do when THE right
+one blazes out on us. Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right
+words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well
+as spiritual, and electrically prompt: it tingles exquisitely around
+through the walls of the mouth and tastes as tart and crisp and good
+as the autumn-butter that creams the sumac-berry. One has no time to
+examine the word and vote upon its rank and standing, the automatic
+recognition of its supremacy is so immediate. There is a plenty of
+acceptable literature which deals largely in approximations, but it may
+be likened to a fine landscape seen through the rain; the right word
+would dismiss the rain, then you would see it better. It doesn't rain
+when Howells is at work.
+
+And where does he get the easy and effortless flow of his speech? and
+its cadenced and undulating rhythm? and its architectural felicities
+of construction, its graces of expression, its pemmican quality of
+compression, and all that? Born to him, no doubt. All in shining good
+order in the beginning, all extraordinary; and all just as shining, just
+as extraordinary today, after forty years of diligent wear and tear
+and use. He passed his fortieth year long and long ago; but I think his
+English of today--his perfect English, I wish to say--can throw down the
+glove before his English of that antique time and not be afraid.
+
+I will go back to the paper on Machiavelli now, and ask the reader to
+examine this passage from it which I append. I do not mean examine it
+in a bird's-eye way; I mean search it, study it. And, of course, read it
+aloud. I may be wrong, still it is my conviction that one cannot get out
+of finely wrought literature all that is in it by reading it mutely:
+
+Mr. Dyer is rather of the opinion, first luminously suggested by
+Macaulay, that Machiavelli was in earnest, but must not be judged as a
+political moralist of our time and race would be judged. He thinks that
+Machiavelli was in earnest, as none but an idealist can be, and he
+is the first to imagine him an idealist immersed in realities, who
+involuntarily transmutes the events under his eye into something like
+the visionary issues of reverie. The Machiavelli whom he depicts does
+not cease to be politically a republican and socially a just man because
+he holds up an atrocious despot like Caesar Borgia as a mirror for
+rulers. What Machiavelli beheld round him in Italy was a civic disorder
+in which there was oppression without statecraft, and revolt without
+patriotism. When a miscreant like Borgia appeared upon the scene and
+reduced both tyrants and rebels to an apparent quiescence, he might very
+well seem to such a dreamer the savior of society whom a certain sort of
+dreamers are always looking for. Machiavelli was no less honest when he
+honored the diabolical force of Caesar Borgia than Carlyle was when at different times
+he extolled the strong man who destroys liberty in creating order. But
+Carlyle has only just ceased to be mistaken for a reformer, while it is
+still Machiavelli's hard fate to be so trammeled in his material that
+his name stands for whatever is most malevolent and perfidious in human
+nature.
+
+You see how easy and flowing it is; how unvexed by ruggednesses,
+clumsinesses, broken meters; how simple and--so far as you or I can
+make out--unstudied; how clear, how limpid, how understandable,
+how unconfused by cross-currents, eddies, undertows; how seemingly
+unadorned, yet is all adornment, like the lily-of-the-valley; and how
+compressed, how compact, without a complacency-signal hung out anywhere
+to call attention to it.
+
+There are twenty-three lines in the quoted passage. After reading it
+several times aloud, one perceives that a good deal of matter is crowded
+into that small space. I think it is a model of compactness. When I take
+its materials apart and work them over and put them together in my way,
+I find I cannot crowd the result back into the same hole, there not
+being room enough. I find it a case of a woman packing a man's trunk: he
+can get the things out, but he can't ever get them back again.
+
+The proffered paragraph is a just and fair sample; the rest of the
+article is as compact as it is; there are no waste words. The sample is
+just in other ways: limpid, fluent, graceful, and rhythmical as it is,
+it holds no superiority in these respects over the rest of the essay.
+Also, the choice phrasing noticeable in the sample is not lonely; there
+is a plenty of its kin distributed through the other paragraphs. This is
+claiming much when that kin must face the challenge of a phrase like
+the one in the middle sentence: “an idealist immersed in realities who
+involuntarily transmutes the events under his eye into something like
+the visionary issues of reverie.” With a hundred words to do it with,
+the literary artisan could catch that airy thought and tie it down and
+reduce it to a concrete condition, visible, substantial, understandable
+and all right, like a cabbage; but the artist does it with twenty, and
+the result is a flower.
+
+The quoted phrase, like a thousand others that have come from the same
+source, has the quality of certain scraps of verse which take hold of
+us and stay in our memories, we do not understand why, at first: all the
+words being the right words, none of them is conspicuous, and so they
+all seem inconspicuous, therefore we wonder what it is about them that
+makes their message take hold.
+
+     The mossy marbles rest
+     On the lips that he has prest
+     In their bloom,
+     And the names he loved to hear
+     Have been carved for many a year
+     On the tomb.
+
+     --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
+
+It is like a dreamy strain of moving music, with no sharp notes in it.
+The words are all “right” words, and all the same size. We do not notice
+it at first. We get the effect, it goes straight home to us, but we
+do not know why. It is when the right words are conspicuous that they
+thunder:
+
+The glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome!
+
+When I go back from Howells old to Howells young I find him arranging
+and clustering English words well, but not any better than now. He
+is not more felicitous in concreting abstractions now than he was in
+translating, then, the visions of the eyes of flesh into words that
+reproduced their forms and colors:
+
+In Venetian streets they give the fallen snow no rest. It is at once
+shoveled into the canals by hundreds of half-naked FACCHINI; and now in
+St. Mark's Place the music of innumerable shovels smote upon my ear; and
+I saw the shivering legion of poverty as it engaged the elements in a
+struggle for the possession of the Piazza. But the snow continued to
+fall, and through the twilight of the descending flakes all this toil
+and encounter looked like that weary kind of effort in dreams, when
+the most determined industry seems only to renew the task. The lofty
+crest of the bell-tower was hidden in the folds of falling snow, and
+I could no longer see the golden angel upon its summit. But looked
+at across the Piazza, the beautiful outline of St. Mark's Church was
+perfectly penciled in the air, and the shifting threads of the snowfall
+were woven into a spell of novel enchantment around the structure that
+always seemed to me too exquisite in its fantastic loveliness to be
+anything but the creation of magic. The tender snow had compassionated
+the beautiful edifice for all the wrongs of time, and so hid the stains
+and ugliness of decay that it looked as if just from the hand of the
+builder--or, better said, just from the brain of the architect. There
+was marvelous freshness in the colors of the mosaics in the great arches
+of the facade, and all that gracious harmony into which the temple
+rises, of marble scrolls and leafy exuberance airily supporting the
+statues of the saints, was a hundred times etherealized by the purity
+and whiteness of the drifting flakes. The snow lay lightly on the golden
+globes that tremble like peacocks-crests above the vast domes, and
+plumed them with softest white; it robed the saints in ermine; and it
+danced over all its works, as if exulting in its beauty--beauty
+which filled me with subtle, selfish yearning to keep such evanescent
+loveliness for the little-while-longer of my whole life, and with
+despair to think that even the poor lifeless shadow of it could never be
+fairly reflected in picture or poem.
+
+Through the wavering snowfall, the Saint Theodore upon one of the
+granite pillars of the Piazzetta did not show so grim as his wont is,
+and the winged lion on the other might have been a winged lamb, so
+gentle and mild he looked by the tender light of the storm. The towers
+of the island churches loomed faint and far away in the dimness; the
+sailors in the rigging of the ships that lay in the Basin wrought like
+phantoms among the shrouds; the gondolas stole in and out of the opaque
+distance more noiselessly and dreamily than ever; and a silence, almost
+palpable, lay upon the mutest city in the world.
+
+The spirit of Venice is there: of a city where Age and Decay, fagged
+with distributing damage and repulsiveness among the other cities of the
+planet in accordance with the policy and business of their profession,
+come for rest and play between seasons, and treat themselves to the
+luxury and relaxation of sinking the shop and inventing and squandering
+charms all about, instead of abolishing such as they find, as is their
+habit when not on vacation.
+
+In the working season they do business in Boston sometimes, and a
+character in THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY takes accurate note of pathetic
+effects wrought by them upon the aspects of a street of once dignified
+and elegant homes whose occupants have moved away and left them a prey
+to neglect and gradual ruin and progressive degradation; a descent
+which reaches bottom at last, when the street becomes a roost for humble
+professionals of the faith-cure and fortune-telling sort.
+
+What a queer, melancholy house, what a queer, melancholy street! I don't
+think I was ever in a street before where quite so many professional
+ladies, with English surnames, preferred Madam to Mrs. on their
+door-plates. And the poor old place has such a desperately conscious
+air of going to the deuce. Every house seems to wince as you go by,
+and button itself up to the chin for fear you should find out it had
+no shirt on--so to speak. I don't know what's the reason, but these
+material tokens of a social decay afflict me terribly; a tipsy woman
+isn't dreadfuler than a haggard old house, that's once been a home, in a
+street like this.
+
+Mr. Howells's pictures are not mere stiff, hard, accurate photographs;
+they are photographs with feeling in them, and sentiment, photographs
+taken in a dream, one might say.
+
+As concerns his humor, I will not try to say anything, yet I would try,
+if I had the words that might approximately reach up to its high place.
+I do not think any one else can play with humorous fancies so gracefully
+and delicately and deliciously as he does, nor has so many to play with,
+nor can come so near making them look as if they were doing the playing
+themselves and he was not aware that they were at it. For they are
+unobtrusive, and quiet in their ways, and well conducted. His is a humor
+which flows softly all around about and over and through the mesh of the
+page, pervasive, refreshing, health-giving, and makes no more show and
+no more noise than does the circulation of the blood.
+
+There is another thing which is contentingly noticeable in Mr. Howells's
+books. That is his “stage directions”--those artifices which authors
+employ to throw a kind of human naturalness around a scene and a
+conversation, and help the reader to see the one and get at meanings in
+the other which might not be perceived if entrusted unexplained to the
+bare words of the talk. Some authors overdo the stage directions, they
+elaborate them quite beyond necessity; they spend so much time and
+take up so much room in telling us how a person said a thing and how he
+looked and acted when he said it that we get tired and vexed and wish he
+hadn't said it at all. Other authors' directions are brief enough, but it
+is seldom that the brevity contains either wit or information. Writers
+of this school go in rags, in the matter of stage directions; the
+majority of them having nothing in stock but a cigar, a laugh, a blush,
+and a bursting into tears. In their poverty they work these sorry things
+to the bone. They say:
+
+“... replied Alfred, flipping the ash from his cigar.” (This explains
+nothing; it only wastes space.)
+
+“... responded Richard, with a laugh.” (There was nothing to laugh
+about; there never is. The writer puts it in from habit--automatically;
+he is paying no attention to his work; or he would see that there is
+nothing to laugh at; often, when a remark is unusually and poignantly
+flat and silly, he tries to deceive the reader by enlarging the stage
+direction and making Richard break into “frenzies of uncontrollable
+laughter.” This makes the reader sad.)
+
+“... murmured Gladys, blushing.” (This poor old shop-worn blush is a
+tiresome thing. We get so we would rather Gladys would fall out of the
+book and break her neck than do it again. She is always doing it, and
+usually irrelevantly. Whenever it is her turn to murmur she hangs out
+her blush; it is the only thing she's got. In a little while we hate
+her, just as we do Richard.)
+
+“... repeated Evelyn, bursting into tears.” (This kind keep a book damp
+all the time. They can't say a thing without crying. They cry so much
+about nothing that by and by when they have something to cry ABOUT they
+have gone dry; they sob, and fetch nothing; we are not moved. We are
+only glad.)
+
+They garvel me, these stale and overworked stage directions, these carbon
+films that got burnt out long ago and cannot now carry any faintest
+thread of light. It would be well if they could be relieved from duty
+and flung out in the literary back yard to rot and disappear along
+with the discarded and forgotten “steeds” and “halidomes” and similar
+stage-properties once so dear to our grandfathers. But I am friendly to
+Mr. Howells's stage directions; more friendly to them than to any one
+else's, I think. They are done with a competent and discriminating art,
+and are faithful to the requirements of a stage direction's proper and
+lawful office, which is to inform. Sometimes they convey a scene and
+its conditions so well that I believe I could see the scene and get the
+spirit and meaning of the accompanying dialogue if some one would read
+merely the stage directions to me and leave out the talk. For instance,
+a scene like this, from THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY:
+
+“... and she laid her arms with a beseeching gesture on her father's
+shoulder.”
+
+“... she answered, following his gesture with a glance.”
+
+“... she said, laughing nervously.”
+
+“... she asked, turning swiftly upon him that strange, searching
+glance.”
+
+“... she answered, vaguely.”
+
+“... she reluctantly admitted.”
+
+“... but her voice died wearily away, and she stood looking into his
+face with puzzled entreaty.”
+
+Mr. Howells does not repeat his forms, and does not need to; he can
+invent fresh ones without limit. It is mainly the repetition over and
+over again, by the third-rates, of worn and commonplace and juiceless
+forms that makes their novels such a weariness and vexation to us, I
+think. We do not mind one or two deliveries of their wares, but as we
+turn the pages over and keep on meeting them we presently get tired of
+them and wish they would do other things for a change.
+
+“... replied Alfred, flipping the ash from his cigar.”
+
+“... responded Richard, with a laugh.”
+
+“... murmured Gladys, blushing.”
+
+“... repeated Evelyn, bursting into tears.”
+
+“... replied the Earl, flipping the ash from his cigar.”
+
+“... responded the undertaker, with a laugh.”
+
+“... murmured the chambermaid, blushing.”
+
+“... repeated the burglar, bursting into tears.”
+
+“... replied the conductor, flipping the ash from his cigar.”
+
+“... responded Arkwright, with a laugh.”
+
+“... murmured the chief of police, blushing.”
+
+“... repeated the house-cat, bursting into tears.”
+
+And so on and so on; till at last it ceases to excite. I always notice
+stage directions, because they fret me and keep me trying to get out
+of their way, just as the automobiles do. At first; then by and by they
+become monotonous and I get run over.
+
+Mr. Howells has done much work, and the spirit of it is as beautiful
+as the make of it. I have held him in admiration and affection so many
+years that I know by the number of those years that he is old now;
+but his heart isn't, nor his pen; and years do not count. Let him have
+plenty of them; there is profit in them for us.
+
+
+
+
+
+ENGLISH AS SHE IS TAUGHT
+
+In the appendix to Croker's Boswell's Johnson one finds this anecdote:
+
+CATO'S SOLILOQUY.--One day Mrs. Gastrel set a little girl to repeat to
+him (Dr. Samuel Johnson) Cato's Soliloquy, which she went through very
+correctly. The Doctor, after a pause, asked the child:
+
+“What was to bring Cato to an end?”
+
+She said it was a knife.
+
+“No, my dear, it was not so.”
+
+“My aunt Polly said it was a knife.”
+
+“Why, Aunt Polly's knife MAY DO, but it was a DAGGER, my dear.”
+
+He then asked her the meaning of “bane and antidote,” which she was
+unable to give. Mrs. Gastrel said:
+
+“You cannot expect so young a child to know the meaning of such words.”
+
+He then said:
+
+“My dear, how many pence are there in SIXPENCE?”
+
+“I cannot tell, sir,” was the half-terrified reply.
+
+On this, addressing himself to Mrs. Gastrel, he said:
+
+“Now, my dear lady, can anything be more ridiculous than to teach a
+child Cato's Soliloquy, who does not know how many pence there are in
+sixpence?”
+
+In a lecture before the Royal Geographical Society Professor Ravenstein
+quoted the following list of frantic questions, and said that they had
+been asked in an examination:
+
+Mention all the names of places in the world derived from Julius Caesar or
+Augustus Caesar.
+
+Where are the following rivers: Pisuerga, Sakaria, Guadalete, Jalon,
+Mulde?
+
+All you know of the following: Machacha, Pilmo, Schebulos, Crivoscia,
+Basecs, Mancikert, Taxhem, Citeaux, Meloria, Zutphen.
+
+The highest peaks of the Karakorum range.
+
+The number of universities in Prussia.
+
+Why are the tops of mountains continually covered with snow (sic)?
+
+Name the length and breadth of the streams of lava which issued from the
+Skaptar Jokul in the eruption of 1783.
+
+That list would oversize nearly anybody's geographical knowledge. Isn't
+it reasonably possible that in our schools many of the questions in all
+studies are several miles ahead of where the pupil is?--that he is set
+to struggle with things that are ludicrously beyond his present reach,
+hopelessly beyond his present strength? This remark in passing, and by
+way of text; now I come to what I was going to say.
+
+I have just now fallen upon a darling literary curiosity. It is a little
+book, a manuscript compilation, and the compiler sent it to me with the
+request that I say whether I think it ought to be published or not. I
+said, Yes; but as I slowly grow wise I briskly grow cautious; and so,
+now that the publication is imminent, it has seemed to me that I should
+feel more comfortable if I could divide up this responsibility with the
+public by adding them to the court. Therefore I will print some extracts
+from the book, in the hope that they may make converts to my judgment
+that the volume has merit which entitles it to publication.
+
+As to its character. Every one has sampled “English as She is Spoke”
+ and “English as She is Wrote”; this little volume furnishes us an
+instructive array of examples of “English as She is Taught”--in the
+public schools of--well, this country. The collection is made by a
+teacher in those schools, and all the examples in it are genuine; none
+of them have been tampered with, or doctored in any way. From time to
+time, during several years, whenever a pupil has delivered himself
+of anything peculiarly quaint or toothsome in the course of his
+recitations, this teacher and her associates have privately set that
+thing down in a memorandum-book; strictly following the original, as
+to grammar, construction, spelling, and all; and the result is this
+literary curiosity.
+
+The contents of the book consist mainly of answers given by the boys
+and girls to questions, said answers being given sometimes verbally,
+sometimes in writing. The subjects touched upon are fifteen in
+number: I. Etymology; II. Grammar; III. Mathematics; IV. Geography;
+V. “Original”; VI. Analysis; VII. History; VIII. “Intellectual”; IX.
+Philosophy; X. Physiology; XI. Astronomy; XII. Politics; XIII. Music;
+XIV. Oratory; XV. Metaphysics.
+
+You perceive that the poor little young idea has taken a shot at a good
+many kinds of game in the course of the book. Now as to results. Here
+are some quaint definitions of words. It will be noticed that in all of
+these instances the sound of the word, or the look of it on paper, has
+misled the child:
+
+ABORIGINES, a system of mountains.
+
+ALIAS, a good man in the Bible.
+
+AMENABLE, anything that is mean.
+
+AMMONIA, the food of the gods.
+
+ASSIDUITY, state of being an acid.
+
+AURIFEROUS, pertaining to an orifice.
+
+CAPILLARY, a little caterpillar.
+
+CORNIFEROUS, rocks in which fossil corn is found.
+
+EMOLUMENT, a headstone to a grave.
+
+EQUESTRIAN, one who asks questions.
+
+EUCHARIST, one who plays euchre.
+
+FRANCHISE, anything belonging to the French.
+
+IDOLATER, a very idle person.
+
+IPECAC, a man who likes a good dinner.
+
+IRRIGATE, to make fun of.
+
+MENDACIOUS, what can be mended.
+
+MERCENARY, one who feels for another.
+
+PARASITE, a kind of umbrella.
+
+PARASITE, the murder of an infant.
+
+PUBLICAN, a man who does his prayers in public.
+
+TENACIOUS, ten acres of land.
+
+Here is one where the phrase “publicans and sinners” has got mixed up
+in the child's mind with politics, and the result is a definition which
+takes one in a sudden and unexpected way:
+
+REPUBLICAN, a sinner mentioned in the Bible.
+
+Also in Democratic newspapers now and then. Here are two where the
+mistake has resulted from sound assisted by remote fact:
+
+PLAGIARIST, a writer of plays.
+
+DEMAGOGUE, a vessel containing beer and other liquids.
+
+I cannot quite make out what it was that misled the pupil in the
+following instances; it would not seem to have been the sound of the
+word, nor the look of it in print:
+
+ASPHYXIA, a grumbling, fussy temper.
+
+QUARTERNIONS, a bird with a flat beak and no bill, living in New
+Zealand.
+
+QUARTERNIONS, the name given to a style of art practiced by the
+Phoenicians.
+
+QUARTERNIONS, a religious convention held every hundred years.
+
+SIBILANT, the state of being idiotic.
+
+CROSIER, a staff carried by the Deity.
+
+In the following sentences the pupil's ear has been deceiving him again:
+
+The marriage was illegible.
+
+He was totally dismasted with the whole performance.
+
+He enjoys riding on a philosopher.
+
+She was very quick at repertoire.
+
+He prayed for the waters to subsidize.
+
+The leopard is watching his sheep.
+
+They had a strawberry vestibule.
+
+Here is one which--well, now, how often we do slam right into the truth
+without ever suspecting it:
+
+The men employed by the Gas Company go around and speculate the meter.
+
+Indeed they do, dear; and when you grow up, many and many's the time you
+will notice it in the gas bill. In the following sentences the little
+people have some information to convey, every time; but in my case they
+fail to connect: the light always went out on the keystone word:
+
+The coercion of some things is remarkable; as bread and molasses.
+
+Her hat is contiguous because she wears it on one side.
+
+He preached to an egregious congregation.
+
+The captain eliminated a bullet through the man's heart.
+
+You should take caution and be precarious.
+
+The supercilious girl acted with vicissitude when the perennial time
+came.
+
+The last is a curiously plausible sentence; one seems to know what it
+means, and yet he knows all the time that he doesn't. Here is an odd
+(but entirely proper) use of a word, and a most sudden descent from
+a lofty philosophical altitude to a very practical and homely
+illustration:
+
+We should endeavor to avoid extremes--like those of wasps and bees.
+
+And here--with “zoological” and “geological” in his mind, but not ready
+to his tongue--the small scholar has innocently gone and let out
+a couple of secrets which ought never to have been divulged in any
+circumstances:
+
+There are a good many donkeys in theological gardens.
+
+Some of the best fossils are found in theological cabinets.
+
+Under the head of “Grammar” the little scholars furnish the following
+information:
+
+Gender is the distinguishing nouns without regard to sex.
+
+A verb is something to eat.
+
+Adverbs should always be used as adjectives and adjectives as adverbs.
+
+Every sentence and name of God must begin with a caterpillar.
+
+“Caterpillar” is well enough, but capital letter would have been
+stricter. The following is a brave attempt at a solution, but it failed
+to liquify:
+
+When they are going to say some prose or poetry before they say the
+poetry or prose they must put a semicolon just after the introduction of
+the prose or poetry.
+
+The chapter on “Mathematics” is full of fruit. From it I take a few
+samples--mainly in an unripe state:
+
+A straight line is any distance between two places.
+
+Parallel lines are lines that can never meet until they run together.
+
+A circle is a round straight line with a hole in the middle.
+
+Things which are equal to each other are equal to anything else.
+
+To find the number of square feet in a room you multiply the room by the
+number of the feet. The product is the result.
+
+Right you are. In the matter of geography this little book is
+unspeakably rich. The questions do not appear to have applied the
+microscope to the subject, as did those quoted by Professor Ravenstein;
+still, they proved plenty difficult enough without that. These pupils
+did not hunt with a microscope, they hunted with a shot-gun; this is
+shown by the crippled condition of the game they brought in:
+
+America is divided into the Passiffic slope and the Mississippi valey.
+
+North America is separated by Spain.
+
+America consists from north to south about five hundred miles.
+
+The United States is quite a small country compared with some other
+countrys, but is about as industrious.
+
+The capital of the United States is Long Island.
+
+The five seaports of the U.S. are Newfunlan and Sanfrancisco.
+
+The principal products of the U.S. is earthquakes and volcanoes.
+
+The Alaginnies are mountains in Philadelphia.
+
+The Rocky Mountains are on the western side of Philadelphia.
+
+Cape Hateras is a vast body of water surrounded by land and flowing into
+the Gulf of Mexico.
+
+Mason and Dixon's line is the Equator.
+
+One of the leading industries of the United States is mollasses,
+book-covers, numbers, gas, teaching, lumber, manufacturers,
+paper-making, publishers, coal.
+
+In Austria the principal occupation is gathering Austrich feathers.
+
+Gibraltar is an island built on a rock.
+
+Russia is very cold and tyrannical.
+
+Sicily is one of the Sandwich Islands.
+
+Hindoostan flows through the Ganges and empties into the Mediterranean
+Sea.
+
+Ireland is called the Emigrant Isle because it is so beautiful and
+green.
+
+The width of the different zones Europe lies in depend upon the
+surrounding country.
+
+The imports of a country are the things that are paid for, the exports
+are the things that are not.
+
+Climate lasts all the time and weather only a few days.
+
+The two most famous volcanoes of Europe are Sodom and Gomorrah.
+
+The chapter headed “Analysis” shows us that the pupils in our public
+schools are not merely loaded up with those showy facts about geography,
+mathematics, and so on, and left in that incomplete state; no, there's
+machinery for clarifying and expanding their minds. They are required to
+take poems and analyze them, dig out their common sense, reduce them
+to statistics, and reproduce them in a luminous prose translation which
+shall tell you at a glance what the poet was trying to get at. One
+sample will do. Here is a stanza from “The Lady of the Lake,” followed
+by the pupil's impressive explanation of it:
+
+Alone, but with unbated zeal, The horseman plied with scourge and steel;
+For jaded now and spent with toil, Embossed with foam and dark with
+soil, While every gasp with sobs he drew, The laboring stag strained
+full in view.
+
+The man who rode on the horse performed the whip and an instrument made
+of steel alone with strong ardor not diminishing, for, being tired from
+the time passed with hard labor overworked with anger and ignorant
+with weariness, while every breath for labor he drew with cries full of
+sorrow, the young deer made imperfect who worked hard filtered in sight.
+
+I see, now, that I never understood that poem before. I have had
+glimpses of its meaning, in moments when I was not as ignorant with
+weariness as usual, but this is the first time the whole spacious idea
+of it ever filtered in sight. If I were a public-school pupil I would
+put those other studies aside and stick to analysis; for, after all, it
+is the thing to spread your mind.
+
+We come now to historical matters, historical remains, one might say. As
+one turns the pages he is impressed with the depth to which one date has
+been driven into the American child's head--1492. The date is there, and
+it is there to stay. And it is always at hand, always deliverable at
+a moment's notice. But the Fact that belongs with it? That is quite
+another matter. Only the date itself is familiar and sure: its vast
+Fact has failed of lodgment. It would appear that whenever you ask a
+public-school pupil when a thing--anything, no matter what--happened,
+and he is in doubt, he always rips out his 1492. He applies it to
+everything, from the landing of the ark to the introduction of the
+horse-car. Well, after all, it is our first date, and so it is right
+enough to honor it, and pay the public schools to teach our children to
+honor it:
+
+George Washington was born in 1492.
+
+Washington wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1492.
+
+St. Bartholemew was massacred in 1492.
+
+The Brittains were the Saxons who entered England in 1492 under Julius
+Caesar.
+
+The earth is 1492 miles in circumference.
+
+
+
+To proceed with “History”
+
+Christopher Columbus was called the Father of his Country.
+
+Queen Isabella of Spain sold her watch and chain and other millinery so
+that Columbus could discover America.
+
+The Indian wars were very desecrating to the country.
+
+The Indians pursued their warfare by hiding in the bushes and then
+scalping them.
+
+Captain John Smith has been styled the father of his country. His life
+was saved by his daughter Pochahantas.
+
+The Puritans found an insane asylum in the wilds of America.
+
+The Stamp Act was to make everybody stamp all materials so they should
+be null and void.
+
+Washington died in Spain almost broken-hearted. His remains were taken
+to the cathedral in Havana.
+
+Gorilla warfare was where men rode on gorillas.
+
+John Brown was a very good insane man who tried to get fugitives
+slaves into Virginia. He captured all the inhabitants, but was finally
+conquered and condemned to his death. The confederasy was formed by the
+fugitive slaves.
+
+Alfred the Great reigned 872 years. He was distinguished for letting
+some buckwheat cakes burn, and the lady scolded him.
+
+Henry Eight was famous for being a great widower haveing lost several
+wives.
+
+Lady Jane Grey studied Greek and Latin and was beheaded after a few
+days.
+
+John Bright is noted for an incurable disease.
+
+Lord James Gordon Bennet instigated the Gordon Riots.
+
+The Middle Ages come in between antiquity and posterity.
+
+Luther introduced Christianity into England a good many thousand years
+ago. His birthday was November 1883. He was once a Pope. He lived at the
+time of the Rebellion of Worms.
+
+Julius Caesar is noted for his famous telegram dispatch I came I saw I
+conquered.
+
+Julius Caesar was really a very great man. He was a very great soldier
+and wrote a book for beginners in the Latin.
+
+Cleopatra was caused by the death of an asp which she dissolved in a
+wine cup.
+
+The only form of government in Greece was a limited monkey.
+
+The Persian war lasted about 500 years.
+
+Greece had only 7 wise men.
+
+Socrates... destroyed some statues and had to drink Shamrock.
+
+Here is a fact correctly stated; and yet it is phrased with
+such ingenious infelicity that it can be depended upon to convey
+misinformation every time it is uncarefully read:
+
+By the Salic law no woman or descendant of a woman could occupy the
+throne.
+
+To show how far a child can travel in history with judicious and
+diligent boosting in the public school, we select the following mosaic:
+
+Abraham Lincoln was born in Wales in 1599.
+
+In the chapter headed “Intellectual” I find a great number of most
+interesting statements. A sample or two may be found not amiss:
+
+Bracebridge Hall was written by Henry Irving.
+
+Snow Bound was written by Peter Cooper.
+
+The House of the Seven Gables was written by Lord Bryant.
+
+Edgar A. Poe was a very curdling writer.
+
+Cotton Mather was a writer who invented the cotten gin and wrote
+histories.
+
+Beowulf wrote the Scriptures.
+
+Ben Johnson survived Shakspeare in some respects.
+
+In the Canterbury Tale it gives account of King Alfred on his way to the
+shrine of Thomas Bucket.
+
+Chaucer was the father of English pottery.
+
+Chaucer was a bland verse writer of the third century.
+
+Chaucer was succeeded by H. Wads. Longfellow an American Writer. His
+writings were chiefly prose and nearly one hundred years elapsed.
+
+Shakspere translated the Scriptures and it was called St. James because
+he did it.
+
+In the middle of the chapter I find many pages of information concerning
+Shakespeare's plays, Milton's works, and those of Bacon, Addison, Samuel
+Johnson, Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Smollett, De Foe, Locke, Pope,
+Swift, Goldsmith, Burns, Cowper, Wordsworth, Gibbon, Byron, Coleridge,
+Hood, Scott, Macaulay, George Eliot, Dickens, Bulwer, Thackeray,
+Browning, Mrs. Browning, Tennyson, and Disraeli--a fact which shows that
+into the restricted stomach of the public-school pupil is shoveled every
+year the blood, bone, and viscera of a gigantic literature, and the
+same is there digested and disposed of in a most successful and
+characteristic and gratifying public-school way. I have space for but a
+trifling few of the results:
+
+Lord Byron was the son of an heiress and a drunken man.
+
+Wm. Wordsworth wrote the Barefoot Boy and Imitations on Immortality.
+
+Gibbon wrote a history of his travels in Italy. This was original.
+
+George Eliot left a wife and children who mourned greatly for his
+genius.
+
+George Eliot Miss Mary Evans Mrs. Cross Mrs. Lewis was the greatest
+female poet unless George Sands is made an exception of.
+
+Bulwell is considered a good writer.
+
+Sir Walter Scott Charles Bronte Alfred the Great and Johnson were the
+first great novelists.
+
+Thomas Babington Makorlay graduated at Harvard and then studied law, he
+was raised to the peerage as baron in 1557 and died in 1776.
+
+Here are two or three miscellaneous facts that may be of value, if taken
+in moderation:
+
+Homer's writings are Homer's Essays Virgil the Aenid and Paradise
+lost some people say that these poems were not written by Homer but by
+another man of the same name.
+
+A sort of sadness kind of shone in Bryant's poems.
+
+Holmes is a very profligate and amusing writer.
+
+When the public-school pupil wrestles with the political features of the
+Great Republic, they throw him sometimes:
+
+A bill becomes a law when the President vetoes it.
+
+The three departments of the government is the President rules the
+world, the governor rules the State, the mayor rules the city.
+
+The first conscientious Congress met in Philadelphia.
+
+The Constitution of the United States was established to ensure domestic
+hostility.
+
+Truth crushed to earth will rise again. As follows:
+
+The Constitution of the United States is that part of the book at the
+end which nobody reads.
+
+And here she rises once more and untimely. There should be a limit to
+public-school instruction; it cannot be wise or well to let the young
+find out everything:
+
+Congress is divided into civilized half civilized and savage.
+
+Here are some results of study in music and oratory:
+
+An interval in music is the distance on the keyboard from one piano to
+the next.
+
+A rest means you are not to sing it.
+
+Emphasis is putting more distress on one word than another.
+
+The chapter on “Physiology” contains much that ought not to be lost to
+science:
+
+Physillogigy is to study about your bones stummick and vertebry.
+
+Occupations which are injurious to health are cabolic acid gas which is
+impure blood.
+
+We have an upper and lower skin. The lower skin moves all the time and
+the upper skin moves when we do.
+
+The body is mostly composed of water and about one half is avaricious
+tissue.
+
+The stomach is a small pear-shaped bone situated in the body.
+
+The gastric juice keeps the bones from creaking.
+
+The Chyle flows up the middle of the backbone and reaches the heart
+where it meets the oxygen and is purified.
+
+The salivary glands are used to salivate the body.
+
+In the stomach starch is changed to cane sugar and cane sugar to sugar
+cane.
+
+The olfactory nerve enters the cavity of the orbit and is developed into
+the special sense of hearing.
+
+The growth of a tooth begins in the back of the mouth and extends to the
+stomach.
+
+If we were on a railroad track and a train was coming the train would
+deafen our ears so that we couldn't see to get off the track.
+
+If, up to this point, none of my quotations have added flavor to the
+Johnsonian anecdote at the head of this article, let us make another
+attempt:
+
+The theory that intuitive truths are discovered by the light of nature
+originated from St. John's interpretation of a passage in the Gospel of
+Plato.
+
+The weight of the earth is found by comparing a mass of known lead with
+that of a mass of unknown lead.
+
+To find the weight of the earth take the length of a degree on a
+meridian and multiply by 62 1/2 pounds.
+
+The spheres are to each other as the squares of their homologous sides.
+
+A body will go just as far in the first second as the body will go plus
+the force of gravity and that's equal to twice what the body will go.
+
+Specific gravity is the weight to be compared weight of an equal volume
+of or that is the weight of a body compared with the weight of an equal
+volume.
+
+The law of fluid pressure divide the different forms of organized bodies
+by the form of attraction and the number increased will be the form.
+
+Inertia is that property of bodies by virtue of which it cannot change
+its own condition of rest or motion. In other words it is the negative
+quality of passiveness either in recoverable latency or insipient
+latescence.
+
+If a laugh is fair here, not the struggling child, nor the unintelligent
+teacher--or rather the unintelligent Boards, Committees, and
+Trustees--are the proper target for it. All through this little book one
+detects the signs of a certain probable fact--that a large part of the
+pupil's “instruction” consists in cramming him with obscure and wordy
+“rules” which he does not understand and has no time to understand. It
+would be as useful to cram him with brickbats; they would at least stay.
+In a town in the interior of New York, a few years ago, a gentleman
+set forth a mathematical problem and proposed to give a prize to every
+public-school pupil who should furnish the correct solution of it.
+Twenty-two of the brightest boys in the public schools entered the
+contest. The problem was not a very difficult one for pupils of their
+mathematical rank and standing, yet they all failed--by a hair--through
+one trifling mistake or another. Some searching questions were asked,
+when it turned out that these lads were as glib as parrots with the
+“rules,” but could not reason out a single rule or explain the
+principle underlying it. Their memories had been stocked, but not their
+understandings. It was a case of brickbat culture, pure and simple.
+
+There are several curious “compositions” in the little book, and we
+must make room for one. It is full of naivete, brutal truth, and
+unembarrassed directness, and is the funniest (genuine) boy's
+composition I think I have ever seen:
+
+
+
+
+ON GIRLS
+
+Girls are very stuck up and dignefied in their maner and be have your.
+They think more of dress than anything and like to play with dowls and
+rags. They cry if they see a cow in a far distance and are afraid of
+guns. They stay at home all the time and go to church on Sunday. They
+are al-ways sick. They are always funy and making fun of boy's hands
+and they say how dirty. They cant play marbels. I pity them poor things.
+They make fun of boys and then turn round and love them. I dont beleave
+they ever kiled a cat or anything. They look out every nite and say oh
+ant the moon lovely. Thir is one thing I have not told and that is they
+al-ways now their lessons bettern boys.
+
+From Mr. Edward Channing's recent article in SCIENCE:
+
+The marked difference between the books now being produced by French,
+English, and American travelers, on the one hand, and German explorers,
+on the other, is too great to escape attention. That difference is due
+entirely to the fact that in school and university the German is taught,
+in the first place to see, and in the second place to understand what he
+does see.
+
+
+
+
+
+A SIMPLIFIED ALPHABET
+
+(This article, written during the autumn of 1899, was about the last
+writing done by Mark Twain on any impersonal subject.)
+
+I have had a kindly feeling, a friendly feeling, a cousinly feeling
+toward Simplified Spelling, from the beginning of the movement three
+years ago, but nothing more inflamed than that. It seemed to me to
+merely propose to substitute one inadequacy for another; a sort of
+patching and plugging poor old dental relics with cement and gold and
+porcelain paste; what was really wanted was a new set of teeth. That is
+to say, a new ALPHABET.
+
+The heart of our trouble is with our foolish alphabet. It doesn't
+know how to spell, and can't be taught. In this it is like all other
+alphabets except one--the phonographic. That is the only competent
+alphabet in the world. It can spell and correctly pronounce any word in
+our language.
+
+That admirable alphabet, that brilliant alphabet, that inspired
+alphabet, can be learned in an hour or two. In a week the student
+can learn to write it with some little facility, and to read it with
+considerable ease. I know, for I saw it tried in a public school in
+Nevada forty-five years ago, and was so impressed by the incident that
+it has remained in my memory ever since.
+
+I wish we could adopt it in place of our present written (and printed)
+character. I mean SIMPLY the alphabet; simply the consonants and the
+vowels--I don't mean any REDUCTIONS or abbreviations of them, such as
+the shorthand writer uses in order to get compression and speed. No, I
+would SPELL EVERY WORD OUT.
+
+I will insert the alphabet here as I find it in Burnz's PHONIC
+SHORTHAND. (Figure 1) It is arranged on the basis of Isaac Pitman's
+PHONOGRAPHY. Isaac Pitman was the originator and father of scientific
+phonography. It is used throughout the globe. It was a memorable
+invention. He made it public seventy-three years ago. The firm of Isaac
+Pitman & Sons, New York, still exists, and they continue the master's
+work.
+
+What should we gain?
+
+First of all, we could spell DEFINITELY--and correctly--any word you
+please, just by the SOUND of it. We can't do that with our present
+alphabet. For instance, take a simple, every-day word PHTHISIS. If we
+tried to spell it by the sound of it, we should make it TYSIS, and be
+laughed at by every educated person.
+
+Secondly, we should gain in REDUCTION OF LABOR in writing.
+
+Simplified Spelling makes valuable reductions in the case of several
+hundred words, but the new spelling must be LEARNED. You can't spell
+them by the sound; you must get them out of the book.
+
+But even if we knew the simplified form for every word in the language,
+the phonographic alphabet would still beat the Simplified Speller “hands
+down” in the important matter of economy of labor. I will illustrate:
+
+PRESENT FORM: through, laugh, highland.
+
+SIMPLIFIED FORM: thru, laff, hyland.
+
+PHONOGRAPHIC FORM: (Figure 2)
+
+To write the word “through,” the pen has to make twenty-one strokes.
+
+To write the word “thru,” the pen has to make twelve strokes--a good
+saving.
+
+To write that same word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to
+make only THREE strokes.
+
+To write the word “laugh,” the pen has to make FOURTEEN strokes.
+
+To write “laff,” the pen has to make the SAME NUMBER of strokes--no
+labor is saved to the penman.
+
+To write the same word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to
+make only THREE strokes.
+
+To write the word “highland,” the pen has to make twenty-two strokes.
+
+To write “hyland,” the pen has to make eighteen strokes.
+
+To write that word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make
+only FIVE strokes. (Figure 3)
+
+To write the words “phonographic alphabet,” the pen has to make
+fifty-three strokes.
+
+To write “fonografic alfabet,” the pen has to make fifty strokes. To the
+penman, the saving in labor is insignificant.
+
+To write that word (with vowels) with the phonographic alphabet, the pen
+has to make only SEVENTEEN strokes.
+
+Without the vowels, only THIRTEEN strokes. (Figure 4) The vowels are
+hardly necessary, this time.
+
+We make five pen-strokes in writing an m. Thus: (Figure 5) a stroke
+down; a stroke up; a second stroke down; a second stroke up; a final
+stroke down. Total, five. The phonographic alphabet accomplishes the
+m with a single stroke--a curve, like a parenthesis that has come home
+drunk and has fallen face down right at the front door where everybody
+that goes along will see him and say, Alas!
+
+When our written m is not the end of a word, but is otherwise located,
+it has to be connected with the next letter, and that requires another
+pen-stroke, making six in all, before you get rid of that m. But never
+mind about the connecting strokes--let them go. Without counting them,
+the twenty-six letters of our alphabet consumed about eighty pen-strokes
+for their construction--about three pen-strokes per letter.
+
+It is THREE TIMES THE NUMBER required by the phonographic alphabet. It
+requires but ONE stroke for each letter.
+
+My writing-gait is--well, I don't know what it is, but I will time
+myself and see. Result: it is twenty-four words per minute. I don't mean
+composing; I mean COPYING. There isn't any definite composing-gait.
+
+Very well, my copying-gait is 1,440 words per hour--say 1,500. If I
+could use the phonographic character with facility I could do the 1,500
+in twenty minutes. I could do nine hours' copying in three hours; I
+could do three years' copying in one year. Also, if I had a typewriting
+machine with the phonographic alphabet on it--oh, the miracles I could
+do!
+
+I am not pretending to write that character well. I have never had a
+lesson, and I am copying the letters from the book. But I can accomplish
+my desire, at any rate, which is, to make the reader get a good and
+clear idea of the advantage it would be to us if we could discard our
+present alphabet and put this better one in its place--using it in
+books, newspapers, with the typewriter, and with the pen.
+
+(Figure 6)--MAN DOG HORSE. I think it is graceful and would look comely
+in print. And consider--once more, I beg--what a labor-saver it is! Ten
+pen-strokes with the one system to convey those three words above, and
+thirty-three by the other! (Figure 7) I mean, in SOME ways, not in all.
+I suppose I might go so far as to say in most ways, and be within the
+facts, but never mind; let it go at SOME. One of the ways in which
+it exercises this birthright is--as I think--continuing to use our
+laughable alphabet these seventy-three years while there was a rational
+one at hand, to be had for the taking.
+
+It has taken five hundred years to simplify some of Chaucer's rotten
+spelling--if I may be allowed to use so frank a term as that--and it
+will take five hundred more to get our exasperating new Simplified
+Corruptions accepted and running smoothly. And we sha'n't be any better
+off then than we are now; for in that day we shall still have the
+privilege the Simplifiers are exercising now: ANYBODY can change the
+spelling that wants to.
+
+BUT YOU CAN'T CHANGE THE PHONOGRAPHIC SPELLING; THERE ISN'T ANY WAY. It
+will always follow the SOUND. If you want to change the spelling, you
+have to change the sound first.
+
+Mind, I myself am a Simplified Speller; I belong to that unhappy
+guild that is patiently and hopefully trying to reform our drunken old
+alphabet by reducing his whiskey. Well, it will improve him. When they
+get through and have reformed him all they can by their system he will
+be only HALF drunk. Above that condition their system can never lift
+him. There is no competent, and lasting, and real reform for him but
+to take away his whiskey entirely, and fill up his jug with Pitman's
+wholesome and undiseased alphabet.
+
+One great drawback to Simplified Spelling is, that in print a simplified
+word looks so like the very nation! and when you bunch a whole squadron
+of the Simplified together the spectacle is very nearly unendurable.
+
+The da ma ov koars kum when the publik ma be expektd to get rekonsyled
+to the bezair asspekt of the Simplified Kombynashuns, but--if I may be
+allowed the expression--is it worth the wasted time? (Figure 8)
+
+To see our letters put together in ways to which we are not accustomed
+offends the eye, and also takes the EXPRESSION out of the words.
+
+La on, Makduf, and damd be he hoo furst krys hold, enuf!
+
+It doesn't thrill you as it used to do. The simplifications have sucked
+the thrill all out of it.
+
+But a written character with which we are NOT ACQUAINTED does not
+offend us--Greek, Hebrew, Russian, Arabic, and the others--they have an
+interesting look, and we see beauty in them, too. And this is true of
+hieroglyphics, as well. There is something pleasant and engaging about
+the mathematical signs when we do not understand them. The mystery
+hidden in these things has a fascination for us: we can't come across a
+printed page of shorthand without being impressed by it and wishing we
+could read it.
+
+Very well, what I am offering for acceptance and adoption is not
+shorthand, but longhand, written with the SHORTHAND ALPHABET UNREDUCED.
+You can write three times as many words in a minute with it as you can
+write with our alphabet. And so, in a way, it IS properly a shorthand.
+It has a pleasant look, too; a beguiling look, an inviting look. I will
+write something in it, in my rude and untaught way: (Figure 9)
+
+Even when _I_ do it it comes out prettier than it does in Simplified
+Spelling. Yes, and in the Simplified it costs one hundred and
+twenty-three pen-strokes to write it, whereas in the phonographic it
+costs only twenty-nine.
+
+(Figure 9) is probably (Figure 10).
+
+Let us hope so, anyway.
+
+
+
+
+
+AS CONCERNS INTERPRETING THE DEITY
+
+I
+
+This line of hieroglyphs was for fourteen years the despair of all the
+scholars who labored over the mysteries of the Rosetta stone: (Figure 1)
+
+After five years of study Champollion translated it thus:
+
+Therefore let the worship of Epiphanes be maintained in all the temples,
+this upon pain of death.
+
+That was the twenty-fourth translation that had been furnished by
+scholars. For a time it stood. But only for a time. Then doubts began to
+assail it and undermine it, and the scholars resumed their labors. Three
+years of patient work produced eleven new translations; among them,
+this, by Grunfeldt, was received with considerable favor:
+
+The horse of Epiphanes shall be maintained at the public expense; this
+upon pain of death.
+
+But the following rendering, by Gospodin, was received by the learned
+world with yet greater favor:
+
+The priest shall explain the wisdom of Epiphanes to all these people,
+and these shall listen with reverence, upon pain of death.
+
+Seven years followed, in which twenty-one fresh and widely varying
+renderings were scored--none of them quite convincing. But now, at last,
+came Rawlinson, the youngest of all the scholars, with a translation
+which was immediately and universally recognized as being the correct
+version, and his name became famous in a day. So famous, indeed, that
+even the children were familiar with it; and such a noise did the
+achievement itself make that not even the noise of the monumental
+political event of that same year--the flight from Elba--was able to
+smother it to silence. Rawlinson's version reads as follows:
+
+Therefore, walk not away from the wisdom of Epiphanes, but turn and
+follow it; so shall it conduct thee to the temple's peace, and soften
+for thee the sorrows of life and the pains of death.
+
+Here is another difficult text: (Figure 2)
+
+It is demotic--a style of Egyptian writing and a phase of the language
+which had perished from the knowledge of all men twenty-five hundred
+years before the Christian era.
+
+Our red Indians have left many records, in the form of pictures, upon
+our crags and boulders. It has taken our most gifted and painstaking
+students two centuries to get at the meanings hidden in these pictures;
+yet there are still two little lines of hieroglyphics among the
+figures grouped upon the Dighton Rocks which they have not succeeded in
+interpreting to their satisfaction. These: (Figure 3)
+
+The suggested solutions of this riddle are practically innumerable;
+they would fill a book.
+
+Thus we have infinite trouble in solving man-made mysteries; it is only
+when we set out to discover the secret of God that our difficulties
+disappear. It was always so. In antique Roman times it was the custom of
+the Deity to try to conceal His intentions in the entrails of birds,
+and this was patiently and hopefully continued century after century,
+although the attempted concealment never succeeded, in a single recorded
+instance. The augurs could read entrails as easily as a modern child
+can read coarse print. Roman history is full of the marvels of
+interpretation which these extraordinary men performed. These strange
+and wonderful achievements move our awe and compel our admiration.
+Those men could pierce to the marrow of a mystery instantly. If the
+Rosetta-stone idea had been introduced it would have defeated them,
+but entrails had no embarrassments for them. Entrails have gone out,
+now--entrails and dreams. It was at last found out that as hiding-places
+for the divine intentions they were inadequate.
+
+A part of the wall of Valletri having in former times been struck with thunder,
+the response of the soothsayers was, that a native of that town would
+some time or other arrive at supreme power. --BOHN'S SUETONIUS, p. 138.
+
+“Some time or other.” It looks indefinite, but no matter, it happened,
+all the same; one needed only to wait, and be patient, and keep watch,
+then he would find out that the thunder-stroke had Caesar Augustus in
+mind, and had come to give notice.
+
+There were other advance-advertisements. One of them appeared just
+before Caesar Augustus was born, and was most poetic and touching and
+romantic in its feelings and aspects. It was a dream. It was dreamed by
+Caesar Augustus's mother, and interpreted at the usual rates:
+
+Atia, before her delivery, dreamed that her bowels stretched to
+the stars and expanded through the whole circuit of heaven and
+earth.--SUETONIUS, p. 139.
+
+That was in the augur's line, and furnished him no difficulties, but it
+would have taken Rawlinson and Champollion fourteen years to make sure
+of what it meant, because they would have been surprised and dizzy. It
+would have been too late to be valuable, then, and the bill for service
+would have been barred by the statute of limitation.
+
+In those old Roman days a gentleman's education was not complete until
+he had taken a theological course at the seminary and learned how to
+translate entrails. Caesar Augustus's education received this final
+polish. All through his life, whenever he had poultry on the menu he
+saved the interiors and kept himself informed of the Deity's plans by
+exercising upon those interiors the arts of augury.
+
+In his first consulship, while he was observing the auguries, twelve
+vultures presented themselves, as they had done to Romulus. And when he
+offered sacrifice, the livers of all the victims were folded inward in
+the lower part; a circumstance which was regarded by those present who
+had skill in things of that nature, as an indubitable prognostic of
+great and wonderful fortune.--SUETONIUS, p. 141.
+
+“Indubitable” is a strong word, but no doubt it was justified, if the
+livers were really turned that way. In those days chicken livers were
+strangely and delicately sensitive to coming events, no matter how far
+off they might be; and they could never keep still, but would curl and
+squirm like that, particularly when vultures came and showed interest in
+that approaching great event and in breakfast.
+
+II
+
+We may now skip eleven hundred and thirty or forty years, which brings
+us down to enlightened Christian times and the troubled days of King
+Stephen of England. The augur has had his day and has been long ago
+forgotten; the priest had fallen heir to his trade.
+
+King Henry is dead; Stephen, that bold and outrageous person, comes
+flying over from Normandy to steal the throne from Henry's daughter.
+He accomplished his crime, and Henry of Huntington, a priest of high
+degree, mourns over it in his Chronicle. The Archbishop of Canterbury
+consecrated Stephen: “wherefore the Lord visited the Archbishop with the
+same judgment which he had inflicted upon him who struck Jeremiah the
+great priest: he died within a year.”
+
+Stephen's was the greater offense, but Stephen could wait; not so the
+Archbishop, apparently.
+
+The kingdom was a prey to intestine wars; slaughter, fire, and rapine
+spread ruin throughout the land; cries of distress, horror, and woe rose
+in every quarter.
+
+That was the result of Stephen's crime. These unspeakable conditions
+continued during nineteen years. Then Stephen died as comfortably as
+any man ever did, and was honorably buried. It makes one pity the poor
+Archbishop, and wish that he, too, could have been let off as leniently.
+How did Henry of Huntington know that the Archbishop was sent to his
+grave by judgment of God for consecrating Stephen? He does not explain.
+Neither does he explain why Stephen was awarded a pleasanter death than
+he was entitled to, while the aged King Henry, his predecessor, who
+had ruled England thirty-five years to the people's strongly worded
+satisfaction, was condemned to close his life in circumstances most
+distinctly unpleasant, inconvenient, and disagreeable. His was probably
+the most uninspiring funeral that is set down in history. There is not
+a detail about it that is attractive. It seems to have been just the
+funeral for Stephen, and even at this far-distant day it is matter of
+just regret that by an indiscretion the wrong man got it.
+
+Whenever God punishes a man, Henry of Huntington knows why it was done,
+and tells us; and his pen is eloquent with admiration; but when a man
+has earned punishment, and escapes, he does not explain. He is evidently
+puzzled, but he does not say anything. I think it is often apparent that
+he is pained by these discrepancies, but loyally tries his best not
+to show it. When he cannot praise, he delivers himself of a silence
+so marked that a suspicious person could mistake it for suppressed
+criticism. However, he has plenty of opportunities to feel contented
+with the way things go--his book is full of them.
+
+  King David of Scotland... under color of religion caused his followers
+  to deal most barbarously with the English. They ripped open women,
+  tossed children on the points of spears, butchered priests at the
+  altars, and, cutting off the heads from the images on crucifixes, placed
+  them on the bodies of the slain, while in exchange they fixed on the
+  crucifixes the heads of their victims. Wherever the Scots came, there
+  was the same scene of horror and cruelty: women shrieking, old men
+  lamenting, amid the groans of the dying and the despair of the living.
+
+But the English got the victory.
+
+  Then the chief of the men of Lothian fell, pierced by an arrow, and all
+  his followers were put to flight. For the Almighty was offended at them
+  and their strength was rent like a cobweb.
+
+Offended at them for what? For committing those fearful butcheries? No,
+for that was the common custom on both sides, and not open to criticism.
+Then was it for doing the butcheries “under cover of religion”? No, that
+was not it; religious feeling was often expressed in that fervent way
+all through those old centuries. The truth is, He was not offended at
+“them” at all; He was only offended at their king, who had been false to
+an oath. Then why did not He put the punishment upon the king instead
+of upon “them”? It is a difficult question. One can see by the Chronicle
+that the “judgments” fell rather customarily upon the wrong person, but
+Henry of Huntington does not explain why. Here is one that went true;
+the chronicler's satisfaction in it is not hidden:
+
+  In the month of August, Providence displayed its justice in a remarkable
+  manner; for two of the nobles who had converted monasteries into
+  fortifications, expelling the monks, their sin being the same, met with
+  a similar punishment. Robert Marmion was one, Godfrey de Mandeville the
+  other. Robert Marmion, issuing forth against the enemy, was slain under
+  the walls of the monastery, being the only one who fell, though he was
+  surrounded by his troops. Dying excommunicated, he became subject to
+  death everlasting. In like manner Earl Godfrey was singled out among
+  his followers, and shot with an arrow by a common foot-soldier. He
+  made light of the wound, but he died of it in a few days, under
+  excommunication. See here the like judgment of God, memorable through
+  all ages!
+
+This exaltation jars upon me; not because of the death of the men, for
+they deserved that, but because it is death eternal, in white-hot fire
+and flame. It makes my flesh crawl. I have not known more than three
+men, or perhaps four, in my whole lifetime, whom I would rejoice to see
+writhing in those fires for even a year, let alone forever. I believe
+I would relent before the year was up, and get them out if I could.
+I think that in the long run, if a man's wife and babies, who had not
+harmed me, should come crying and pleading, I couldn't stand it; I
+know I should forgive him and let him go, even if he had violated a
+monastery. Henry of Huntington has been watching Godfrey and Marmion for
+nearly seven hundred and fifty years, now, but I couldn't do it, I
+know I couldn't. I am soft and gentle in my nature, and I should have
+forgiven them seventy-and-seven times, long ago. And I think God has;
+but this is only an opinion, and not authoritative, like Henry of
+Huntington's interpretations. I could learn to interpret, but I have
+never tried; I get so little time.
+
+All through his book Henry exhibits his familiarity with the intentions
+of God, and with the reasons for his intentions. Sometimes--very often,
+in fact--the act follows the intention after such a wide interval of
+time that one wonders how Henry could fit one act out of a hundred to
+one intention out of a hundred and get the thing right every time when
+there was such abundant choice among acts and intentions. Sometimes a
+man offends the Deity with a crime, and is punished for it thirty years
+later; meantime he has committed a million other crimes: no matter,
+Henry can pick out the one that brought the worms. Worms were generally
+used in those days for the slaying of particularly wicked people.
+This has gone out, now, but in old times it was a favorite. It always
+indicated a case of “wrath.” For instance:
+
+... the just God avenging Robert Fitzhilderbrand's perfidy, a worm grew
+in his vitals, which gradually gnawing its way through his intestines
+fattened on the abandoned man till, tortured with excruciating
+sufferings and venting himself in bitter moans, he was by a fitting
+punishment brought to his end.--(P. 400.)
+
+It was probably an alligator, but we cannot tell; we only know it was a
+particular breed, and only used to convey wrath. Some authorities think
+it was an ichthyosaurus, but there is much doubt.
+
+However, one thing we do know; and that is that that worm had been
+due years and years. Robert F. had violated a monastery once; he had
+committed unprintable crimes since, and they had been permitted--under
+disapproval--but the ravishment of the monastery had not been forgotten
+nor forgiven, and the worm came at last.
+
+Why were these reforms put off in this strange way? What was to be
+gained by it? Did Henry of Huntington really know his facts, or was he
+only guessing? Sometimes I am half persuaded that he is only a guesser,
+and not a good one. The divine wisdom must surely be of the better
+quality than he makes it out to be.
+
+Five hundred years before Henry's time some forecasts of the Lord's
+purposes were furnished by a pope, who perceived, by certain perfectly
+trustworthy signs furnished by the Deity for the information of His
+familiars, that the end of the world was
+
+... about to come. But as this end of the world draws near many things
+are at hand which have not before happened, as changes in the air,
+terrible signs in the heavens, tempests out of the common order of the
+seasons, wars, famines, pestilences, earthquakes in various places; all
+which will not happen in our days, but after our days all will come to
+pass.
+
+Still, the end was so near that these signs were “sent before that we
+may be careful for our souls and be found prepared to meet the impending
+judgment.”
+
+That was thirteen hundred years ago. This is really no improvement on
+the work of the Roman augurs.
+
+
+
+
+
+CONCERNING TOBACCO
+
+(Written about 1893; not before published)
+
+
+As concerns tobacco, there are many superstitions. And the chiefest is
+this--that there is a STANDARD governing the matter, whereas there is
+nothing of the kind. Each man's own preference is the only standard for
+him, the only one which he can accept, the only one which can command
+him. A congress of all the tobacco-lovers in the world could not elect
+a standard which would be binding upon you or me, or would even much
+influence us.
+
+The next superstition is that a man has a standard of his own. He
+hasn't. He thinks he has, but he hasn't. He thinks he can tell what he
+regards as a good cigar from what he regards as a bad one--but he can't.
+He goes by the brand, yet imagines he goes by the flavor. One may palm
+off the worst counterfeit upon him; if it bears his brand he will smoke
+it contentedly and never suspect.
+
+Children of twenty-five, who have seven years of experience, try to tell me
+what is a good cigar and what isn't. Me, who never learned to smoke, but
+always smoked; me, who came into the world asking for a light.
+
+No one can tell me what is a good cigar--for me. I am the only judge.
+People who claim to know say that I smoke the worst cigars in the world.
+They bring their own cigars when they come to my house. They betray an
+unmanly terror when I offer them a cigar; they tell lies and hurry away
+to meet engagements which they have not made when they are threatened
+with the hospitalities of my box. Now then, observe what superstition,
+assisted by a man's reputation, can do. I was to have twelve personal
+friends to supper one night. One of them was as notorious for costly
+and elegant cigars as I was for cheap and devilish ones. I called at his
+house and when no one was looking borrowed a double handful of his very
+choicest; cigars which cost him forty cents apiece and bore red-and-gold
+labels in sign of their nobility. I removed the labels and put the
+cigars into a box with my favorite brand on it--a brand which those
+people all knew, and which cowed them as men are cowed by an epidemic.
+They took these cigars when offered at the end of the supper, and lit
+them and sternly struggled with them--in dreary silence, for hilarity
+died when the fell brand came into view and started around--but their
+fortitude held for a short time only; then they made excuses and filed
+out, treading on one another's heels with indecent eagerness; and in the
+morning when I went out to observe results the cigars lay all between
+the front door and the gate. All except one--that one lay in the plate
+of the man from whom I had cabbaged the lot. One or two whiffs was all
+he could stand. He told me afterward that some day I would get shot for
+giving people that kind of cigars to smoke.
+
+Am I certain of my own standard? Perfectly; yes, absolutely--unless
+somebody fools me by putting my brand on some other kind of cigar; for
+no doubt I am like the rest, and know my cigar by the brand instead of
+by the flavor. However, my standard is a pretty wide one and covers a
+good deal of territory. To me, almost any cigar is good that nobody
+else will smoke, and to me almost all cigars are bad that other people
+consider good. Nearly any cigar will do me, except a Havana. People
+think they hurt my feelings when they come to my house with their life
+preservers on--I mean, with their own cigars in their pockets. It is
+an error; I take care of myself in a similar way. When I go into
+danger--that is, into rich people's houses, where, in the nature of
+things, they will have high-tariff cigars, red-and-gilt girded and
+nested in a rosewood box along with a damp sponge, cigars which develop
+a dismal black ash and burn down the side and smell, and will grow hot
+to the fingers, and will go on growing hotter and hotter, and go on
+smelling more and more infamously and unendurably the deeper the fire
+tunnels down inside below the thimbleful of honest tobacco that is in
+the front end, the furnisher of it praising it all the time and telling
+you how much the deadly thing cost--yes, when I go into that sort of
+peril I carry my own defense along; I carry my own brand--twenty-seven
+cents a barrel--and I live to see my family again. I may seem to light
+his red-gartered cigar, but that is only for courtesy's sake; I smuggle
+it into my pocket for the poor, of whom I know many, and light one of
+my own; and while he praises it I join in, but when he says it cost
+forty-five cents I say nothing, for I know better.
+
+However, to say true, my tastes are so catholic that I have never seen
+any cigars that I really could not smoke, except those that cost a
+dollar apiece. I have examined those and know that they are made of
+dog-hair, and not good dog-hair at that.
+
+I have a thoroughly satisfactory time in Europe, for all over the
+Continent one finds cigars which not even the most hardened newsboys in
+New York would smoke. I brought cigars with me, the last time; I will
+not do that any more. In Italy, as in France, the Government is the only
+cigar-peddler. Italy has three or four domestic brands: the Minghetti,
+the Trabuco, the Virginia, and a very coarse one which is a modification
+of the Virginia. The Minghettis are large and comely, and cost three
+dollars and sixty cents a hundred; I can smoke a hundred in seven days
+and enjoy every one of them. The Trabucos suit me, too; I don't remember
+the price. But one has to learn to like the Virginia, nobody is born
+friendly to it. It looks like a rat-tail file, but smokes better, some
+think. It has a straw through it; you pull this out, and it leaves a
+flue, otherwise there would be no draught, not even as much as there is
+to a nail. Some prefer a nail at first. However, I like all the French,
+Swiss, German, and Italian domestic cigars, and have never cared to
+inquire what they are made of; and nobody would know, anyhow, perhaps.
+There is even a brand of European smoking-tobacco that I like. It is a
+brand used by the Italian peasants. It is loose and dry and black, and
+looks like tea-grounds. When the fire is applied it expands, and climbs
+up and towers above the pipe, and presently tumbles off inside of one's
+vest. The tobacco itself is cheap, but it raises the insurance. It is
+as I remarked in the beginning--the taste for tobacco is a matter of
+superstition. There are no standards--no real standards. Each man's
+preference is the only standard for him, the only one which he can
+accept, the only one which can command him.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BEE
+
+It was Maeterlinck who introduced me to the bee. I mean, in the
+psychical and in the poetical way. I had had a business introduction
+earlier. It was when I was a boy. It is strange that I should remember a
+formality like that so long; it must be nearly sixty years.
+
+Bee scientists always speak of the bee as she. It is because all the
+important bees are of that sex. In the hive there is one married bee,
+called the queen; she has fifty thousand children; of these, about one
+hundred are sons; the rest are daughters. Some of the daughters are
+young maids, some are old maids, and all are virgins and remain so.
+
+Every spring the queen comes out of the hive and flies away with one of
+her sons and marries him. The honeymoon lasts only an hour or two; then
+the queen divorces her husband and returns home competent to lay two
+million eggs. This will be enough to last the year, but not more than
+enough, because hundreds of bees get drowned every day, and other
+hundreds are eaten by birds, and it is the queen's business to keep the
+population up to standard--say, fifty thousand. She must always have
+that many children on hand and efficient during the busy season, which
+is summer, or winter would catch the community short of food. She lays
+from two thousand to three thousand eggs a day, according to the demand;
+and she must exercise judgment, and not lay more than are needed in a
+slim flower-harvest, nor fewer than are required in a prodigal one, or
+the board of directors will dethrone her and elect a queen that has more
+sense.
+
+There are always a few royal heirs in stock and ready to take her
+place--ready and more than anxious to do it, although she is their own
+mother. These girls are kept by themselves, and are regally fed and
+tended from birth. No other bees get such fine food as they get, or
+live such a high and luxurious life. By consequence they are larger and
+longer and sleeker than their working sisters. And they have a curved
+sting, shaped like a scimitar, while the others have a straight one.
+
+A common bee will sting any one or anybody, but a royalty stings
+royalties only. A common bee will sting and kill another common bee,
+for cause, but when it is necessary to kill the queen other ways are
+employed. When a queen has grown old and slack and does not lay eggs
+enough one of her royal daughters is allowed to come to attack her, the
+rest of the bees looking on at the duel and seeing fair play. It is a
+duel with the curved stings. If one of the fighters gets hard pressed
+and gives it up and runs, she is brought back and must try again--once,
+maybe twice; then, if she runs yet once more for her life, judicial
+death is her portion; her children pack themselves into a ball around
+her person and hold her in that compact grip two or three days, until
+she starves to death or is suffocated. Meantime the victor bee is
+receiving royal honors and performing the one royal function--laying
+eggs.
+
+As regards the ethics of the judicial assassination of the queen, that
+is a matter of politics, and will be discussed later, in its proper
+place.
+
+During substantially the whole of her short life of five or six years
+the queen lives in the Egyptian darkness and stately seclusion of the royal
+apartments, with none about her but plebeian servants, who give her
+empty lip-affection in place of the love which her heart hungers for;
+who spy upon her in the interest of her waiting heirs, and report and
+exaggerate her defects and deficiencies to them; who fawn upon her and
+flatter her to her face and slander her behind her back; who grovel
+before her in the day of her power and forsake her in her age and
+weakness. There she sits, friendless, upon her throne through the long
+night of her life, cut off from the consoling sympathies and sweet
+companionship and loving endearments which she craves, by the gilded
+barriers of her awful rank; a forlorn exile in her own house and home,
+weary object of formal ceremonies and machine-made worship, winged child
+of the sun, native to the free air and the blue skies and the flowery
+fields, doomed by the splendid accident of her birth to trade this
+priceless heritage for a black captivity, a tinsel grandeur, and a
+loveless life, with shame and insult at the end and a cruel death--and
+condemned by the human instinct in her to hold the bargain valuable!
+
+Huber, Lubbock, Maeterlinck--in fact, all the great authorities--are
+agreed in denying that the bee is a member of the human family. I do not
+know why they have done this, but I think it is from dishonest motives.
+Why, the innumerable facts brought to light by their own painstaking
+and exhaustive experiments prove that if there is a master fool in the
+world, it is the bee. That seems to settle it.
+
+But that is the way of the scientist. He will spend thirty years in
+building up a mountain range of facts with the intent to prove a
+certain theory; then he is so happy in his achievement that as a rule
+he overlooks the main chief fact of all--that his accumulation proves an
+entirely different thing. When you point out this miscarriage to him he
+does not answer your letters; when you call to convince him, the servant
+prevaricates and you do not get in. Scientists have odious manners,
+except when you prop up their theory; then you can borrow money of them.
+
+To be strictly fair, I will concede that now and then one of them will
+answer your letter, but when they do they avoid the issue--you cannot
+pin them down. When I discovered that the bee was human I wrote about it
+to all those scientists whom I have just mentioned. For evasions, I have
+seen nothing to equal the answers I got.
+
+After the queen, the personage next in importance in the hive is the
+virgin. The virgins are fifty thousand or one hundred thousand in
+number, and they are the workers, the laborers. No work is done, in the
+hive or out of it, save by them. The males do not work, the queen does
+no work, unless laying eggs is work, but it does not seem so to me.
+There are only two million of them, anyway, and all of five months
+to finish the contract in. The distribution of work in a hive is
+as cleverly and elaborately specialized as it is in a vast American
+machine-shop or factory. A bee that has been trained to one of the many
+and various industries of the concern doesn't know how to exercise any
+other, and would be offended if asked to take a hand in anything outside
+of her profession. She is as human as a cook; and if you should ask the
+cook to wait on the table, you know what would happen. Cooks will play
+the piano if you like, but they draw the line there. In my time I have
+asked a cook to chop wood, and I know about these things. Even the hired
+girl has her frontiers; true, they are vague, they are ill-defined, even
+flexible, but they are there. This is not conjecture; it is founded on
+the absolute. And then the butler. You ask the butler to wash the dog.
+It is just as I say; there is much to be learned in these ways, without
+going to books. Books are very well, but books do not cover the whole
+domain of esthetic human culture. Pride of profession is one of the
+boniest bones in existence, if not the boniest. Without doubt it is so
+in the hive.
+
+
+
+
+
+TAMING THE BICYCLE
+
+(Written about 1893; not before published)
+
+
+In the early eighties Mark Twain learned to ride one of the old
+high-wheel bicycles of that period. He wrote an account of his
+experience, but did not offer it for publication. The form of bicycle he
+rode long ago became antiquated, but in the humor of his pleasantry is a
+quality which does not grow old.
+
+A. B. P.
+
+
+
+I
+
+I thought the matter over, and concluded I could do it. So I went down
+and bought a barrel of Pond's Extract and a bicycle. The Expert came home
+with me to instruct me. We chose the back yard, for the sake of privacy,
+and went to work.
+
+Mine was not a full-grown bicycle, but only a colt--a fifty-inch, with
+the pedals shortened up to forty-eight--and skittish, like any other
+colt. The Expert explained the thing's points briefly, then he got on
+its back and rode around a little, to show me how easy it was to do. He
+said that the dismounting was perhaps the hardest thing to learn, and so
+we would leave that to the last. But he was in error there. He found, to
+his surprise and joy, that all that he needed to do was to get me on to
+the machine and stand out of the way; I could get off, myself. Although
+I was wholly inexperienced, I dismounted in the best time on record. He
+was on that side, shoving up the machine; we all came down with a crash,
+he at the bottom, I next, and the machine on top.
+
+We examined the machine, but it was not in the least injured. This was
+hardly believable. Yet the Expert assured me that it was true; in fact,
+the examination proved it. I was partly to realize, then, how admirably
+these things are constructed. We applied some Pond's Extract, and
+resumed. The Expert got on the OTHER side to shove up this time, but I
+dismounted on that side; so the result was as before.
+
+The machine was not hurt. We oiled ourselves up again, and resumed. This
+time the Expert took up a sheltered position behind, but somehow or
+other we landed on him again.
+
+He was full of surprised admiration; said it was abnormal. She was all right,
+not a scratch on her, not a timber started anywhere. I said it was
+wonderful, while we were greasing up, but he said that when I came to
+know these steel spider-webs I would realize that nothing but dynamite
+could cripple them. Then he limped out to position, and we resumed once
+more. This time the Expert took up the position of short-stop, and got
+a man to shove up behind. We got up a handsome speed, and presently
+traversed a brick, and I went out over the top of the tiller and landed,
+head down, on the instructor's back, and saw the machine fluttering in
+the air between me and the sun. It was well it came down on us, for that
+broke the fall, and it was not injured.
+
+Five days later I got out and was carried down to the hospital, and
+found the Expert doing pretty fairly. In a few more days I was quite
+sound. I attribute this to my prudence in always dismounting on
+something soft. Some recommend a feather bed, but I think an Expert is
+better.
+
+The Expert got out at last, brought four assistants with him. It was a
+good idea. These four held the graceful cobweb upright while I climbed
+into the saddle; then they formed in column and marched on either
+side of me while the Expert pushed behind; all hands assisted at the
+dismount.
+
+The bicycle had what is called the “wabbles,” and had them very badly.
+In order to keep my position, a good many things were required of me,
+and in every instance the thing required was against nature. Against
+nature, but not against the laws of nature. That is to say, that
+whatever the needed thing might be, my nature, habit, and breeding moved
+me to attempt it in one way, while some immutable and unsuspected law of
+physics required that it be done in just the other way. I perceived by
+this how radically and grotesquely wrong had been the life-long
+education of my body and members. They were steeped in ignorance; they
+knew nothing--nothing which it could profit them to know. For instance,
+if I found myself falling to the right, I put the tiller hard down the
+other way, by a quite natural impulse, and so violated a law, and kept
+on going down. The law required the opposite thing--the big wheel must
+be turned in the direction in which you are falling. It is hard to
+believe this, when you are told it. And not merely hard to believe it,
+but impossible; it is opposed to all your notions. And it is just as
+hard to do it, after you do come to believe it. Believing it, and
+knowing by the most convincing proof that it is true, does not help it:
+you can't any more DO it than you could before; you can neither force
+nor persuade yourself to do it at first. The intellect has to come to
+the front, now. It has to teach the limbs to discard their old education
+and adopt the new.
+
+The steps of one's progress are distinctly marked. At the end of each
+lesson he knows he has acquired something, and he also knows what that
+something is, and likewise that it will stay with him. It is not like
+studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for
+thirty years; and at last, just as you think you've got it, they spring
+the subjunctive on you, and there you are. No--and I see now, plainly
+enough, that the great pity about the German language is, that you can't
+fall off it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that feature to
+make you attend strictly to business. But I also see, by what I have
+learned of bicycling, that the right and only sure way to learn German
+is by the bicycling method. That is to say, take a grip on one villainy
+of it at a time, and learn it--not ease up and shirk to the next,
+leaving that one half learned.
+
+When you have reached the point in bicycling where you can balance the
+machine tolerably fairly and propel it and steer it, then comes your
+next task--how to mount it. You do it in this way: you hop along behind
+it on your right foot, resting the other on the mounting-peg, and
+grasping the tiller with your hands. At the word, you rise on the
+peg, stiffen your left leg, hang your other one around in the air in
+a general in indefinite way, lean your stomach against the rear of the
+saddle, and then fall off, maybe on one side, maybe on the other;
+but you fall off. You get up and do it again; and once more; and then
+several times.
+
+By this time you have learned to keep your balance; and also to steer
+without wrenching the tiller out by the roots (I say tiller because it
+IS a tiller; “handle-bar” is a lamely descriptive phrase). So you steer
+along, straight ahead, a little while, then you rise forward, with a
+steady strain, bringing your right leg, and then your body, into the
+saddle, catch your breath, fetch a violent hitch this way and then that,
+and down you go again.
+
+But you have ceased to mind the going down by this time; you are getting
+to light on one foot or the other with considerable certainty. Six more
+attempts and six more falls make you perfect. You land in the saddle
+comfortably, next time, and stay there--that is, if you can be content
+to let your legs dangle, and leave the pedals alone a while; but if you
+grab at once for the pedals, you are gone again. You soon learn to wait
+a little and perfect your balance before reaching for the pedals; then
+the mounting-art is acquired, is complete, and a little practice will
+make it simple and easy to you, though spectators ought to keep off
+a rod or two to one side, along at first, if you have nothing against
+them.
+
+And now you come to the voluntary dismount; you learned the other kind
+first of all. It is quite easy to tell one how to do the voluntary
+dismount; the words are few, the requirement simple, and apparently
+undifficult; let your left pedal go down till your left leg is nearly
+straight, turn your wheel to the left, and get off as you would from a
+horse. It certainly does sound exceedingly easy; but it isn't. I don't
+know why it isn't but it isn't. Try as you may, you don't get down as
+you would from a horse, you get down as you would from a house afire.
+You make a spectacle of yourself every time.
+
+II
+
+During the eight days I took a daily lesson of an hour and a half. At the
+end of this twelve working-hours' apprenticeship I was graduated--in
+the rough. I was pronounced competent to paddle my own bicycle without
+outside help. It seems incredible, this celerity of acquirement. It
+takes considerably longer than that to learn horseback-riding in the
+rough.
+
+Now it is true that I could have learned without a teacher, but it
+would have been risky for me, because of my natural clumsiness. The
+self-taught man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know
+a tenth as much as he could have known if he had worked under teachers;
+and, besides, he brags, and is the means of fooling other thoughtless
+people into going and doing as he himself has done. There are those who
+imagine that the unlucky accidents of life--life's “experiences”--are in
+some way useful to us. I wish I could find out how. I never knew one of
+them to happen twice. They always change off and swap around and catch
+you on your inexperienced side. If personal experience can be worth
+anything as an education, it wouldn't seem likely that you could trip
+Methuselah; and yet if that old person could come back here it is more
+than likely that one of the first things he would do would be to take
+hold of one of these electric wires and tie himself all up in a knot.
+Now the surer thing and the wiser thing would be for him to ask somebody
+whether it was a good thing to take hold of. But that would not suit
+him; he would be one of the self-taught kind that go by experience;
+he would want to examine for himself. And he would find, for his
+instruction, that the coiled patriarch shuns the electric wire; and it
+would be useful to him, too, and would leave his education in quite a
+complete and rounded-out condition, till he should come again, some day,
+and go to bouncing a dynamite-can around to find out what was in it.
+
+But we wander from the point. However, get a teacher; it saves much time
+and Pond's Extract.
+
+Before taking final leave of me, my instructor inquired concerning my
+physical strength, and I was able to inform him that I hadn't any. He
+said that that was a defect which would make up-hill wheeling pretty
+difficult for me at first; but he also said the bicycle would soon
+remove it. The contrast between his muscles and mine was quite marked.
+He wanted to test mine, so I offered my biceps--which was my best. It
+almost made him smile. He said, “It is pulpy, and soft, and yielding,
+and rounded; it evades pressure, and glides from under the fingers; in
+the dark a body might think it was an oyster in a rag.” Perhaps this
+made me look grieved, for he added, briskly: “Oh, that's all right, you
+needn't worry about that; in a little while you can't tell it from a
+petrified kidney. Just go right along with your practice; you're all
+right.”
+
+Then he left me, and I started out alone to seek adventures. You don't
+really have to seek them--that is nothing but a phrase--they come to
+you.
+
+I chose a reposeful Sabbath-day sort of a back street which was about
+thirty yards wide between the curbstones. I knew it was not wide enough;
+still, I thought that by keeping strict watch and wasting no space
+unnecessarily I could crowd through.
+
+Of course I had trouble mounting the machine, entirely on my own
+responsibility, with no encouraging moral support from the outside,
+no sympathetic instructor to say, “Good! now you're doing well--good
+again--don't hurry--there, now, you're all right--brace up, go ahead.”
+ In place of this I had some other support. This was a boy, who was
+perched on a gate-post munching a hunk of maple sugar.
+
+He was full of interest and comment. The first time I failed and went
+down he said that if he was me he would dress up in pillows, that's what
+he would do. The next time I went down he advised me to go and learn
+to ride a tricycle first. The third time I collapsed he said he didn't
+believe I could stay on a horse-car. But the next time I succeeded, and
+got clumsily under way in a weaving, tottering, uncertain fashion, and
+occupying pretty much all of the street. My slow and lumbering gait
+filled the boy to the chin with scorn, and he sung out, “My, but don't
+he rip along!” Then he got down from his post and loafed along the
+sidewalk, still observing and occasionally commenting. Presently he
+dropped into my wake and followed along behind. A little girl passed
+by, balancing a wash-board on her head, and giggled, and seemed about to
+make a remark, but the boy said, rebukingly, “Let him alone, he's going
+to a funeral.”
+
+I have been familiar with that street for years, and had always supposed
+it was a dead level; but it was not, as the bicycle now informed me,
+to my surprise. The bicycle, in the hands of a novice, is as alert and
+acute as a spirit-level in the detecting of delicate and vanishing
+shades of difference in these matters. It notices a rise where your
+untrained eye would not observe that one existed; it notices any decline
+which water will run down. I was toiling up a slight rise, but was not
+aware of it. It made me tug and pant and perspire; and still, labor as
+I might, the machine came almost to a standstill every little while. At
+such times the boy would say: “That's it! take a rest--there ain't no
+hurry. They can't hold the funeral without YOU.”
+
+Stones were a bother to me. Even the smallest ones gave me a panic when
+I went over them. I could hit any kind of a stone, no matter how small,
+if I tried to miss it; and of course at first I couldn't help trying to
+do that. It is but natural. It is part of the ass that is put in us all,
+for some inscrutable reason.
+
+I was at the end of my course, at last, and it was necessary for me to
+round to. This is not a pleasant thing, when you undertake it for the
+first time on your own responsibility, and neither is it likely to
+succeed. Your confidence oozes away, you fill steadily up with nameless
+apprehensions, every fiber of you is tense with a watchful strain, you
+start a cautious and gradual curve, but your squirmy nerves are all full
+of electric anxieties, so the curve is quickly demoralized into a jerky
+and perilous zigzag; then suddenly the nickel-clad horse takes the bit
+in its mouth and goes slanting for the curbstone, defying all prayers
+and all your powers to change its mind--your heart stands still, your
+breath hangs fire, your legs forget to work, straight on you go, and
+there are but a couple of feet between you and the curb now. And now is
+the desperate moment, the last chance to save yourself; of course all
+your instructions fly out of your head, and you whirl your wheel AWAY
+from the curb instead of TOWARD it, and so you go sprawling on that
+granite-bound inhospitable shore. That was my luck; that was my
+experience. I dragged myself out from under the indestructible bicycle
+and sat down on the curb to examine.
+
+I started on the return trip. It was now that I saw a farmer's wagon
+poking along down toward me, loaded with cabbages. If I needed anything
+to perfect the precariousness of my steering, it was just that. The
+farmer was occupying the middle of the road with his wagon, leaving
+barely fourteen or fifteen yards of space on either side. I couldn't
+shout at him--a beginner can't shout; if he opens his mouth he is gone;
+he must keep all his attention on his business. But in this grisly
+emergency, the boy came to the rescue, and for once I had to be grateful
+to him. He kept a sharp lookout on the swiftly varying impulses and
+inspirations of my bicycle, and shouted to the man accordingly:
+
+“To the left! Turn to the left, or this jackass 'll run over you!” The
+man started to do it. “No, to the right, to the right! Hold on!
+THAT won't do!--to the left!--to the right!--to the LEFT--right!
+left--ri--Stay where you ARE, or you're a goner!”
+
+And just then I caught the off horse in the starboard and went down in a
+pile. I said, “Hang it! Couldn't you SEE I was coming?”
+
+“Yes, I see you was coming, but I couldn't tell which WAY you was
+coming. Nobody could--now, COULD they? You couldn't yourself--now, COULD
+you? So what could _I_ do?”
+
+There was something in that, and so I had the magnanimity to say so. I
+said I was no doubt as much to blame as he was.
+
+Within the next five days I achieved so much progress that the boy
+couldn't keep up with me. He had to go back to his gate-post, and
+content himself with watching me fall at long range.
+
+There was a row of low stepping-stones across one end of the street, a
+measured yard apart. Even after I got so I could steer pretty fairly I
+was so afraid of those stones that I always hit them. They gave me the
+worst falls I ever got in that street, except those which I got from
+dogs. I have seen it stated that no expert is quick enough to run over a
+dog; that a dog is always able to skip out of his way. I think that that
+may be true: but I think that the reason he couldn't run over the dog
+was because he was trying to. I did not try to run over any dog. But
+I ran over every dog that came along. I think it makes a great deal of
+difference. If you try to run over the dog he knows how to calculate,
+but if you are trying to miss him he does not know how to calculate,
+and is liable to jump the wrong way every time. It was always so in my
+experience. Even when I could not hit a wagon I could hit a dog that
+came to see me practice. They all liked to see me practice, and they
+all came, for there was very little going on in our neighborhood to
+entertain a dog. It took time to learn to miss a dog, but I achieved
+even that.
+
+I can steer as well as I want to, now, and I will catch that boy out
+one of these days and run over HIM if he doesn't reform.
+
+Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.
+
+
+
+
+
+IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?
+
+(from My Autobiography)
+
+Scattered here and there through the stacks of unpublished manuscript
+which constitute this formidable Autobiography and Diary of mine,
+certain chapters will in some distant future be found which deal with
+“Claimants”--claimants historically notorious: Satan, Claimant; the
+Golden Calf, Claimant; the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, Claimant; Louis
+XVII., Claimant; William Shakespeare, Claimant; Arthur Orton, Claimant;
+Mary Baker G. Eddy, Claimant--and the rest of them. Eminent Claimants,
+successful Claimants, defeated Claimants, royal Claimants, pleb
+Claimants, showy Claimants, shabby Claimants, revered Claimants,
+despised Claimants, twinkle star-like here and there and yonder through
+the mists of history and legend and tradition--and, oh, all the darling
+tribe are clothed in mystery and romance, and we read about them with
+deep interest and discuss them with loving sympathy or with rancorous
+resentment, according to which side we hitch ourselves to. It has always
+been so with the human race. There was never a Claimant that couldn't
+get a hearing, nor one that couldn't accumulate a rapturous following,
+no matter how flimsy and apparently unauthentic his claim might be.
+Arthur Orton's claim that he was the lost Tichborne baronet come to life
+again was as flimsy as Mrs. Eddy's that she wrote SCIENCE AND HEALTH
+from the direct dictation of the Deity; yet in England nearly forty
+years ago Orton had a huge army of devotees and incorrigible adherents,
+many of whom remained stubbornly unconvinced after their fat god had
+been proven an impostor and jailed as a perjurer, and today Mrs. Eddy's
+following is not only immense, but is daily augmenting in numbers and
+enthusiasm. Orton had many fine and educated minds among his adherents,
+Mrs. Eddy has had the like among hers from the beginning. Her Church is
+as well equipped in those particulars as is any other Church. Claimants
+can always count upon a following, it doesn't matter who they are, nor
+what they claim, nor whether they come with documents or without. It was
+always so. Down out of the long-vanished past, across the abyss of
+the ages, if you listen, you can still hear the believing multitudes
+shouting for Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel.
+
+A friend has sent me a new book, from England--THE SHAKESPEARE PROBLEM
+RESTATED--well restated and closely reasoned; and my fifty years'
+interest in that matter--asleep for the last three years--is excited
+once more. It is an interest which was born of Delia Bacon's book--away
+back in that ancient day--1857, or maybe 1856. About a year later my
+pilot-master, Bixby, transferred me from his own steamboat to the
+PENNSYLVANIA, and placed me under the orders and instructions of George
+Ealer--dead now, these many, many years. I steered for him a good many
+months--as was the humble duty of the pilot-apprentice: stood a daylight
+watch and spun the wheel under the severe superintendence and
+correction of the master. He was a prime chess-player and an idolater of
+Shakespeare. He would play chess with anybody; even with me, and it cost
+his official dignity something to do that. Also--quite uninvited--he
+would read Shakespeare to me; not just casually, but by the hour, when
+it was his watch and I was steering. He read well, but not profitably
+for me, because he constantly injected commands into the text. That
+broke it all up, mixed it all up, tangled it all up--to that degree,
+in fact, that if we were in a risky and difficult piece of river an
+ignorant person couldn't have told, sometimes, which observations were
+Shakespeare's and which were Ealer's. For instance:
+
+What man dare, _I_ dare!
+
+Approach thou WHAT are you laying in the leads for? what a hell of
+an idea! like the rugged ease her off a little, ease her off! rugged
+Russian bear, the armed rhinoceros or the THERE she goes! meet her, meet
+her! didn't you KNOW she'd smell the reef if you crowded it like that?
+Hyrcan tiger; take any shape but that and my firm nerves she'll be in the
+WOODS the first you know! stop the starboard! come ahead strong on the
+larboard! back the starboard!... NOW then, you're all right; come ahead
+on the starboard; straighten up and go 'long, never tremble: or be alive
+again, and dare me to the desert DAMNATION can't you keep away from that
+greasy water? pull her down! snatch her! snatch her baldheaded! with thy
+sword; if trembling I inhabit then, lay in the leads!--no, only with
+the starboard one, leave the other alone, protest me the baby of a girl.
+Hence horrible shadow! eight bells--that watchman's asleep again, I
+reckon, go down and call Brown yourself, unreal mockery, hence!
+
+He certainly was a good reader, and splendidly thrilling and stormy and
+tragic, but it was a damage to me, because I have never since been
+able to read Shakespeare in a calm and sane way. I cannot rid it of his
+explosive interlardings, they break in everywhere with their irrelevant,
+“What in hell are you up to NOW! pull her down! more! MORE!--there now,
+steady as you go,” and the other disorganizing interruptions that were
+always leaping from his mouth. When I read Shakespeare now I can hear
+them as plainly as I did in that long-departed time--fifty-one years
+ago. I never regarded Ealer's readings as educational. Indeed, they were
+a detriment to me.
+
+His contributions to the text seldom improved it, but barring that
+detail he was a good reader; I can say that much for him. He did not use
+the book, and did not need to; he knew his Shakespeare as well as Euclid
+ever knew his multiplication table.
+
+Did he have something to say--this Shakespeare-adoring Mississippi
+pilot--anent Delia Bacon's book?
+
+Yes. And he said it; said it all the time, for months--in the morning
+watch, the middle watch, and dog watch; and probably kept it going
+in his sleep. He bought the literature of the dispute as fast as it
+appeared, and we discussed it all through thirteen hundred miles of
+river four times traversed in every thirty-five days--the time required
+by that swift boat to achieve two round trips. We discussed, and
+discussed, and discussed, and disputed and disputed and disputed; at any
+rate, HE did, and I got in a word now and then when he slipped a cog
+and there was a vacancy. He did his arguing with heat, with energy,
+with violence; and I did mine with the reserve and moderation of a
+subordinate who does not like to be flung out of a pilot-house that is
+perched forty feet above the water. He was fiercely loyal to Shakespeare
+and cordially scornful of Bacon and of all the pretensions of the
+Baconians. So was I--at first. And at first he was glad that that was
+my attitude. There were even indications that he admired it; indications
+dimmed, it is true, by the distance that lay between the lofty
+boss-pilotical altitude and my lowly one, yet perceptible to me;
+perceptible, and translatable into a compliment--compliment coming down
+from above the snow-line and not well thawed in the transit, and not
+likely to set anything afire, not even a cub-pilot's self-conceit; still
+a detectable complement, and precious.
+
+Naturally it flattered me into being more loyal to Shakespeare--if
+possible--than I was before, and more prejudiced against Bacon--if
+possible--than I was before. And so we discussed and discussed, both on
+the same side, and were happy. For a while. Only for a while. Only for a
+very little while, a very, very, very little while. Then the atmosphere
+began to change; began to cool off.
+
+A brighter person would have seen what the trouble was, earlier than I
+did, perhaps, but I saw it early enough for all practical purposes. You
+see, he was of an argumentative disposition. Therefore it took him but
+a little time to get tired of arguing with a person who agreed with
+everything he said and consequently never furnished him a provocative
+to flare up and show what he could do when it came to clear, cold, hard,
+rose-cut, hundred-faceted, diamond-flashing REASONING. That was his name
+for it. It has been applied since, with complacency, as many as several
+times, in the Bacon-Shakespeare scuffle. On the Shakespeare side.
+
+Then the thing happened which has happened to more persons than to me
+when principle and personal interest found themselves in opposition to
+each other and a choice had to be made: I let principle go, and went
+over to the other side. Not the entire way, but far enough to answer the
+requirements of the case. That is to say, I took this attitude--to wit,
+I only BELIEVED Bacon wrote Shakespeare, whereas I KNEW Shakespeare
+didn't. Ealer was satisfied with that, and the war broke loose. Study,
+practice, experience in handling my end of the matter presently enabled
+me to take my new position almost seriously; a little bit later, utterly
+seriously; a little later still, lovingly, gratefully, devotedly;
+finally: fiercely, rabidly, uncompromisingly. After that I was welded
+to my faith, I was theoretically ready to die for it, and I looked down
+with compassion not unmixed with scorn upon everybody else's faith that
+didn't tally with mine. That faith, imposed upon me by self-interest
+in that ancient day, remains my faith today, and in it I find comfort,
+solace, peace, and never-failing joy. You see how curiously theological
+it is. The “rice Christian” of the Orient goes through the very same
+steps, when he is after rice and the missionary is after HIM; he goes
+for rice, and remains to worship.
+
+Ealer did a lot of our “reasoning”--not to say substantially all of it.
+The slaves of his cult have a passion for calling it by that large name.
+We others do not call our inductions and deductions and reductions by
+any name at all. They show for themselves what they are, and we can with
+tranquil confidence leave the world to ennoble them with a title of its
+own choosing.
+
+Now and then when Ealer had to stop to cough, I pulled my
+induction-talents together and hove the controversial lead myself:
+always getting eight feet, eight and a half, often nine, sometimes even
+quarter-less-twain--as _I_ believed; but always “no bottom,” as HE said.
+
+I got the best of him only once. I prepared myself. I wrote out a
+passage from Shakespeare--it may have been the very one I quoted
+awhile ago, I don't remember--and riddled it with his wild steamboatful
+interlardings. When an unrisky opportunity offered, one lovely summer
+day, when we had sounded and buoyed a tangled patch of crossings known
+as Hell's Half Acre, and were aboard again and he had sneaked the
+PENNSYLVANIA triumphantly through it without once scraping sand, and the
+A. T. LACEY had followed in our wake and got stuck, and he was feeling
+good, I showed it to him. It amused him. I asked him to fire it
+off--READ it; read it, I diplomatically added, as only HE could read
+dramatic poetry. The compliment touched him where he lived. He did read
+it; read it with surpassing fire and spirit; read it as it will never be
+read again; for HE knew how to put the right music into those thunderous
+interlardings and make them seem a part of the text, make them sound as
+if they were bursting from Shakespeare's own soul, each one of them a
+golden inspiration and not to be left out without damage to the massed
+and magnificent whole.
+
+I waited a week, to let the incident fade; waited longer; waited until
+he brought up for reasonings and vituperation my pet position, my pet
+argument, the one which I was fondest of, the one which I prized far
+above all others in my ammunition-wagon--to wit, that Shakespeare
+couldn't have written Shakespeare's works, for the reason that the
+man who wrote them was limitlessly familiar with the laws, and the
+law-courts, and law-proceedings, and lawyer-talk, and lawyer-ways--and
+if Shakespeare was possessed of the infinitely divided star-dust that
+constituted this vast wealth, HOW did he get it, and WHERE and WHEN?
+
+“From books.”
+
+From books! That was always the idea. I answered as my readings of the
+champions of my side of the great controversy had taught me to
+answer: that a man can't handle glibly and easily and comfortably and
+successfully the argot of a trade at which he has not personally served.
+He will make mistakes; he will not, and cannot, get the trade-phrasings
+precisely and exactly right; and the moment he departs, by even a shade,
+from a common trade-form, the reader who has served that trade will know
+the writer HASN'T. Ealer would not be convinced; he said a man
+could learn how to correctly handle the subtleties and mysteries and
+free-masonries of ANY trade by careful reading and studying. But when
+I got him to read again the passage from Shakespeare with the
+interlardings, he perceived, himself, that books couldn't teach a
+student a bewildering multitude of pilot-phrases so thoroughly and
+perfectly that he could talk them off in book and play or conversation
+and make no mistake that a pilot would not immediately discover. It
+was a triumph for me. He was silent awhile, and I knew what was
+happening--he was losing his temper. And I knew he would presently close
+the session with the same old argument that was always his stay and
+his support in time of need; the same old argument, the one I couldn't
+answer, because I dasn't--the argument that I was an ass, and better
+shut up. He delivered it, and I obeyed.
+
+O dear, how long ago it was--how pathetically long ago! And here am I,
+old, forsaken, forlorn, and alone, arranging to get that argument out of
+somebody again.
+
+When a man has a passion for Shakespeare, it goes without saying that
+he keeps company with other standard authors. Ealer always had several
+high-class books in the pilot-house, and he read the same ones over and
+over again, and did not care to change to newer and fresher ones. He
+played well on the flute, and greatly enjoyed hearing himself play. So
+did I. He had a notion that a flute would keep its health better if you
+took it apart when it was not standing a watch; and so, when it was not
+on duty it took its rest, disjointed, on the compass-shelf under
+the breastboard. When the PENNSYLVANIA blew up and became a drifting
+rack-heap freighted with wounded and dying poor souls (my young brother
+Henry among them), pilot Brown had the watch below, and was probably
+asleep and never knew what killed him; but Ealer escaped unhurt. He and
+his pilot-house were shot up into the air; then they fell, and Ealer
+sank through the ragged cavern where the hurricane-deck and the
+boiler-deck had been, and landed in a nest of ruins on the main deck,
+on top of one of the unexploded boilers, where he lay prone in a fog of
+scald and deadly steam. But not for long. He did not lose his head--long
+familiarity with danger had taught him to keep it, in any and all
+emergencies. He held his coat-lapels to his nose with one hand, to keep
+out the steam, and scrabbled around with the other till he found the
+joints of his flute, then he took measures to save himself alive, and
+was successful. I was not on board. I had been put ashore in New Orleans
+by Captain Klinefelter. The reason--however, I have told all about it
+in the book called OLD TIMES ON THE MISSISSIPPI, and it isn't important,
+anyway, it is so long ago.
+
+II
+
+When I was a Sunday-school scholar, something more than sixty years ago,
+I became interested in Satan, and wanted to find out all I could about
+him. I began to ask questions, but my class-teacher, Mr. Barclay, the
+stone-mason, was reluctant about answering them, it seemed to me. I was
+anxious to be praised for turning my thoughts to serious subjects when
+there wasn't another boy in the village who could be hired to do such a
+thing. I was greatly interested in the incident of Eve and the serpent,
+and thought Eve's calmness was perfectly noble. I asked Mr. Barclay if
+he had ever heard of another woman who, being approached by a serpent,
+would not excuse herself and break for the nearest timber. He did not
+answer my question, but rebuked me for inquiring into matters above my
+age and comprehension. I will say for Mr. Barclay that he was willing to
+tell me the facts of Satan's history, but he stopped there: he wouldn't
+allow any discussion of them.
+
+In the course of time we exhausted the facts. There were only five
+or six of them; you could set them all down on a visiting-card. I was
+disappointed. I had been meditating a biography, and was grieved to find
+that there were no materials. I said as much, with the tears running
+down. Mr. Barclay's sympathy and compassion were aroused, for he was
+a most kind and gentle-spirited man, and he patted me on the head and
+cheered me up by saying there was a whole vast ocean of materials! I can
+still feel the happy thrill which these blessed words shot through me.
+
+Then he began to bail out that ocean's riches for my encouragement and
+joy. Like this: it was “conjectured”--though not established--that Satan
+was originally an angel in Heaven; that he fell; that he rebelled, and
+brought on a war; that he was defeated, and banished to perdition. Also,
+“we have reason to believe” that later he did so and so; that “we
+are warranted in supposing” that at a subsequent time he traveled
+extensively, seeking whom he might devour; that a couple of centuries
+afterward, “as tradition instructs us,” he took up the cruel trade of
+tempting people to their ruin, with vast and fearful results; that
+by and by, “as the probabilities seem to indicate,” he may have done
+certain things, he might have done certain other things, he must have
+done still other things.
+
+And so on and so on. We set down the five known facts by themselves on a
+piece of paper, and numbered it “page 1”; then on fifteen hundred other
+pieces of paper we set down the “conjectures,” and “suppositions,”
+ and “maybes,” and “perhapses,” and “doubtlesses,” and “rumors,” and
+“guesses,” and “probabilities,” and “likelihoods,” and “we are permitted
+to thinks,” and “we are warranted in believings,” and “might
+have beens,” and “could have beens,” and “must have beens,” and
+“unquestionablys,” and “without a shadow of doubts”--and behold!
+
+MATERIALS? Why, we had enough to build a biography of Shakespeare!
+
+Yet he made me put away my pen; he would not let me write the history of
+Satan. Why? Because, as he said, he had suspicions--suspicions that
+my attitude in that matter was not reverent, and that a person must be
+reverent when writing about the sacred characters. He said any one who
+spoke flippantly of Satan would be frowned upon by the religious world
+and also be brought to account.
+
+I assured him, in earnest and sincere words, that he had wholly
+misconceived my attitude; that I had the highest respect for Satan, and
+that my reverence for him equaled, and possibly even exceeded, that of
+any member of any church. I said it wounded me deeply to perceive by his
+words that he thought I would make fun of Satan, and deride him, laugh
+at him, scoff at him; whereas in truth I had never thought of such a
+thing, but had only a warm desire to make fun of those others and
+laugh at THEM. “What others?” “Why, the Supposers, the Perhapsers, the
+Might-Have-Beeners, the Could-Have-Beeners, the Must-Have-Beeners, the
+Without-a-Shadow-of-Doubters, the We-Are-Warranted-in-Believingers, and
+all that funny crop of solemn architects who have taken a good solid
+foundation of five indisputable and unimportant facts and built upon it
+a Conjectural Satan thirty miles high.”
+
+What did Mr. Barclay do then? Was he disarmed? Was he silenced? No. He
+was shocked. He was so shocked that he visibly shuddered. He said the
+Satanic Traditioners and Perhapsers and Conjecturers were THEMSELVES
+sacred! As sacred as their work. So sacred that whoso ventured to
+mock them or make fun of their work, could not afterward enter any
+respectable house, even by the back door.
+
+How true were his words, and how wise! How fortunate it would have been
+for me if I had heeded them. But I was young, I was but seven years of
+age, and vain, foolish, and anxious to attract attention. I wrote the
+biography, and have never been in a respectable house since.
+
+III
+
+How curious and interesting is the parallel--as far as poverty of
+biographical details is concerned--between Satan and Shakespeare. It
+is wonderful, it is unique, it stands quite alone, there is nothing
+resembling it in history, nothing resembling it in romance, nothing
+approaching it even in tradition. How sublime is their position, and how
+over-topping, how sky-reaching, how supreme--the two Great Unknowns,
+the two Illustrious Conjecturabilities! They are the best-known unknown
+persons that have ever drawn breath upon the planet.
+
+For the instruction of the ignorant I will make a list, now, of those
+details of Shakespeare's history which are FACTS--verified facts,
+established facts, undisputed facts.
+
+
+
+Facts
+
+He was born on the 23d of April, 1564.
+
+Of good farmer-class parents who could not read, could not write, could
+not sign their names.
+
+At Stratford, a small back settlement which in that day was shabby and
+unclean, and densely illiterate. Of the nineteen important men charged
+with the government of the town, thirteen had to “make their mark” in
+attesting important documents, because they could not write their names.
+
+Of the first eighteen years of his life NOTHING is known. They are a
+blank.
+
+On the 27th of November (1582) William Shakespeare took out a license to
+marry Anne Whateley.
+
+Next day William Shakespeare took out a license to marry Anne Hathaway.
+She was eight years his senior.
+
+William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. In a hurry. By grace of a
+reluctantly granted dispensation there was but one publication of the
+banns.
+
+Within six months the first child was born.
+
+About two (blank) years followed, during which period NOTHING AT ALL
+HAPPENED TO SHAKESPEARE, so far as anybody knows.
+
+Then came twins--1585. February.
+
+Two blank years follow.
+
+Then--1587--he makes a ten-year visit to London, leaving the family
+behind.
+
+Five blank years follow. During this period NOTHING HAPPENED TO HIM, as
+far as anybody actually knows.
+
+Then--1592--there is mention of him as an actor.
+
+Next year--1593--his name appears in the official list of players.
+
+Next year--1594--he played before the queen. A detail of no consequence:
+other obscurities did it every year of the forty-five of her reign. And
+remained obscure.
+
+Three pretty full years follow. Full of play-acting. Then
+
+In 1597 he bought New Place, Stratford.
+
+Thirteen or fourteen busy years follow; years in which he accumulated
+money, and also reputation as actor and manager.
+
+Meantime his name, liberally and variously spelt, had become associated
+with a number of great plays and poems, as (ostensibly) author of the
+same.
+
+Some of these, in these years and later, were pirated, but he made no
+protest.
+
+Then--1610-11--he returned to Stratford and settled down for good and
+all, and busied himself in lending money, trading in tithes, trading in
+land and houses; shirking a debt of forty-one shillings, borrowed by
+his wife during his long desertion of his family; suing debtors for
+shillings and coppers; being sued himself for shillings and coppers;
+and acting as confederate to a neighbor who tried to rob the town of its
+rights in a certain common, and did not succeed.
+
+He lived five or six years--till 1616--in the joy of these elevated
+pursuits. Then he made a will, and signed each of its three pages with
+his name.
+
+A thoroughgoing business man's will. It named in minute detail
+every item of property he owned in the world--houses, lands, sword,
+silver-gilt bowl, and so on--all the way down to his “second-best bed”
+ and its furniture.
+
+It carefully and calculatingly distributed his riches among the members
+of his family, overlooking no individual of it. Not even his wife:
+the wife he had been enabled to marry in a hurry by urgent grace of a
+special dispensation before he was nineteen; the wife whom he had left
+husbandless so many years; the wife who had had to borrow forty-one
+shillings in her need, and which the lender was never able to collect of
+the prosperous husband, but died at last with the money still lacking.
+No, even this wife was remembered in Shakespeare's will.
+
+He left her that “second-best bed.”
+
+And NOT ANOTHER THING; not even a penny to bless her lucky widowhood
+with.
+
+It was eminently and conspicuously a business man's will, not a poet's.
+
+It mentioned NOT A SINGLE BOOK.
+
+Books were much more precious than swords and silver-gilt bowls and
+second-best beds in those days, and when a departing person owned one he
+gave it a high place in his will.
+
+The will mentioned NOT A PLAY, NOT A POEM, NOT AN UNFINISHED LITERARY
+WORK, NOT A SCRAP OF MANUSCRIPT OF ANY KIND.
+
+Many poets have died poor, but this is the only one in history that
+has died THIS poor; the others all left literary remains behind. Also a
+book. Maybe two.
+
+If Shakespeare had owned a dog--but we need not go into that: we know he
+would have mentioned it in his will. If a good dog, Susanna would have
+got it; if an inferior one his wife would have got a dower interest in
+it. I wish he had had a dog, just so we could see how painstakingly he
+would have divided that dog among the family, in his careful business
+way.
+
+He signed the will in three places.
+
+In earlier years he signed two other official documents.
+
+These five signatures still exist.
+
+There are NO OTHER SPECIMENS OF HIS PENMANSHIP IN EXISTENCE. Not a line.
+
+Was he prejudiced against the art? His granddaughter, whom he loved, was
+eight years old when he died, yet she had had no teaching, he left no
+provision for her education, although he was rich, and in her mature
+womanhood she couldn't write and couldn't tell her husband's manuscript
+from anybody else's--she thought it was Shakespeare's.
+
+When Shakespeare died in Stratford, IT WAS NOT AN EVENT. It made no
+more stir in England than the death of any other forgotten theater-actor
+would have made. Nobody came down from London; there were no lamenting
+poems, no eulogies, no national tears--there was merely silence, and
+nothing more. A striking contrast with what happened when Ben Jonson,
+and Francis Bacon, and Spenser, and Raleigh, and the other distinguished
+literary folk of Shakespeare's time passed from life! No praiseful voice
+was lifted for the lost Bard of Avon; even Ben Jonson waited seven years
+before he lifted his.
+
+SO FAR AS ANYBODY ACTUALLY KNOWS AND CAN PROVE, Shakespeare of
+Stratford-on-Avon never wrote a play in his life.
+
+SO FAR AS ANYBODY KNOWS AND CAN PROVE, he never wrote a letter to
+anybody in his life.
+
+SO FAR AS ANY ONE KNOWS, HE RECEIVED ONLY ONE LETTER DURING HIS LIFE.
+
+So far as any one KNOWS AND CAN PROVE, Shakespeare of Stratford wrote
+only one poem during his life. This one is authentic. He did write that
+one--a fact which stands undisputed; he wrote the whole of it; he wrote
+the whole of it out of his own head. He commanded that this work of art
+be engraved upon his tomb, and he was obeyed. There it abides to this
+day. This is it:
+
+Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare To digg the dust encloased heare:
+Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones And curst be he yt moves my bones.
+
+In the list as above set down will be found EVERY POSITIVELY KNOWN fact
+of Shakespeare's life, lean and meager as the invoice is. Beyond these
+details we know NOT A THING about him. All the rest of his vast history,
+as furnished by the biographers, is built up, course upon course,
+of guesses, inferences, theories, conjectures--an Eiffel Tower
+of artificialities rising sky-high from a very flat and very thin
+foundation of inconsequential facts.
+
+IV
+
+Conjectures
+
+The historians “suppose” that Shakespeare attended the Free School in
+Stratford from the time he was seven years old till he was thirteen.
+There is no EVIDENCE in existence that he ever went to school at all.
+
+The historians “infer” that he got his Latin in that school--the school
+which they “suppose” he attended.
+
+They “suppose” his father's declining fortunes made it necessary for him
+to leave the school they supposed he attended, and get to work and help
+support his parents and their ten children. But there is no evidence
+that he ever entered or returned from the school they suppose he
+attended.
+
+They “suppose” he assisted his father in the butchering business; and
+that, being only a boy, he didn't have to do full-grown butchering, but
+only slaughtered calves. Also, that whenever he killed a calf he made a
+high-flown speech over it. This supposition rests upon the testimony
+of a man who wasn't there at the time; a man who got it from a man
+who could have been there, but did not say whether he was nor not; and
+neither of them thought to mention it for decades, and decades, and
+decades, and two more decades after Shakespeare's death (until old age
+and mental decay had refreshed and vivified their memories). They hadn't
+two facts in stock about the long-dead distinguished citizen, but only
+just the one: he slaughtered calves and broke into oratory while he was
+at it. Curious. They had only one fact, yet the distinguished citizen
+had spent twenty-six years in that little town--just half his lifetime.
+However, rightly viewed, it was the most important fact, indeed almost
+the only important fact, of Shakespeare's life in Stratford. Rightly
+viewed. For experience is an author's most valuable asset; experience
+is the thing that puts the muscle and the breath and the warm blood into
+the book he writes. Rightly viewed, calf-butchering accounts for “Titus
+Andronicus,” the only play--ain't it?--that the Stratford Shakespeare
+ever wrote; and yet it is the only one everybody tried to chouse him out
+of, the Baconians included.
+
+The historians find themselves “justified in believing” that the young
+Shakespeare poached upon Sir Thomas Lucy's deer preserves and got haled
+before that magistrate for it. But there is no shred of respectworthy
+evidence that anything of the kind happened.
+
+The historians, having argued the thing that MIGHT have happened into
+the thing that DID happen, found no trouble in turning Sir Thomas Lucy
+into Mr. Justice Shallow. They have long ago convinced the world--on
+surmise and without trustworthy evidence--that Shallow IS Sir Thomas.
+
+The next addition to the young Shakespeare's Stratford history comes
+easy. The historian builds it out of the surmised deer-steeling, and
+the surmised trial before the magistrate, and the surmised
+vengeance-prompted satire upon the magistrate in the play: result, the
+young Shakespeare was a wild, wild, wild, oh, SUCH a wild young scamp,
+and that gratuitous slander is established for all time! It is the very
+way Professor Osborn and I built the colossal skeleton brontosaur
+that stands fifty-seven feet long and sixteen feet high in the Natural
+History Museum, the awe and admiration of all the world, the stateliest
+skeleton that exists on the planet. We had nine bones, and we built the
+rest of him out of plaster of Paris. We ran short of plaster of Paris,
+or we'd have built a brontosaur that could sit down beside the Stratford
+Shakespeare and none but an expert could tell which was biggest or
+contained the most plaster.
+
+Shakespeare pronounced “Venus and Adonis” “the first heir of his
+invention,” apparently implying that it was his first effort at literary
+composition. He should not have said it. It has been an embarrassment to
+his historians these many, many years. They have to make him write that
+graceful and polished and flawless and beautiful poem before he escaped
+from Stratford and his family--1586 or '87--age, twenty-two, or along
+there; because within the next five years he wrote five great plays, and
+could not have found time to write another line.
+
+It is sorely embarrassing. If he began to slaughter calves, and poach
+deer, and rollick around, and learn English, at the earliest likely
+moment--say at thirteen, when he was supposably wrenched from that
+school where he was supposably storing up Latin for future literary
+use--he had his youthful hands full, and much more than full. He must
+have had to put aside his Warwickshire dialect, which wouldn't be
+understood in London, and study English very hard. Very hard indeed;
+incredibly hard, almost, if the result of that labor was to be the
+smooth and rounded and flexible and letter-perfect English of the “Venus
+and Adonis” in the space of ten years; and at the same time learn great
+and fine and unsurpassable literary FORM.
+
+However, it is “conjectured” that he accomplished all this and more,
+much more: learned law and its intricacies; and the complex procedure of
+the law-courts; and all about soldiering, and sailoring, and the manners
+and customs and ways of royal courts and aristocratic society; and
+likewise accumulated in his one head every kind of knowledge the learned
+then possessed, and every kind of humble knowledge possessed by the
+lowly and the ignorant; and added thereto a wider and more intimate
+knowledge of the world's great literatures, ancient and modern, than
+was possessed by any other man of his time--for he was going to make
+brilliant and easy and admiration-compelling use of these splendid
+treasures the moment he got to London. And according to the surmisers,
+that is what he did. Yes, although there was no one in Stratford able to
+teach him these things, and no library in the little village to dig them
+out of. His father could not read, and even the surmisers surmise that
+he did not keep a library.
+
+It is surmised by the biographers that the young Shakespeare got his
+vast knowledge of the law and his familiar and accurate acquaintance
+with the manners and customs and shop-talk of lawyers through being for
+a time the CLERK OF A STRATFORD COURT; just as a bright lad like me,
+reared in a village on the banks of the Mississippi, might become
+perfect in knowledge of the Bering Strait whale-fishery and the
+shop-talk of the veteran exercises of that adventure-bristling trade
+through catching catfish with a “trot-line” Sundays. But the surmise
+is damaged by the fact that there is no evidence--and not even
+tradition--that the young Shakespeare was ever clerk of a law-court.
+
+It is further surmised that the young Shakespeare accumulated his
+law-treasures in the first years of his sojourn in London, through
+“amusing himself” by learning book-law in his garret and by picking up
+lawyer-talk and the rest of it through loitering about the law-courts
+and listening. But it is only surmise; there is no EVIDENCE that he
+ever did either of those things. They are merely a couple of chunks of
+plaster of Paris.
+
+There is a legend that he got his bread and butter by holding horses in
+front of the London theaters, mornings and afternoons. Maybe he did.
+If he did, it seriously shortened his law-study hours and his
+recreation-time in the courts. In those very days he was writing great
+plays, and needed all the time he could get. The horse-holding legend
+ought to be strangled; it too formidably increases the historian's
+difficulty in accounting for the young Shakespeare's erudition--an
+erudition which he was acquiring, hunk by hunk and chunk by chunk, every
+day in those strenuous times, and emptying each day's catch into next
+day's imperishable drama.
+
+He had to acquire a knowledge of war at the same time; and a knowledge
+of soldier-people and sailor-people and their ways and talk; also a
+knowledge of some foreign lands and their languages: for he was daily
+emptying fluent streams of these various knowledges, too, into his
+dramas. How did he acquire these rich assets?
+
+In the usual way: by surmise. It is SURMISED that he traveled in Italy
+and Germany and around, and qualified himself to put their scenic and
+social aspects upon paper; that he perfected himself in French, Italian,
+and Spanish on the road; that he went in Leicester's expedition to the
+Low Countries, as soldier or sutler or something, for several months or
+years--or whatever length of time a surmiser needs in his business--and
+thus became familiar with soldiership and soldier-ways and soldier-talk
+and generalship and general-ways and general-talk, and seamanship and
+sailor-ways and sailor-talk.
+
+Maybe he did all these things, but I would like to know who held the
+horses in the mean time; and who studied the books in the garret;
+and who frolicked in the law-courts for recreation. Also, who did the
+call-boying and the play-acting.
+
+For he became a call-boy; and as early as '93 he became a
+“vagabond”--the law's ungentle term for an unlisted actor; and in '94
+a “regular” and properly and officially listed member of that (in those
+days) lightly valued and not much respected profession.
+
+Right soon thereafter he became a stockholder in two theaters, and
+manager of them. Thenceforward he was a busy and flourishing business
+man, and was raking in money with both hands for twenty years. Then in a
+noble frenzy of poetic inspiration he wrote his one poem--his only poem,
+his darling--and laid him down and died:
+
+Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare To digg the dust encloased heare:
+Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones And curst be he yt moves my bones.
+
+He was probably dead when he wrote it. Still, this is only conjecture.
+We have only circumstantial evidence. Internal evidence.
+
+Shall I set down the rest of the Conjectures which constitute the
+giant Biography of William Shakespeare? It would strain the Unabridged
+Dictionary to hold them. He is a brontosaur: nine bones and six hundred
+barrels of plaster of Paris.
+
+
+
+V
+
+“We May Assume”
+
+In the Assuming trade three separate and independent cults are
+transacting business. Two of these cults are known as the Shakespearites
+and the Baconians, and I am the other one--the Brontosaurian.
+
+The Shakespearite knows that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's Works; the
+Baconian knows that Francis Bacon wrote them; the Brontosaurian
+doesn't really know which of them did it, but is quite composedly and
+contentedly sure that Shakespeare DIDN'T, and strongly suspects that
+Bacon DID. We all have to do a good deal of assuming, but I am fairly
+certain that in every case I can call to mind the Baconian assumers
+have come out ahead of the Shakespearites. Both parties handle the same
+materials, but the Baconians seem to me to get much more reasonable and
+rational and persuasive results out of them than is the case with the
+Shakespearites. The Shakespearite conducts his assuming upon a definite
+principle, an unchanging and immutable law: which is: 2 and 8 and 7 and
+14, added together, make 165. I believe this to be an error. No matter,
+you cannot get a habit-sodden Shakespearite to cipher-up his materials
+upon any other basis. With the Baconian it is different. If you place
+before him the above figures and set him to adding them up, he will
+never in any case get more than 45 out of them, and in nine cases out of
+ten he will get just the proper 31.
+
+Let me try to illustrate the two systems in a simple and homely way
+calculated to bring the idea within the grasp of the ignorant and
+unintelligent. We will suppose a case: take a lap-bred, house-fed,
+uneducated, inexperienced kitten; take a rugged old Tom that's scarred
+from stem to rudder-post with the memorials of strenuous experience, and
+is so cultured, so educated, so limitlessly erudite that one may say of
+him “all cat-knowledge is his province”; also, take a mouse. Lock the
+three up in a holeless, crackless, exitless prison-cell. Wait half an
+hour, then open the cell, introduce a Shakespearite and a Baconian, and
+let them cipher and assume. The mouse is missing: the question to be
+decided is, where is it? You can guess both verdicts beforehand. One
+verdict will say the kitten contains the mouse; the other will as
+certainly say the mouse is in the tom-cat.
+
+The Shakespearite will Reason like this--(that is not my word, it is
+his). He will say the kitten MAY HAVE BEEN attending school when nobody
+was noticing; therefore WE ARE WARRANTED IN ASSUMING that it did so;
+also, it COULD HAVE BEEN training in a court-clerk's office when no
+one was noticing; since that could have happened, WE ARE JUSTIFIED IN
+ASSUMING that it did happen; it COULD HAVE STUDIED CATOLOGY IN A GARRET
+when no one was noticing--therefore it DID; it COULD HAVE attended
+cat-assizes on the shed-roof nights, for recreation, when no one was
+noticing, and have harvested a knowledge of cat court-forms and cat
+lawyer-talk in that way: it COULD have done it, therefore without a
+doubt it DID; it COULD HAVE gone soldiering with a war-tribe when no one
+was noticing, and learned soldier-wiles and soldier-ways, and what to do
+with a mouse when opportunity offers; the plain inference, therefore,
+is that that is what it DID. Since all these manifold things COULD have
+occurred, we have EVERY RIGHT TO BELIEVE they did occur. These patiently
+and painstakingly accumulated vast acquirements and competences needed
+but one thing more--opportunity--to convert themselves into triumphant
+action. The opportunity came, we have the result; BEYOND SHADOW OF
+QUESTION the mouse is in the kitten.
+
+It is proper to remark that when we of the three cults plant a “WE THINK
+WE MAY ASSUME,” we expect it, under careful watering and fertilizing and
+tending, to grow up into a strong and hardy and weather-defying “THERE
+ISN'T A SHADOW OF A DOUBT” at last--and it usually happens.
+
+We know what the Baconian's verdict would be: “THERE IS NOT A RAG
+OF EVIDENCE THAT THE KITTEN HAS HAD ANY TRAINING, ANY EDUCATION, ANY
+EXPERIENCE QUALIFYING IT FOR THE PRESENT OCCASION, OR IS INDEED EQUIPPED
+FOR ANY ACHIEVEMENT ABOVE LIFTING SUCH UNCLAIMED MILK AS COMES ITS WAY;
+BUT THERE IS ABUNDANT EVIDENCE--UNASSAILABLE PROOF, IN FACT--THAT THE
+OTHER ANIMAL IS EQUIPPED, TO THE LAST DETAIL, WITH EVERY QUALIFICATION
+NECESSARY FOR THE EVENT. WITHOUT SHADOW OF DOUBT THE TOM-CAT CONTAINS
+THE MOUSE.”
+
+VI
+
+When Shakespeare died, in 1616, great literary productions attributed
+to him as author had been before the London world and in high favor for
+twenty-four years. Yet his death was not an event. It made no stir, it
+attracted no attention. Apparently his eminent literary contemporaries
+did not realize that a celebrated poet had passed from their midst.
+Perhaps they knew a play-actor of minor rank had disappeared, but
+did not regard him as the author of his Works. “We are justified in
+assuming” this.
+
+His death was not even an event in the little town of Stratford. Does
+this mean that in Stratford he was not regarded as a celebrity of ANY
+kind?
+
+“We are privileged to assume”--no, we are indeed OBLIGED to assume--that
+such was the case. He had spent the first twenty-two or twenty-three
+years of his life there, and of course knew everybody and was known by
+everybody of that day in the town, including the dogs and the cats and
+the horses. He had spent the last five or six years of his life there,
+diligently trading in every big and little thing that had money in it;
+so we are compelled to assume that many of the folk there in those said
+latter days knew him personally, and the rest by sight and hearsay.
+But not as a CELEBRITY? Apparently not. For everybody soon forgot to
+remember any contact with him or any incident connected with him. The
+dozens of townspeople, still alive, who had known of him or known
+about him in the first twenty-three years of his life were in the same
+unremembering condition: if they knew of any incident connected with
+that period of his life they didn't tell about it. Would they if they had
+been asked? It is most likely. Were they asked? It is pretty apparent
+that they were not. Why weren't they? It is a very plausible guess that
+nobody there or elsewhere was interested to know.
+
+For seven years after Shakespeare's death nobody seems to have been
+interested in him. Then the quarto was published, and Ben Jonson awoke
+out of his long indifference and sang a song of praise and put it in the
+front of the book. Then silence fell AGAIN.
+
+For sixty years. Then inquiries into Shakespeare's Stratford life began
+to be made, of Stratfordians. Of Stratfordians who had known Shakespeare
+or had seen him? No. Then of Stratfordians who had seen people who
+had known or seen people who had seen Shakespeare? No. Apparently the
+inquires were only made of Stratfordians who were not Stratfordians of
+Shakespeare's day, but later comers; and what they had learned had come
+to them from persons who had not seen Shakespeare; and what they had
+learned was not claimed as FACT, but only as legend--dim and fading and
+indefinite legend; legend of the calf-slaughtering rank, and not worth
+remembering either as history or fiction.
+
+Has it ever happened before--or since--that a celebrated person who had
+spent exactly half of a fairly long life in the village where he was
+born and reared, was able to slip out of this world and leave that
+village voiceless and gossipless behind him--utterly voiceless., utterly
+gossipless? And permanently so? I don't believe it has happened in any
+case except Shakespeare's. And couldn't and wouldn't have happened
+in his case if he had been regarded as a celebrity at the time of his
+death.
+
+When I examine my own case--but let us do that, and see if it will not
+be recognizable as exhibiting a condition of things quite likely to
+result, most likely to result, indeed substantially SURE to result in
+the case of a celebrated person, a benefactor of the human race. Like
+me.
+
+My parents brought me to the village of Hannibal, Missouri, on the
+banks of the Mississippi, when I was two and a half years old. I entered
+school at five years of age, and drifted from one school to another in
+the village during nine and a half years. Then my father died, leaving
+his family in exceedingly straitened circumstances; wherefore my
+book-education came to a standstill forever, and I became a printer's
+apprentice, on board and clothes, and when the clothes failed I got a
+hymn-book in place of them. This for summer wear, probably. I lived in
+Hannibal fifteen and a half years, altogether, then ran away, according
+to the custom of persons who are intending to become celebrated. I
+never lived there afterward. Four years later I became a “cub” on a
+Mississippi steamboat in the St. Louis and New Orleans trade, and
+after a year and a half of hard study and hard work the U.S. inspectors
+rigorously examined me through a couple of long sittings and decided
+that I knew every inch of the Mississippi--thirteen hundred miles--in
+the dark and in the day--as well as a baby knows the way to its mother's
+paps day or night. So they licensed me as a pilot--knighted me, so to
+speak--and I rose up clothed with authority, a responsible servant of
+the United States Government.
+
+Now then. Shakespeare died young--he was only fifty-two. He had lived in
+his native village twenty-six years, or about that. He died celebrated
+(if you believe everything you read in the books). Yet when he died
+nobody there or elsewhere took any notice of it; and for sixty years
+afterward no townsman remembered to say anything about him or about
+his life in Stratford. When the inquirer came at last he got but one
+fact--no, LEGEND--and got that one at second hand, from a person who
+had only heard it as a rumor and didn't claim copyright in it as a
+production of his own. He couldn't, very well, for its date antedated
+his own birth-date. But necessarily a number of persons were still
+alive in Stratford who, in the days of their youth, had seen Shakespeare
+nearly every day in the last five years of his life, and they would have
+been able to tell that inquirer some first-hand things about him if
+he had in those last days been a celebrity and therefore a person of
+interest to the villagers. Why did not the inquirer hunt them up and
+interview them? Wasn't it worth while? Wasn't the matter of sufficient
+consequence? Had the inquirer an engagement to see a dog-fight and
+couldn't spare the time?
+
+It all seems to mean that he never had any literary celebrity, there or
+elsewhere, and no considerable repute as actor and manager.
+
+Now then, I am away along in life--my seventy-third year being already
+well behind me--yet SIXTEEN of my Hannibal schoolmates are still
+alive today, and can tell--and do tell--inquirers dozens and dozens of
+incidents of their young lives and mine together; things that happened
+to us in the morning of life, in the blossom of our youth, in the good
+days, the dear days, “the days when we went gipsying, a long time ago.”
+ Most of them creditable to me, too. One child to whom I paid court when
+she was five years old and I eight still lives in Hannibal, and she
+visited me last summer, traversing the necessary ten or twelve hundred
+miles of railroad without damage to her patience or to her old-young
+vigor. Another little lassie to whom I paid attention in Hannibal when
+she was nine years old and I the same, is still alive--in
+London--and hale and hearty, just as I am. And on the few surviving
+steamboats--those lingering ghosts and remembrancers of great fleets
+that plied the big river in the beginning of my water-career--which
+is exactly as long ago as the whole invoice of the life-years of
+Shakespeare numbers--there are still findable two or three river-pilots
+who saw me do creditable things in those ancient days; and several
+white-headed engineers; and several roustabouts and mates; and several
+deck-hands who used to heave the lead for me and send up on the
+still night the “Six--feet--SCANT!” that made me shudder, and the
+“M-a-r-k--TWAIN!” that took the shudder away, and presently the darling
+“By the d-e-e-p--FOUR!” that lifted me to heaven for joy. (1) They know
+about me, and can tell. And so do printers, from St. Louis to New York;
+and so do newspaper reporters, from Nevada to San Francisco. And so
+do the police. If Shakespeare had really been celebrated, like me,
+Stratford could have told things about him; and if my experience goes
+for anything, they'd have done it.
+
+      1.  Four fathoms--twenty-four feet.
+
+
+
+VII
+
+If I had under my superintendence a controversy appointed to decide
+whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare or not, I believe I would place
+before the debaters only the one question, WAS SHAKESPEARE EVER A
+PRACTICING LAWYER? and leave everything else out.
+
+It is maintained that the man who wrote the plays was not merely
+myriad-minded, but also myriad-accomplished: that he not only knew some
+thousands of things about human life in all its shades and grades, and
+about the hundred arts and trades and crafts and professions which
+men busy themselves in, but that he could TALK about the men and their
+grades and trades accurately, making no mistakes. Maybe it is so, but
+have the experts spoken, or is it only Tom, Dick, and Harry? Does the
+exhibit stand upon wide, and loose, and eloquent generalizing--which is
+not evidence, and not proof--or upon details, particulars, statistics,
+illustrations, demonstrations?
+
+Experts of unchallengeable authority have testified definitely as to
+only one of Shakespeare's multifarious craft-equipments, so far as
+my recollections of Shakespeare-Bacon talk abide with me--his
+law-equipment. I do not remember that Wellington or Napoleon ever
+examined Shakespeare's battles and sieges and strategies, and then
+decided and established for good and all that they were militarily
+flawless; I do not remember that any Nelson, or Drake, or Cook ever
+examined his seamanship and said it showed profound and accurate
+familiarity with that art; I don't remember that any king or prince
+or duke has ever testified that Shakespeare was letter-perfect in
+his handling of royal court-manners and the talk and manners of
+aristocracies; I don't remember that any illustrious Latinist or Grecian
+or Frenchman or Spaniard or Italian has proclaimed him a past-master in
+those languages; I don't remember--well, I don't remember that there
+is TESTIMONY--great testimony--imposing testimony--unanswerable and
+unattackable testimony as to any of Shakespeare's hundred specialties,
+except one--the law.
+
+Other things change, with time, and the student cannot trace back
+with certainty the changes that various trades and their processes and
+technicalities have undergone in the long stretch of a century or two
+and find out what their processes and technicalities were in those early
+days, but with the law it is different: it is mile-stoned and documented
+all the way back, and the master of that wonderful trade, that complex
+and intricate trade, that awe-compelling trade, has competent ways of
+knowing whether Shakespeare-law is good law or not; and whether his
+law-court procedure is correct or not, and whether his legal shop-talk
+is the shop-talk of a veteran practitioner or only a machine-made
+counterfeit of it gathered from books and from occasional loiterings in
+Westminster.
+
+Richard H. Dana served two years before the mast, and had every
+experience that falls to the lot of the sailor before the mast of our
+day. His sailor-talk flows from his pen with the sure touch and the ease
+and confidence of a person who has LIVED what he is talking about, not
+gathered it from books and random listenings. Hear him:
+
+Having hove short, cast off the gaskets, and made the bunt of each
+sail fast by the jigger, with a man on each yard, at the word the whole
+canvas of the ship was loosed, and with the greatest rapidity possible
+everything was sheeted home and hoisted up, the anchor tripped and
+cat-headed, and the ship under headway.
+
+Again:
+
+The royal yards were all crossed at once, and royals and sky-sails
+set, and, as we had the wind free, the booms were run out, and all were
+aloft, active as cats, laying out on the yards and booms, reeving the
+studding-sail gear; and sail after sail the captain piled upon her,
+until she was covered with canvas, her sails looking like a great white
+cloud resting upon a black speck.
+
+Once more. A race in the Pacific:
+
+Our antagonist was in her best trim. Being clear of the point, the
+breeze became stiff, and the royal-masts bent under our sails, but we
+would not take them in until we saw three boys spring into the rigging
+of the CALIFORNIA; then they were all furled at once, but with orders
+to our boys to stay aloft at the top-gallant mast-heads and loose them
+again at the word. It was my duty to furl the fore-royal; and while
+standing by to loose it again, I had a fine view of the scene. From
+where I stood, the two vessels seemed nothing but spars and sails, while
+their narrow decks, far below, slanting over by the force of the wind
+aloft, appeared hardly capable of supporting the great fabrics
+raised upon them. The CALIFORNIA was to windward of us, and had every
+advantage; yet, while the breeze was stiff we held our own. As soon as
+it began to slacken she ranged a little ahead, and the order was given
+to loose the royals. In an instant the gaskets were off and the bunt
+dropped. “Sheet home the fore-royal!”--“Weather sheet's home!”--“Lee
+sheet's home!”--“Hoist away, sir!” is bawled from aloft. “Overhaul your
+clew-lines!” shouts the mate. “Aye-aye, sir, all clear!”--“Taut leech!
+belay! Well the lee brace; haul taut to windward!” and the royals are
+set.
+
+What would the captain of any sailing-vessel of our time say to that?
+He would say, “The man that wrote that didn't learn his trade out of a
+book, he has BEEN there!” But would this same captain be competent to
+sit in judgment upon Shakespeare's seamanship--considering the changes
+in ships and ship-talk that have necessarily taken place, unrecorded,
+unremembered, and lost to history in the last three hundred years? It
+is my conviction that Shakespeare's sailor-talk would be Choctaw to him.
+For instance--from “The Tempest”:
+
+MASTER. Boatswain!
+
+BOATSWAIN. Here, master; what cheer?
+
+MASTER. Good, speak to the mariners: fall to 't, yarely, or we run
+ourselves to ground; bestir, bestir! (ENTER MARINERS.)
+
+BOATSWAIN. Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts! yare, yare!
+Take in the topsail. Tend to the master's whistle.... Down with the
+topmast! yare! lower, lower! Bring her to try wi' the main course....
+Lay her a-hold, a-hold! Set her two courses. Off to sea again; lay her
+off.
+
+That will do, for the present; let us yare a little, now, for a change.
+
+If a man should write a book and in it make one of his characters
+say, “Here, devil, empty the quoins into the standing galley and the
+imposing-stone into the hell-box; assemble the comps around the frisket
+and let them jeff for takes and be quick about it,” I should recognize a
+mistake or two in the phrasing, and would know that the writer was only
+a printer theoretically, not practically.
+
+I have been a quartz miner in the silver regions--a pretty hard life; I
+know all the palaver of that business: I know all about discovery
+claims and the subordinate claims; I know all about lodes, ledges,
+outcroppings, dips, spurs, angles, shafts, drifts, inclines, levels,
+tunnels, air-shafts, “horses,” clay casings, granite casings; quartz
+mills and their batteries; arastras, and how to charge them with
+quicksilver and sulphate of copper; and how to clean them up, and how to
+reduce the resulting amalgam in the retorts, and how to cast the bullion
+into pigs; and finally I know how to screen tailings, and also how to
+hunt for something less robust to do, and find it. I know the argot of
+the quartz-mining and milling industry familiarly; and so whenever Bret
+Harte introduces that industry into a story, the first time one of his
+miners opens his mouth I recognize from his phrasing that Harte got the
+phrasing by listening--like Shakespeare--I mean the Stratford one--not
+by experience. No one can talk the quartz dialect correctly without
+learning it with pick and shovel and drill and fuse.
+
+I have been a surface miner--gold--and I know all its mysteries, and
+the dialect that belongs with them; and whenever Harte introduces that
+industry into a story I know by the phrasing of his characters that
+neither he nor they have ever served that trade.
+
+I have been a “pocket” miner--a sort of gold mining not findable in any
+but one little spot in the world, so far as I know. I know how, with
+horn and water, to find the trail of a pocket and trace it step by step
+and stage by stage up the mountain to its source, and find the compact
+little nest of yellow metal reposing in its secret home under the
+ground. I know the language of that trade, that capricious trade, that
+fascinating buried-treasure trade, and can catch any writer who tries to
+use it without having learned it by the sweat of his brow and the labor
+of his hands.
+
+I know several other trades and the argot that goes with them; and
+whenever a person tries to talk the talk peculiar to any of them without
+having learned it at its source I can trap him always before he gets far
+on his road.
+
+And so, as I have already remarked, if I were required to superintend a
+Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, I would narrow the matter down to a
+single question--the only one, so far as the previous controversies have
+informed me, concerning which illustrious experts of unimpeachable
+competency have testified: WAS THE AUTHOR OF SHAKESPEARE'S WORKS A
+LAWYER?--a lawyer deeply read and of limitless experience? I would put
+aside the guesses and surmises, and perhapses, and might-have-beens, and
+could-have-beens, and must-have-beens, and,
+we-are-justified-in-presumings,and the rest of those vague specters and
+shadows and indefinitenesses, and stand or fall, win or lose, by the
+verdict rendered by the jury upon that single question. If the verdict
+was Yes, I should feel quite convinced that the Stratford Shakespeare,
+the actor, manager, and trader who died so obscure, so forgotten, so
+destitute of even village consequence, that sixty years afterward no
+fellow-citizen and friend of his later days remembered to tell anything
+about him, did not write the Works.
+
+Chapter XIII of THE SHAKESPEARE PROBLEM RESTATED bears the heading
+“Shakespeare as a Lawyer,” and comprises some fifty pages of expert
+testimony, with comments thereon, and I will copy the first nine, as
+being sufficient all by themselves, as it seems to me, to settle
+the question which I have conceived to be the master-key to the
+Shakespeare-Bacon puzzle.
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Shakespeare as a Lawyer (1)
+
+The Plays and Poems of Shakespeare supply ample evidence that their
+author not only had a very extensive and accurate knowledge of law, but
+that he was well acquainted with the manners and customs of members of
+the Inns of Court and with legal life generally.
+
+“While novelists and dramatists are constantly making mistakes as to
+the laws of marriage, of wills, and inheritance, to Shakespeare's law,
+lavishly as he expounds it, there can neither be demurrer, nor bill of
+exceptions, nor writ of error.” Such was the testimony borne by one of
+the most distinguished lawyers of the nineteenth century who was raised
+to the high office of Lord Chief Justice in 1850, and subsequently
+became Lord Chancellor. Its weight will, doubtless, be more appreciated
+by lawyers than by laymen, for only lawyers know how impossible it is
+for those who have not served an apprenticeship to the law to avoid
+displaying their ignorance if they venture to employ legal terms and
+to discuss legal doctrines. “There is nothing so dangerous,” wrote Lord
+Campbell, “as for one not of the craft to tamper with our freemasonry.”
+ A layman is certain to betray himself by using some expression which a
+lawyer would never employ. Mr. Sidney Lee himself supplies us with an
+example of this. He writes (p. 164): “On February 15, 1609, Shakespeare
+... obtained judgment from a jury against Addenbroke for the payment of
+No. 6, and No. 1, 5s. 0d. costs.” Now a lawyer would never have spoken
+of obtaining “judgment from a jury,” for it is the function of a jury
+not to deliver judgment (which is the prerogative of the court), but to
+find a verdict on the facts. The error is, indeed, a venial one, but it
+is just one of those little things which at once enable a lawyer to know
+if the writer is a layman or “one of the craft.”
+
+But when a layman ventures to plunge deeply into legal subjects, he
+is naturally apt to make an exhibition of his incompetence. “Let a
+non-professional man, however acute,” writes Lord Campbell again,
+“presume to talk law, or to draw illustrations from legal science in
+discussing other subjects, and he will speedily fall into laughable
+absurdity.”
+
+And what does the same high authority say about Shakespeare? He had “a
+deep technical knowledge of the law,” and an easy familiarity with “some
+of the most abstruse proceedings in English jurisprudence.” And again:
+“Whenever he indulges this propensity he uniformly lays down good law.”
+ Of “Henry IV.,” Part 2, he says: “If Lord Eldon could be supposed to
+have written the play, I do not see how he could be chargeable with
+having forgotten any of his law while writing it.” Charles and Mary
+Cowden Clarke speak of “the marvelous intimacy which he displays with
+legal terms, his frequent adoption of them in illustration, and his
+curiously technical knowledge of their form and force.” Malone, himself
+a lawyer, wrote: “His knowledge of legal terms is not merely such
+as might be acquired by the casual observation of even his
+all-comprehending mind; it has the appearance of technical skill.”
+ Another lawyer and well-known Shakespearean, Richard Grant White, says:
+“No dramatist of the time, not even Beaumont, who was the younger son of
+a judge of the Common Pleas, and who after studying in the Inns of
+Court abandoned law for the drama, used legal phrases with Shakespeare's
+readiness and exactness. And the significance of this fact is heightened
+by another, that it is only to the language of the law that he exhibits
+this inclination. The phrases peculiar to other occupations serve him
+on rare occasions by way of description, comparison, or illustration,
+generally when something in the scene suggests them, but legal phrases
+flow from his pen as part of his vocabulary and parcel of his thought.
+Take the word 'purchase' for instance, which, in ordinary use, means
+to acquire by giving value, but applies in law to all legal modes
+of obtaining property except by inheritance or descent, and in this
+peculiar sense the word occurs five times in Shakespeare's thirty-four
+plays, and only in one single instance in the fifty-four plays of
+Beaumont and Fletcher. It has been suggested that it was in attendance
+upon the courts in London that he picked up his legal vocabulary. But
+this supposition not only fails to account for Shakespeare's peculiar
+freedom and exactness in the use of that phraseology, it does not even
+place him in the way of learning those terms his use of which is most
+remarkable, which are not such as he would have heard at ordinary
+proceedings at NISI PRIUS, but such as refer to the tenure or transfer
+of real property, 'fine and recovery,' 'statutes merchant,' 'purchase,'
+'indenture,' 'tenure,' 'double voucher,' 'fee simple,' 'fee farm,'
+'remainder,' 'reversion,' 'forfeiture,' etc. This conveyancer's jargon
+could not have been picked up by hanging round the courts of law in
+London two hundred and fifty years ago, when suits as to the title of
+real property were comparatively rare. And besides, Shakespeare uses
+his law just as freely in his first plays, written in his first London
+years, as in those produced at a later period. Just as exactly, too; for
+the correctness and propriety with which these terms are introduced have
+compelled the admiration of a Chief Justice and a Lord Chancellor.”
+
+Senator Davis wrote: “We seem to have something more than a sciolist's
+temerity of indulgence in the terms of an unfamiliar art. No legal
+solecisms will be found. The abstrusest elements of the common law are
+impressed into a disciplined service. Over and over again, where such
+knowledge is unexampled in writers unlearned in the law, Shakespeare
+appears in perfect possession of it. In the law of real property, its
+rules of tenure and descents, its entails, its fines and recoveries,
+their vouchers and double vouchers, in the procedure of the Courts, the
+method of bringing writs and arrests, the nature of actions, the
+rules of pleading, the law of escapes and of contempt of court, in
+the principles of evidence, both technical and philosophical, in the
+distinction between the temporal and spiritual tribunals, in the law of
+attainder and forfeiture, in the requisites of a valid marriage, in the
+presumption of legitimacy, in the learning of the law of prerogative,
+in the inalienable character of the Crown, this mastership appears with
+surprising authority.”
+
+To all this testimony (and there is much more which I have not cited)
+may now be added that of a great lawyer of our own times, VIZ.: Sir
+James Plaisted Wilde, Q.C. 1855, created a Baron of the Exchequer in
+1860, promoted to the post of Judge-Ordinary and Judge of the Courts
+of Probate and Divorce in 1863, and better known to the world as Lord
+Penzance, to which dignity he was raised in 1869. Lord Penzance, as all
+lawyers know, and as the late Mr. Inderwick, K.C., has testified,
+was one of the first legal authorities of his day, famous for his
+“remarkable grasp of legal principles,” and “endowed by nature with a
+remarkable facility for marshaling facts, and for a clear expression of
+his views.”
+
+Lord Penzance speaks of Shakespeare's “perfect familiarity with not only
+the principles, axioms, and maxims, but the technicalities of English
+law, a knowledge so perfect and intimate that he was never incorrect
+and never at fault.... The mode in which this knowledge was pressed
+into service on all occasions to express his meaning and illustrate his
+thoughts was quite unexampled. He seems to have had a special pleasure
+in his complete and ready mastership of it in all its branches. As
+manifested in the plays, this legal knowledge and learning had therefore
+a special character which places it on a wholly different footing from
+the rest of the multifarious knowledge which is exhibited in page after
+page of the plays. At every turn and point at which the author required
+a metaphor, simile, or illustration, his mind ever turned FIRST to the
+law. He seems almost to have THOUGHT in legal phrases, the commonest
+of legal expressions were ever at the end of his pen in description or
+illustration. That he should have descanted in lawyer language when
+he had a forensic subject in hand, such as Shylock's bond, was to be
+expected, but the knowledge of law in 'Shakespeare' was exhibited in a
+far different manner: it protruded itself on all occasions, appropriate
+or inappropriate, and mingled itself with strains of thought widely
+divergent from forensic subjects.” Again: “To acquire a perfect
+familiarity with legal principles, and an accurate and ready use of the
+technical terms and phrases not only of the conveyancer's office, but of
+the pleader's chambers and the Courts at Westminster, nothing short
+of employment in some career involving constant contact with legal
+questions and general legal work would be requisite. But a continuous
+employment involves the element of time, and time was just what the
+manager of two theaters had not at his disposal. In what portion of
+Shakespeare's (i.e., Shakspere's) career would it be possible to point
+out that time could be found for the interposition of a legal employment
+in the chambers or offices of practicing lawyers?”
+
+Stratfordians, as is well known, casting about for some possible
+explanation of Shakespeare's extraordinary knowledge of law, have made
+the suggestion that Shakespeare might, conceivably, have been a clerk in
+an attorney's office before he came to London. Mr. Collier wrote to Lord
+Campbell to ask his opinion as to the probability of this being true.
+His answer was as follows: “You require us to believe implicitly a
+fact, of which, if true, positive and irrefragable evidence in his own
+handwriting might have been forthcoming to establish it. Not having been
+actually enrolled as an attorney, neither the records of the local court
+at Stratford nor of the superior Courts at Westminster would present
+his name as being concerned in any suit as an attorney, but it might
+reasonably have been expected that there would be deeds or wills
+witnessed by him still extant, and after a very diligent search none
+such can be discovered.”
+
+Upon this Lord Penzance comments: “It cannot be doubted that Lord
+Campbell was right in this. No young man could have been at work in
+an attorney's office without being called upon continually to act as a
+witness, and in many other ways leaving traces of his work and
+name.” There is not a single fact or incident in all that is known of
+Shakespeare, even by rumor or tradition, which supports this notion of
+a clerkship. And after much argument and surmise which has been indulged
+in on this subject, we may, I think, safely put the notion on one side,
+for no less an authority than Mr. Grant White says finally that the idea
+of his having been clerk to an attorney has been “blown to pieces.”
+
+It is altogether characteristic of Mr. Churton Collins that he,
+nevertheless, adopts this exploded myth. “That Shakespeare was in early
+life employed as a clerk in an attorney's office may be correct. At
+Stratford there was by royal charter a Court of Record sitting every
+fortnight, with six attorneys, besides the town clerk, belonging to it,
+and it is certainly not straining probability to suppose that the young
+Shakespeare may have had employment in one of them. There is, it is
+true, no tradition to this effect, but such traditions as we have about
+Shakespeare's occupation between the time of leaving school and going
+to London are so loose and baseless that no confidence can be placed
+in them. It is, to say the least, more probable that he was in an
+attorney's office than that he was a butcher killing calves 'in a high
+style,' and making speeches over them.”
+
+This is a charming specimen of Stratfordian argument. There is, as
+we have seen, a very old tradition that Shakespeare was a butcher's
+apprentice. John Dowdall, who made a tour in Warwickshire in 1693,
+testifies to it as coming from the old clerk who showed him over
+the church, and it is unhesitatingly accepted as true by Mr.
+Halliwell-Phillipps. (Vol. I, p. 11, and Vol. II, pp. 71, 72.) Mr.
+Sidney Lee sees nothing improbable in it, and it is supported by Aubrey,
+who must have written his account some time before 1680, when his
+manuscript was completed. Of the attorney's clerk hypothesis, on the
+other hand, there is not the faintest vestige of a tradition. It
+has been evolved out of the fertile imaginations of embarrassed
+Stratfordians, seeking for some explanation of the Stratford rustic's
+marvelous acquaintance with law and legal terms and legal life. But
+Mr. Churton Collins has not the least hesitation in throwing over the
+tradition which has the warrant of antiquity and setting up in its
+stead this ridiculous invention, for which not only is there no shred of
+positive evidence, but which, as Lord Campbell and Lord Penzance point
+out, is really put out of court by the negative evidence, since “no
+young man could have been at work in an attorney's office without being
+called upon continually to act as a witness, and in many other ways
+leaving traces of his work and name.” And as Mr. Edwards further points
+out, since the day when Lord Campbell's book was published (between
+forty and fifty years ago), “every old deed or will, to say nothing of
+other legal papers, dated during the period of William Shakespeare's
+youth, has been scrutinized over half a dozen shires, and not one
+signature of the young man has been found.”
+
+Moreover, if Shakespeare had served as clerk in an attorney's office it
+is clear that he must have so served for a considerable period in order to
+have gained (if, indeed, it is credible that he could have so gained)
+his remarkable knowledge of the law. Can we then for a moment believe
+that, if this had been so, tradition would have been absolutely silent
+on the matter? That Dowdall's old clerk, over eighty years of age,
+should have never heard of it (though he was sure enough about the
+butcher's apprentice) and that all the other ancient witnesses should be
+in similar ignorance!
+
+But such are the methods of Stratfordian controversy. Tradition is to be
+scouted when it is found inconvenient, but cited as irrefragable truth
+when it suits the case. Shakespeare of Stratford was the author of the
+Plays and Poems, but the author of the Plays and Poems could not have
+been a butcher's apprentice. Away, therefore, with tradition. But
+the author of the Plays and Poems MUST have had a very large and a very
+accurate knowledge of the law. Therefore, Shakespeare of Stratford
+must have been an attorney's clerk! The method is simplicity itself. By
+similar reasoning Shakespeare has been made a country schoolmaster, a
+soldier, a physician, a printer, and a good many other things besides,
+according to the inclination and the exigencies of the commentator. It
+would not be in the least surprising to find that he was studying Latin
+as a schoolmaster and law in an attorney's office at the same time.
+
+However, we must do Mr. Collins the justice of saying that he has fully
+recognized, what is indeed tolerably obvious, that Shakespeare must have
+had a sound legal training. “It may, of course, be urged,” he writes,
+“that Shakespeare's knowledge of medicine, and particularly that branch
+of it which related to morbid psychology, is equally remarkable, and
+that no one has ever contended that he was a physician. (Here Mr.
+Collins is wrong; that contention also has been put forward.) It may be
+urged that his acquaintance with the technicalities of other crafts
+and callings, notably of marine and military affairs, was also
+extraordinary, and yet no one has suspected him of being a sailor or
+a soldier. (Wrong again. Why, even Messrs. Garnett and Gosse “suspect”
+ that he was a soldier!) This may be conceded, but the concession
+hardly furnishes an analogy. To these and all other subjects he recurs
+occasionally, and in season, but with reminiscences of the law his
+memory, as is abundantly clear, was simply saturated. In season and out
+of season now in manifest, now in recondite application, he presses it
+into the service of expression and illustration. At least a third of his
+myriad metaphors are derived from it. It would indeed be difficult to
+find a single act in any of his dramas, nay, in some of them, a single
+scene, the diction and imagery of which are not colored by it. Much of
+his law may have been acquired from three books easily accessible to
+him--namely, Tottell's PRECEDENTS (1572), Pulton's STATUTES (1578), and
+Fraunce's LAWIER'S LOGIKE (1588), works with which he certainly seems to
+have been familiar; but much of it could only have come from one who had
+an intimate acquaintance with legal proceedings. We quite agree with Mr.
+Castle that Shakespeare's legal knowledge is not what could have been
+picked up in an attorney's office, but could only have been learned
+by an actual attendance at the Courts, at a Pleader's Chambers, and
+on circuit, or by associating intimately with members of the Bench and
+Bar.”
+
+This is excellent. But what is Mr. Collins's explanation? “Perhaps the
+simplest solution of the problem is to accept the hypothesis that in
+early life he was in an attorney's office (!), that he there contracted
+a love for the law which never left him, that as a young man in London
+he continued to study or dabble in it for his amusement, to stroll in
+leisure hours into the Courts, and to frequent the society of lawyers.
+On no other supposition is it possible to explain the attraction which
+the law evidently had for him, and his minute and undeviating accuracy
+in a subject where no layman who has indulged in such copious and
+ostentatious display of legal technicalities has ever yet succeeded in
+keeping himself from tripping.”
+
+A lame conclusion. “No other supposition” indeed! Yes, there is another,
+and a very obvious supposition--namely, that Shakespeare was himself a
+lawyer, well versed in his trade, versed in all the ways of the courts,
+and living in close intimacy with judges and members of the Inns of
+Court.
+
+One is, of course, thankful that Mr. Collins has appreciated the fact
+that Shakespeare must have had a sound legal training, but I may
+be forgiven if I do not attach quite so much importance to his
+pronouncements on this branch of the subject as to those of Malone,
+Lord Campbell, Judge Holmes, Mr. Castle, K.C., Lord Penzance, Mr. Grant
+White, and other lawyers, who have expressed their opinion on the matter
+of Shakespeare's legal acquirements....
+
+Here it may, perhaps, be worth while to quote again from Lord Penzance's
+book as to the suggestion that Shakespeare had somehow or other managed
+“to acquire a perfect familiarity with legal principles, and an accurate
+and ready use of the technical terms and phrases, not only of the
+conveyancer's office, but of the pleader's chambers and the Courts at
+Westminster.” This, as Lord Penzance points out, “would require nothing
+short of employment in some career involving CONSTANT CONTACT with legal
+questions and general legal work.” But “in what portion of Shakespeare's
+career would it be possible to point out that time could be found for
+the interposition of a legal employment in the chambers or offices of
+practicing lawyers?... It is beyond doubt that at an early period he was
+called upon to abandon his attendance at school and assist his father,
+and was soon after, at the age of sixteen, bound apprentice to a trade.
+While under the obligation of this bond he could not have pursued any
+other employment. Then he leaves Stratford and comes to London. He has
+to provide himself with the means of a livelihood, and this he did in
+some capacity at the theater. No one doubts that. The holding of horses
+is scouted by many, and perhaps with justice, as being unlikely and
+certainly unproved; but whatever the nature of his employment was at
+the theater, there is hardly room for the belief that it could have been
+other than continuous, for his progress there was so rapid. Ere long he
+had been taken into the company as an actor, and was soon spoken of as a
+'Johannes Factotum.' His rapid accumulation of wealth speaks volumes for
+the constancy and activity of his services. One fails to see when there
+could be a break in the current of his life at this period of it, giving
+room or opportunity for legal or indeed any other employment. 'In 1589,'
+says Knight, 'we have undeniable evidence that he had not only a casual
+engagement, was not only a salaried servant, as many players were, but
+was a shareholder in the company of the Queen's players with other
+shareholders below him on the list.' This (1589) would be within
+two years after his arrival in London, which is placed by White and
+Halliwell-Phillipps about the year 1587. The difficulty in supposing
+that, starting with a state of ignorance in 1587, when he is supposed
+to have come to London, he was induced to enter upon a course of most
+extended study and mental culture, is almost insuperable. Still it was
+physically possible, provided always that he could have had access to
+the needful books. But this legal training seems to me to stand on a
+different footing. It is not only unaccountable and incredible, but it
+is actually negatived by the known facts of his career.” Lord Penzance
+then refers to the fact that “by 1592 (according to the best authority,
+Mr. Grant White) several of the plays had been written. 'The Comedy
+of Errors' in 1589, 'Love's Labour's Lost' in 1589, 'Two Gentlemen
+of Verona' in 1589 or 1590,” and so forth, and then asks, “with this
+catalogue of dramatic work on hand... was it possible that he could have
+taken a leading part in the management and conduct of two theaters,
+and if Mr. Phillipps is to be relied upon, taken his share in the
+performances of the provincial tours of his company--and at the same
+time devoted himself to the study of the law in all its branches so
+efficiently as to make himself complete master of its principles and
+practice, and saturate his mind with all its most technical terms?”
+
+I have cited this passage from Lord Penzance's book, because it
+lay before me, and I had already quoted from it on the matter of
+Shakespeare's legal knowledge; but other writers have still better set
+forth the insuperable difficulties, as they seem to me, which beset the
+idea that Shakespeare might have found time in some unknown period
+of early life, amid multifarious other occupations, for the study of
+classics, literature, and law, to say nothing of languages and a few
+other matters. Lord Penzance further asks his readers: “Did you ever
+meet with or hear of an instance in which a young man in this country
+gave himself up to legal studies and engaged in legal employments,
+which is the only way of becoming familiar with the technicalities of
+practice, unless with the view of practicing in that profession? I do
+not believe that it would be easy, or indeed possible, to produce
+an instance in which the law has been seriously studied in all
+its branches, except as a qualification for practice in the legal
+profession.”
+
+This testimony is so strong, so direct, so authoritative; and so
+uncheapened, unwatered by guesses, and surmises, and maybe-so's, and
+might-have-beens, and could-have-beens, and must-have-beens, and the
+rest of that ton of plaster of Paris out of which the biographers have
+built the colossal brontosaur which goes by the Stratford actor's name,
+that it quite convinces me that the man who wrote Shakespeare's Works
+knew all about law and lawyers. Also, that that man could not have been
+the Stratford Shakespeare--and WASN'T.
+
+Who did write these Works, then?
+
+I wish I knew.
+
+     1.  From Chapter XIII of THE SHAKESPEARE PROBLEM RESTATED. By
+George G. Greenwood, M.P. John Lane Company, publishers.
+
+
+
+IX
+
+Did Francis Bacon write Shakespeare's Works? Nobody knows.
+
+We cannot say we KNOW a thing when that thing has not been proved.
+KNOW is too strong a word to use when the evidence is not final
+and absolutely conclusive. We can infer, if we want to, like those
+slaves.... No, I will not write that word, it is not kind, it is not
+courteous. The upholders of the Stratford-Shakespeare superstition call
+US the hardest names they can think of, and they keep doing it all the
+time; very well, if they like to descend to that level, let them do it,
+but I will not so undignify myself as to follow them. I cannot call them
+harsh names; the most I can do is to indicate them by terms reflecting
+my disapproval; and this without malice, without venom.
+
+To resume. What I was about to say was, those thugs have built their
+entire superstition upon INFERENCES, not upon known and established
+facts. It is a weak method, and poor, and I am glad to be able to say
+our side never resorts to it while there is anything else to resort to.
+
+But when we must, we must; and we have now arrived at a place of that
+sort.... Since the Stratford Shakespeare couldn't have written the
+Works, we infer that somebody did. Who was it, then? This requires some
+more inferring.
+
+Ordinarily when an unsigned poem sweeps across the continent like a
+tidal wave whose roar and boom and thunder are made up of admiration,
+delight, and applause, a dozen obscure people rise up and claim the
+authorship. Why a dozen, instead of only one or two? One reason is,
+because there are a dozen that are recognizably competent to do that
+poem. Do you remember “Beautiful Snow”? Do you remember “Rock Me to
+Sleep, Mother, Rock Me to Sleep”? Do you remember “Backward, turn,
+backward, O Time, in thy flight! Make me a child again just for
+tonight”? I remember them very well. Their authorship was claimed
+by most of the grown-up people who were alive at the time, and every
+claimant had one plausible argument in his favor, at least--to wit, he
+could have done the authoring; he was competent.
+
+Have the Works been claimed by a dozen? They haven't. There was good
+reason. The world knows there was but one man on the planet at the
+time who was competent--not a dozen, and not two. A long time ago the
+dwellers in a far country used now and then to find a procession of
+prodigious footprints stretching across the plain--footprints that were
+three miles apart, each footprint a third of a mile long and a furlong
+deep, and with forests and villages mashed to mush in it. Was there any
+doubt as to who made that mighty trail? Were there a dozen claimants?
+Where there two? No--the people knew who it was that had been along
+there: there was only one Hercules.
+
+There has been only one Shakespeare. There couldn't be two; certainly
+there couldn't be two at the same time. It takes ages to bring forth a
+Shakespeare, and some more ages to match him. This one was not matched
+before his time; nor during his time; and hasn't been matched since. The
+prospect of matching him in our time is not bright.
+
+The Baconians claim that the Stratford Shakespeare was not qualified
+to write the Works, and that Francis Bacon was. They claim that Bacon
+possessed the stupendous equipment--both natural and acquired--for the
+miracle; and that no other Englishman of his day possessed the like; or,
+indeed, anything closely approaching it.
+
+Macaulay, in his Essay, has much to say about the splendor and
+horizonless magnitude of that equipment. Also, he has synopsized Bacon's
+history--a thing which cannot be done for the Stratford Shakespeare,
+for he hasn't any history to synopsize. Bacon's history is open to the
+world, from his boyhood to his death in old age--a history consisting
+of known facts, displayed in minute and multitudinous detail; FACTS, not
+guesses and conjectures and might-have-beens.
+
+Whereby it appears that he was born of a race of statesmen, and had a
+Lord Chancellor for his father, and a mother who was “distinguished both
+as a linguist and a theologian: she corresponded in Greek with Bishop
+Jewell, and translated his APOLOGIA from the Latin so correctly that
+neither he nor Archbishop Parker could suggest a single alteration.” It
+is the atmosphere we are reared in that determines how our inclinations
+and aspirations shall tend. The atmosphere furnished by the parents to
+the son in this present case was an atmosphere saturated with learning;
+with thinkings and ponderings upon deep subjects; and with polite
+culture. It had its natural effect. Shakespeare of Stratford was reared
+in a house which had no use for books, since its owners, his parents,
+were without education. This may have had an effect upon the son, but
+we do not know, because we have no history of him of an informing sort.
+There were but few books anywhere, in that day, and only the well-to-do
+and highly educated possessed them, they being almost confined to
+the dead languages. “All the valuable books then extant in all the
+vernacular dialects of Europe would hardly have filled a single
+shelf”--imagine it! The few existing books were in the Latin tongue
+mainly. “A person who was ignorant of it was shut out from all
+acquaintance--not merely with Cicero and Virgil, but with the most
+interesting memoirs, state papers, and pamphlets of his own time”--a
+literature necessary to the Stratford lad, for his fictitious
+reputation's sake, since the writer of his Works would begin to use it
+wholesale and in a most masterly way before the lad was hardly more than
+out of his teens and into his twenties.
+
+At fifteen Bacon was sent to the university, and he spent three years
+there. Thence he went to Paris in the train of the English Ambassador,
+and there he mingled daily with the wise, the cultured, the great, and
+the aristocracy of fashion, during another three years. A total of six
+years spent at the sources of knowledge; knowledge both of books and of
+men. The three spent at the university were coeval with the second
+and last three spent by the little Stratford lad at Stratford school
+supposedly, and perhapsedly, and maybe, and by inference--with nothing
+to infer from. The second three of the Baconian six were “presumably”
+ spent by the Stratford lad as apprentice to a butcher. That is, the
+thugs presume it--on no evidence of any kind. Which is their way, when
+they want a historical fact. Fact and presumption are, for business
+purposes, all the same to them. They know the difference, but they also
+know how to blink it. They know, too, that while in history-building a
+fact is better than a presumption, it doesn't take a presumption long
+to bloom into a fact when THEY have the handling of it. They know by old
+experience that when they get hold of a presumption-tadpole he is
+not going to STAY tadpole in their history-tank; no, they know how to
+develop him into the giant four-legged bullfrog of FACT, and make
+him sit up on his hams, and puff out his chin, and look important
+and insolent and come-to-stay; and assert his genuine simon-pure
+authenticity with a thundering bellow that will convince everybody
+because it is so loud. The thug is aware that loudness convinces sixty
+persons where reasoning convinces but one. I wouldn't be a thug, not
+even if--but never mind about that, it has nothing to do with the
+argument, and it is not noble in spirit besides. If I am better than a
+thug, is the merit mine? No, it is His. Then to Him be the praise. That
+is the right spirit.
+
+They “presume” the lad severed his “presumed” connection with the
+Stratford school to become apprentice to a butcher. They also “presume”
+ that the butcher was his father. They don't know. There is no written
+record of it, nor any other actual evidence. If it would have helped
+their case any, they would have apprenticed him to thirty butchers,
+to fifty butchers, to a wilderness of butchers--all by their patented
+method “presumption.” If it will help their case they will do it yet;
+and if it will further help it, they will “presume” that all those
+butchers were his father. And the week after, they will SAY it. Why, it
+is just like being the past tense of the compound reflexive adverbial
+incandescent hypodermic irregular accusative Noun of Multitude; which is
+father to the expression which the grammarians call Verb. It is like a
+whole ancestry, with only one posterity.
+
+To resume. Next, the young Bacon took up the study of law, and mastered
+that abstruse science. From that day to the end of his life he was daily
+in close contact with lawyers and judges; not as a casual onlooker
+in intervals between holding horses in front of a theater, but as
+a practicing lawyer--a great and successful one, a renowned one, a
+Launcelot of the bar, the most formidable lance in the high brotherhood
+of the legal Table Round; he lived in the law's atmosphere thenceforth,
+all his years, and by sheer ability forced his way up its difficult
+steeps to its supremest summit, the Lord-Chancellorship, leaving behind
+him no fellow-craftsman qualified to challenge his divine right to that
+majestic place.
+
+When we read the praises bestowed by Lord Penzance and the other
+illustrious experts upon the legal condition and legal aptnesses,
+brilliances, profundities, and felicities so prodigally displayed in the
+Plays, and try to fit them to the historyless Stratford stage-manager,
+they sound wild, strange, incredible, ludicrous; but when we put them in
+the mouth of Bacon they do not sound strange, they seem in their natural
+and rightful place, they seem at home there. Please turn back and read
+them again. Attributed to Shakespeare of Stratford they are meaningless,
+they are inebriate extravagancies--intemperate admirations of the dark
+side of the moon, so to speak; attributed to Bacon, they are admirations
+of the golden glories of the moon's front side, the moon at the
+full--and not intemperate, not overwrought, but sane and right, and
+justified. “At every turn and point at which the author required a
+metaphor, simile, or illustration, his mind ever turned FIRST to the
+law; he seems almost to have THOUGHT in legal phrases; the commonest
+legal phrases, the commonest of legal expressions, were ever at the end
+of his pen.” That could happen to no one but a person whose TRADE was
+the law; it could not happen to a dabbler in it. Veteran mariners fill
+their conversation with sailor-phrases and draw all their similes from
+the ship and the sea and the storm, but no mere PASSENGER ever does it,
+be he of Stratford or elsewhere; or could do it with anything resembling
+accuracy, if he were hardy enough to try. Please read again what Lord
+Campbell and the other great authorities have said about Bacon when they
+thought they were saying it about Shakespeare of Stratford.
+
+
+
+X
+
+The Rest of the Equipment
+
+The author of the Plays was equipped, beyond every other man of his
+time, with wisdom, erudition, imagination, capaciousness of mind, grace,
+and majesty of expression. Every one has said it, no one doubts it.
+Also, he had humor, humor in rich abundance, and always wanting to
+break out. We have no evidence of any kind that Shakespeare of Stratford
+possessed any of these gifts or any of these acquirements. The only
+lines he ever wrote, so far as we know, are substantially barren of
+them--barren of all of them.
+
+Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare To digg the dust encloased heare:
+Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones And curst be he yt moves my bones.
+
+Ben Jonson says of Bacon, as orator:
+
+His language, WHERE HE COULD SPARE AND PASS BY A JEST, was nobly
+censorious. No man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily,
+or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member
+of his speech but consisted of his (its) own graces.... The fear of
+every man that heard him was lest he should make an end.
+
+From Macaulay:
+
+He continued to distinguish himself in Parliament, particularly by his
+exertions in favor of one excellent measure on which the King's heart
+was set--the union of England and Scotland. It was not difficult for
+such an intellect to discover many irresistible arguments in favor
+of such a scheme. He conducted the great case of the POST NATI in
+the Exchequer Chamber; and the decision of the judges--a decision the
+legality of which may be questioned, but the beneficial effect of which
+must be acknowledged--was in a great measure attributed to his dexterous
+management.
+
+Again:
+
+While actively engaged in the House of Commons and in the courts of law,
+he still found leisure for letters and philosophy. The noble treatise on
+the ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING, which at a later period was expanded into
+the DE AUGMENTIS, appeared in 1605.
+
+The WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS, a work which, if it had proceeded from any
+other writer, would have been considered as a masterpiece of wit and
+learning, was printed in 1609.
+
+In the mean time the NOVUM ORGANUM was slowly proceeding. Several
+distinguished men of learning had been permitted to see portions of that
+extraordinary book, and they spoke with the greatest admiration of his
+genius.
+
+Even Sir Thomas Bodley, after perusing the COGITATA ET VISA, one of the
+most precious of those scattered leaves out of which the great oracular
+volume was afterward made up, acknowledged that “in all proposals and
+plots in that book, Bacon showed himself a master workman”; and that “it
+could not be gainsaid but all the treatise over did abound with
+choice conceits of the present state of learning, and with worthy
+contemplations of the means to procure it.”
+
+In 1612 a new edition of the ESSAYS appeared, with additions surpassing
+the original collection both in bulk and quality.
+
+Nor did these pursuits distract Bacon's attention from a work the most
+arduous, the most glorious, and the most useful that even his mighty
+powers could have achieved, “the reducing and recompiling,” to use his
+own phrase, “of the laws of England.”
+
+To serve the exacting and laborious offices of Attorney-General and
+Solicitor-General would have satisfied the appetite of any other man
+for hard work, but Bacon had to add the vast literary industries just
+described, to satisfy his. He was a born worker.
+
+The service which he rendered to letters during the last five years of
+his life, amid ten thousand distractions and vexations, increase the
+regret with which we think on the many years which he had wasted, to use
+the words of Sir Thomas Bodley, “on such study as was not worthy such a
+student.”
+
+He commenced a digest of the laws of England, a History of England
+under the Princes of the House of Tudor, a body of National History, a
+Philosophical Romance. He made extensive and valuable additions to his
+Essays. He published the inestimable TREATISE DE AUGMENTIS SCIENTIARUM.
+
+Did these labors of Hercules fill up his time to his contentment, and
+quiet his appetite for work? Not entirely:
+
+The trifles with which he amused himself in hours of pain and languor
+bore the mark of his mind. THE BEST JEST-BOOK IN THE WORLD is that which
+he dictated from memory, without referring to any book, on a day on
+which illness had rendered him incapable of serious study.
+
+Here are some scattered remarks (from Macaulay) which throw light
+upon Bacon, and seem to indicate--and maybe demonstrate--that he was
+competent to write the Plays and Poems:
+
+With great minuteness of observation he had an amplitude of
+comprehension such as has never yet been vouchsafed to any other human
+being.
+
+The ESSAYS contain abundant proofs that no nice feature of character,
+no peculiarity in the ordering of a house, a garden, or a court-masque,
+could escape the notice of one whose mind was capable of taking in the
+whole world of knowledge.
+
+His understanding resembled the tent which the fairy Paribanou gave
+to Prince Ahmed: fold it, and it seemed a toy for the hand of a lady;
+spread it, and the armies of the powerful Sultans might repose beneath
+its shade.
+
+The knowledge in which Bacon excelled all men was a knowledge of the
+mutual relations of all departments of knowledge.
+
+In a letter written when he was only thirty-one, to his uncle, Lord
+Burleigh, he said, “I have taken all knowledge to be my province.”
+
+Though Bacon did not arm his philosophy with the weapons of logic, he
+adorned her profusely with all the richest decorations of rhetoric.
+
+The practical faculty was powerful in Bacon; but not, like his wit,
+so powerful as occasionally to usurp the place of his reason and to
+tyrannize over the whole man.
+
+There are too many places in the Plays where this happens. Poor old
+dying John of Gaunt volleying second-rate puns at his own name, is a
+pathetic instance of it. “We may assume” that it is Bacon's fault, but
+the Stratford Shakespeare has to bear the blame.
+
+No imagination was ever at once so strong and so thoroughly subjugated.
+It stopped at the first check from good sense.
+
+In truth, much of Bacon's life was passed in a visionary world--amid
+things as strange as any that are described in the ARABIAN TALES...
+amid buildings more sumptuous than the palace of Aladdin, fountains more
+wonderful than the golden water of Parizade, conveyances more rapid
+than the hippogryph of Ruggiero, arms more formidable than the lance of
+Astolfo, remedies more efficacious than the balsam of Fierabras. Yet
+in his magnificent day-dreams there was nothing wild--nothing but what
+sober reason sanctioned.
+
+Bacon's greatest performance is the first book of the NOVUM ORGANUM... .
+Every part of it blazes with wit, but with wit which is employed only to
+illustrate and decorate truth. No book ever made so great a revolution
+in the mode of thinking, overthrew so may prejudices, introduced so many
+new opinions.
+
+But what we most admire is the vast capacity of that intellect which,
+without effort, takes in at once all the domains of science--all the
+past, the present and the future, all the errors of two thousand years,
+all the encouraging signs of the passing times, all the bright hopes of
+the coming age.
+
+He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close and rendering it
+portable.
+
+His eloquence would alone have entitled him to a high rank in
+literature.
+
+It is evident that he had each and every one of the mental gifts and
+each and every one of the acquirements that are so prodigally displayed
+in the Plays and Poems, and in much higher and richer degree than any
+other man of his time or of any previous time. He was a genius without a
+mate, a prodigy not matable. There was only one of him; the planet
+could not produce two of him at one birth, nor in one age. He could have
+written anything that is in the Plays and Poems. He could have written
+this:
+
+
+
+     The cloud-cap'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
+     The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
+     Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
+     And, like an insubstantial pageant faded,
+     Leave not a rack behind.  We are such stuff
+     As dreams are made on, and our little life
+     Is rounded with a sleep.
+
+Also, he could have written this, but he refrained:
+
+     Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare
+     To digg the dust encloased heare:
+     Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones
+     And curst be he yt moves my bones.
+
+When a person reads the noble verses about the cloud-cap'd towers,
+he ought not to follow it immediately with Good friend for Iesus sake
+forbeare, because he will find the transition from great poetry to
+poor prose too violent for comfort. It will give him a shock. You never
+notice how commonplace and unpoetic gravel is until you bite into a
+layer of it in a pie.
+
+
+
+XI
+
+Am I trying to convince anybody that Shakespeare did not write
+Shakespeare's Works? Ah, now, what do you take me for? Would I be so
+soft as that, after having known the human race familiarly for nearly
+seventy-four years? It would grieve me to know that any one could think
+so injuriously of me, so uncomplimentarily, so unadmiringly of me. No,
+no, I am aware that when even the brightest mind in our world has been
+trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never
+be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely,
+dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance
+which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition.
+I doubt if I could do it myself. We always get at second hand our
+notions about systems of government; and high tariff and low tariff;
+and prohibition and anti-prohibition; and the holiness of peace and the
+glories of war; and codes of honor and codes of morals; and approval of
+the duel and disapproval of it; and our beliefs concerning the nature of
+cats; and our ideas as to whether the murder of helpless wild animals
+is base or is heroic; and our preferences in the matter of religious and
+political parties; and our acceptance or rejection of the Shakespeares
+and the Author Ortons and the Mrs. Eddys. We get them all at second
+hand, we reason none of them out for ourselves. It is the way we are
+made. It is the way we are all made, and we can't help it, we can't
+change it. And whenever we have been furnished a fetish, and have been
+taught to believe in it, and love it and worship it, and refrain from
+examining it, there is no evidence, howsoever clear and strong, that can
+persuade us to withdraw from it our loyalty and our devotion. In
+morals, conduct, and beliefs we take the color of our environment and
+associations, and it is a color that can safely be warranted to wash.
+Whenever we have been furnished with a tar baby ostensibly stuffed
+with jewels, and warned that it will be dishonorable and irreverent to
+disembowel it and test the jewels, we keep our sacrilegious hands off
+it. We submit, not reluctantly, but rather gladly, for we are privately
+afraid we should find, upon examination that the jewels are of the sort
+that are manufactured at North Adams, Mass.
+
+I haven't any idea that Shakespeare will have to vacate his pedestal
+this side of the year 2209. Disbelief in him cannot come swiftly,
+disbelief in a healthy and deeply-loved tar baby has never been known
+to disintegrate swiftly; it is a very slow process. It took several
+thousand years to convince our fine race--including every splendid
+intellect in it--that there is no such thing as a witch; it has taken
+several thousand years to convince the same fine race--including every
+splendid intellect in it--that there is no such person as Satan; it has
+taken several centuries to remove perdition from the Protestant Church's
+program of post-mortem entertainments; it has taken a weary long time to
+persuade American Presbyterians to give up infant damnation and try to
+bear it the best they can; and it looks as if their Scotch brethren will
+still be burning babies in the everlasting fires when Shakespeare comes
+down from his perch.
+
+We are The Reasoning Race. We can't prove it by the above examples,
+and we can't prove it by the miraculous “histories” built by those
+Stratfordolaters out of a hatful of rags and a barrel of sawdust, but
+there is a plenty of other things we can prove it by, if I could think
+of them. We are The Reasoning Race, and when we find a vague file of
+chipmunk-tracks stringing through the dust of Stratford village, we know
+by our reasoning bowers that Hercules has been along there. I feel that
+our fetish is safe for three centuries yet. The bust, too--there in the
+Stratford Church. The precious bust, the priceless bust, the calm bust,
+the serene bust, the emotionless bust, with the dandy mustache, and the
+putty face, unseamed of care--that face which has looked passionlessly
+down upon the awed pilgrim for a hundred and fifty years and will still
+look down upon the awed pilgrim three hundred more, with the deep, deep,
+deep, subtle, subtle, subtle expression of a bladder.
+
+
+
+XII
+
+Irreverence
+
+One of the most trying defects which I find in these--these--what shall
+I call them? for I will not apply injurious epithets to them, the way
+they do to us, such violations of courtesy being repugnant to my nature
+and my dignity. The farthest I can go in that direction is to call them
+by names of limited reverence--names merely descriptive, never unkind,
+never offensive, never tainted by harsh feeling. If THEY would do
+like this, they would feel better in their hearts. Very well,
+then--to proceed. One of the most trying defects which I find in these
+Stratfordolaters, these Shakesperiods, these thugs, these bangalores,
+these troglodytes, these herumfrodites, these blatherskites, these
+buccaneers, these bandoleers, is their spirit of irreverence. It is
+detectable in every utterance of theirs when they are talking about us.
+I am thankful that in me there is nothing of that spirit. When a thing
+is sacred to me it is impossible for me to be irreverent toward it. I
+cannot call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent,
+except towards the things which were sacred to other people. Am I in
+the right? I think so. But I ask no one to take my unsupported word;
+no, look at the dictionary; let the dictionary decide. Here is the
+definition:
+
+IRREVERENCE. The quality or condition of irreverence toward God and
+sacred things.
+
+What does the Hindu say? He says it is correct. He says irreverence
+is lack of respect for Vishnu, and Brahma, and Chrishna, and his other
+gods, and for his sacred cattle, and for his temples and the things
+within them. He endorses the definition, you see; and there are
+300,000,000 Hindus or their equivalents back of him.
+
+The dictionary had the acute idea that by using the capital G it could
+restrict irreverence to lack of reverence for OUR Deity and our sacred
+things, but that ingenious and rather sly idea miscarried: for by
+the simple process of spelling HIS deities with capitals the Hindu
+confiscates the definition and restricts it to his own sects, thus
+making it clearly compulsory upon us to revere HIS gods and HIS sacred
+things, and nobody's else. We can't say a word, for he has our own
+dictionary at his back, and its decision is final.
+
+This law, reduced to its simplest terms, is this: 1. Whatever is
+sacred to the Christian must be held in reverence by everybody else; 2.
+whatever is sacred to the Hindu must be held in reverence by everybody
+else; 3. therefore, by consequence, logically, and indisputably,
+whatever is sacred to ME must be held in reverence by everybody else.
+
+Now then, what aggravates me is that these troglodytes and muscovites
+and bandoleers and buccaneers are ALSO trying to crowd in and share the
+benefit of the law, and compel everybody to revere their Shakespeare and
+hold him sacred. We can't have that: there's enough of us already. If
+you go on widening and spreading and inflating the privilege, it will
+presently come to be conceded that each man's sacred things are the ONLY
+ones, and the rest of the human race will have to be humbly reverent
+toward them or suffer for it. That can surely happen, and when it
+happens, the word Irreverence will be regarded as the most meaningless,
+and foolish, and self-conceited, and insolent, and impudent, and
+dictatorial word in the language. And people will say, “Whose business
+is it what gods I worship and what things hold sacred? Who has the right
+to dictate to my conscience, and where did he get that right?”
+
+We cannot afford to let that calamity come upon us. We must save the
+word from this destruction. There is but one way to do it, and that
+is to stop the spread of the privilege and strictly confine it to its
+present limits--that is, to all the Christian sects, to all the Hindu
+sects, and me. We do not need any more, the stock is watered enough,
+just as it is.
+
+It would be better if the privilege were limited to me alone. I think so
+because I am the only sect that knows how to employ it gently, kindly,
+charitably, dispassionately. The other sects lack the quality of
+self-restraint. The Catholic Church says the most irreverent things
+about matters which are sacred to the Protestants, and the Protestant
+Church retorts in kind about the confessional and other matters which
+Catholics hold sacred; then both of these irreverencers turn upon Thomas
+Paine and charge HIM with irreverence. This is all unfortunate, because
+it makes it difficult for students equipped with only a low grade of
+mentality to find out what Irreverence really IS.
+
+It will surely be much better all around if the privilege of regulating
+the irreverent and keeping them in order shall eventually be withdrawn
+from all the sects but me. Then there will be no more quarreling, no
+more bandying of disrespectful epithets, no more heartburnings.
+
+There will then be nothing sacred involved in this Bacon-Shakespeare
+controversy except what is sacred to me. That will simplify the whole
+matter, and trouble will cease. There will be irreverence no longer,
+because I will not allow it. The first time those criminals charge
+me with irreverence for calling their Stratford myth an
+Arthur-Orton-Mary-Baker-Thompson-Eddy-Louis-the-Seventeenth-Veiled-Prophet
+-of-Khorassan will be the last. Taught by the methods found effective in
+extinguishing earlier offenders by the Inquisition, of holy memory, I
+shall know how to quiet them.
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+Isn't it odd, when you think of it, that you may list all the celebrated
+Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotchmen of modern times, clear back to the
+first Tudors--a list containing five hundred names, shall we say?--and
+you can go to the histories, biographies, and cyclopedias and learn the
+particulars of the lives of every one of them. Every one of them except
+one--the most famous, the most renowned--by far the most illustrious of
+them all--Shakespeare! You can get the details of the lives of all the
+celebrated ecclesiastics in the list; all the celebrated tragedians,
+comedians, singers, dancers, orators, judges, lawyers, poets,
+dramatists, historians, biographers, editors, inventors, reformers,
+statesmen, generals, admirals, discoverers, prize-fighters, murderers,
+pirates, conspirators, horse-jockeys, bunco-steerers, misers,
+swindlers, explorers, adventurers by land and sea, bankers, financiers,
+astronomers, naturalists, claimants, impostors, chemists, biologists,
+geologists, philologists, college presidents and professors, architects,
+engineers, painters, sculptors, politicians, agitators, rebels,
+revolutionists, patriots, demagogues, clowns, cooks, freaks,
+philosophers, burglars, highwaymen, journalists, physicians,
+surgeons--you can get the life-histories of all of them but ONE.
+Just ONE--the most extraordinary and the most celebrated of them
+all--Shakespeare!
+
+You may add to the list the thousand celebrated persons furnished by the
+rest of Christendom in the past four centuries, and you can find out
+the life-histories of all those people, too. You will then have
+listed fifteen hundred celebrities, and you can trace the authentic
+life-histories of the whole of them. Save one--far and away the most
+colossal prodigy of the entire accumulation--Shakespeare! About him you
+can find out NOTHING. Nothing of even the slightest importance. Nothing
+worth the trouble of stowing away in your memory. Nothing that even
+remotely indicates that he was ever anything more than a distinctly
+commonplace person--a manager, an actor of inferior grade, a small
+trader in a small village that did not regard him as a person of any
+consequence, and had forgotten all about him before he was fairly cold
+in his grave. We can go to the records and find out the life-history of
+every renowned RACE-HORSE of modern times--but not Shakespeare's! There
+are many reasons why, and they have been furnished in cart-loads (of
+guess and conjecture) by those troglodytes; but there is one that
+is worth all the rest of the reasons put together, and is abundantly
+sufficient all by itself--HE HADN'T ANY HISTORY TO RECORD. There is no
+way of getting around that deadly fact. And no sane way has yet been
+discovered of getting around its formidable significance.
+
+Its quite plain significance--to any but those thugs (I do not use the
+term unkindly) is, that Shakespeare had no prominence while he lived,
+and none until he had been dead two or three generations. The Plays
+enjoyed high fame from the beginning; and if he wrote them it seems a
+pity the world did not find it out. He ought to have explained that he
+was the author, and not merely a NOM DE PLUME for another man to hide
+behind. If he had been less intemperately solicitous about his bones,
+and more solicitous about his Works, it would have been better for his
+good name, and a kindness to us. The bones were not important. They will
+moulder away, they will turn to dust, but the Works will endure until
+the last sun goes down.
+
+
+Mark Twain.
+
+P.S. MARCH 25. About two months ago I was illuminating this
+Autobiography with some notions of mine concerning the Bacon-Shakespeare
+controversy, and I then took occasion to air the opinion that the
+Stratford Shakespeare was a person of no public consequence or celebrity
+during his lifetime, but was utterly obscure and unimportant. And not
+only in great London, but also in the little village where he was born,
+where he lived a quarter of a century, and where he died and was buried.
+I argued that if he had been a person of any note at all, aged villagers
+would have had much to tell about him many and many a year after his
+death, instead of being unable to furnish inquirers a single fact
+connected with him. I believed, and I still believe, that if he had been
+famous, his notoriety would have lasted as long as mine has lasted in
+my native village out in Missouri. It is a good argument, a prodigiously
+strong one, and most formidable one for even the most gifted and
+ingenious and plausible Stratfordolator to get around or explain away.
+Today a Hannibal COURIER-POST of recent date has reached me, with an
+article in it which reinforces my contention that a really celebrated
+person cannot be forgotten in his village in the short space of sixty
+years. I will make an extract from it:
+
+Hannibal, as a city, may have many sins to answer for, but ingratitude
+is not one of them, or reverence for the great men she has produced, and
+as the years go by her greatest son, Mark Twain, or S. L. Clemens as a
+few of the unlettered call him, grows in the estimation and regard of
+the residents of the town he made famous and the town that made him
+famous. His name is associated with every old building that is torn
+down to make way for the modern structures demanded by a rapidly growing
+city, and with every hill or cave over or through which he might by any
+possibility have roamed, while the many points of interest which he wove
+into his stories, such as Holiday Hill, Jackson's Island, or Mark
+Twain Cave, are now monuments to his genius. Hannibal is glad of any
+opportunity to do him honor as he had honored her.
+
+So it has happened that the “old timers” who went to school with Mark
+or were with him on some of his usual escapades have been honored
+with large audiences whenever they were in a reminiscent mood and
+condescended to tell of their intimacy with the ordinary boy who came to
+be a very extraordinary humorist and whose every boyish act is now seen
+to have been indicative of what was to come. Like Aunt Becky and Mrs.
+Clemens, they can now see that Mark was hardly appreciated when he lived
+here and that the things he did as a boy and was whipped for doing were
+not all bad, after all. So they have been in no hesitancy about drawing
+out the bad things he did as well as the good in their efforts to get
+a “Mark Twain” story, all incidents being viewed in the light of his
+present fame, until the volume of “Twainiana” is already considerable
+and growing in proportion as the “old timers” drop away and the stories
+are retold second and third hand by their descendants. With some
+seventy-three years young and living in a villa instead of a house, he is a
+fair target, and let him incorporate, copyright, or patent himself as
+he will, there are some of his “works” that will go swooping up Hannibal
+chimneys as long as graybeards gather about the fires and begin with,
+“I've heard father tell,” or possibly, “Once when I.” The Mrs. Clemens
+referred to is my mother--WAS my mother.
+
+And here is another extract from a Hannibal paper, of date twenty days
+ago:
+
+Miss Becca Blankenship died at the home of William Dickason, 408 Rock
+Street, at 2.30 o'clock yesterday afternoon, aged 72 years. The deceased
+was a sister of “Huckleberry Finn,” one of the famous characters in Mark
+Twain's TOM SAWYER. She had been a member of the Dickason family--the
+housekeeper--for nearly forty-five years, and was a highly respected
+lady. For the past eight years she had been an invalid, but was as
+well cared for by Mr. Dickason and his family as if she had been a near
+relative. She was a member of the Park Methodist Church and a Christian
+woman.
+
+I remember her well. I have a picture of her in my mind which was graven
+there, clear and sharp and vivid, sixty-three years ago. She was at that
+time nine years old, and I was about eleven. I remember where she stood,
+and how she looked; and I can still see her bare feet, her bare head,
+her brown face, and her short tow-linen frock. She was crying. What it
+was about I have long ago forgotten. But it was the tears that preserved
+the picture for me, no doubt. She was a good child, I can say that for
+her. She knew me nearly seventy years ago. Did she forget me, in
+the course of time? I think not. If she had lived in Stratford in
+Shakespeare's time, would she have forgotten him? Yes. For he was never
+famous during his lifetime, he was utterly obscure in Stratford, and
+there wouldn't be any occasion to remember him after he had been dead a
+week.
+
+“Injun Joe,” “Jimmy Finn,” and “General Gaines” were prominent and very
+intemperate ne'er-do-weels in Hannibal two generations ago. Plenty of
+grayheads there remember them to this day, and can tell you about them.
+Isn't it curious that two “town drunkards” and one half-breed loafer
+should leave behind them, in a remote Missourian village, a fame a
+hundred times greater and several hundred times more particularized in
+the matter of definite facts than Shakespeare left behind him in the
+village where he had lived the half of his lifetime?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of What Is Man? And Other Stories, by
+Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
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+
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <title>
+      What is Man? and Other Essays, by Mark Twain
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd7; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .50em; margin-bottom: .50em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
+    .toc2      { margin-left: 20%;}
+    div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    pre     { font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
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+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of What Is Man? And Other Stories, by
+Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: What Is Man? And Other Stories
+
+Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
+
+Release Date: May 11, 2009 [EBook #70]
+Last Updated: February 24, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHAT IS MAN? AND OTHER STORIES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      WHAT IS MAN? <br /><br />AND OTHER ESSAYS
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      By Mark Twain
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      (Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910)
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <big><b>CONTENTS</b></big>
+      </p>
+      <p>
+        <br />
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> WHAT IS MAN? </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> THE DEATH OF JEAN </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> HOW TO MAKE HISTORY DATES STICK </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> THE MEMORABLE ASSASSINATION </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> A SCRAP OF CURIOUS HISTORY </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> SWITZERLAND, THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> AT THE SHRINE OF ST. WAGNER </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> ENGLISH AS SHE IS TAUGHT </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> ON GIRLS </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> A SIMPLIFIED ALPHABET </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> AS CONCERNS INTERPRETING THE DEITY </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0015"> CONCERNING TOBACCO </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0016"> THE BEE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0017"> TAMING THE BICYCLE </a>
+      </p>
+      <p class="toc">
+        <a href="#link2H_4_0018"> IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD? </a>
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <hr />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      WHAT IS MAN?
+    </h1>
+    <h3>
+      I
+    </h3>
+    <h4>
+      a. Man the Machine. b. Personal Merit
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      [The Old Man and the Young Man had been conversing. The Old Man had
+      asserted that the human being is merely a machine, and nothing more. The
+      Young Man objected, and asked him to go into particulars and furnish his
+      reasons for his position.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Man. What are the materials of which a steam-engine is made?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Man. Iron, steel, brass, white-metal, and so on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Where are these found?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. In the rocks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. In a pure state?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. No&mdash;in ores.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Are the metals suddenly deposited in the ores?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. No&mdash;it is the patient work of countless ages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. You could make the engine out of the rocks themselves?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes, a brittle one and not valuable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. You would not require much, of such an engine as that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. No&mdash;substantially nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. To make a fine and capable engine, how would you proceed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Drive tunnels and shafts into the hills; blast out the iron ore;
+      crush it, smelt it, reduce it to pig-iron; put some of it through the
+      Bessemer process and make steel of it. Mine and treat and combine several
+      metals of which brass is made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Out of the perfected result, build the fine engine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. You would require much of this one?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Oh, indeed yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It could drive lathes, drills, planers, punches, polishers, in a word
+      all the cunning machines of a great factory?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. It could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. What could the stone engine do?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Drive a sewing-machine, possibly&mdash;nothing more, perhaps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Men would admire the other engine and rapturously praise it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. But not the stone one?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. The merits of the metal machine would be far above those of the stone
+      one?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Of course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Personal merits?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. <i>Personal</i> merits? How do you mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It would be personally entitled to the credit of its own performance?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. The engine? Certainly not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Why not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Because its performance is not personal. It is the result of the law
+      of construction. It is not a <i>merit</i> that it does the things which it
+      is set to do&mdash;it can't <i>help</i> doing them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. And it is not a personal demerit in the stone machine that it does so
+      little?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Certainly not. It does no more and no less than the law of its make
+      permits and compels it to do. There is nothing <i>personal</i> about it;
+      it cannot choose. In this process of &ldquo;working up to the matter&rdquo;
+      is it your idea to work up to the proposition that man and a machine are
+      about the same thing, and that there is no personal merit in the
+      performance of either?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes&mdash;but do not be offended; I am meaning no offense. What makes
+      the grand difference between the stone engine and the steel one? Shall we
+      call it training, education? Shall we call the stone engine a savage and
+      the steel one a civilized man? The original rock contained the stuff of
+      which the steel one was built&mdash;but along with a lot of sulphur and
+      stone and other obstructing inborn heredities, brought down from the old
+      geologic ages&mdash;prejudices, let us call them. Prejudices which nothing
+      within the rock itself had either <i>power</i> to remove or any <i>desire</i>
+      to remove. Will you take note of that phrase?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes. I have written it down; &ldquo;Prejudices which nothing within
+      the rock itself had either power to remove or any desire to remove.&rdquo;
+      Go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Prejudices must be removed by <i>outside influences</i> or not at
+      all. Put that down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Very well; &ldquo;Must be removed by outside influences or not at
+      all.&rdquo; Go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. The iron's prejudice against ridding itself of the cumbering
+      rock. To make it more exact, the iron's absolute <i>indifference</i>
+      as to whether the rock be removed or not. Then comes the <i>outside
+      influence</i> and grinds the rock to powder and sets the ore free. The <i>iron</i>
+      in the ore is still captive. An <i>outside influence</i> smelts it free of
+      the clogging ore. The iron is emancipated iron, now, but indifferent to
+      further progress. An <i>outside influence</i> beguiles it into the
+      Bessemer furnace and refines it into steel of the first quality. It is
+      educated, now&mdash;its training is complete. And it has reached its
+      limit. By no possible process can it be educated into <i>gold</i>. Will
+      you set that down?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes. &ldquo;Everything has its limit&mdash;iron ore cannot be
+      educated into gold.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. There are gold men, and tin men, and copper men, and leaden men, and
+      steel men, and so on&mdash;and each has the limitations of his nature, his
+      heredities, his training, and his environment. You can build engines out
+      of each of these metals, and they will all perform, but you must not
+      require the weak ones to do equal work with the strong ones. In each case,
+      to get the best results, you must free the metal from its obstructing
+      prejudicial ones by education&mdash;smelting, refining, and so forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. You have arrived at man, now?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes. Man the machine&mdash;man the impersonal engine. Whatsoever a
+      man is, is due to his <i>make</i>, and to the <i>influences</i> brought to
+      bear upon it by his heredities, his habitat, his associations. He is
+      moved, directed, <i>commanded</i>, by <i>exterior</i> influences&mdash;<i>solely</i>.
+      He <i>originates</i> nothing, not even a thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Oh, come! Where did I get my opinion that this which you are talking
+      is all foolishness?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It is a quite natural opinion&mdash;indeed an inevitable opinion&mdash;but
+      <i>you </i>did not create the materials out of which it is formed. They
+      are odds and ends of thoughts, impressions, feelings, gathered
+      unconsciously from a thousand books, a thousand conversations, and from
+      streams of thought and feeling which have flowed down into your heart and
+      brain out of the hearts and brains of centuries of ancestors. <i>Personally</i>
+      you did not create even the smallest microscopic fragment of the materials
+      out of which your opinion is made; and personally you cannot claim even
+      the slender merit of <i>putting the borrowed materials together</i>. That
+      was done <i>automatically</i>&mdash;by your mental machinery, in strict
+      accordance with the law of that machinery's construction. And you
+      not only did not make that machinery yourself, but you have <i>not even
+      any command over it</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. This is too much. You think I could have formed no opinion but that
+      one?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Spontaneously? No. And <i>you did not form that one</i>; your
+      machinery did it for you&mdash;automatically and instantly, without
+      reflection or the need of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Suppose I had reflected? How then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Suppose you try?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. (<i>After a quarter of an hour</i>.) I have reflected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. You mean you have tried to change your opinion&mdash;as an
+      experiment?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. With success?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. No. It remains the same; it is impossible to change it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I am sorry, but you see, yourself, that your mind is merely a
+      machine, nothing more. You have no command over it, it has no command over
+      itself&mdash;it is worked <i>solely from the outside</i>. That is the law
+      of its make; it is the law of all machines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Can't I <i>ever</i> change one of these automatic opinions?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. No. You can't yourself, but <i>exterior influences</i> can do
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. And exterior ones <i>only</i>?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes&mdash;exterior ones only.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. That position is untenable&mdash;I may say ludicrously untenable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. What makes you think so?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I don't merely think it, I know it. Suppose I resolve to enter
+      upon a course of thought, and study, and reading, with the deliberate
+      purpose of changing that opinion; and suppose I succeed. <i>That </i>is
+      not the work of an exterior impulse, the whole of it is mine and personal;
+      for I originated the project.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Not a shred of it. <i>It grew out of this talk with me</i>. But for
+      that it would not have occurred to you. No man ever originates anything.
+      All his thoughts, all his impulses, come <i>from the outside</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. It's an exasperating subject. The <i>first</i> man had original
+      thoughts, anyway; there was nobody to draw from.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It is a mistake. Adam's thoughts came to him from the outside.
+      <i>You</i> have a fear of death. You did not invent that&mdash;you got it
+      from outside, from talking and teaching. Adam had no fear of death&mdash;none
+      in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes, he had.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. When he was created?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. When, then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. When he was threatened with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Then it came from <i>outside</i>. Adam is quite big enough; let us
+      not try to make a god of him. <i>None but gods have ever had a thought
+      which did not come from the outside</i>. Adam probably had a good head,
+      but it was of no sort of use to him until it was filled up <i>from the
+      outside</i>. He was not able to invent the triflingest little thing with
+      it. He had not a shadow of a notion of the difference between good and
+      evil&mdash;he had to get the idea <i>from the outside</i>. Neither he nor
+      Eve was able to originate the idea that it was immodest to go naked; the
+      knowledge came in with the apple <i>from the outside</i>. A man's
+      brain is so constructed that <i>it can originate nothing whatsoever</i>.
+      It can only use material obtained <i>outside</i>. It is merely a machine;
+      and it works automatically, not by will-power. <i>It has no command over
+      itself, its owner has no command over it</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Well, never mind Adam: but certainly Shakespeare's creations&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. No, you mean Shakespeare's <i>imitations</i>. Shakespeare
+      created nothing. He correctly observed, and he marvelously painted. He
+      exactly portrayed people whom <i>God</i> had created; but he created none
+      himself. Let us spare him the slander of charging him with trying.
+      Shakespeare could not create. <i>He was a machine, and machines do not
+      create</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Where <i>was</i> his excellence, then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. In this. He was not a sewing-machine, like you and me; he was a
+      Gobelin loom. The threads and the colors came into him <i>from the outside</i>;
+      outside influences, suggestions, <i>experiences</i> (reading, seeing
+      plays, playing plays, borrowing ideas, and so on), framed the patterns in
+      his mind and started up his complex and admirable machinery, and <i>it
+      automatically</i> turned out that pictured and gorgeous fabric which still
+      compels the astonishment of the world. If Shakespeare had been born and
+      bred on a barren and unvisited rock in the ocean his mighty intellect
+      would have had no <i>outside material</i> to work with, and could have
+      invented none; and <i>no outside influences</i>, teachings, moldings,
+      persuasions, inspirations, of a valuable sort, and could have invented
+      none; and so Shakespeare would have produced nothing. In Turkey he would
+      have produced something&mdash;something up to the highest limit of Turkish
+      influences, associations, and training. In France he would have produced
+      something better&mdash;something up to the highest limit of the French
+      influences and training. In England he rose to the highest limit
+      attainable through the <i>outside helps afforded by that land's
+      ideals, influences, and training</i>. You and I are but sewing-machines.
+      We must turn out what we can; we must do our endeavor and care nothing at
+      all when the unthinking reproach us for not turning out Gobelins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. And so we are mere machines! And machines may not boast, nor feel
+      proud of their performance, nor claim personal merit for it, nor applause
+      and praise. It is an infamous doctrine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It isn't a doctrine, it is merely a fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I suppose, then, there is no more merit in being brave than in being
+      a coward?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. <i>Personal</i> merit? No. A brave man does not <i>create</i> his
+      bravery. He is entitled to no personal credit for possessing it. It is
+      born to him. A baby born with a billion dollars&mdash;where is the
+      personal merit in that? A baby born with nothing&mdash;where is the
+      personal demerit in that? The one is fawned upon, admired, worshiped, by
+      sycophants, the other is neglected and despised&mdash;where is the sense
+      in it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Sometimes a timid man sets himself the task of conquering his
+      cowardice and becoming brave&mdash;and succeeds. What do you say to that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. That it shows the value of <i>training in right directions over
+      training in wrong ones</i>. Inestimably valuable is training, influence,
+      education, in right directions&mdash;<i>training one's
+      self-approbation to elevate its ideals</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. But as to merit&mdash;the personal merit of the victorious coward's
+      project and achievement?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. There isn't any. In the world's view he is a worthier man
+      than he was before, but <i>he</i> didn't achieve the change&mdash;the
+      merit of it is not his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Whose, then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. His <i>make</i>, and the influences which wrought upon it from the
+      outside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. His make?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. To start with, he was <i>not</i> utterly and completely a coward, or
+      the influences would have had nothing to work upon. He was not afraid of a
+      cow, though perhaps of a bull: not afraid of a woman, but afraid of a man.
+      There was something to build upon. There was a <i>seed</i>. No seed, no
+      plant. Did he make that seed himself, or was it born in him? It was no
+      merit of <i>his</i> that the seed was there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Well, anyway, the idea of <i>cultivating</i> it, the resolution to
+      cultivate it, was meritorious, and he originated that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. He did nothing of the kind. It came whence <i>all</i> impulses, good
+      or bad, come&mdash;from <i>outside</i>. If that timid man had lived all
+      his life in a community of human rabbits, had never read of brave deeds,
+      had never heard speak of them, had never heard any one praise them nor
+      express envy of the heroes that had done them, he would have had no more
+      idea of bravery than Adam had of modesty, and it could never by any
+      possibility have occurred to him to <i>resolve</i> to become brave. He <i>could
+      not originate the idea</i>&mdash;it had to come to him from the <i>outside</i>.
+      And so, when he heard bravery extolled and cowardice derided, it woke him
+      up. He was ashamed. Perhaps his sweetheart turned up her nose and said,
+      &ldquo;I am told that you are a coward!&rdquo; It was not <i>he</i> that
+      turned over the new leaf&mdash;she did it for him. <i>He</i> must not
+      strut around in the merit of it &mdash;it is not his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. But, anyway, he reared the plant after she watered the seed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. No. <i>Outside influences</i> reared it. At the command&mdash;and
+      trembling&mdash;he marched out into the field&mdash;with other soldiers
+      and in the daytime, not alone and in the dark. He had the <i>influence of
+      example</i>, he drew courage from his comrades' courage; he was
+      afraid, and wanted to run, but he did not dare; he was <i>afraid</i> to
+      run, with all those soldiers looking on. He was progressing, you see&mdash;the
+      moral fear of shame had risen superior to the physical fear of harm. By
+      the end of the campaign experience will have taught him that not <i>all</i>
+      who go into battle get hurt&mdash;an outside influence which will be
+      helpful to him; and he will also have learned how sweet it is to be
+      praised for courage and be huzza'd at with tear-choked voices as the
+      war-worn regiment marches past the worshiping multitude with flags flying
+      and the drums beating. After that he will be as securely brave as any
+      veteran in the army&mdash;and there will not be a shade nor suggestion of
+      <i>personal merit</i> in it anywhere; it will all have come from the <i>outside</i>.
+      The Victoria Cross breeds more heroes than&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Hang it, where is the sense in his becoming brave if he is to get no
+      credit for it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Your question will answer itself presently. It involves an important
+      detail of man's make which we have not yet touched upon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. What detail is that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. The impulse which moves a person to do things&mdash;the only impulse
+      that ever moves a person to do a thing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. The <i>only</i> one! Is there but one?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. That is all. There is only one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Well, certainly that is a strange enough doctrine. What is the sole
+      impulse that ever moves a person to do a thing?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. The impulse to <i>content his own spirit</i>&mdash;the <i>necessity</i>
+      of contenting his own spirit and <i>winning its approval</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Oh, come, that won't do!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Why won't it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Because it puts him in the attitude of always looking out for his own
+      comfort and advantage; whereas an unselfish man often does a thing solely
+      for another person's good when it is a positive disadvantage to
+      himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It is a mistake. The act must do <i>him</i> good, <i>first</i>;
+      otherwise he will not do it. He may <i>think</i> he is doing it solely for
+      the other person's sake, but it is not so; he is contenting his own
+      spirit first&mdash;the other's person's benefit has to always
+      take <i>second</i> place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. What a fantastic idea! What becomes of self&mdash;sacrifice? Please
+      answer me that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. What is self-sacrifice?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. The doing good to another person where no shadow nor suggestion of
+      benefit to one's self can result from it.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II
+    </h3>
+    <h4>
+      Man's Sole Impulse&mdash;the Securing of His Own Approval
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Old Man. There have been instances of it&mdash;you think?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Man. <i>Instances</i>? Millions of them!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. You have not jumped to conclusions? You have examined them&mdash;critically?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. They don't need it: the acts themselves reveal the golden
+      impulse back of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. For instance?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Well, then, for instance. Take the case in the book here. The man
+      lives three miles up-town. It is bitter cold, snowing hard, midnight. He
+      is about to enter the horse-car when a gray and ragged old woman, a
+      touching picture of misery, puts out her lean hand and begs for rescue
+      from hunger and death. The man finds that he has a quarter in his pocket,
+      but he does not hesitate: he gives it her and trudges home through the
+      storm. There&mdash;it is noble, it is beautiful; its grace is marred by no
+      fleck or blemish or suggestion of self-interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. What makes you think that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Pray what else could I think? Do you imagine that there is some other
+      way of looking at it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Can you put yourself in the man's place and tell me what he
+      felt and what he thought?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Easily. The sight of that suffering old face pierced his generous
+      heart with a sharp pain. He could not bear it. He could endure the
+      three-mile walk in the storm, but he could not endure the tortures his
+      conscience would suffer if he turned his back and left that poor old
+      creature to perish. He would not have been able to sleep, for thinking of
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. What was his state of mind on his way home?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. It was a state of joy which only the self-sacrificer knows. His heart
+      sang, he was unconscious of the storm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. He felt well?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. One cannot doubt it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Very well. Now let us add up the details and see how much he got for
+      his twenty-five cents. Let us try to find out the <i>real</i> why of his
+      making the investment. In the first place <i>he</i> couldn't bear
+      the pain which the old suffering face gave him. So he was thinking of <i>his</i>
+      pain&mdash;this good man. He must buy a salve for it. If he did not succor
+      the old woman <i>his</i> conscience would torture him all the way home.
+      Thinking of <i>his</i> pain again. He must buy relief for that. If he didn't
+      relieve the old woman <i>he</i> would not get any sleep. He must buy some
+      sleep&mdash;still thinking of <i>himself</i>, you see. Thus, to sum up, he
+      bought himself free of a sharp pain in his heart, he bought himself free
+      of the tortures of a waiting conscience, he bought a whole night's
+      sleep&mdash;all for twenty-five cents! It should make Wall Street ashamed
+      of itself. On his way home his heart was joyful, and it sang&mdash;profit
+      on top of profit! The impulse which moved the man to succor the old woman
+      was&mdash;<i>first</i>&mdash;to <i>content his own spirit</i>; secondly to
+      relieve <i>her</i> sufferings. Is it your opinion that men's acts
+      proceed from one central and unchanging and inalterable impulse, or from a
+      variety of impulses?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. From a variety, of course&mdash;some high and fine and noble, others
+      not. What is your opinion?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Then there is but <i>one</i> law, one source.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. That both the noblest impulses and the basest proceed from that one
+      source?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Will you put that law into words?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes. This is the law, keep it in your mind. <i>From his cradle to his
+      grave a man never does a single thing which has any</i> FIRST AND FOREMOST
+      <i>object</i> <i>but one</i>&mdash;<i>to secure peace of mind, spiritual
+      comfort</i>, <i>for</i> HIMSELF.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Come! He never does anything for any one else's comfort,
+      spiritual or physical?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. No. <i>except on those distinct terms</i>&mdash;that it shall <i>first</i>
+      secure <i>his own</i> spiritual comfort. Otherwise he will not do it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. It will be easy to expose the falsity of that proposition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. For instance?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Take that noble passion, love of country, patriotism. A man who loves
+      peace and dreads pain, leaves his pleasant home and his weeping family and
+      marches out to manfully expose himself to hunger, cold, wounds, and death.
+      Is that seeking spiritual comfort?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. He loves peace and dreads pain?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Then perhaps there is something that he loves <i>more</i> than he
+      loves peace&mdash;<i>the approval of his neighbors and the public</i>. And
+      perhaps there is something which he dreads more than he dreads pain&mdash;the
+      <i>disapproval</i> of his neighbors and the public. If he is sensitive to
+      shame he will go to the field&mdash;not because his spirit will be <i>entirely</i>
+      comfortable there, but because it will be more comfortable there than it
+      would be if he remained at home. He will always do the thing which will
+      bring him the <i>most</i> mental comfort&mdash;for that is <i>the sole law
+      of his life</i>. He leaves the weeping family behind; he is sorry to make
+      them uncomfortable, but not sorry enough to sacrifice his <i>own</i>
+      comfort to secure theirs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Do you really believe that mere public opinion could force a timid
+      and peaceful man to&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Go to war? Yes&mdash;public opinion can force some men to do <i>anything</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. <i>Anything</i>?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes&mdash;anything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I don't believe that. Can it force a right-principled man to do
+      a wrong thing?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Can it force a kind man to do a cruel thing?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Give an instance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Alexander Hamilton was a conspicuously high-principled man. He
+      regarded dueling as wrong, and as opposed to the teachings of religion&mdash;but
+      in deference to <i>public opinion</i> he fought a duel. He deeply loved
+      his family, but to buy public approval he treacherously deserted them and
+      threw his life away, ungenerously leaving them to lifelong sorrow in order
+      that he might stand well with a foolish world. In the then condition of
+      the public standards of honor he could not have been comfortable with the
+      stigma upon him of having refused to fight. The teachings of religion, his
+      devotion to his family, his kindness of heart, his high principles, all
+      went for nothing when they stood in the way of his spiritual comfort. A
+      man will do <i>anything</i>, no matter what it is, <i>to secure his
+      spiritual comfort</i>; and he can neither be forced nor persuaded to any
+      act which has not that goal for its object. Hamilton's act was
+      compelled by the inborn necessity of contenting his own spirit; in this it
+      was like all the other acts of his life, and like all the acts of all men's
+      lives. Do you see where the kernel of the matter lies? A man cannot be
+      comfortable without <i>his own</i> approval. He will secure the largest
+      share possible of that, at all costs, all sacrifices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. A minute ago you said Hamilton fought that duel to get <i>public</i>
+      approval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I did. By refusing to fight the duel he would have secured his family's
+      approval and a large share of his own; but the public approval was more
+      valuable in his eyes than all other approvals put together&mdash;in the
+      earth or above it; to secure that would furnish him the <i>most</i>
+      comfort of mind, the most <i>self</i>&mdash;approval; so he sacrificed all
+      other values to get it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Some noble souls have refused to fight duels, and have manfully
+      braved the public contempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. They acted <i>according to their make</i>. They valued their
+      principles and the approval of their families <i>above</i> the public
+      approval. They took the thing they valued <i>most</i> and let the rest go.
+      They took what would give them the <i>largest</i> share of <i>personal
+      contentment and approval</i>&mdash;a man <i>always</i> does. Public
+      opinion cannot force that kind of men to go to the wars. When they go it
+      is for other reasons. Other spirit-contenting reasons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Always spirit-contenting reasons?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. There are no others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. When a man sacrifices his life to save a little child from a burning
+      building, what do you call that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. When he does it, it is the law of <i>his</i> make. <i>He</i> can't
+      bear to see the child in that peril (a man of a different make <i>could</i>),
+      and so he tries to save the child, and loses his life. But he has got what
+      he was after&mdash;<i>his own approval</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. What do you call Love, Hate, Charity, Revenge, Humanity, Magnanimity,
+      Forgiveness?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Different results of the one Master Impulse: the necessity of
+      securing one's self approval. They wear diverse clothes and are
+      subject to diverse moods, but in whatsoever ways they masquerade they are
+      the <i>same person</i> all the time. To change the figure, the <i>compulsion</i>
+      that moves a man&mdash;and there is but the one&mdash;is the necessity of
+      securing the contentment of his own spirit. When it stops, the man is
+      dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. That is foolishness. Love&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Why, love is that impulse, that law, in its most uncompromising form.
+      It will squander life and everything else on its object. Not <i>primarily</i>
+      for the object's sake, but for <i>its own</i>. When its object is
+      happy <i>it</i> is happy&mdash;and that is what it is unconsciously after.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. You do not even except the lofty and gracious passion of mother-love?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. No, <i>it </i>is the absolute slave of that law. The mother will go
+      naked to clothe her child; she will starve that it may have food; suffer
+      torture to save it from pain; die that it may live. She takes a living <i>pleasure</i>
+      in making these sacrifices. <i>She does it for that reward</i>&mdash;that
+      self-approval, that contentment, that peace, that comfort. <i>She would do
+      it for your child</i> IF SHE COULD GET THE SAME PAY.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. This is an infernal philosophy of yours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It isn't a philosophy, it is a fact.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Of course you must admit that there are some acts which&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. No. There is <i>no</i> act, large or small, fine or mean, which
+      springs from any motive but the one&mdash;the necessity of appeasing and
+      contenting one's own spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. The world's philanthropists&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I honor them, I uncover my head to them&mdash;from habit and
+      training; and <i>they</i> could not know comfort or happiness or
+      self-approval if they did not work and spend for the unfortunate. It makes
+      <i>them</i> happy to see others happy; and so with money and labor they
+      buy what they are after&mdash;<i>happiness, self-approval</i>. Why don't
+      miners do the same thing? Because they can get a thousandfold more
+      happiness by <i>not</i> doing it. There is no other reason. They follow
+      the law of their make.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. What do you say of duty for duty's sake?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. That <i>it does not exist</i>. Duties are not performed for duty's
+      <i>sake</i>, but because their <i>neglect</i> would make the man <i>uncomfortable</i>.
+      A man performs but <i>one</i> duty&mdash;the duty of contenting his
+      spirit, the duty of making himself agreeable to himself. If he can most
+      satisfyingly perform this sole and only duty by <i>helping</i> his
+      neighbor, he will do it; if he can most satisfyingly perform it by <i>swindling</i>
+      his neighbor, he will do it. But he always looks out for Number One&mdash;<i>first</i>;
+      the effects upon others are a <i>secondary</i> matter. Men pretend to
+      self-sacrifices, but this is a thing which, in the ordinary value of the
+      phrase, <i>does not exist and has not existed</i>. A man often honestly <i>thinks</i>
+      he is sacrificing himself merely and solely for some one else, but he is
+      deceived; his bottom impulse is to content a requirement of his nature and
+      training, and thus acquire peace for his soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Apparently, then, all men, both good and bad ones, devote their lives
+      to contenting their consciences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes. That is a good enough name for it: Conscience&mdash;that
+      independent Sovereign, that insolent absolute Monarch inside of a man who
+      is the man's Master. There are all kinds of consciences, because
+      there are all kinds of men. You satisfy an assassin's conscience in
+      one way, a philanthropist's in another, a miser's in another,
+      a burglar's in still another. As a <i>guide</i> or <i>incentive</i>
+      to any authoritatively prescribed line of morals or conduct (leaving <i>training</i>
+      out of the account), a man's conscience is totally valueless. I know
+      a kind-hearted Kentuckian whose self-approval was lacking&mdash;whose
+      conscience was troubling him, to phrase it with exactness&mdash;<i>because
+      he had neglected to kill a certain man</i>&mdash;a man whom he had never
+      seen. The stranger had killed this man's friend in a fight, this man's
+      Kentucky training made it a duty to kill the stranger for it. He neglected
+      his duty&mdash;kept dodging it, shirking it, putting it off, and his
+      unrelenting conscience kept persecuting him for this conduct. At last, to
+      get ease of mind, comfort, self-approval, he hunted up the stranger and
+      took his life. It was an immense act of <i>self-sacrifice</i> (as per the
+      usual definition), for he did not want to do it, and he never would have
+      done it if he could have bought a contented spirit and an unworried mind
+      at smaller cost. But we are so made that we will pay <i>anything</i> for
+      that contentment&mdash;even another man's life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. You spoke a moment ago of <i>trained</i> consciences. You mean that
+      we are not <i>born</i> with consciences competent to guide us aright?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. If we were, children and savages would know right from wrong, and not
+      have to be taught it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. But consciences can be <i>trained</i>?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Of course by parents, teachers, the pulpit, and books.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes&mdash;they do their share; they do what they can.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. And the rest is done by&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Oh, a million unnoticed influences&mdash;for good or bad: influences
+      which work without rest during every waking moment of a man's life,
+      from cradle to grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. You have tabulated these?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Many of them&mdash;yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Will you read me the result?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Another time, yes. It would take an hour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. A conscience can be trained to shun evil and prefer good?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. But will it for spirit-contenting reasons only?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It <i>can't</i> be trained to do a thing for any <i>other</i>
+      reason. The thing is impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. There <i>must</i> be a genuinely and utterly self-sacrificing act
+      recorded in human history somewhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. You are young. You have many years before you. Search one out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. It does seem to me that when a man sees a fellow-being struggling in
+      the water and jumps in at the risk of his life to save him&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Wait. Describe the <i>man</i>. Describe the <i>fellow-being</i>.
+      State if there is an <i>audience</i> present; or if they are <i>alone</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. What have these things to do with the splendid act?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Very much. Shall we suppose, as a beginning, that the two are alone,
+      in a solitary place, at midnight?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. If you choose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. And that the fellow-being is the man's daughter?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Well, n-no&mdash;make it someone else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. A filthy, drunken ruffian, then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I see. Circumstances alter cases. I suppose that if there was no
+      audience to observe the act, the man wouldn't perform it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. But there is here and there a man who <i>would</i>. People, for
+      instance, like the man who lost his life trying to save the child from the
+      fire; and the man who gave the needy old woman his twenty-five cents and
+      walked home in the storm&mdash;there are here and there men like that who
+      would do it. And why? Because they couldn't <i>bear</i> to see a
+      fellow-being struggling in the water and not jump in and help. It would
+      give <i>them</i> pain. They would save the fellow-being on that account.
+      <i>They wouldn't do it otherwise</i>. They strictly obey the law
+      which I have been insisting upon. You must remember and always distinguish
+      the people who <i>can't bear</i> things from people who <i>can</i>.
+      It will throw light upon a number of apparently &ldquo;self-sacrificing&rdquo;
+      cases.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Oh, dear, it's all so disgusting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes. And so true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Come&mdash;take the good boy who does things he doesn't want to
+      do, in order to gratify his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. He does seven-tenths of the act because it gratifies <i>him</i> to
+      gratify his mother. Throw the bulk of advantage the other way and the good
+      boy would not do the act. He <i>must</i> obey the iron law. None can
+      escape it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Well, take the case of a bad boy who&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. You needn't mention it, it is a waste of time. It is no matter
+      about the bad boy's act. Whatever it was, he had a spirit-contenting
+      reason for it. Otherwise you have been misinformed, and he didn't do
+      it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. It is very exasperating. A while ago you said that man's
+      conscience is not a born judge of morals and conduct, but has to be taught
+      and trained. Now I think a conscience can get drowsy and lazy, but I don't
+      think it can go wrong; if you wake it up&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>A Little Story</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I will tell you a little story:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once upon a time an Infidel was guest in the house of a Christian widow
+      whose little boy was ill and near to death. The Infidel often watched by
+      the bedside and entertained the boy with talk, and he used these
+      opportunities to satisfy a strong longing in his nature&mdash;that desire
+      which is in us all to better other people's condition by having them
+      think as we think. He was successful. But the dying boy, in his last
+      moments, reproached him and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>I believed, and was happy in it; you have taken my belief away,
+      and my comfort. Now I have nothing left, and I die miserable; for the
+      things which you have told me do not take the place of that which I have
+      lost</i>.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the mother, also, reproached the Infidel, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>My child is forever lost, and my heart is broken. How could you
+      do this cruel thing? We have done you no harm, but only kindness; we made
+      our house your home, you were welcome to all we had, and this is our
+      reward.&rdquo;</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The heart of the Infidel was filled with remorse for what he had done, and
+      he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>It was wrong&mdash;I see it now; but I was only trying to do him
+      good. In my view he was in error; it seemed my duty to teach him the truth</i>.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the mother said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>I had taught him, all his little life, what I believed to be the
+      truth, and in his believing faith both of us were happy. Now he is dead,&mdash;and
+      lost; and I am miserable. Our faith came down to us through centuries of
+      believing ancestors; what right had you, or any one, to disturb it? Where
+      was your honor, where was your shame</i>?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. He was a miscreant, and deserved death!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. He thought so himself, and said so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Ah&mdash;you see, <i>his conscience was awakened</i>!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes, his Self-Disapproval was. It <i>pained</i> him to see the mother
+      suffer. He was sorry he had done a thing which brought <i>him</i> pain. It
+      did not occur to him to think of the mother when he was misteaching the
+      boy, for he was absorbed in providing <i>pleasure</i> for himself, then.
+      Providing it by satisfying what he believed to be a call of duty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Call it what you please, it is to me a case of <i>awakened conscience</i>.
+      That awakened conscience could never get itself into that species of
+      trouble again. A cure like that is a <i>permanent</i> cure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Pardon&mdash;I had not finished the story. We are creatures of <i>outside
+      influences</i>&mdash;we originate <i>nothing</i> within. Whenever we take
+      a new line of thought and drift into a new line of belief and action, the
+      impulse is <i>always</i> suggested from the <i>outside</i>. Remorse so
+      preyed upon the Infidel that it dissolved his harshness toward the boy's
+      religion and made him come to regard it with tolerance, next with
+      kindness, for the boy's sake and the mother's. Finally he
+      found himself examining it. From that moment his progress in his new trend
+      was steady and rapid. He became a believing Christian. And now his remorse
+      for having robbed the dying boy of his faith and his salvation was
+      bitterer than ever. It gave him no rest, no peace. He <i>must</i> have
+      rest and peace&mdash;it is the law of nature. There seemed but one way to
+      get it; he must devote himself to saving imperiled souls. He became a
+      missionary. He landed in a pagan country ill and helpless. A native widow
+      took him into her humble home and nursed him back to convalescence. Then
+      her young boy was taken hopelessly ill, and the grateful missionary helped
+      her tend him. Here was his first opportunity to repair a part of the wrong
+      done to the other boy by doing a precious service for this one by
+      undermining his foolish faith in his false gods. He was successful. But
+      the dying boy in his last moments reproached him and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>I believed, and was happy in it; you have taken my belief away,
+      and my comfort. Now I have nothing left, and I die miserable; for the
+      things which you have told me do not take the place of that which I have
+      lost</i>.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the mother, also, reproached the missionary, and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>My child is forever lost, and my heart is broken. How could you
+      do this cruel thing? We had done you no harm, but only kindness; we made
+      our house your home, you were welcome to all we had, and this is our
+      reward</i>.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The heart of the missionary was filled with remorse for what he had done,
+      and he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>It was wrong&mdash;I see it now; but I was only trying to do him
+      good. In my view he was in error; it seemed my duty to teach him the truth</i>.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the mother said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>I had taught him, all his little life, what I believed to be the
+      truth, and in his believing faith both of us were happy. Now he is dead&mdash;and
+      lost; and I am miserable. Our faith came down to us through centuries of
+      believing ancestors; what right had you, or any one, to disturb it? Where
+      was your honor, where was your shame</i>?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The missionary's anguish of remorse and sense of treachery were as
+      bitter and persecuting and unappeasable, now, as they had been in the
+      former case. The story is finished. What is your comment?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. The man's conscience is a fool! It was morbid. It didn't
+      know right from wrong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I am not sorry to hear you say that. If you grant that <i>one</i> man's
+      conscience doesn't know right from wrong, it is an admission that
+      there are others like it. This single admission pulls down the whole
+      doctrine of infallibility of judgment in consciences. Meantime there is
+      one thing which I ask you to notice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. What is that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. That in both cases the man's <i>act</i> gave him no spiritual
+      discomfort, and that he was quite satisfied with it and got pleasure out
+      of it. But afterward when it resulted in <i>pain</i> to <i>him</i>, he was
+      sorry. Sorry it had inflicted pain upon the others, <i>but for no reason
+      under the sun except that their pain gave him pain</i>. Our consciences
+      take <i>no</i> notice of pain inflicted upon others until it reaches a
+      point where it gives pain to <i>us</i>. In <i>all</i> cases without
+      exception we are absolutely indifferent to another person's pain
+      until his sufferings make us uncomfortable. Many an infidel would not have
+      been troubled by that Christian mother's distress. Don't you
+      believe that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes. You might almost say it of the <i>average</i> infidel, I think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. And many a missionary, sternly fortified by his sense of duty, would
+      not have been troubled by the pagan mother's distress&mdash;Jesuit
+      missionaries in Canada in the early French times, for instance; see
+      episodes quoted by Parkman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Well, let us adjourn. Where have we arrived?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. At this. That we (mankind) have ticketed ourselves with a number of
+      qualities to which we have given misleading names. Love, Hate, Charity,
+      Compassion, Avarice, Benevolence, and so on. I mean we attach misleading
+      <i>meanings</i> to the names. They are all forms of self-contentment,
+      self-gratification, but the names so disguise them that they distract our
+      attention from the fact. Also we have smuggled a word into the dictionary
+      which ought not to be there at all&mdash;Self-Sacrifice. It describes a
+      thing which does not exist. But worst of all, we ignore and never mention
+      the Sole Impulse which dictates and compels a man's every act: the
+      imperious necessity of securing his own approval, in every emergency and
+      at all costs. To it we owe all that we are. It is our breath, our heart,
+      our blood. It is our only spur, our whip, our goad, our only impelling
+      power; we have no other. Without it we should be mere inert images,
+      corpses; no one would do anything, there would be no progress, the world
+      would stand still. We ought to stand reverently uncovered when the name of
+      that stupendous power is uttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I am not convinced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. You will be when you think.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h3>
+      III
+    </h3>
+    <h4>
+      Instances in Point
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Old Man. Have you given thought to the Gospel of Self&mdash;Approval since
+      we talked?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Man. I have.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It was I that moved you to it. That is to say an <i>outside influence</i>
+      moved you to it&mdash;not one that originated in your head. Will you try
+      to keep that in mind and not forget it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes. Why?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Because by and by in one of our talks, I wish to further impress upon
+      you that neither you, nor I, nor any man ever originates a thought in his
+      own head. <i>The utterer of a thought always utters a second-hand one</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Oh, now&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Wait. Reserve your remark till we get to that part of our discussion&mdash;tomorrow
+      or next day, say. Now, then, have you been considering the proposition
+      that no act is ever born of any but a self-contenting impulse&mdash;(primarily).
+      You have sought. What have you found?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I have not been very fortunate. I have examined many fine and
+      apparently self-sacrificing deeds in romances and biographies, but&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Under searching analysis the ostensible self-sacrifice disappeared?
+      It naturally would.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. But here in this novel is one which seems to promise. In the
+      Adirondack woods is a wage-earner and lay preacher in the lumber-camps who
+      is of noble character and deeply religious. An earnest and practical
+      laborer in the New York slums comes up there on vacation&mdash;he is
+      leader of a section of the University Settlement. Holme, the lumberman, is
+      fired with a desire to throw away his excellent worldly prospects and go
+      down and save souls on the East Side. He counts it happiness to make this
+      sacrifice for the glory of God and for the cause of Christ. He resigns his
+      place, makes the sacrifice cheerfully, and goes to the East Side and
+      preaches Christ and Him crucified every day and every night to little
+      groups of half-civilized foreign paupers who scoff at him. But he rejoices
+      in the scoffings, since he is suffering them in the great cause of Christ.
+      You have so filled my mind with suspicions that I was constantly expecting
+      to find a hidden questionable impulse back of all this, but I am thankful
+      to say I have failed. This man saw his duty, and for <i>duty's sake</i>
+      he sacrificed self and assumed the burden it imposed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Is that as far as you have read?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Let us read further, presently. Meantime, in sacrificing himself&mdash;<i>not</i>
+      for the glory of God, <i>primarily</i>, as <i>he</i> imagined, but <i>first</i>
+      to content that exacting and inflexible master within him&mdash;<i>did he
+      sacrifice anybody else</i>?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. How do you mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. He relinquished a lucrative post and got mere food and lodging in
+      place of it. Had he dependents?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Well&mdash;yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. In what way and to what extend did his self-sacrifice affect <i>them</i>?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. He was the support of a superannuated father. He had a young sister
+      with a remarkable voice&mdash;he was giving her a musical education, so
+      that her longing to be self-supporting might be gratified. He was
+      furnishing the money to put a young brother through a polytechnic school
+      and satisfy his desire to become a civil engineer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. The old father's comforts were now curtailed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Quite seriously. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. The sister's music-lessens had to stop?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. The young brother's education&mdash;well, an extinguishing
+      blight fell upon that happy dream, and he had to go to sawing wood to
+      support the old father, or something like that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. It is about what happened. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. What a handsome job of self-sacrificing he did do! It seems to me
+      that he sacrificed everybody <i>except</i> himself. Haven't I told
+      you that no man <i>ever</i> sacrifices himself; that there is no instance
+      of it upon record anywhere; and that when a man's Interior Monarch
+      requires a thing of its slave for either its <i>momentary</i> or its <i>permanent</i>
+      contentment, that thing must and will be furnished and that command
+      obeyed, no matter who may stand in the way and suffer disaster by it? That
+      man <i>ruined his family</i> to please and content his Interior Monarch&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. And help Christ's cause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes&mdash;<i>secondly</i>. Not firstly. <i>He</i> thought it was
+      firstly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Very well, have it so, if you will. But it could be that he argued
+      that if he saved a hundred souls in New York&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. The sacrifice of the <i>family</i> would be justified by that great
+      profit upon the&mdash;the&mdash;what shall we call it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Investment?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Hardly. How would <i>speculation</i> do? How would <i>gamble</i> do?
+      Not a solitary soul-capture was sure. He played for a possible
+      thirty-three-hundred-per-cent profit. It was <i>gambling</i>&mdash;with
+      his family for &ldquo;chips.&rdquo; However let us see how the game came
+      out. Maybe we can get on the track of the secret original impulse, the <i>real</i>
+      impulse, that moved him to so nobly self&mdash;sacrifice his family in the
+      Savior's cause under the superstition that he was sacrificing
+      himself. I will read a chapter or so.... Here we have it! It was bound to
+      expose itself sooner or later. He preached to the East-Side rabble a
+      season, then went back to his old dull, obscure life in the lumber-camps
+      &ldquo;<i>hurt to the heart, his pride humbled</i>.&rdquo; Why? Were not
+      his efforts acceptable to the Savior, for Whom alone they were made? Dear
+      me, that detail is <i>lost sight of</i>, is not even referred to, the fact
+      that it started out as a motive is entirely forgotten! Then what is the
+      trouble? The authoress quite innocently and unconsciously gives the whole
+      business away. The trouble was this: this man merely <i>preached</i> to
+      the poor; that is not the University Settlement's way; it deals in
+      larger and better things than that, and it did not enthuse over that crude
+      Salvation-Army eloquence. It was courteous to Holme&mdash;but cool. It did
+      not pet him, did not take him to its bosom. &ldquo;<i>Perished were all
+      his dreams of distinction, the praise and grateful approval</i>&mdash;&rdquo;
+      Of whom? The Savior? No; the Savior is not mentioned. Of whom, then? Of
+      &ldquo;his <i>fellow-workers</i>.&rdquo; Why did he want that? Because the
+      Master inside of him wanted it, and would not be content without it. That
+      emphasized sentence quoted above, reveals the secret we have been seeking,
+      the original impulse, the <i>real</i> impulse, which moved the obscure and
+      unappreciated Adirondack lumberman to sacrifice his family and go on that
+      crusade to the East Side&mdash;which said original impulse was this, to
+      wit: without knowing it <i>he went there to show a neglected world the
+      large talent that was in him, and rise to distinction</i>. As I have
+      warned you before, <i>no</i> act springs from any but the one law, the one
+      motive. But I pray you, do not accept this law upon my say-so; but
+      diligently examine for yourself. Whenever you read of a self-sacrificing
+      act or hear of one, or of a duty done for <i>duty's sake</i>, take
+      it to pieces and look for the <i>real</i> motive. It is always there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I do it every day. I cannot help it, now that I have gotten started
+      upon the degrading and exasperating quest. For it is hatefully
+      interesting!&mdash;in fact, fascinating is the word. As soon as I come
+      across a golden deed in a book I have to stop and take it apart and
+      examine it, I cannot help myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Have you ever found one that defeated the rule?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. No&mdash;at least, not yet. But take the case of servant&mdash;tipping
+      in Europe. You pay the <i>hotel</i> for service; you owe the servants <i>nothing</i>,
+      yet you pay them besides. Doesn't that defeat it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. In what way?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. You are not <i>obliged</i> to do it, therefore its source is
+      compassion for their ill-paid condition, and&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Has that custom ever vexed you, annoyed you, irritated you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Well, yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Still you succumbed to it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Of course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Why of course?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Well, custom is law, in a way, and laws must be submitted to&mdash;everybody
+      recognizes it as a <i>duty</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Then you pay for the irritating tax for <i>duty's</i> sake?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I suppose it amounts to that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Then the impulse which moves you to submit to the tax is not <i>all</i>
+      compassion, charity, benevolence?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Well&mdash;perhaps not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Is <i>any</i> of it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I&mdash;perhaps I was too hasty in locating its source.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Perhaps so. In case you ignored the custom would you get prompt and
+      effective service from the servants?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Oh, hear yourself talk! Those European servants? Why, you wouldn't
+      get any at all, to speak of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Couldn't <i>that</i> work as an impulse to move you to pay the
+      tax?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I am not denying it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Apparently, then, it is a case of for-duty's-sake with a little
+      self-interest added?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes, it has the look of it. But here is a point: we pay that tax
+      knowing it to be unjust and an extortion; yet we go away with a pain at
+      the heart if we think we have been stingy with the poor fellows; and we
+      heartily wish we were back again, so that we could do the right thing, and
+      <i>more</i> than the right thing, the <i>generous</i> thing. I think it
+      will be difficult for you to find any thought of self in that impulse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I wonder why you should think so. When you find service charged in
+      the <i>hotel</i> bill does it annoy you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Do you ever complain of the amount of it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. No, it would not occur to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. The <i>expense</i>, then, is not the annoying detail. It is a fixed
+      charge, and you pay it cheerfully, you pay it without a murmur. When you
+      came to pay the servants, how would you like it if each of the men and
+      maids had a fixed charge?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Like it? I should rejoice!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Even if the fixed tax were a shade <i>more</i> than you had been in
+      the habit of paying in the form of tips?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Indeed, yes!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Very well, then. As I understand it, it isn't really compassion
+      nor yet duty that moves you to pay the tax, and it isn't the <i>amount</i>
+      of the tax that annoys you. Yet <i>something</i> annoys you. What is it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Well, the trouble is, you never know <i>what</i> to pay, the tax
+      varies so, all over Europe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. So you have to guess?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. There is no other way. So you go on thinking and thinking, and
+      calculating and guessing, and consulting with other people and getting
+      their views; and it spoils your sleep nights, and makes you distraught in
+      the daytime, and while you are pretending to look at the sights you are
+      only guessing and guessing and guessing all the time, and being worried
+      and miserable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. And all about a debt which you don't owe and don't have
+      to pay unless you want to! Strange. What is the purpose of the guessing?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. To guess out what is right to give them, and not be unfair to any of
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It has quite a noble look&mdash;taking so much pains and using up so
+      much valuable time in order to be just and fair to a poor servant to whom
+      you owe nothing, but who needs money and is ill paid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I think, myself, that if there is any ungracious motive back of it it
+      will be hard to find.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. How do you know when you have not paid a servant fairly?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Why, he is silent; does not thank you. Sometimes he gives you a look
+      that makes you ashamed. You are too proud to rectify your mistake there,
+      with people looking, but afterward you keep on wishing and wishing you <i>had</i>
+      done it. My, the shame and the pain of it! Sometimes you see, by the
+      signs, that you have it <i>just right</i>, and you go away mightily
+      satisfied. Sometimes the man is so effusively thankful that you know you
+      have given him a good deal <i>more</i> than was necessary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. <i>Necessary</i>? Necessary for what?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. To content him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. How do you feel <i>then</i>?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Repentant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It is my belief that you have <i>not</i> been concerning yourself in
+      guessing out his just dues, but only in ciphering out what would <i>content</i>
+      him. And I think you have a self-deluding reason for that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. What was it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. If you fell short of what he was expecting and wanting, you would get
+      a look which would <i>shame you before folk</i>. That would give you <i>pain</i>.
+      <i>You</i>&mdash;for you are only working for yourself, not <i>him</i>. If
+      you gave him too much you would be <i>ashamed of yourself</i> for it, and
+      that would give <i>you</i> pain&mdash;another case of thinking of <i>yourself</i>,
+      protecting yourself, <i>saving yourself from discomfort</i>. You never
+      think of the servant once&mdash;except to guess out how to get <i>his
+      approval</i>. If you get that, you get your <i>own </i>approval, and that
+      is the sole and only thing you are after. The Master inside of you is then
+      satisfied, contented, comfortable; there was <i>no other</i> thing at
+      stake, as a matter of <i>first</i> interest, anywhere in the transaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Further Instances</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Well, to think of it; Self-Sacrifice for others, the grandest thing
+      in man, ruled out! non-existent!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Are you accusing me of saying that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Why, certainly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I haven't said it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. What did you say, then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. That no man has ever sacrificed himself in the common meaning of that
+      phrase&mdash;which is, self-sacrifice for another <i>alone</i>. Men make
+      daily sacrifices for others, but it is for their own sake <i>first</i>.
+      The act must content their own spirit <i>first</i>. The other
+      beneficiaries come second.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. And the same with duty for duty's sake?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes. No man performs a duty for mere duty's sake; the act must
+      content his spirit <i>first</i>. He must feel better for <i>doing</i> the
+      duty than he would for shirking it. Otherwise he will not do it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Take the case of the <i>Berkeley Castle</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It was a noble duty, greatly performed. Take it to pieces and examine
+      it, if you like.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. A British troop-ship crowded with soldiers and their wives and
+      children. She struck a rock and began to sink. There was room in the boats
+      for the women and children only. The colonel lined up his regiment on the
+      deck and said &ldquo;it is our duty to die, that they may be saved.&rdquo;
+      There was no murmur, no protest. The boats carried away the women and
+      children. When the death-moment was come, the colonel and his officers
+      took their several posts, the men stood at shoulder-arms, and so, as on
+      dress-parade, with their flag flying and the drums beating, they went
+      down, a sacrifice to duty for duty's sake. Can you view it as other
+      than that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It was something as fine as that, as exalted as that. Could you have
+      remained in those ranks and gone down to your death in that unflinching
+      way?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Could I? No, I could not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Think. Imagine yourself there, with that watery doom creeping higher
+      and higher around you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I can imagine it. I feel all the horror of it. I could not have
+      endured it, I could not have remained in my place. I know it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Why?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. There is no why about it: I know myself, and I know I couldn't
+      <i>do</i> it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. But it would be your <i>duty</i> to do it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes, I know&mdash;but I couldn't.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It was more than thousand men, yet not one of them flinched. Some of
+      them must have been born with your temperament; if they could do that
+      great duty for duty's <i>sake</i>, why not you? Don't you know
+      that you could go out and gather together a thousand clerks and mechanics
+      and put them on that deck and ask them to die for duty's sake, and
+      not two dozen of them would stay in the ranks to the end?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes, I know that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. But you <i>train</i> them, and put them through a campaign or two;
+      then they would be soldiers; soldiers, with a soldier's pride, a
+      soldier's self-respect, a soldier's ideals. They would have to
+      content a <i>soldier's</i> spirit then, not a clerk's, not a
+      mechanic's. They could not content that spirit by shirking a soldier's
+      duty, could they?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I suppose not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Then they would do the duty not for the <i>duty's</i> sake, but
+      for their <i>own </i>sake&mdash;primarily. The <i>duty</i> was <i>just the
+      same</i>, and just as imperative, when they were clerks, mechanics, raw
+      recruits, but they wouldn't perform it for that. As clerks and
+      mechanics they had other ideals, another spirit to satisfy, and they
+      satisfied it. They <i>had</i> to; it is the law. <i>Training </i>is
+      potent. Training toward higher and higher, and ever higher ideals is worth
+      any man's thought and labor and diligence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Consider the man who stands by his duty and goes to the stake rather
+      than be recreant to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It is his make and his training. He has to content the spirit that is
+      in him, though it cost him his life. Another man, just as sincerely
+      religious, but of different temperament, will fail of that duty, though
+      recognizing it as a duty, and grieving to be unequal to it: but he must
+      content the spirit that is in him&mdash;he cannot help it. He could not
+      perform that duty for duty's <i>sake</i>, for that would not content
+      his spirit, and the contenting of his spirit must be looked to <i>first</i>.
+      It takes precedence of all other duties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Take the case of a clergyman of stainless private morals who votes
+      for a thief for public office, on his own party's ticket, and
+      against an honest man on the other ticket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. He has to content his spirit. He has no public morals; he has no
+      private ones, where his party's prosperity is at stake. He will
+      always be true to his make and training.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h3>
+      IV
+    </h3>
+    <h4>
+      Training
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      Young Man. You keep using that word&mdash;training. By it do you
+      particularly mean&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Man. Study, instruction, lectures, sermons? That is a part of it&mdash;but
+      not a large part. I mean <i>all </i>the outside influences. There are a
+      million of them. From the cradle to the grave, during all his waking
+      hours, the human being is under training. In the very first rank of his
+      trainers stands <i>association</i>. It is his human environment which
+      influences his mind and his feelings, furnishes him his ideals, and sets
+      him on his road and keeps him in it. If he leave[s] that road he will find
+      himself shunned by the people whom he most loves and esteems, and whose
+      approval he most values. He is a chameleon; by the law of his nature he
+      takes the color of his place of resort. The influences about him create
+      his preferences, his aversions, his politics, his tastes, his morals, his
+      religion. He creates none of these things for himself. He <i>thinks </i>he
+      does, but that is because he has not examined into the matter. You have
+      seen Presbyterians?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Many.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. How did they happen to be Presbyterians and not Congregationalists?
+      And why were the Congregationalists not Baptists, and the Baptists Roman
+      Catholics, and the Roman Catholics Buddhists, and the Buddhists Quakers,
+      and the Quakers Episcopalians, and the Episcopalians Millerites and the
+      Millerites Hindus, and the Hindus Atheists, and the Atheists
+      Spiritualists, and the Spiritualists Agnostics, and the Agnostics
+      Methodists, and the Methodists Confucians, and the Confucians Unitarians,
+      and the Unitarians Mohammedans, and the Mohammedans Salvation Warriors,
+      and the Salvation Warriors Zoroastrians, and the Zoroastrians Christian
+      Scientists, and the Christian Scientists Mormons&mdash;and so on?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. You may answer your question yourself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. That list of sects is not a record of <i>studies</i>, searchings,
+      seekings after light; it mainly (and sarcastically) indicates what <i>association
+      </i>can do. If you know a man's nationality you can come within a
+      split hair of guessing the complexion of his religion: English&mdash;Protestant;
+      American&mdash;ditto; Spaniard, Frenchman, Irishman, Italian, South
+      American&mdash;Roman Catholic; Russian&mdash;Greek Catholic; Turk&mdash;Mohammedan;
+      and so on. And when you know the man's religious complexion, you
+      know what sort of religious books he reads when he wants some more light,
+      and what sort of books he avoids, lest by accident he get more light than
+      he wants. In America if you know which party-collar a voter wears, you
+      know what his associations are, and how he came by his politics, and which
+      breed of newspaper he reads to get light, and which breed he diligently
+      avoids, and which breed of mass-meetings he attends in order to broaden
+      his political knowledge, and which breed of mass-meetings he doesn't
+      attend, except to refute its doctrines with brickbats. We are always
+      hearing of people who are around <i>seeking after truth</i>. I have never
+      seen a (permanent) specimen. I think he had never lived. But I have seen
+      several entirely sincere people who <i>thought </i>they were (permanent)
+      Seekers after Truth. They sought diligently, persistently, carefully,
+      cautiously, profoundly, with perfect honesty and nicely adjusted judgment&mdash;until
+      they believed that without doubt or question they had found the Truth. <i>That
+      was the end of the search. </i>The man spent the rest of his life hunting
+      up shingles wherewith to protect his Truth from the weather. If he was
+      seeking after political Truth he found it in one or another of the hundred
+      political gospels which govern men in the earth; if he was seeking after
+      the Only True Religion he found it in one or another of the three thousand
+      that are on the market. In any case, when he found the Truth <i>he sought
+      no further; </i>but from that day forth, with his soldering-iron in one
+      hand and his bludgeon in the other he tinkered its leaks and reasoned with
+      objectors. There have been innumerable Temporary Seekers of Truth&mdash;have
+      you ever heard of a permanent one? In the very nature of man such a person
+      is impossible. However, to drop back to the text&mdash;training: all
+      training is one form or another of <i>outside influence, </i>and <i>association
+      </i>is the largest part of it. A man is never anything but what his
+      outside influences have made him. They train him downward or they train
+      him upward&mdash;but they <i>train </i>him; they are at work upon him all
+      the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Then if he happen by the accidents of life to be evilly placed there
+      is no help for him, according to your notions&mdash;he must train
+      downward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. No help for him? No help for this chameleon? It is a mistake. It is
+      in his chameleonship that his greatest good fortune lies. He has only to
+      change his habitat&mdash;his <i>associations</i>. But the impulse to do it
+      must come from the <i>outside </i>&mdash;he cannot originate it himself,
+      with that purpose in view. Sometimes a very small and accidental thing can
+      furnish him the initiatory impulse and start him on a new road, with a new
+      idea. The chance remark of a sweetheart, &ldquo;I hear that you are a
+      coward,&rdquo; may water a seed that shall sprout and bloom and flourish,
+      and ended in producing a surprising fruitage&mdash;in the fields of war.
+      The history of man is full of such accidents. The accident of a broken leg
+      brought a profane and ribald soldier under religious influences and
+      furnished him a new ideal. From that accident sprang the Order of the
+      Jesuits, and it has been shaking thrones, changing policies, and doing
+      other tremendous work for two hundred years&mdash;and will go on. The
+      chance reading of a book or of a paragraph in a newspaper can start a man
+      on a new track and make him renounce his old associations and seek new
+      ones that are <i>in sympathy with his new ideal</i>: and the result, for
+      that man, can be an entire change of his way of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Are you hinting at a scheme of procedure?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Not a new one&mdash;an old one. Old as mankind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. What is it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Merely the laying of traps for people. Traps baited with <i>initiatory
+      impulses toward high ideals. </i>It is what the tract-distributor does. It
+      is what the missionary does. It is what governments ought to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Don't they?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. In one way they do, in another they don't. They separate the
+      smallpox patients from the healthy people, but in dealing with crime they
+      put the healthy into the pest-house along with the sick. That is to say,
+      they put the beginners in with the confirmed criminals. This would be well
+      if man were naturally inclined to good, but he isn't, and so <i>association
+      </i>makes the beginners worse than they were when they went into
+      captivity. It is putting a very severe punishment upon the comparatively
+      innocent at times. They hang a man&mdash;which is a trifling punishment;
+      this breaks the hearts of his family&mdash;which is a heavy one. They
+      comfortably jail and feed a wife-beater, and leave his innocent wife and
+      family to starve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Do you believe in the doctrine that man is equipped with an intuitive
+      perception of good and evil?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Adam hadn't it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. But has man acquired it since?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. No. I think he has no intuitions of any kind. He gets <i>all </i>his
+      ideas, all his impressions, from the outside. I keep repeating this, in
+      the hope that I may impress it upon you that you will be interested to
+      observe and examine for yourself and see whether it is true or false.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Where did you get your own aggravating notions?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. From the <i>outside</i>. I did not invent them. They are gathered
+      from a thousand unknown sources. Mainly <i>unconsciously </i>gathered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Don't you believe that God could make an inherently honest man?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes, I know He could. I also know that He never did make one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. A wiser observer than you has recorded the fact that &ldquo;an honest
+      man's the noblest work of God.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. He didn't record a fact, he recorded a falsity. It is windy,
+      and sounds well, but it is not true. God makes a man with honest and
+      dishonest <i>possibilities </i>in him and stops there. The man's <i>associations
+      </i>develop the possibilities&mdash;the one set or the other. The result
+      is accordingly an honest man or a dishonest one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. And the honest one is not entitled to&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Praise? No. How often must I tell you that? <i>He </i>is not the
+      architect of his honesty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Now then, I will ask you where there is any sense in training people
+      to lead virtuous lives. What is gained by it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. The man himself gets large advantages out of it, and that is the main
+      thing&mdash;to <i>him</i>. He is not a peril to his neighbors, he is not a
+      damage to them&mdash;and so <i>they </i>get an advantage out of his
+      virtues. That is the main thing to <i>them</i>. It can make this life
+      comparatively comfortable to the parties concerned; the <i>neglect </i>of
+      this training can make this life a constant peril and distress to the
+      parties concerned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. You have said that training is everything; that training is the man
+      <i>himself</i>, for it makes him what he is.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I said training and <i>another </i>thing. Let that other thing pass,
+      for the moment. What were you going to say?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. We have an old servant. She has been with us twenty&mdash;two years.
+      Her service used to be faultless, but now she has become very forgetful.
+      We are all fond of her; we all recognize that she cannot help the
+      infirmity which age has brought her; the rest of the family do not scold
+      her for her remissnesses, but at times I do&mdash;I can't seem to
+      control myself. Don't I try? I do try. Now, then, when I was ready
+      to dress, this morning, no clean clothes had been put out. I lost my
+      temper; I lose it easiest and quickest in the early morning. I rang; and
+      immediately began to warn myself not to show temper, and to be careful and
+      speak gently. I safe-guarded myself most carefully. I even chose the very
+      word I would use: &ldquo;You've forgotten the clean clothes, Jane.&rdquo;
+      When she appeared in the door I opened my mouth to say that phrase&mdash;and
+      out of it, moved by an instant surge of passion which I was not expecting
+      and hadn't time to put under control, came the hot rebuke, &ldquo;You've
+      forgotten them again!&rdquo; You say a man always does the thing which
+      will best please his Interior Master. Whence came the impulse to make
+      careful preparation to save the girl the humiliation of a rebuke? Did that
+      come from the Master, who is always primarily concerned about <i>himself</i>?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Unquestionably. There is no other source for any impulse. <i>Secondarily
+      </i>you made preparation to save the girl, but <i>primarily </i>its object
+      was to save yourself, by contenting the Master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. How do you mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Has any member of the family ever implored you to watch your temper
+      and not fly out at the girl?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes. My mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. You love her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Oh, more than that!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. You would always do anything in your power to please her?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. It is a delight to me to do anything to please her!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Why? <i>You would do it for pay, solely </i>&mdash;for <i>profit</i>.
+      What profit would you expect and certainly receive from the investment?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Personally? None. To please <i>her </i>is enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It appears, then, that your object, primarily, <i>wasn't </i>to
+      save the girl a humiliation, but to <i>please your mother. </i>It also
+      appears that to please your mother gives <i>you </i>a strong pleasure. Is
+      not that the profit which you get out of the investment? Isn't that
+      the <i>real </i>profits and <i>first </i>profit?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Oh, well? Go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. In <i>all </i>transactions, the Interior Master looks to it that <i>you
+      get the first profit. </i>Otherwise there is no transaction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Well, then, if I was so anxious to get that profit and so intent upon
+      it, why did I throw it away by losing my temper?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. In order to get <i>another </i>profit which suddenly superseded it in
+      value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Where was it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Ambushed behind your born temperament, and waiting for a chance. Your
+      native warm temper suddenly jumped to the front, and <i>for the moment its
+      influence </i>was more powerful than your mother's, and abolished
+      it. In that instance you were eager to flash out a hot rebuke and enjoy
+      it. You did enjoy it, didn't you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. For&mdash;for a quarter of a second. Yes&mdash;I did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Very well, it is as I have said: the thing which will give you the <i>most
+      </i>pleasure, the most satisfaction, in any moment or <i>fraction </i>of a
+      moment, is the thing you will always do. You must content the Master's
+      <i>latest </i>whim, whatever it may be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. But when the tears came into the old servant's eyes I could
+      have cut my hand off for what I had done.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Right. You had humiliated <i>yourself</i>, you see, you had given
+      yourself <i>pain</i>. Nothing is of <i>first </i>importance to a man
+      except results which damage <i>him </i>or profit him&mdash;all the rest is
+      <i>secondary</i>. Your Master was displeased with you, although you had
+      obeyed him. He required a prompt <i>repentance</i>; you obeyed again; you<i>
+      had </i>to&mdash;there is never any escape from his commands. He is a hard
+      master and fickle; he changes his mind in the fraction of a second, but
+      you must be ready to obey, and you will obey, <i>always</i>. If he
+      requires repentance, you content him, you will always furnish it. He must
+      be nursed, petted, coddled, and kept contented, let the terms be what they
+      may.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Training! Oh, what's the use of it? Didn't I, and didn't
+      my mother try to train me up to where I would no longer fly out at that
+      girl?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Have you never managed to keep back a scolding?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Oh, certainly&mdash;many times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. More times this year than last?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes, a good many more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. More times last year than the year before?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. There is a large improvement, then, in the two years?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes, undoubtedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Then your question is answered. You see there <i>is </i>use in
+      training. Keep on. Keeping faithfully on. You are doing well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Will my reform reach perfection?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It will. Up to <i>your </i>limit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. My limit? What do you mean by that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. You remember that you said that I said training was <i>everything</i>.
+      I corrected you, and said &ldquo;training and <i>another </i>thing.&rdquo;
+      That other thing is <i>temperament </i>&mdash;that is, the disposition you
+      were born with. <i>You can't eradicate your disposition nor any rag
+      of it </i>&mdash;you can only put a pressure on it and keep it down and
+      quiet. You have a warm temper?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. You will never get rid of it; but by watching it you can keep it down
+      nearly all the time. <i>Its presence is your limit. </i>Your reform will
+      never quite reach perfection, for your temper will beat you now and then,
+      but you come near enough. You have made valuable progress and can make
+      more. There <i>is </i>use in training. Immense use. Presently you will
+      reach a new stage of development, then your progress will be easier; will
+      proceed on a simpler basis, anyway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Explain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. You keep back your scoldings now, to please <i>yourself </i>by
+      pleasing your <i>mother</i>; presently the mere triumphing over your
+      temper will delight your vanity and confer a more delicious pleasure and
+      satisfaction upon you than even the approbation of your <i>mother </i>confers
+      upon you now. You will then labor for yourself directly and at <i>first
+      hand, </i>not by the roundabout way through your mother. It simplifies the
+      matter, and it also strengthens the impulse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Ah, dear! But I sha'n't ever reach the point where I will
+      spare the girl for <i>her </i>sake <i>primarily</i>, not mine?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Why&mdash;yes. In heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. (<i>After a reflective pause) </i>Temperament. Well, I see one must
+      allow for temperament. It is a large factor, sure enough. My mother is
+      thoughtful, and not hot-tempered. When I was dressed I went to her room;
+      she was not there; I called, she answered from the bathroom. I heard the
+      water running. I inquired. She answered, without temper, that Jane had
+      forgotten her bath, and she was preparing it herself. I offered to ring,
+      but she said, &ldquo;No, don't do that; it would only distress her
+      to be confronted with her lapse, and would be a rebuke; she doesn't
+      deserve that&mdash;she is not to blame for the tricks her memory serves
+      her.&rdquo; I say&mdash;has my mother an Interior Master?&mdash;and where
+      was he?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. He was there. There, and looking out for his own peace and pleasure
+      and contentment. The girl's distress would have pained <i>your
+      mother. </i>Otherwise the girl would have been rung up, distress and all.
+      I know women who would have gotten a No. 1 <i>pleasure </i>out of ringing
+      Jane up&mdash;and so they would infallibly have pushed the button and
+      obeyed the law of their make and training, which are the servants of their
+      Interior Masters. It is quite likely that a part of your mother's
+      forbearance came from training. The <i>good </i>kind of training&mdash;whose
+      best and highest function is to see to it that every time it confers a
+      satisfaction upon its pupil a benefit shall fall at second hand upon
+      others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. If you were going to condense into an admonition your plan for the
+      general betterment of the race's condition, how would you word it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Admonition</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Diligently train your ideals <i>upward </i>and <i>still upward </i>toward
+      a summit where you will find your chiefest pleasure in conduct which,
+      while contenting you, will be sure to confer benefits upon your neighbor
+      and the community.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Is that a new gospel?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. It has been taught before?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. For ten thousand years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. By whom?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. All the great religions&mdash;all the great gospels.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Then there is nothing new about it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Oh yes, there is. It is candidly stated, this time. That has not been
+      done before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. How do you mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Haven't I put <i>you first, </i>and your neighbor and the
+      community afterward?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Well, yes, that is a difference, it is true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. The difference between straight speaking and crooked; the difference
+      between frankness and shuffling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Explain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. The others offer you a hundred bribes to be good, thus conceding that
+      the Master inside of you must be conciliated and contented first, and that
+      you will do nothing at <i>first hand </i>but for his sake; then they turn
+      square around and require you to do good for <i>other's </i>sake <i>chiefly</i>;
+      and to do your duty for duty's <i>sake</i>, chiefly; and to do acts
+      of <i>self</i>-<i>sacrifice</i>. Thus at the outset we all stand upon the
+      same ground&mdash;recognition of the supreme and absolute Monarch that
+      resides in man, and we all grovel before him and appeal to him; then those
+      others dodge and shuffle, and face around and unfrankly and inconsistently
+      and illogically change the form of their appeal and direct its persuasions
+      to man's <i>second-place </i>powers and to powers which have <i>no
+      existence </i>in him, thus advancing them to <i>first </i>place; whereas
+      in my Admonition I stick logically and consistently to the original
+      position: I place the Interior Master's requirements <i>first</i>,
+      and keep them there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. If we grant, for the sake of argument, that your scheme and the other
+      schemes aim at and produce the same result&mdash;<i>right living&mdash;</i>has
+      yours an advantage over the others?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. One, yes&mdash;a large one. It has no concealments, no deceptions.
+      When a man leads a right and valuable life under it he is not deceived as
+      to the <i>real </i>chief motive which impels him to it&mdash;in those
+      other cases he is.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Is that an advantage? Is it an advantage to live a lofty life for a
+      mean reason? In the other cases he lives the lofty life under the <i>impression
+      </i>that he is living for a lofty reason. Is not that an advantage?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Perhaps so. The same advantage he might get out of thinking himself a
+      duke, and living a duke's life and parading in ducal fuss and
+      feathers, when he wasn't a duke at all, and could find it out if he
+      would only examine the herald's records.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. But anyway, he is obliged to do a duke's part; he puts his hand
+      in his pocket and does his benevolences on as big a scale as he can stand,
+      and that benefits the community.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. He could do that without being a duke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. But would he?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Don't you see where you are arriving?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Where?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. At the standpoint of the other schemes: That it is good morals to let
+      an ignorant duke do showy benevolences for his pride's sake, a
+      pretty low motive, and go on doing them unwarned, lest if he were made
+      acquainted with the actual motive which prompted them he might shut up his
+      purse and cease to be good?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. But isn't it best to leave him in ignorance, as long as he <i>thinks
+      </i>he is doing good for others' sake?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Perhaps so. It is the position of the other schemes. They think
+      humbug is good enough morals when the dividend on it is good deeds and
+      handsome conduct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. It is my opinion that under your scheme of a man's doing a good
+      deed for his <i>own </i>sake first-off, instead of first for the <i>good
+      deed's </i>sake, no man would ever do one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Have you committed a benevolence lately?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes. This morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Give the particulars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. The cabin of the old negro woman who used to nurse me when I was a
+      child and who saved my life once at the risk of her own, was burned last
+      night, and she came mourning this morning, and pleading for money to build
+      another one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. You furnished it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Certainly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. You were glad you had the money?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Money? I hadn't. I sold my horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. You were glad you had the horse?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Of course I was; for if I hadn't had the horse I should have
+      been incapable, and my <i>mother </i>would have captured the chance to set
+      old Sally up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. You were cordially glad you were not caught out and incapable?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Oh, I just was!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Now, then&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Stop where you are! I know your whole catalog of questions, and I
+      could answer every one of them without your wasting the time to ask them;
+      but I will summarize the whole thing in a single remark: I did the charity
+      knowing it was because the act would give <i>me </i>a splendid pleasure,
+      and because old Sally's moving gratitude and delight would give <i>me
+      </i>another one; and because the reflection that she would be happy now
+      and out of her trouble would fill <i>me </i>full of happiness. I did the
+      whole thing with my eyes open and recognizing and realizing that I was
+      looking out for <i>my </i>share of the profits <i>first</i>. Now then, I
+      have confessed. Go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I haven't anything to offer; you have covered the whole ground.
+      Can you have been any <i>more </i>strongly moved to help Sally out of her
+      trouble&mdash;could you have done the deed any more eagerly&mdash;if you
+      had been under the delusion that you were doing it for <i>her </i>sake and
+      profit only?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. No! Nothing in the world could have made the impulse which moved me
+      more powerful, more masterful, more thoroughly irresistible. I played the
+      limit!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Very well. You begin to suspect&mdash;and I claim to <i>know </i>&mdash;that
+      when a man is a shade <i>more strongly moved </i>to do <i>one </i>of two
+      things or of two dozen things than he is to do any one of the <i>others</i>,
+      he will infallibly do that <i>one </i>thing, be it good or be it evil; and
+      if it be good, not all the beguilements of all the casuistries can
+      increase the strength of the impulse by a single shade or add a shade to
+      the comfort and contentment he will get out of the act.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Then you believe that such tendency toward doing good as is in men's
+      hearts would not be diminished by the removal of the delusion that good
+      deeds are done primarily for the sake of No. 2 instead of for the sake of
+      No. 1?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. That is what I fully believe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Doesn't it somehow seem to take from the dignity of the deed?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. If there is dignity in falsity, it does. It removes that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. What is left for the moralists to do?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Teach unreservedly what he already teaches with one side of his mouth
+      and takes back with the other: Do right <i>for your own sake, </i>and be
+      happy in knowing that your <i>neighbor </i>will certainly share in the
+      benefits resulting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Repeat your Admonition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. <i>Diligently train your ideals upward and still upward toward a
+      summit where you will find your chiefest pleasure in conduct which, while
+      contenting you, will be sure to confer benefits upon your neighbor and the
+      community.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. One's <i>every </i>act proceeds from <i>exterior influences</i>,
+      you think?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. If I conclude to rob a person, I am not the <i>originator </i>of the
+      idea, but it comes in from the <i>outside</i>? I see him handling money&mdash;for
+      instance&mdash;and <i>that </i>moves me to the crime?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. That, by itself? Oh, certainly not. It is merely the <i>latest </i>outside
+      influence of a procession of preparatory influences stretching back over a
+      period of years. No <i>single </i>outside influence can make a man do a
+      thing which is at war with his training. The most it can do is to start
+      his mind on a new tract and open it to the reception of <i>new </i>influences&mdash;as
+      in the case of Ignatius Loyola. In time these influences can train him to
+      a point where it will be consonant with his new character to yield to the
+      <i>final </i>influence and do that thing. I will put the case in a form
+      which will make my theory clear to you, I think. Here are two ingots of
+      virgin gold. They shall represent a couple of characters which have been
+      refined and perfected in the virtues by years of diligent right training.
+      Suppose you wanted to break down these strong and well-compacted
+      characters&mdash;what influence would you bring to bear upon the ingots?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Work it out yourself. Proceed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Suppose I turn upon one of them a steam-jet during a long succession
+      of hours. Will there be a result?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. None that I know of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Why?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. A steam-jet cannot break down such a substance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Very well. The steam is an <i>outside influence, </i>but it is
+      ineffective because the gold <i>takes no interest in it. </i>The ingot
+      remains as it was. Suppose we add to the steam some quicksilver in a
+      vaporized condition, and turn the jet upon the ingot, will there be an
+      instantaneous result?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. The <i>quicksilver </i>is an outside influence which gold (by its
+      peculiar nature&mdash;say <i>temperament, disposition) cannot be
+      indifferent to. </i>It stirs up the interest of the gold, although we do
+      not perceive it; but a <i>single </i>application of the influence works no
+      damage. Let us continue the application in a steady stream, and call each
+      minute a year. By the end of ten or twenty minutes&mdash;ten or twenty
+      years&mdash;the little ingot is sodden with quicksilver, its virtues are
+      gone, its character is degraded. At last it is ready to yield to a
+      temptation which it would have taken no notice of, ten or twenty years
+      ago. We will apply that temptation in the form of a pressure of my finger.
+      You note the result?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes; the ingot has crumbled to sand. I understand, now. It is not the
+      <i>single </i>outside influence that does the work, but only the <i>last
+      </i>one of a long and disintegrating accumulation of them. I see, now, how
+      my <i>single </i>impulse to rob the man is not the one that makes me do
+      it, but only the <i>last </i>one of a preparatory series. You might
+      illustrate with a parable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>A Parable</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I will. There was once a pair of New England boys&mdash;twins. They
+      were alike in good dispositions, feckless morals, and personal appearance.
+      They were the models of the Sunday&mdash;school. At fifteen George had the
+      opportunity to go as cabin-boy in a whale-ship, and sailed away for the
+      Pacific. Henry remained at home in the village. At eighteen George was a
+      sailor before the mast, and Henry was teacher of the advanced Bible class.
+      At twenty-two George, through fighting-habits and drinking-habits acquired
+      at sea and in the sailor boarding-houses of the European and Oriental
+      ports, was a common rough in Hong-Kong, and out of a job; and Henry was
+      superintendent of the Sunday-school. At twenty-six George was a wanderer,
+      a tramp, and Henry was pastor of the village church. Then George came
+      home, and was Henry's guest. One evening a man passed by and turned
+      down the lane, and Henry said, with a pathetic smile, &ldquo;Without
+      intending me a discomfort, that man is always keeping me reminded of my
+      pinching poverty, for he carries heaps of money about him, and goes by
+      here every evening of his life.&rdquo; That <i>outside influence </i>&mdash;that
+      remark&mdash;was enough for George, but <i>it </i>was not the one that
+      made him ambush the man and rob him, it merely represented the eleven
+      years' accumulation of such influences, and gave birth to the act
+      for which their long gestation had made preparation. It had never entered
+      the head of Henry to rob the man&mdash;his ingot had been subjected to
+      clean steam only; but George's had been subjected to vaporized
+      quicksilver.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      V
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      More About the Machine
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Note.&mdash;When Mrs. W. asks how can a millionaire give a single dollar
+      to colleges and museums while one human being is destitute of bread, she
+      has answered her question herself. Her feeling for the poor shows that she
+      has a standard of benevolence; there she has conceded the millionaire's
+      privilege of having a standard; since she evidently requires him to adopt
+      her standard, she is by that act requiring herself to adopt his. The human
+      being always looks down when he is examining another person's
+      standard; he never find one that he has to examine by looking up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Man-Machine Again</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Man. You really think man is a mere machine?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Man. I do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. And that his mind works automatically and is independent of his
+      control&mdash;carries on thought on its own hook?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes. It is diligently at work, unceasingly at work, during every
+      waking moment. Have you never tossed about all night, imploring,
+      beseeching, commanding your mind to stop work and let you go to sleep?&mdash;you
+      who perhaps imagine that your mind is your servant and must obey your
+      orders, think what you tell it to think, and stop when you tell it to
+      stop. When it chooses to work, there is no way to keep it still for an
+      instant. The brightest man would not be able to supply it with subjects if
+      he had to hunt them up. If it needed the man's help it would wait
+      for him to give it work when he wakes in the morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Maybe it does.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. No, it begins right away, before the man gets wide enough awake to
+      give it a suggestion. He may go to sleep saying, &ldquo;The moment I wake
+      I will think upon such and such a subject,&rdquo; but he will fail. His
+      mind will be too quick for him; by the time he has become nearly enough
+      awake to be half conscious, he will find that it is already at work upon
+      another subject. Make the experiment and see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. At any rate, he can make it stick to a subject if he wants to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Not if it find another that suits it better. As a rule it will listen
+      to neither a dull speaker nor a bright one. It refuses all persuasion. The
+      dull speaker wearies it and sends it far away in idle dreams; the bright
+      speaker throws out stimulating ideas which it goes chasing after and is at
+      once unconscious of him and his talk. You cannot keep your mind from
+      wandering, if it wants to; it is master, not you.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      <i>After an Interval of Days</i>
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Now, dreams&mdash;but we will examine that later. Meantime, did you
+      try commanding your mind to wait for orders from you, and not do any
+      thinking on its own hook?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes, I commanded it to stand ready to take orders when I should wake
+      in the morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Did it obey?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. No. It went to thinking of something of its own initiation, without
+      waiting for me. Also&mdash;as you suggested&mdash;at night I appointed a
+      theme for it to begin on in the morning, and commanded it to begin on that
+      one and no other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Did it obey?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. How many times did you try the experiment?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Ten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. How many successes did you score?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Not one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It is as I have said: the mind is independent of the man. He has no
+      control over it; it does as it pleases. It will take up a subject in spite
+      of him; it will stick to it in spite of him; it will throw it aside in
+      spite of him. It is entirely independent of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Go on. Illustrate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Do you know chess?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I learned it a week ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Did your mind go on playing the game all night that first night?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Don't mention it!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It was eagerly, unsatisfiably interested; it rioted in the
+      combinations; you implored it to drop the game and let you get some sleep?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes. It wouldn't listen; it played right along. It wore me out
+      and I got up haggard and wretched in the morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. At some time or other you have been captivated by a ridiculous
+      rhyme-jingle?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Indeed, yes!
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+ &ldquo;I saw Esau kissing Kate,
+
+ And she saw I saw Esau;
+
+ I saw Esau, he saw Kate,
+
+ And she saw&mdash;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      And so on. My mind went mad with joy over it. It repeated it all day and
+      all night for a week in spite of all I could do to stop it, and it seemed
+      to me that I must surely go crazy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. And the new popular song?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Oh yes! &ldquo;In the Swee-eet By and By&rdquo;; etc. Yes, the new
+      popular song with the taking melody sings through one's head day and
+      night, asleep and awake, till one is a wreck. There is no getting the mind
+      to let it alone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes, asleep as well as awake. The mind is quite independent. It is
+      master. You have nothing to do with it. It is so apart from you that it
+      can conduct its affairs, sing its songs, play its chess, weave its complex
+      and ingeniously constructed dreams, while you sleep. It has no use for
+      your help, no use for your guidance, and never uses either, whether you be
+      asleep or awake. You have imagined that you could originate a thought in
+      your mind, and you have sincerely believed you could do it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes, I have had that idea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yet you can't originate a dream-thought for it to work out, and
+      get it accepted?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. And you can't dictate its procedure after it has originated a
+      dream-thought for itself?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. No. No one can do it. Do you think the waking mind and the dream mind
+      are the same machine?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. There is argument for it. We have wild and fantastic day-thoughts?
+      Things that are dream-like?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes&mdash;like Mr. Wells's man who invented a drug that made
+      him invisible; and like the Arabian tales of the Thousand Nights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. And there are dreams that are rational, simple, consistent, and
+      unfantastic?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes. I have dreams that are like that. Dreams that are just like real
+      life; dreams in which there are several persons with distinctly
+      differentiated characters&mdash;inventions of my mind and yet strangers to
+      me: a vulgar person; a refined one; a wise person; a fool; a cruel person;
+      a kind and compassionate one; a quarrelsome person; a peacemaker; old
+      persons and young; beautiful girls and homely ones. They talk in
+      character, each preserves his own characteristics. There are vivid fights,
+      vivid and biting insults, vivid love-passages; there are tragedies and
+      comedies, there are griefs that go to one's heart, there are sayings
+      and doings that make you laugh: indeed, the whole thing is exactly like
+      real life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Your dreaming mind originates the scheme, consistently and
+      artistically develops it, and carries the little drama creditably through&mdash;all
+      without help or suggestion from you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It is argument that it could do the like awake without help or
+      suggestion from you&mdash;and I think it does. It is argument that it is
+      the same old mind in both cases, and never needs your help. I think the
+      mind is purely a machine, a thoroughly independent machine, an automatic
+      machine. Have you tried the other experiment which I suggested to you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Which one?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. The one which was to determine how much influence you have over your
+      mind&mdash;if any.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes, and got more or less entertainment out of it. I did as you
+      ordered: I placed two texts before my eyes&mdash;one a dull one and barren
+      of interest, the other one full of interest, inflamed with it, white-hot
+      with it. I commanded my mind to busy itself solely with the dull one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Did it obey?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Well, no, it didn't. It busied itself with the other one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Did you try hard to make it obey?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes, I did my honest best.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. What was the text which it refused to be interested in or think
+      about?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. It was this question: If A owes B a dollar and a half, and B owes C
+      two and three-quarter, and C owes A thirty&mdash;five cents, and D and A
+      together owe E and B three-sixteenths of&mdash;of&mdash;I don't
+      remember the rest, now, but anyway it was wholly uninteresting, and I
+      could not force my mind to stick to it even half a minute at a time; it
+      kept flying off to the other text.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. What was the other text?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. It is no matter about that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. But what was it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. A photograph.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Your own?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. No. It was hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. You really made an honest good test. Did you make a second trial?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes. I commanded my mind to interest itself in the morning paper's
+      report of the pork-market, and at the same time I reminded it of an
+      experience of mine of sixteen years ago. It refused to consider the pork
+      and gave its whole blazing interest to that ancient incident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. What was the incident?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. An armed desperado slapped my face in the presence of twenty
+      spectators. It makes me wild and murderous every time I think of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Good tests, both; very good tests. Did you try my other suggestion?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. The one which was to prove to me that if I would leave my mind to its
+      own devices it would find things to think about without any of my help,
+      and thus convince me that it was a machine, an automatic machine, set in
+      motion by exterior influences, and as independent of me as it could be if
+      it were in some one else's skull. Is that the one?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I tried it. I was shaving. I had slept well, and my mind was very
+      lively, even gay and frisky. It was reveling in a fantastic and joyful
+      episode of my remote boyhood which had suddenly flashed up in my memory&mdash;moved
+      to this by the spectacle of a yellow cat picking its way carefully along
+      the top of the garden wall. The color of this cat brought the bygone cat
+      before me, and I saw her walking along the side-step of the pulpit; saw
+      her walk on to a large sheet of sticky fly-paper and get all her feet
+      involved; saw her struggle and fall down, helpless and dissatisfied, more
+      and more urgent, more and more unreconciled, more and more mutely profane;
+      saw the silent congregation quivering like jelly, and the tears running
+      down their faces. I saw it all. The sight of the tears whisked my mind to
+      a far distant and a sadder scene&mdash;in Terra del Fuego&mdash;and with
+      Darwin's eyes I saw a naked great savage hurl his little boy against
+      the rocks for a trifling fault; saw the poor mother gather up her dying
+      child and hug it to her breast and weep, uttering no word. Did my mind
+      stop to mourn with that nude black sister of mine? No&mdash;it was far
+      away from that scene in an instant, and was busying itself with an
+      ever-recurring and disagreeable dream of mine. In this dream I always find
+      myself, stripped to my shirt, cringing and dodging about in the midst of a
+      great drawing-room throng of finely dressed ladies and gentlemen, and
+      wondering how I got there. And so on and so on, picture after picture,
+      incident after incident, a drifting panorama of ever-changing,
+      ever-dissolving views manufactured by my mind without any help from me&mdash;why,
+      it would take me two hours to merely name the multitude of things my mind
+      tallied off and photographed in fifteen minutes, let alone describe them
+      to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. A man's mind, left free, has no use for his help. But there is
+      one way whereby he can get its help when he desires it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. What is that way?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. When your mind is racing along from subject to subject and strikes an
+      inspiring one, open your mouth and begin talking upon that matter&mdash;or&mdash;take
+      your pen and use that. It will interest your mind and concentrate it, and
+      it will pursue the subject with satisfaction. It will take full charge,
+      and furnish the words itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. But don't I tell it what to say?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. There are certainly occasions when you haven't time. The words
+      leap out before you know what is coming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. For instance?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Well, take a &ldquo;flash of wit&rdquo;&mdash;repartee. Flash is the
+      right word. It is out instantly. There is no time to arrange the words.
+      There is no thinking, no reflecting. Where there is a wit-mechanism it is
+      automatic in its action and needs no help. Where the wit-mechanism is
+      lacking, no amount of study and reflection can manufacture the product.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. You really think a man originates nothing, creates nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Thinking-Process</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I do. Men perceive, and their brain-machines automatically combine
+      the things perceived. That is all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. The steam-engine?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It takes fifty men a hundred years to invent it. One meaning of
+      invent is discover. I use the word in that sense. Little by little they
+      discover and apply the multitude of details that go to make the perfect
+      engine. Watt noticed that confined steam was strong enough to lift the lid
+      of the teapot. He didn't create the idea, he merely discovered the
+      fact; the cat had noticed it a hundred times. From the teapot he evolved
+      the cylinder&mdash;from the displaced lid he evolved the piston-rod. To
+      attach something to the piston-rod to be moved by it, was a simple matter&mdash;crank
+      and wheel. And so there was a working engine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One by one, improvements were discovered by men who used their eyes, not
+      their creating powers&mdash;for they hadn't any&mdash;and now, after
+      a hundred years the patient contributions of fifty or a hundred observers
+      stand compacted in the wonderful machine which drives the ocean liner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. A Shakespearean play?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. The process is the same. The first actor was a savage. He reproduced
+      in his theatrical war-dances, scalp&mdash;dances, and so on, incidents
+      which he had seen in real life. A more advanced civilization produced more
+      incidents, more episodes; the actor and the story-teller borrowed them.
+      And so the drama grew, little by little, stage by stage. It is made up of
+      the facts of life, not creations. It took centuries to develop the Greek
+      drama. It borrowed from preceding ages; it lent to the ages that came
+      after. Men observe and combine, that is all. So does a rat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. How?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. He observes a smell, he infers a cheese, he seeks and finds. The
+      astronomer observes this and that; adds his this and that to the
+      this-and-thats of a hundred predecessors, infers an invisible planet,
+      seeks it and finds it. The rat gets into a trap; gets out with trouble;
+      infers that cheese in traps lacks value, and meddles with that trap no
+      more. The astronomer is very proud of his achievement, the rat is proud of
+      his. Yet both are machines; they have done machine work, they have
+      originated nothing, they have no right to be vain; the whole credit
+      belongs to their Maker. They are entitled to no honors, no praises, no
+      monuments when they die, no remembrance. One is a complex and elaborate
+      machine, the other a simple and limited machine, but they are alike in
+      principle, function, and process, and neither of them works otherwise than
+      automatically, and neither of them may righteously claim a <i>personal
+      </i>superiority or a personal dignity above the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. In earned personal dignity, then, and in personal merit for what he
+      does, it follows of necessity that he is on the same level as a rat?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. His brother the rat; yes, that is how it seems to me. Neither of them
+      being entitled to any personal merit for what he does, it follows of
+      necessity that neither of them has a right to arrogate to himself
+      (personally created) superiorities over his brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Are you determined to go on believing in these insanities? Would you
+      go on believing in them in the face of able arguments backed by collated
+      facts and instances?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I have been a humble, earnest, and sincere Truth-Seeker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Very well?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. The humble, earnest, and sincere Truth-Seeker is always convertible
+      by such means.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I am thankful to God to hear you say this, for now I know that your
+      conversion&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Wait. You misunderstand. I said I have <i>been </i>a Truth-Seeker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Well?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I am not that now. Have your forgotten? I told you that there are
+      none but temporary Truth-Seekers; that a permanent one is a human
+      impossibility; that as soon as the Seeker finds what he is thoroughly
+      convinced is the Truth, he seeks no further, but gives the rest of his
+      days to hunting junk to patch it and caulk it and prop it with, and make
+      it weather-proof and keep it from caving in on him. Hence the Presbyterian
+      remains a Presbyterian, the Mohammedan a Mohammedan, the Spiritualist a
+      Spiritualist, the Democrat a Democrat, the Republican a Republican, the
+      Monarchist a Monarchist; and if a humble, earnest, and sincere Seeker
+      after Truth should find it in the proposition that the moon is made of
+      green cheese nothing could ever budge him from that position; for he is
+      nothing but an automatic machine, and must obey the laws of his
+      construction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. And so&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Having found the Truth; perceiving that beyond question man has but
+      one moving impulse&mdash;the contenting of his own spirit&mdash;and is
+      merely a machine and entitled to no personal merit for anything he does,
+      it is not humanly possible for me to seek further. The rest of my days
+      will be spent in patching and painting and puttying and caulking my
+      priceless possession and in looking the other way when an imploring
+      argument or a damaging fact approaches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      1. The Marquess of Worcester had done all of this more than a century
+      earlier.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      VI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Instinct and Thought
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Young Man. It is odious. Those drunken theories of yours, advanced a while
+      ago&mdash;concerning the rat and all that&mdash;strip Man bare of all his
+      dignities, grandeurs, sublimities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Old Man. He hasn't any to strip&mdash;they are shams, stolen
+      clothes. He claims credits which belong solely to his Maker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. But you have no right to put him on a level with a rat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I don't&mdash;morally. That would not be fair to the rat. The
+      rat is well above him, there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Are you joking?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. No, I am not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Then what do you mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. That comes under the head of the Moral Sense. It is a large question.
+      Let us finish with what we are about now, before we take it up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Very well. You have seemed to concede that you place Man and the rat
+      on a level. What is it? The intellectual?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. In form&mdash;not a degree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Explain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I think that the rat's mind and the man's mind are the
+      same machine, but of unequal capacities&mdash;like yours and Edison's;
+      like the African pygmy's and Homer's; like the Bushman's
+      and Bismarck's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. How are you going to make that out, when the lower animals have no
+      mental quality but instinct, while man possesses reason?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. What is instinct?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. It is merely unthinking and mechanical exercise of inherited habit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. What originated the habit?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. The first animal started it, its descendants have inherited it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. How did the first one come to start it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I don't know; but it didn't <i>think </i>it out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. How do you know it didn't?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Well&mdash;I have a right to suppose it didn't, anyway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I don't believe you have. What is thought?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I know what you call it: the mechanical and automatic putting
+      together of impressions received from outside, and drawing an inference
+      from them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Very good. Now my idea of the meaningless term &ldquo;instinct&rdquo;
+      is, that it is merely <i>petrified thought; </i>solidified and made
+      inanimate by habit; thought which was once alive and awake, but is become
+      unconscious&mdash;walks in its sleep, so to speak.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Illustrate it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Take a herd of cows, feeding in a pasture. Their heads are all turned
+      in one direction. They do that instinctively; they gain nothing by it,
+      they have no reason for it, they don't know why they do it. It is an
+      inherited habit which was originally thought&mdash;that is to say,
+      observation of an exterior fact, and a valuable inference drawn from that
+      observation and confirmed by experience. The original wild ox noticed that
+      with the wind in his favor he could smell his enemy in time to escape;
+      then he inferred that it was worth while to keep his nose to the wind.
+      That is the process which man calls reasoning. Man's thought-machine
+      works just like the other animals', but it is a better one and more
+      Edisonian. Man, in the ox's place, would go further, reason wider:
+      he would face part of the herd the other way and protect both front and
+      rear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Did you stay the term instinct is meaningless?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I think it is a bastard word. I think it confuses us; for as a rule
+      it applies itself to habits and impulses which had a far-off origin in
+      thought, and now and then breaks the rule and applies itself to habits
+      which can hardly claim a thought-origin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Give an instance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Well, in putting on trousers a man always inserts the same old leg
+      first&mdash;never the other one. There is no advantage in that, and no
+      sense in it. All men do it, yet no man thought it out and adopted it of
+      set purpose, I imagine. But it is a habit which is transmitted, no doubt,
+      and will continue to be transmitted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Can you prove that the habit exists?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. You can prove it, if you doubt. If you will take a man to a
+      clothing-store and watch him try on a dozen pairs of trousers, you will
+      see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. The cow illustration is not&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Sufficient to show that a dumb animal's mental machine is just
+      the same as a man's and its reasoning processes the same? I will
+      illustrate further. If you should hand Mr. Edison a box which you caused
+      to fly open by some concealed device he would infer a spring, and would
+      hunt for it and find it. Now an uncle of mine had an old horse who used to
+      get into the closed lot where the corn-crib was and dishonestly take the
+      corn. I got the punishment myself, as it was supposed that I had
+      heedlessly failed to insert the wooden pin which kept the gate closed.
+      These persistent punishments fatigued me; they also caused me to infer the
+      existence of a culprit, somewhere; so I hid myself and watched the gate.
+      Presently the horse came and pulled the pin out with his teeth and went
+      in. Nobody taught him that; he had observed&mdash;then thought it out for
+      himself. His process did not differ from Edison's; he put this and
+      that together and drew an inference&mdash;and the peg, too; but I made him
+      sweat for it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. It has something of the seeming of thought about it. Still it is not
+      very elaborate. Enlarge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Suppose Mr. Edison has been enjoying some one's hospitalities.
+      He comes again by and by, and the house is vacant. He infers that his host
+      has moved. A while afterward, in another town, he sees the man enter a
+      house; he infers that that is the new home, and follows to inquire. Here,
+      now, is the experience of a gull, as related by a naturalist. The scene is
+      a Scotch fishing village where the gulls were kindly treated. This
+      particular gull visited a cottage; was fed; came next day and was fed
+      again; came into the house, next time, and ate with the family; kept on
+      doing this almost daily, thereafter. But, once the gull was away on a
+      journey for a few days, and when it returned the house was vacant. Its
+      friends had removed to a village three miles distant. Several months later
+      it saw the head of the family on the street there, followed him home,
+      entered the house without excuse or apology, and became a daily guest
+      again. Gulls do not rank high mentally, but this one had memory and the
+      reasoning faculty, you see, and applied them Edisonially.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yet it was not an Edison and couldn't be developed into one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Perhaps not. Could you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. That is neither here nor there. Go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. If Edison were in trouble and a stranger helped him out of it and
+      next day he got into the same difficulty again, he would infer the wise
+      thing to do in case he knew the stranger's address. Here is a case
+      of a bird and a stranger as related by a naturalist. An Englishman saw a
+      bird flying around about his dog's head, down in the grounds, and
+      uttering cries of distress. He went there to see about it. The dog had a
+      young bird in his mouth&mdash;unhurt. The gentleman rescued it and put it
+      on a bush and brought the dog away. Early the next morning the mother bird
+      came for the gentleman, who was sitting on his veranda, and by its
+      maneuvers persuaded him to follow it to a distant part of the grounds&mdash;flying
+      a little way in front of him and waiting for him to catch up, and so on;
+      and keeping to the winding path, too, instead of flying the near way
+      across lots. The distance covered was four hundred yards. The same dog was
+      the culprit; he had the young bird again, and once more he had to give it
+      up. Now the mother bird had reasoned it all out: since the stranger had
+      helped her once, she inferred that he would do it again; she knew where to
+      find him, and she went upon her errand with confidence. Her mental
+      processes were what Edison's would have been. She put this and that
+      together&mdash;and that is all that thought <i>is </i>&mdash;and out of
+      them built her logical arrangement of inferences. Edison couldn't
+      have done it any better himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Do you believe that many of the dumb animals can think?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes&mdash;the elephant, the monkey, the horse, the dog, the parrot,
+      the macaw, the mocking-bird, and many others. The elephant whose mate fell
+      into a pit, and who dumped dirt and rubbish into the pit till bottom was
+      raised high enough to enable the captive to step out, was equipped with
+      the reasoning quality. I conceive that all animals that can learn things
+      through teaching and drilling have to know how to observe, and put this
+      and that together and draw an inference&mdash;the process of thinking.
+      Could you teach an idiot the manual of arms, and to advance, retreat, and
+      go through complex field maneuvers at the word of command?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Not if he were a thorough idiot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Well, canary-birds can learn all that; dogs and elephants learn all
+      sorts of wonderful things. They must surely be able to notice, and to put
+      things together, and say to themselves, &ldquo;I get the idea, now: when I
+      do so and so, as per order, I am praised and fed; when I do differently I
+      am punished.&rdquo; Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman
+      can.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Granting, then, that dumb animals are able to think upon a low plane,
+      is there any that can think upon a high one? Is there one that is well up
+      toward man?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes. As a thinker and planner the ant is the equal of any savage race
+      of men; as a self-educated specialist in several arts she is the superior
+      of any savage race of men; and in one or two high mental qualities she is
+      above the reach of any man, savage or civilized!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Oh, come! you are abolishing the intellectual frontier which
+      separates man and beast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I beg your pardon. One cannot abolish what does not exist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. You are not in earnest, I hope. You cannot mean to seriously say
+      there is no such frontier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I do say it seriously. The instances of the horse, the gull, the
+      mother bird, and the elephant show that those creatures put their this's
+      and thats together just as Edison would have done it and drew the same
+      inferences that he would have drawn. Their mental machinery was just like
+      his, also its manner of working. Their equipment was as inferior to the
+      Strasburg clock, but that is the only difference&mdash;there is no
+      frontier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. It looks exasperatingly true; and is distinctly offensive. It
+      elevates the dumb beasts to&mdash;to&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Let us drop that lying phrase, and call them the Unrevealed
+      Creatures; so far as we can know, there is no such thing as a dumb beast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. On what grounds do you make that assertion?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. On quite simple ones. &ldquo;Dumb&rdquo; beast suggests an animal
+      that has no thought-machinery, no understanding, no speech, no way of
+      communicating what is in its mind. We know that a hen <i>has </i>speech.
+      We cannot understand everything she says, but we easily learn two or three
+      of her phrases. We know when she is saying, &ldquo;I have laid an egg&rdquo;;
+      we know when she is saying to the chicks, &ldquo;Run here, dears, I've
+      found a worm&rdquo;; we know what she is saying when she voices a warning:
+      &ldquo;Quick! hurry! gather yourselves under mamma, there's a hawk
+      coming!&rdquo; We understand the cat when she stretches herself out,
+      purring with affection and contentment and lifts up a soft voice and says,
+      &ldquo;Come, kitties, supper's ready&rdquo;; we understand her when
+      she goes mourning about and says, &ldquo;Where can they be? They are lost.
+      Won't you help me hunt for them?&rdquo; and we understand the
+      disreputable Tom when he challenges at midnight from his shed, &ldquo;You
+      come over here, you product of immoral commerce, and I'll make your
+      fur fly!&rdquo; We understand a few of a dog's phrases and we learn
+      to understand a few of the remarks and gestures of any bird or other
+      animal that we domesticate and observe. The clearness and exactness of the
+      few of the hen's speeches which we understand is argument that she
+      can communicate to her kind a hundred things which we cannot comprehend&mdash;in
+      a word, that she can converse. And this argument is also applicable in the
+      case of others of the great army of the Unrevealed. It is just like man's
+      vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his
+      dull perceptions. Now as to the ant&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes, go back to the ant, the creature that&mdash;as you seem to think&mdash;sweeps
+      away the last vestige of an intellectual frontier between man and the
+      Unrevealed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. That is what she surely does. In all his history the aboriginal
+      Australian never thought out a house for himself and built it. The ant is
+      an amazing architect. She is a wee little creature, but she builds a
+      strong and enduring house eight feet high&mdash;a house which is as large
+      in proportion to her size as is the largest capitol or cathedral in the
+      world compared to man's size. No savage race has produced architects
+      who could approach the ant in genius or culture. No civilized race has
+      produced architects who could plan a house better for the uses proposed
+      than can hers. Her house contains a throne-room; nurseries for her young;
+      granaries; apartments for her soldiers, her workers, etc.; and they and
+      the multifarious halls and corridors which communicate with them are
+      arranged and distributed with an educated and experienced eye for
+      convenience and adaptability.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. That could be mere instinct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It would elevate the savage if he had it. But let us look further
+      before we decide. The ant has soldiers&mdash;battalions, regiments,
+      armies; and they have their appointed captains and generals, who lead them
+      to battle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. That could be instinct, too.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. We will look still further. The ant has a system of government; it is
+      well planned, elaborate, and is well carried on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Instinct again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. She has crowds of slaves, and is a hard and unjust employer of forced
+      labor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Instinct.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. She has cows, and milks them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Instinct, of course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. In Texas she lays out a farm twelve feet square, plants it, weeds it,
+      cultivates it, gathers the crop and stores it away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Instinct, all the same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. The ant discriminates between friend and stranger. Sir John Lubbock
+      took ants from two different nests, made them drunk with whiskey and laid
+      them, unconscious, by one of the nests, near some water. Ants from the
+      nest came and examined and discussed these disgraced creatures, then
+      carried their friends home and threw the strangers overboard. Sir John
+      repeated the experiment a number of times. For a time the sober ants did
+      as they had done at first&mdash;carried their friends home and threw the
+      strangers overboard. But finally they lost patience, seeing that their
+      reformatory efforts went for nothing, and threw both friends and strangers
+      overboard. Come&mdash;is this instinct, or is it thoughtful and
+      intelligent discussion of a thing new&mdash;absolutely new&mdash;to their
+      experience; with a verdict arrived at, sentence passed, and judgment
+      executed? Is it instinct?&mdash;thought petrified by ages of habit&mdash;or
+      isn't it brand-new thought, inspired by the new occasion, the new
+      circumstances?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I have to concede it. It was not a result of habit; it has all the
+      look of reflection, thought, putting this and that together, as you phrase
+      it. I believe it was thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I will give you another instance of thought. Franklin had a cup of
+      sugar on a table in his room. The ants got at it. He tried several
+      preventives; and ants rose superior to them. Finally he contrived one
+      which shut off access&mdash;probably set the table's legs in pans of
+      water, or drew a circle of tar around the cup, I don't remember. At
+      any rate, he watched to see what they would do. They tried various schemes&mdash;failures,
+      every one. The ants were badly puzzled. Finally they held a consultation,
+      discussed the problem, arrived at a decision&mdash;and this time they beat
+      that great philosopher. They formed in procession, cross the floor,
+      climbed the wall, marched across the ceiling to a point just over the cup,
+      then one by one they let go and fell down into it! Was that instinct&mdash;thought
+      petrified by ages of inherited habit?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. No, I don't believe it was. I believe it was a newly reasoned
+      scheme to meet a new emergency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Very well. You have conceded the reasoning power in two instances. I
+      come now to a mental detail wherein the ant is a long way the superior of
+      any human being. Sir John Lubbock proved by many experiments that an ant
+      knows a stranger ant of her own species in a moment, even when the
+      stranger is disguised&mdash;with paint. Also he proved that an ant knows
+      every individual in her hive of five hundred thousand souls. Also, after a
+      year's absence one of the five hundred thousand she will straightway
+      recognize the returned absentee and grace the recognition with an
+      affectionate welcome. How are these recognitions made? Not by color, for
+      painted ants were recognized. Not by smell, for ants that had been dipped
+      in chloroform were recognized. Not by speech and not by antennae signs nor
+      contacts, for the drunken and motionless ants were recognized and the
+      friend discriminated from the stranger. The ants were all of the same
+      species, therefore the friends had to be recognized by form and feature&mdash;friends
+      who formed part of a hive of five hundred thousand! Has any man a memory
+      for form and feature approaching that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Certainly not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Franklin's ants and Lubbuck's ants show fine capacities
+      of putting this and that together in new and untried emergencies and
+      deducting smart conclusions from the combinations&mdash;a man's
+      mental process exactly. With memory to help, man preserves his
+      observations and reasonings, reflects upon them, adds to them, recombines,
+      and so proceeds, stage by stage, to far results&mdash;from the teakettle
+      to the ocean greyhound's complex engine; from personal labor to
+      slave labor; from wigwam to palace; from the capricious chase to
+      agriculture and stored food; from nomadic life to stable government and
+      concentrated authority; from incoherent hordes to massed armies. The ant
+      has observation, the reasoning faculty, and the preserving adjunct of a
+      prodigious memory; she has duplicated man's development and the
+      essential features of his civilization, and you call it all instinct!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Perhaps I lacked the reasoning faculty myself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Well, don't tell anybody, and don't do it again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. We have come a good way. As a result&mdash;as I understand it&mdash;I
+      am required to concede that there is absolutely no intellectual frontier
+      separating Man and the Unrevealed Creatures?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. That is what you are required to concede. There is no such frontier&mdash;there
+      is no way to get around that. Man has a finer and more capable machine in
+      him than those others, but it is the same machine and works in the same
+      way. And neither he nor those others can command the machine&mdash;it is
+      strictly automatic, independent of control, works when it pleases, and
+      when it doesn't please, it can't be forced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Then man and the other animals are all alike, as to mental machinery,
+      and there isn't any difference of any stupendous magnitude between
+      them, except in quality, not in kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. That is about the state of it&mdash;intellectuality. There are
+      pronounced limitations on both sides. We can't learn to understand
+      much of their language, but the dog, the elephant, etc., learn to
+      understand a very great deal of ours. To that extent they are our
+      superiors. On the other hand, they can't learn reading, writing,
+      etc., nor any of our fine and high things, and there we have a large
+      advantage over them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Very well, let them have what they've got, and welcome; there
+      is still a wall, and a lofty one. They haven't got the Moral Sense;
+      we have it, and it lifts us immeasurably above them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. What makes you think that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Now look here&mdash;let's call a halt. I have stood the other
+      infamies and insanities and that is enough; I am not going to have man and
+      the other animals put on the same level morally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I wasn't going to hoist man up to that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. This is too much! I think it is not right to jest about such things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I am not jesting, I am merely reflecting a plain and simple truth&mdash;and
+      without uncharitableness. The fact that man knows right from wrong proves
+      his <i>intellectual </i>superiority to the other creatures; but the fact
+      that he can <i>do </i>wrong proves his <i>moral </i>inferiority to any
+      creature that <i>cannot</i>. It is my belief that this position is not
+      assailable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Free Will</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. What is your opinion regarding Free Will?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. That there is no such thing. Did the man possess it who gave the old
+      woman his last shilling and trudged home in the storm?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. He had the choice between succoring the old woman and leaving her to
+      suffer. Isn't it so?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes, there was a choice to be made, between bodily comfort on the one
+      hand and the comfort of the spirit on the other. The body made a strong
+      appeal, of course&mdash;the body would be quite sure to do that; the
+      spirit made a counter appeal. A choice had to be made between the two
+      appeals, and was made. Who or what determined that choice?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Any one but you would say that the man determined it, and that in
+      doing it he exercised Free Will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. We are constantly assured that every man is endowed with Free Will,
+      and that he can and must exercise it where he is offered a choice between
+      good conduct and less-good conduct. Yet we clearly saw that in that man's
+      case he really had no Free Will: his temperament, his training, and the
+      daily influences which had molded him and made him what he was, <i>compelled
+      </i>him to rescue the old woman and thus save <i>himself </i>&mdash;save
+      himself from spiritual pain, from unendurable wretchedness. He did not
+      make the choice, it was made <i>for </i>him by forces which he could not
+      control. Free Will has always existed in <i>words</i>, but it stops there,
+      I think&mdash;stops short of <i>fact</i>. I would not use those words&mdash;Free
+      Will&mdash;but others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. What others?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Free Choice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. What is the difference?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. The one implies untrammeled power to <i>act </i>as you please, the
+      other implies nothing beyond a mere <i>mental process: </i>the critical
+      ability to determine which of two things is nearest right and just.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Make the difference clear, please.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. The mind can freely <i>select, choose, point out </i>the right and
+      just one&mdash;its function stops there. It can go no further in the
+      matter. It has no authority to say that the right one shall be acted upon
+      and the wrong one discarded. That authority is in other hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. The man's?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. In the machine which stands for him. In his born disposition and the
+      character which has been built around it by training and environment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. It will act upon the right one of the two?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It will do as it pleases in the matter. George Washington's
+      machine would act upon the right one; Pizarro would act upon the wrong
+      one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Then as I understand it a bad man's mental machinery calmly and
+      judicially points out which of two things is right and just&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes, and his <i>moral </i>machinery will freely act upon the one or
+      the other, according to its make, and be quite indifferent to the <i>mind's
+      </i>feeling concerning the matter&mdash;that is, <i>would </i>be, if the
+      mind had any feelings; which it hasn't. It is merely a thermometer:
+      it registers the heat and the cold, and cares not a farthing about either.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Then we must not claim that if a man <i>knows </i>which of two things
+      is right he is absolutely <i>bound </i>to do that thing?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. His temperament and training will decide what he shall do, and he
+      will do it; he cannot help himself, he has no authority over the matter.
+      Wasn't it right for David to go out and slay Goliath?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Then it would have been equally <i>right </i>for any one else to do
+      it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Certainly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Then it would have been <i>right </i>for a born coward to attempt it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. It would&mdash;yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. You know that no born coward ever would have attempted it, don't
+      you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. You know that a born coward's make and temperament would be an
+      absolute and insurmountable bar to his ever essaying such a thing, don't
+      you?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes, I know it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. He clearly perceives that it would be <i>right </i>to try it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. His mind has Free Choice in determining that it would be <i>right
+      </i>to try it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Then if by reason of his inborn cowardice he simply can <i>not </i>essay
+      it, what becomes of his Free Will? Where is his Free Will? Why claim that
+      he has Free Will when the plain facts show that he hasn't? Why
+      contend that because he and David <i>see </i>the right alike, both must <i>act
+      </i>alike? Why impose the same laws upon goat and lion?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. There is really no such thing as Free Will?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It is what I think. There is <i>will</i>. But it has nothing to do
+      with <i>intellectual perceptions of right and wrong, </i>and is not under
+      their command. David's temperament and training had Will, and it was
+      a compulsory force; David had to obey its decrees, he had no choice. The
+      coward's temperament and training possess Will, and <i>it </i>is
+      compulsory; it commands him to avoid danger, and he obeys, he has no
+      choice. But neither the Davids nor the cowards possess Free Will&mdash;will
+      that may do the right or do the wrong, as their <i>mental </i>verdict
+      shall decide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Not Two Values, But Only One</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. There is one thing which bothers me: I can't tell where you
+      draw the line between <i>material </i>covetousness and <i>spiritual </i>covetousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I don't draw any.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. How do you mean?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. There is no such thing as <i>material </i>covetousness. All
+      covetousness is spiritual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. <i>All </i>longings, desires, ambitions <i>spiritual, </i>never
+      material?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes. The Master in you requires that in <i>all </i>cases you shall
+      content his <i>spirit </i>&mdash;that alone. He never requires anything
+      else, he never interests himself in any other matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Ah, come! When he covets somebody's money&mdash;isn't
+      that rather distinctly material and gross?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. No. The money is merely a symbol&mdash;it represents in visible and
+      concrete form a <i>spiritual desire. </i>Any so-called material thing that
+      you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for <i>itself</i>, but
+      because it will content your spirit for the moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Please particularize.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Very well. Maybe the thing longed for is a new hat. You get it and
+      your vanity is pleased, your spirit contented. Suppose your friends deride
+      the hat, make fun of it: at once it loses its value; you are ashamed of
+      it, you put it out of your sight, you never want to see it again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I think I see. Go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It is the same hat, isn't it? It is in no way altered. But it
+      wasn't the <i>hat </i>you wanted, but only what it stood for&mdash;a
+      something to please and content your <i>spirit</i>. When it failed of
+      that, the whole of its value was gone. There are no <i>material </i>values;
+      there are only spiritual ones. You will hunt in vain for a material value
+      that is <i>actual, real&mdash;</i>there is no such thing. The only value
+      it possesses, for even a moment, is the spiritual value back of it: remove
+      that end and it is at once worthless&mdash;like the hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Can you extend that to money?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes. It is merely a symbol, it has no <i>material </i>value; you
+      think you desire it for its own sake, but it is not so. You desire it for
+      the spiritual content it will bring; if it fail of that, you discover that
+      its value is gone. There is that pathetic tale of the man who labored like
+      a slave, unresting, unsatisfied, until he had accumulated a fortune, and
+      was happy over it, jubilant about it; then in a single week a pestilence
+      swept away all whom he held dear and left him desolate. His money's
+      value was gone. He realized that his joy in it came not from the money
+      itself, but from the spiritual contentment he got out of his family's
+      enjoyment of the pleasures and delights it lavished upon them. Money has
+      no <i>material </i>value; if you remove its spiritual value nothing is
+      left but dross. It is so with all things, little or big, majestic or
+      trivial&mdash;there are no exceptions. Crowns, scepters, pennies, paste
+      jewels, village notoriety, world-wide fame&mdash;they are all the same,
+      they have no <i>material </i>value: while they content the <i>spirit </i>they
+      are precious, when this fails they are worthless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>A Difficult Question</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. You keep me confused and perplexed all the time by your elusive
+      terminology. Sometimes you divide a man up into two or three separate
+      personalities, each with authorities, jurisdictions, and responsibilities
+      of its own, and when he is in that condition I can't grasp it. Now
+      when <i>I</i> speak of a man, he is <i>the whole thing in one, </i>and
+      easy to hold and contemplate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. That is pleasant and convenient, if true. When you speak of &ldquo;my
+      body&rdquo; who is the &ldquo;my&rdquo;?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. It is the &ldquo;me.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. The body is a property then, and the Me owns it. Who is the Me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. The Me is <i>the whole thing; </i>it is a common property; an
+      undivided ownership, vested in the whole entity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. If the Me admires a rainbow, is it the whole Me that admires it,
+      including the hair, hands, heels, and all?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Certainly not. It is my <i>mind </i>that admires it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. So <i>you </i>divide the Me yourself. Everybody does; everybody must.
+      What, then, definitely, is the Me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I think it must consist of just those two parts&mdash;the body and
+      the mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. You think so? If you say &ldquo;I believe the world is round,&rdquo;
+      who is the &ldquo;I&rdquo; that is speaking?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. The mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. If you say &ldquo;I grieve for the loss of my father,&rdquo; who is
+      the &ldquo;I&rdquo;?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. The mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Is the mind exercising an intellectual function when it examines and
+      accepts the evidence that the world is round?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Is it exercising an intellectual function when it grieves for the
+      loss of your father?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. That is not cerebration, brain-work, it is a matter of <i>feeling</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Then its source is not in your mind, but in your <i>moral </i>territory?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I have to grant it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Is your mind a part of your <i>physical </i>equipment?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. No. It is independent of it; it is spiritual.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Being spiritual, it cannot be affected by physical influences?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Does the mind remain sober with the body is drunk?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Well&mdash;no.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. There <i>is </i>a physical effect present, then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. It looks like it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. A cracked skull has resulted in a crazy mind. Why should it happen if
+      the mind is spiritual, and <i>independent </i>of physical influences?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Well&mdash;I don't know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. When you have a pain in your foot, how do you know it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I feel it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. But you do not feel it until a nerve reports the hurt to the brain.
+      Yet the brain is the seat of the mind, is it not?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I think so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. But isn't spiritual enough to learn what is happening in the
+      outskirts without the help of the <i>physical </i>messenger? You perceive
+      that the question of who or what the Me is, is not a simple one at all.
+      You say &ldquo;I admire the rainbow,&rdquo; and &ldquo;I believe the world
+      is round,&rdquo; and in these cases we find that the Me is not speaking,
+      but only the <i>mental </i>part. You say, &ldquo;I grieve,&rdquo; and
+      again the Me is not all speaking, but only the <i>moral </i>part. You say
+      the mind is wholly spiritual; then you say &ldquo;I have a pain&rdquo; and
+      find that this time the Me is mental <i>and </i>spiritual combined. We all
+      use the &ldquo;I&rdquo; in this indeterminate fashion, there is no help
+      for it. We imagine a Master and King over what you call The Whole Thing,
+      and we speak of him as &ldquo;I,&rdquo; but when we try to define him we
+      find we cannot do it. The intellect and the feelings can act quite <i>independently
+      </i>of each other; we recognize that, and we look around for a Ruler who
+      is master over both, and can serve as a <i>definite and indisputable
+      &ldquo;I,&rdquo; </i>and enable us to know what we mean and who or what we
+      are talking about when we use that pronoun, but we have to give it up and
+      confess that we cannot find him. To me, Man is a machine, made up of many
+      mechanisms, the moral and mental ones acting automatically in accordance
+      with the impulses of an interior Master who is built out of
+      born-temperament and an accumulation of multitudinous outside influences
+      and trainings; a machine whose <i>one </i>function is to secure the
+      spiritual contentment of the Master, be his desires good or be they evil;
+      a machine whose Will is absolute and must be obeyed, and always <i>is </i>obeyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Maybe the Me is the Soul?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Maybe it is. What is the Soul?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I don't know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Neither does any one else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>The Master Passion</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. What is the Master?&mdash;or, in common speech, the Conscience?
+      Explain it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It is that mysterious autocrat, lodged in a man, which compels the
+      man to content its desires. It may be called the Master Passion&mdash;the
+      hunger for Self-Approval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Where is its seat?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. In man's moral constitution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Are its commands for the man's good?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It is indifferent to the man's good; it never concerns itself
+      about anything but the satisfying of its own desires. It can be <i>trained
+      </i>to prefer things which will be for the man's good, but it will
+      prefer them only because they will content <i>it </i>better than other
+      things would.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Then even when it is trained to high ideals it is still looking out
+      for its own contentment, and not for the man's good.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. True. Trained or untrained, it cares nothing for the man's
+      good, and never concerns itself about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. It seems to be an <i>immoral </i>force seated in the man's
+      moral constitution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It is a <i>colorless </i>force seated in the man's moral
+      constitution. Let us call it an instinct&mdash;a blind, unreasoning
+      instinct, which cannot and does not distinguish between good morals and
+      bad ones, and cares nothing for results to the man provided its own
+      contentment be secured; and it will <i>always </i>secure that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. It seeks money, and it probably considers that that is an advantage
+      for the man?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It is not always seeking money, it is not always seeking power, nor
+      office, nor any other <i>material </i>advantage. In <i>all </i>cases it
+      seeks a <i>spiritual </i>contentment, let the <i>means </i>be what they
+      may. Its desires are determined by the man's temperament&mdash;and
+      it is lord over that. Temperament, Conscience, Susceptibility, Spiritual
+      Appetite, are, in fact, the same thing. Have you ever heard of a person
+      who cared nothing for money?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes. A scholar who would not leave his garret and his books to take a
+      place in a business house at a large salary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. He had to satisfy his master&mdash;that is to say, his temperament,
+      his Spiritual Appetite&mdash;and it preferred books to money. Are there
+      other cases?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes, the hermit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It is a good instance. The hermit endures solitude, hunger, cold, and
+      manifold perils, to content his autocrat, who prefers these things, and
+      prayer and contemplation, to money or to any show or luxury that money can
+      buy. Are there others?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes. The artist, the poet, the scientist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Their autocrat prefers the deep pleasures of these occupations,
+      either well paid or ill paid, to any others in the market, at any price.
+      You <i>realize </i>that the Master Passion&mdash;the contentment of the
+      spirit&mdash;concerns itself with many things besides so-called material
+      advantage, material prosperity, cash, and all that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I think I must concede it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I believe you must. There are perhaps as many Temperaments that would
+      refuse the burdens and vexations and distinctions of public office as
+      there are that hunger after them. The one set of Temperaments seek the
+      contentment of the spirit, and that alone; and this is exactly the case
+      with the other set. Neither set seeks anything <i>but </i>the contentment
+      of the spirit. If the one is sordid, both are sordid; and equally so,
+      since the end in view is precisely the same in both cases. And in both
+      cases Temperament decides the preference&mdash;and Temperament is <i>born</i>,
+      not made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Conclusion</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. You have been taking a holiday?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Yes; a mountain tramp covering a week. Are you ready to talk?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Quite ready. What shall we begin with?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Well, lying abed resting up, two days and nights, I have thought over
+      all these talks, and passed them carefully in review. With this result:
+      that... that... are you intending to publish your notions about Man some
+      day?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Now and then, in these past twenty years, the Master inside of me has
+      half-intended to order me to set them to paper and publish them. Do I have
+      to tell you why the order has remained unissued, or can you explain so
+      simple a thing without my help?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. By your doctrine, it is simplicity itself: outside influences moved
+      your interior Master to give the order; stronger outside influences
+      deterred him. Without the outside influences, neither of these impulses
+      could ever have been born, since a person's brain is incapable or
+      originating an idea within itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Correct. Go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. The matter of publishing or withholding is still in your Master's
+      hands. If some day an outside influence shall determine him to publish, he
+      will give the order, and it will be obeyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. That is correct. Well?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Upon reflection I have arrived at the conviction that the publication
+      of your doctrines would be harmful. Do you pardon me?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Pardon <i>you</i>? You have done nothing. You are an instrument&mdash;a
+      speaking-trumpet. Speaking-trumpets are not responsible for what is said
+      through them. Outside influences&mdash;in the form of lifelong teachings,
+      trainings, notions, prejudices, and other second-hand importations&mdash;have
+      persuaded the Master within you that the publication of these doctrines
+      would be harmful. Very well, this is quite natural, and was to be
+      expected; in fact, was inevitable. Go on; for the sake of ease and
+      convenience, stick to habit: speak in the first person, and tell me what
+      your Master thinks about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Well, to begin: it is a desolating doctrine; it is not inspiring,
+      enthusing, uplifting. It takes the glory out of man, it takes the pride
+      out of him, it takes the heroism out of him, it denies him all personal
+      credit, all applause; it not only degrades him to a machine, but allows
+      him no control over the machine; makes a mere coffee-mill of him, and
+      neither permits him to supply the coffee nor turn the crank, his sole and
+      piteously humble function being to grind coarse or fine, according to his
+      make, outside impulses doing the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. It is correctly stated. Tell me&mdash;what do men admire most in each
+      other?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Intellect, courage, majesty of build, beauty of countenance, charity,
+      benevolence, magnanimity, kindliness, heroism, and&mdash;and&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I would not go any further. These are <i>elementals</i>. Virtue,
+      fortitude, holiness, truthfulness, loyalty, high ideals&mdash;these, and
+      all the related qualities that are named in the dictionary, are <i>made of
+      the elementals, </i>by blendings, combinations, and shadings of the
+      elementals, just as one makes green by blending blue and yellow, and makes
+      several shades and tints of red by modifying the elemental red. There are
+      several elemental colors; they are all in the rainbow; out of them we
+      manufacture and name fifty shades of them. You have named the elementals
+      of the human rainbow, and also one <i>blend </i>&mdash;heroism, which is
+      made out of courage and magnanimity. Very well, then; which of these
+      elements does the possessor of it manufacture for himself? Is it
+      intellect?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Why?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. He is born with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Is it courage?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. No. He is born with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Is it majesty of build, beauty of countenance?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. No. They are birthrights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Take those others&mdash;the elemental moral qualities&mdash;charity,
+      benevolence, magnanimity, kindliness; fruitful seeds, out of which spring,
+      through cultivation by outside influences, all the manifold blends and
+      combinations of virtues named in the dictionaries: does man manufacture
+      any of those seeds, or are they all born in him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Born in him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Who manufactures them, then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Where does the credit of it belong?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. To God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. And the glory of which you spoke, and the applause?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. To God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Then it is <i>you </i>who degrade man. You make him claim glory,
+      praise, flattery, for every valuable thing he possesses&mdash;<i>borrowed
+      </i>finery, the whole of it; no rag of it earned by himself, not a detail
+      of it produced by his own labor. <i>You </i>make man a humbug; have I done
+      worse by him?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. You have made a machine of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Who devised that cunning and beautiful mechanism, a man's hand?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Who devised the law by which it automatically hammers out of a piano
+      an elaborate piece of music, without error, while the man is thinking
+      about something else, or talking to a friend?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Who devised the blood? Who devised the wonderful machinery which
+      automatically drives its renewing and refreshing streams through the body,
+      day and night, without assistance or advice from the man? Who devised the
+      man's mind, whose machinery works automatically, interests itself in
+      what it pleases, regardless of its will or desire, labors all night when
+      it likes, deaf to his appeals for mercy? God devised all these things. <i>I</i>
+      have not made man a machine, God made him a machine. I am merely calling
+      attention to the fact, nothing more. Is it wrong to call attention to the
+      fact? Is it a crime?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I think it is wrong to <i>expose </i>a fact when harm can come of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Go on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Look at the matter as it stands now. Man has been taught that he is
+      the supreme marvel of the Creation; he believes it; in all the ages he has
+      never doubted it, whether he was a naked savage, or clothed in purple and
+      fine linen, and civilized. This has made his heart buoyant, his life
+      cheery. His pride in himself, his sincere admiration of himself, his joy
+      in what he supposed were his own and unassisted achievements, and his
+      exultation over the praise and applause which they evoked&mdash;these have
+      exalted him, enthused him, ambitioned him to higher and higher flights; in
+      a word, made his life worth the living. But by your scheme, all this is
+      abolished; he is degraded to a machine, he is a nobody, his noble prides
+      wither to mere vanities; let him strive as he may, he can never be any
+      better than his humblest and stupidest neighbor; he would never be
+      cheerful again, his life would not be worth the living.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. You really think that?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I certainly do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Have you ever seen me uncheerful, unhappy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. No.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Well, <i>I</i> believe these things. Why have they not made me
+      unhappy?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Oh, well&mdash;temperament, of course! You never let <i>that </i>escape
+      from your scheme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. That is correct. If a man is born with an unhappy temperament,
+      nothing can make him happy; if he is born with a happy temperament,
+      nothing can make him unhappy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. What&mdash;not even a degrading and heart-chilling system of beliefs?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Beliefs? Mere beliefs? Mere convictions? They are powerless. They
+      strive in vain against inborn temperament.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. I can't believe that, and I don't.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Now you are speaking hastily. It shows that you have not studiously
+      examined the facts. Of all your intimates, which one is the happiest? Isn't
+      it Burgess?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Easily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. And which one is the unhappiest? Henry Adams?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. Without a question!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. I know them well. They are extremes, abnormals; their temperaments
+      are as opposite as the poles. Their life-histories are about alike&mdash;but
+      look at the results! Their ages are about the same&mdash;about around
+      fifty. Burgess had always been buoyant, hopeful, happy; Adams has always
+      been cheerless, hopeless, despondent. As young fellows both tried country
+      journalism&mdash;and failed. Burgess didn't seem to mind it; Adams
+      couldn't smile, he could only mourn and groan over what had happened
+      and torture himself with vain regrets for not having done so and so
+      instead of so and so&mdash;<i>then </i>he would have succeeded. They tried
+      the law&mdash;and failed. Burgess remained happy&mdash;because he couldn't
+      help it. Adams was wretched&mdash;because he couldn't help it. From
+      that day to this, those two men have gone on trying things and failing:
+      Burgess has come out happy and cheerful every time; Adams the reverse. And
+      we do absolutely know that these men's inborn temperaments have
+      remained unchanged through all the vicissitudes of their material affairs.
+      Let us see how it is with their immaterials. Both have been zealous
+      Democrats; both have been zealous Republicans; both have been zealous
+      Mugwumps. Burgess has always found happiness and Adams unhappiness in
+      these several political beliefs and in their migrations out of them. Both
+      of these men have been Presbyterians, Universalists, Methodists, Catholics&mdash;then
+      Presbyterians again, then Methodists again. Burgess has always found rest
+      in these excursions, and Adams unrest. They are trying Christian Science,
+      now, with the customary result, the inevitable result. No political or
+      religious belief can make Burgess unhappy or the other man happy. I assure
+      you it is purely a matter of temperament. Beliefs are <i>acquirements</i>,
+      temperaments are <i>born</i>; beliefs are subject to change, nothing
+      whatever can change temperament.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Y.M. You have instanced extreme temperaments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O.M. Yes, the half-dozen others are modifications of the extremes. But the
+      law is the same. Where the temperament is two-thirds happy, or two-thirds
+      unhappy, no political or religious beliefs can change the proportions. The
+      vast majority of temperaments are pretty equally balanced; the intensities
+      are absent, and this enables a nation to learn to accommodate itself to
+      its political and religious circumstances and like them, be satisfied with
+      them, at last prefer them. Nations do not <i>think</i>, they only <i>feel</i>.
+      They get their feelings at second hand through their temperaments, not
+      their brains. A nation can be brought&mdash;by force of circumstances, not
+      argument&mdash;to reconcile itself to <i>any kind of government or
+      religion that can be devised; </i>in time it will fit itself to the
+      required conditions; later, it will prefer them and will fiercely fight
+      for them. As instances, you have all history: the Greeks, the Romans, the
+      Persians, the Egyptians, the Russians, the Germans, the French, the
+      English, the Spaniards, the Americans, the South Americans, the Japanese,
+      the Chinese, the Hindus, the Turks&mdash;a thousand wild and tame
+      religions, every kind of government that can be thought of, from tiger to
+      house-cat, each nation <i>knowing </i>it has the only true religion and
+      the only sane system of government, each despising all the others, each an
+      ass and not suspecting it, each proud of its fancied supremacy, each
+      perfectly sure it is the pet of God, each without undoubting confidence
+      summoning Him to take command in time of war, each surprised when He goes
+      over to the enemy, but by habit able to excuse it and resume compliments&mdash;in
+      a word, the whole human race content, always content, persistently
+      content, indestructibly content, happy, thankful, proud, <i>no matter what
+      its religion is, nor whether its master be tiger or house-cat. </i>Am I
+      stating facts? You know I am. Is the human race cheerful? You know it is.
+      Considering what it can stand, and be happy, you do me too much honor when
+      you think that <i>I</i> can place before it a system of plain cold facts
+      that can take the cheerfulness out of it. Nothing can do that. Everything
+      has been tried. Without success. I beg you not to be troubled.
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE DEATH OF JEAN
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      The death of Jean Clemens occurred early in the morning of December 24,
+      1909. Mr. Clemens was in great stress of mind when I first saw him, but a
+      few hours later I found him writing steadily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am setting it down,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;everything. It is a
+      relief to me to write it. It furnishes me an excuse for thinking.&rdquo;
+      At intervals during that day and the next I looked in, and usually found
+      him writing. Then on the evening of the 26th, when he knew that Jean had
+      been laid to rest in Elmira, he came to my room with the manuscript in his
+      hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have finished it,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;read it. I can form no
+      opinion of it myself. If you think it worthy, some day&mdash;at the proper
+      time&mdash;it can end my autobiography. It is the final chapter.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four months later&mdash;almost to the day&mdash;(April 21st) he was with
+      Jean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Albert Bigelow Paine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stormfield, Christmas Eve, 11 A.M., 1909.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      JEAN IS DEAD!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Has any one ever tried to put upon paper all the little happenings
+      connected with a dear one&mdash;happenings of the twenty-four hours
+      preceding the sudden and unexpected death of that dear one? Would a book
+      contain them? Would two books contain them? I think not. They pour into
+      the mind in a flood. They are little things that have been always
+      happening every day, and were always so unimportant and easily forgettable
+      before&mdash;but now! Now, how different! how precious they are, how dear,
+      how unforgettable, how pathetic, how sacred, how clothed with dignity!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Last night Jean, all flushed with splendid health, and I the same, from
+      the wholesome effects of my Bermuda holiday, strolled hand in hand from
+      the dinner-table and sat down in the library and chatted, and planned, and
+      discussed, cheerily and happily (and how unsuspectingly!)&mdash;until nine&mdash;which
+      is late for us&mdash;then went upstairs, Jean's friendly German dog
+      following. At my door Jean said, &ldquo;I can't kiss you good night,
+      father: I have a cold, and you could catch it.&rdquo; I bent and kissed
+      her hand. She was moved&mdash;I saw it in her eyes&mdash;and she
+      impulsively kissed my hand in return. Then with the usual gay &ldquo;Sleep
+      well, dear!&rdquo; from both, we parted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At half past seven this morning I woke, and heard voices outside my door.
+      I said to myself, &ldquo;Jean is starting on her usual horseback flight to
+      the station for the mail.&rdquo; Then Katy (1) entered, stood quaking and
+      gasping at my bedside a moment, then found her tongue:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MISS JEAN IS DEAD!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Possibly I know now what the soldier feels when a bullet crashes through
+      his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In her bathroom there she lay, the fair young creature, stretched upon the
+      floor and covered with a sheet. And looking so placid, so natural, and as
+      if asleep. We knew what had happened. She was an epileptic: she had been
+      seized with a convulsion and heart failure in her bath. The doctor had to
+      come several miles. His efforts, like our previous ones, failed to bring
+      her back to life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is noon, now. How lovable she looks, how sweet and how tranquil! It is
+      a noble face, and full of dignity; and that was a good heart that lies
+      there so still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In England, thirteen years ago, my wife and I were stabbed to the heart
+      with a cablegram which said, &ldquo;Susy was mercifully released today.&rdquo;
+      I had to send a like shot to Clara, in Berlin, this morning. With the
+      peremptory addition, &ldquo;You must not come home.&rdquo; Clara and her
+      husband sailed from here on the 11th of this month. How will Clara bear
+      it? Jean, from her babyhood, was a worshiper of Clara.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four days ago I came back from a month's holiday in Bermuda in
+      perfected health; but by some accident the reporters failed to perceive
+      this. Day before yesterday, letters and telegrams began to arrive from
+      friends and strangers which indicated that I was supposed to be
+      dangerously ill. Yesterday Jean begged me to explain my case through the
+      Associated Press. I said it was not important enough; but she was
+      distressed and said I must think of Clara. Clara would see the report in
+      the German papers, and as she had been nursing her husband day and night
+      for four months (2) and was worn out and feeble, the shock might be
+      disastrous. There was reason in that; so I sent a humorous paragraph by
+      telephone to the Associated Press denying the &ldquo;charge&rdquo; that I
+      was &ldquo;dying,&rdquo; and saying &ldquo;I would not do such a thing at
+      my time of life.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jean was a little troubled, and did not like to see me treat the matter so
+      lightly; but I said it was best to treat it so, for there was nothing
+      serious about it. This morning I sent the sorrowful facts of this day's
+      irremediable disaster to the Associated Press. Will both appear in this
+      evening's papers?&mdash;the one so blithe, the other so tragic?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother&mdash;her incomparable
+      mother!&mdash;five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in
+      Europe; and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich!
+      Seven months ago Mr. Rogers died&mdash;one of the best friends I ever had,
+      and the nearest perfect, as man and gentleman, I have yet met among my
+      race; within the last six weeks Gilder has passed away, and Laffan&mdash;old,
+      old friends of mine. Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under
+      our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night&mdash;and it
+      was forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, and I sit here&mdash;writing,
+      busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How dazzlingly the
+      sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a mockery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seventy-four years old twenty-four days ago. Seventy-four years old
+      yesterday. Who can estimate my age today?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have looked upon her again. I wonder I can bear it. She looks just as
+      her mother looked when she lay dead in that Florentine villa so long ago.
+      The sweet placidity of death! it is more beautiful than sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw her mother buried. I said I would never endure that horror again;
+      that I would never again look into the grave of any one dear to me. I have
+      kept to that. They will take Jean from this house tomorrow, and bear her
+      to Elmira, New York, where lie those of us that have been released, but I
+      shall not follow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jean was on the dock when the ship came in, only four days ago. She was at
+      the door, beaming a welcome, when I reached this house the next evening.
+      We played cards, and she tried to teach me a new game called &ldquo;Mark
+      Twain.&rdquo; We sat chatting cheerily in the library last night, and she
+      wouldn't let me look into the loggia, where she was making Christmas
+      preparations. She said she would finish them in the morning, and then her
+      little French friend would arrive from New York&mdash;the surprise would
+      follow; the surprise she had been working over for days. While she was out
+      for a moment I disloyally stole a look. The loggia floor was clothed with
+      rugs and furnished with chairs and sofas; and the uncompleted surprise was
+      there: in the form of a Christmas tree that was drenched with silver film
+      in a most wonderful way; and on a table was a prodigal profusion of bright
+      things which she was going to hang upon it today. What desecrating hand
+      will ever banish that eloquent unfinished surprise from that place? Not
+      mine, surely. All these little matters have happened in the last four
+      days. &ldquo;Little.&rdquo; Yes&mdash;<i>then</i>. But not now. Nothing
+      she said or thought or did is little now. And all the lavish humor!&mdash;what
+      is become of it? It is pathos, now. Pathos, and the thought of it brings
+      tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All these little things happened such a few hours ago&mdash;and now she
+      lies yonder. Lies yonder, and cares for nothing any more. Strange&mdash;marvelous&mdash;incredible!
+      I have had this experience before; but it would still be incredible if I
+      had had it a thousand times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MISS JEAN IS DEAD!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That is what Katy said. When I heard the door open behind the bed's
+      head without a preliminary knock, I supposed it was Jean coming to kiss me
+      good morning, she being the only person who was used to entering without
+      formalities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have been to Jean's parlor. Such a turmoil of Christmas presents
+      for servants and friends! They are everywhere; tables, chairs, sofas, the
+      floor&mdash;everything is occupied, and over-occupied. It is many and many
+      a year since I have seen the like. In that ancient day Mrs. Clemens and I
+      used to slip softly into the nursery at midnight on Christmas Eve and look
+      the array of presents over. The children were little then. And now here is
+      Jean's parlor looking just as that nursery used to look. The
+      presents are not labeled&mdash;the hands are forever idle that would have
+      labeled them today. Jean's mother always worked herself down with
+      her Christmas preparations. Jean did the same yesterday and the preceding
+      days, and the fatigue has cost her her life. The fatigue caused the
+      convulsion that attacked her this morning. She had had no attack for
+      months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jean was so full of life and energy that she was constantly in danger of
+      overtaxing her strength. Every morning she was in the saddle by half past
+      seven, and off to the station for her mail. She examined the letters and I
+      distributed them: some to her, some to Mr. Paine, the others to the
+      stenographer and myself. She dispatched her share and then mounted her
+      horse again and went around superintending her farm and her poultry the
+      rest of the day. Sometimes she played billiards with me after dinner, but
+      she was usually too tired to play, and went early to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yesterday afternoon I told her about some plans I had been devising while
+      absent in Bermuda, to lighten her burdens. We would get a housekeeper;
+      also we would put her share of the secretary-work into Mr. Paine's
+      hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No&mdash;she wasn't willing. She had been making plans herself. The
+      matter ended in a compromise, I submitted. I always did. She wouldn't
+      audit the bills and let Paine fill out the checks&mdash;she would continue
+      to attend to that herself. Also, she would continue to be housekeeper, and
+      let Katy assist. Also, she would continue to answer the letters of
+      personal friends for me. Such was the compromise. Both of us called it by
+      that name, though I was not able to see where any formidable change had
+      been made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, Jean was pleased, and that was sufficient for me. She was proud
+      of being my secretary, and I was never able to persuade her to give up any
+      part of her share in that unlovely work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the talk last night I said I found everything going so smoothly that if
+      she were willing I would go back to Bermuda in February and get blessedly
+      out of the clash and turmoil again for another month. She was urgent that
+      I should do it, and said that if I would put off the trip until March she
+      would take Katy and go with me. We struck hands upon that, and said it was
+      settled. I had a mind to write to Bermuda by tomorrow's ship and
+      secure a furnished house and servants. I meant to write the letter this
+      morning. But it will never be written, now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For she lies yonder, and before her is another journey than that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Night is closing down; the rim of the sun barely shows above the sky-line
+      of the hills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have been looking at that face again that was growing dearer and dearer
+      to me every day. I was getting acquainted with Jean in these last nine
+      months. She had been long an exile from home when she came to us
+      three-quarters of a year ago. She had been shut up in sanitariums, many
+      miles from us. How eloquently glad and grateful she was to cross her
+      father's threshold again!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Would I bring her back to life if I could do it? I would not. If a word
+      would do it, I would beg for strength to withhold the word. And I would
+      have the strength; I am sure of it. In her loss I am almost bankrupt, and
+      my life is a bitterness, but I am content: for she has been enriched with
+      the most precious of all gifts&mdash;that gift which makes all other gifts
+      mean and poor&mdash;death. I have never wanted any released friend of mine
+      restored to life since I reached manhood. I felt in this way when Susy
+      passed away; and later my wife, and later Mr. Rogers. When Clara met me at
+      the station in New York and told me Mr. Rogers had died suddenly that
+      morning, my thought was, Oh, favorite of fortune&mdash;fortunate all his
+      long and lovely life&mdash;fortunate to his latest moment! The reporters
+      said there were tears of sorrow in my eyes. True&mdash;but they were for
+      <i>me</i>, not for him. He had suffered no loss. All the fortunes he had
+      ever made before were poverty compared with this one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why did I build this house, two years ago? To shelter this vast emptiness?
+      How foolish I was! But I shall stay in it. The spirits of the dead hallow
+      a house, for me. It was not so with other members of my family. Susy died
+      in the house we built in Hartford. Mrs. Clemens would never enter it
+      again. But it made the house dearer to me. I have entered it once since,
+      when it was tenantless and silent and forlorn, but to me it was a holy
+      place and beautiful. It seemed to me that the spirits of the dead were all
+      about me, and would speak to me and welcome me if they could: Livy, and
+      Susy, and George, and Henry Robinson, and Charles Dudley Warner. How good
+      and kind they were, and how lovable their lives! In fancy I could see them
+      all again, I could call the children back and hear them romp again with
+      George&mdash;that peerless black ex-slave and children's idol who
+      came one day&mdash;a flitting stranger&mdash;to wash windows, and stayed
+      eighteen years. Until he died. Clara and Jean would never enter again the
+      New York hotel which their mother had frequented in earlier days. They
+      could not bear it. But I shall stay in this house. It is dearer to me
+      tonight than ever it was before. Jean's spirit will make it
+      beautiful for me always. Her lonely and tragic death&mdash;but I will not
+      think of that now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jean's mother always devoted two or three weeks to Christmas
+      shopping, and was always physically exhausted when Christmas Eve came.
+      Jean was her very own child&mdash;she wore herself out present-hunting in
+      New York these latter days. Paine has just found on her desk a long list
+      of names&mdash;fifty, he thinks&mdash;people to whom she sent presents
+      last night. Apparently she forgot no one. And Katy found there a roll of
+      bank-notes, for the servants.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her dog has been wandering about the grounds today, comradeless and
+      forlorn. I have seen him from the windows. She got him from Germany. He
+      has tall ears and looks exactly like a wolf. He was educated in Germany,
+      and knows no language but the German. Jean gave him no orders save in that
+      tongue. And so when the burglar-alarm made a fierce clamor at midnight a
+      fortnight ago, the butler, who is French and knows no German, tried in
+      vain to interest the dog in the supposed burglar. Jean wrote me, to
+      Bermuda, about the incident. It was the last letter I was ever to receive
+      from her bright head and her competent hand. The dog will not be
+      neglected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was never a kinder heart than Jean's. From her childhood up
+      she always spent the most of her allowance on charities of one kind and
+      another. After she became secretary and had her income doubled she spent
+      her money upon these things with a free hand. Mine too, I am glad and
+      grateful to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was a loyal friend to all animals, and she loved them all, birds,
+      beasts, and everything&mdash;even snakes&mdash;an inheritance from me. She
+      knew all the birds; she was high up in that lore. She became a member of
+      various humane societies when she was still a little girl&mdash;both here
+      and abroad&mdash;and she remained an active member to the last. She
+      founded two or three societies for the protection of animals, here and in
+      Europe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was an embarrassing secretary, for she fished my correspondence out of
+      the waste-basket and answered the letters. She thought all letters
+      deserved the courtesy of an answer. Her mother brought her up in that
+      kindly error.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She could write a good letter, and was swift with her pen. She had but an
+      indifferent ear for music, but her tongue took to languages with an easy
+      facility. She never allowed her Italian, French, and German to get rusty
+      through neglect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The telegrams of sympathy are flowing in, from far and wide, now, just as
+      they did in Italy five years and a half ago, when this child's
+      mother laid down her blameless life. They cannot heal the hurt, but they
+      take away some of the pain. When Jean and I kissed hands and parted at my
+      door last, how little did we imagine that in twenty-two hours the
+      telegraph would be bringing words like these:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;From the bottom of our hearts we send our sympathy, dearest of
+      friends.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For many and many a day to come, wherever I go in this house,
+      remembrancers of Jean will mutely speak to me of her. Who can count the
+      number of them?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was in exile two years with the hope of healing her malady&mdash;epilepsy.
+      There are no words to express how grateful I am that she did not meet her
+      fate in the hands of strangers, but in the loving shelter of her own home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;MISS JEAN IS DEAD!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is true. Jean is dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A month ago I was writing bubbling and hilarious articles for magazines
+      yet to appear, and now I am writing&mdash;this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CHRISTMAS DAY. NOON.&mdash;Last night I went to Jean's room at
+      intervals, and turned back the sheet and looked at the peaceful face, and
+      kissed the cold brow, and remembered that heartbreaking night in Florence
+      so long ago, in that cavernous and silent vast villa, when I crept
+      downstairs so many times, and turned back a sheet and looked at a face
+      just like this one&mdash;Jean's mother's face&mdash;and kissed
+      a brow that was just like this one. And last night I saw again what I had
+      seen then&mdash;that strange and lovely miracle&mdash;the sweet, soft
+      contours of early maidenhood restored by the gracious hand of death! When
+      Jean's mother lay dead, all trace of care, and trouble, and
+      suffering, and the corroding years had vanished out of the face, and I was
+      looking again upon it as I had known and worshiped it in its young bloom
+      and beauty a whole generation before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About three in the morning, while wandering about the house in the deep
+      silences, as one does in times like these, when there is a dumb sense that
+      something has been lost that will never be found again, yet must be
+      sought, if only for the employment the useless seeking gives, I came upon
+      Jean's dog in the hall downstairs, and noted that he did not spring
+      to greet me, according to his hospitable habit, but came slow and
+      sorrowfully; also I remembered that he had not visited Jean's
+      apartment since the tragedy. Poor fellow, did he know? I think so. Always
+      when Jean was abroad in the open he was with her; always when she was in
+      the house he was with her, in the night as well as in the day. Her parlor
+      was his bedroom. Whenever I happened upon him on the ground floor he
+      always followed me about, and when I went upstairs he went too&mdash;in a
+      tumultuous gallop. But now it was different: after patting him a little I
+      went to the library&mdash;he remained behind; when I went upstairs he did
+      not follow me, save with his wistful eyes. He has wonderful eyes&mdash;big,
+      and kind, and eloquent. He can talk with them. He is a beautiful creature,
+      and is of the breed of the New York police-dogs. I do not like dogs,
+      because they bark when there is no occasion for it; but I have liked this
+      one from the beginning, because he belonged to Jean, and because he never
+      barks except when there is occasion&mdash;which is not oftener than twice
+      a week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In my wanderings I visited Jean's parlor. On a shelf I found a pile
+      of my books, and I knew what it meant. She was waiting for me to come home
+      from Bermuda and autograph them, then she would send them away. If I only
+      knew whom she intended them for! But I shall never know. I will keep them.
+      Her hand has touched them&mdash;it is an accolade&mdash;they are noble,
+      now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in a closet she had hidden a surprise for me&mdash;a thing I have
+      often wished I owned: a noble big globe. I couldn't see it for the
+      tears. She will never know the pride I take in it, and the pleasure. Today
+      the mails are full of loving remembrances for her: full of those old, old
+      kind words she loved so well, &ldquo;Merry Christmas to Jean!&rdquo; If
+      she could only have lived one day longer!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last she ran out of money, and would not use mine. So she sent to one
+      of those New York homes for poor girls all the clothes she could spare&mdash;and
+      more, most likely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CHRISTMAS NIGHT.&mdash;This afternoon they took her away from her room. As
+      soon as I might, I went down to the library, and there she lay, in her
+      coffin, dressed in exactly the same clothes she wore when she stood at the
+      other end of the same room on the 6th of October last, as Clara's
+      chief bridesmaid. Her face was radiant with happy excitement then; it was
+      the same face now, with the dignity of death and the peace of God upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They told me the first mourner to come was the dog. He came uninvited, and
+      stood up on his hind legs and rested his fore paws upon the trestle, and
+      took a last long look at the face that was so dear to him, then went his
+      way as silently as he had come. <i>He knows.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At mid-afternoon it began to snow. The pity of it&mdash;that Jean could
+      not see it! She so loved the snow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The snow continued to fall. At six o'clock the hearse drew up to the
+      door to bear away its pathetic burden. As they lifted the casket, Paine
+      began playing on the orchestrelle Schubert's &ldquo;Impromptu,&rdquo;
+      which was Jean's favorite. Then he played the Intermezzo; that was
+      for Susy; then he played the Largo; that was for their mother. He did this
+      at my request. Elsewhere in my Autobiography I have told how the
+      Intermezzo and the Largo came to be associated in my heart with Susy and
+      Livy in their last hours in this life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From my windows I saw the hearse and the carriages wind along the road and
+      gradually grow vague and spectral in the falling snow, and presently
+      disappear. Jean was gone out of my life, and would not come back any more.
+      Jervis, the cousin she had played with when they were babies together&mdash;he
+      and her beloved old Katy&mdash;were conducting her to her distant
+      childhood home, where she will lie by her mother's side once more,
+      in the company of Susy and Langdon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DECEMBER 26TH. The dog came to see me at eight o'clock this morning.
+      He was very affectionate, poor orphan! My room will be his quarters
+      hereafter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The storm raged all night. It has raged all the morning. The snow drives
+      across the landscape in vast clouds, superb, sublime&mdash;and Jean not
+      here to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      2:30 P.M.&mdash;It is the time appointed. The funeral has begun. Four
+      hundred miles away, but I can see it all, just as if I were there. The
+      scene is the library in the Langdon homestead. Jean's coffin stands
+      where her mother and I stood, forty years ago, and were married; and where
+      Susy's coffin stood thirteen years ago; where her mother's
+      stood five years and a half ago; and where mine will stand after a little
+      time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FIVE O'CLOCK.&mdash;It is all over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Clara went away two weeks ago to live in Europe, it was hard, but I
+      could bear it, for I had Jean left. I said <i>we</i> would be a family. We
+      said we would be close comrades and happy&mdash;just we two. That fair
+      dream was in my mind when Jean met me at the steamer last Monday; it was
+      in my mind when she received me at the door last Tuesday evening. We were
+      together; WE WERE A FAMILY! the dream had come true&mdash;oh, precisely
+      true, contentedly, true, satisfyingly true! and remained true two whole
+      days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now? Now Jean is in her grave!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the grave&mdash;if I can believe it. God rest her sweet spirit!
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     1.  Katy Leary, who had been in the service of the Clemens
+     family for twenty-nine years.
+
+     2.  Mr. Gabrilowitsch had been operated on for appendicitis.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE TURNING-POINT OF MY LIFE
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      I
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      If I understand the idea, the <i>Bazar </i>invites several of us to write
+      upon the above text. It means the change in my life's course which
+      introduced what must be regarded by me as the most <i>important </i>condition
+      of my career. But it also implies&mdash;without intention, perhaps&mdash;that
+      that turning-point <i>itself </i>was the creator of the new condition.
+      This gives it too much distinction, too much prominence, too much credit.
+      It is only the <i>last </i>link in a very long chain of turning-points
+      commissioned to produce the cardinal result; it is not any more important
+      than the humblest of its ten thousand predecessors. Each of the ten
+      thousand did its appointed share, on its appointed date, in forwarding the
+      scheme, and they were all necessary; to have left out any one of them
+      would have defeated the scheme and brought about <i>some other</i> result.
+      I know we have a fashion of saying &ldquo;such and such an event was the
+      turning-point in my life,&rdquo; but we shouldn't say it. We should
+      merely grant that its place as LAST link in the chain makes it the most <i>conspicuous
+      </i>link; in real importance it has no advantage over any one of its
+      predecessors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps the most celebrated turning-point recorded in history was the
+      crossing of the Rubicon. Suetonius says:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, he halted for a
+      while, and, revolving in his mind the importance of the step he was on the
+      point of taking, he turned to those about him and said, &ldquo;We may
+      still retreat; but if we pass this little bridge, nothing is left for us
+      but to fight it out in arms.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a stupendously important moment. And all the incidents, big and
+      little, of Caesar's previous life had been leading up to it, stage
+      by stage, link by link. This was the <i>last </i>link&mdash;merely the
+      last one, and no bigger than the others; but as we gaze back at it through
+      the inflating mists of our imagination, it looks as big as the orbit of
+      Neptune.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You, the reader, have a <i>personal </i>interest in that link, and so have
+      I; so has the rest of the human race. It was one of the links in your
+      life-chain, and it was one of the links in mine. We may wait, now, with
+      bated breath, while Caesar reflects. Your fate and mine are involved in
+      his decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While he was thus hesitating, the following incident occurred. A person
+      remarked for his noble mien and graceful aspect appeared close at hand,
+      sitting and playing upon a pipe. When not only the shepherds, but a number
+      of soldiers also, flocked to listen to him, and some trumpeters among
+      them, he snatched a trumpet from one of them, ran to the river with it,
+      and, sounding the advance with a piercing blast, crossed to the other
+      side. Upon this, Caesar exclaimed: &ldquo;Let us go whither the omens of
+      the gods and the iniquity of our enemies call us. <i>The Die Is Cast</i>.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he crossed&mdash;and changed the future of the whole human race, for
+      all time. But that stranger was a link in Caesar's life-chain, too;
+      and a necessary one. We don't know his name, we never hear of him
+      again; he was very casual; he acts like an accident; but he was no
+      accident, he was there by compulsion of HIS life-chain, to blow the
+      electrifying blast that was to make up Caesar's mind for him, and
+      thence go piping down the aisles of history forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the stranger hadn't been there! But he WAS. And Caesar crossed.
+      With such results! Such vast events&mdash;each a link in the <i>human race</i>'s
+      life-chain; each event producing the next one, and that one the next one,
+      and so on: the destruction of the republic; the founding of the empire;
+      the breaking up of the empire; the rise of Christianity upon its ruins;
+      the spread of the religion to other lands&mdash;and so on; link by link
+      took its appointed place at its appointed time, the discovery of America
+      being one of them; our Revolution another; the inflow of English and other
+      immigrants another; their drift westward (my ancestors among them)
+      another; the settlement of certain of them in Missouri, which resulted in
+      ME. For I was one of the unavoidable results of the crossing of the
+      Rubicon. If the stranger, with his trumpet blast, had stayed away (which
+      he <i>couldn't</i>, for he was an appointed link) Caesar would not
+      have crossed. What would have happened, in that case, we can never guess.
+      We only know that the things that did happen would not have happened. They
+      might have been replaced by equally prodigious things, of course, but
+      their nature and results are beyond our guessing. But the matter that
+      interests me personally is that I would not be <i>here </i>now, but
+      somewhere else; and probably black&mdash;there is no telling. Very well, I
+      am glad he crossed. And very really and thankfully glad, too, though I
+      never cared anything about it before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To me, the most important feature of my life is its literary feature. I
+      have been professionally literary something more than forty years. There
+      have been many turning-points in my life, but the one that was the last
+      link in the chain appointed to conduct me to the literary guild is the
+      most <i>conspicuous </i>link in that chain. <i>because </i>it was the last
+      one. It was not any more important than its predecessors. All the other
+      links have an inconspicuous look, except the crossing of the Rubicon; but
+      as factors in making me literary they are all of the one size, the
+      crossing of the Rubicon included.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I know how I came to be literary, and I will tell the steps that lead up
+      to it and brought it about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The crossing of the Rubicon was not the first one, it was hardly even a
+      recent one; I should have to go back ages before Caesar's day to
+      find the first one. To save space I will go back only a couple of
+      generations and start with an incident of my boyhood. When I was twelve
+      and a half years old, my father died. It was in the spring. The summer
+      came, and brought with it an epidemic of measles. For a time a child died
+      almost every day. The village was paralyzed with fright, distress,
+      despair. Children that were not smitten with the disease were imprisoned
+      in their homes to save them from the infection. In the homes there were no
+      cheerful faces, there was no music, there was no singing but of solemn
+      hymns, no voice but of prayer, no romping was allowed, no noise, no
+      laughter, the family moved spectrally about on tiptoe, in a ghostly hush.
+      I was a prisoner. My soul was steeped in this awful dreariness&mdash;and
+      in fear. At some time or other every day and every night a sudden shiver
+      shook me to the marrow, and I said to myself, &ldquo;There, I've got
+      it! and I shall die.&rdquo; Life on these miserable terms was not worth
+      living, and at last I made up my mind to get the disease and have it over,
+      one way or the other. I escaped from the house and went to the house of a
+      neighbor where a playmate of mine was very ill with the malady. When the
+      chance offered I crept into his room and got into bed with him. I was
+      discovered by his mother and sent back into captivity. But I had the
+      disease; they could not take that from me. I came near to dying. The whole
+      village was interested, and anxious, and sent for news of me every day;
+      and not only once a day, but several times. Everybody believed I would
+      die; but on the fourteenth day a change came for the worse and they were
+      disappointed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was a turning-point of my life. (Link number one.) For when I got
+      well my mother closed my school career and apprenticed me to a printer.
+      She was tired of trying to keep me out of mischief, and the adventure of
+      the measles decided her to put me into more masterful hands than hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I became a printer, and began to add one link after another to the chain
+      which was to lead me into the literary profession. A long road, but I
+      could not know that; and as I did not know what its goal was, or even that
+      it had one, I was indifferent. Also contented.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A young printer wanders around a good deal, seeking and finding work; and
+      seeking again, when necessity commands. N. B. Necessity is a CIRCUMSTANCE;
+      Circumstance is man's master&mdash;and when Circumstance commands,
+      he must obey; he may argue the matter&mdash;that is his privilege, just as
+      it is the honorable privilege of a falling body to argue with the
+      attraction of gravitation&mdash;but it won't do any good, he must
+      OBEY. I wandered for ten years, under the guidance and dictatorship of
+      Circumstance, and finally arrived in a city of Iowa, where I worked
+      several months. Among the books that interested me in those days was one
+      about the Amazon. The traveler told an alluring tale of his long voyage up
+      the great river from Para to the sources of the Madeira, through the heart
+      of an enchanted land, a land wastefully rich in tropical wonders, a
+      romantic land where all the birds and flowers and animals were of the
+      museum varieties, and where the alligator and the crocodile and the monkey
+      seemed as much at home as if they were in the Zoo. Also, he told an
+      astonishing tale about COCA, a vegetable product of miraculous powers,
+      asserting that it was so nourishing and so strength-giving that the native
+      of the mountains of the Madeira region would tramp up hill and down all
+      day on a pinch of powdered coca and require no other sustenance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was fired with a longing to ascend the Amazon. Also with a longing to
+      open up a trade in coca with all the world. During months I dreamed that
+      dream, and tried to contrive ways to get to Para and spring that splendid
+      enterprise upon an unsuspecting planet. But all in vain. A person may PLAN
+      as much as he wants to, but nothing of consequence is likely to come of it
+      until the magician <i>circumstance </i>steps in and takes the matter off
+      his hands. At last Circumstance came to my help. It was in this way.
+      Circumstance, to help or hurt another man, made him lose a fifty-dollar
+      bill in the street; and to help or hurt me, made me find it. I advertised
+      the find, and left for the Amazon the same day. This was another
+      turning-point, another link.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Could Circumstance have ordered another dweller in that town to go to the
+      Amazon and open up a world-trade in coca on a fifty-dollar basis and been
+      obeyed? No, I was the only one. There were other fools there&mdash;shoals
+      and shoals of them&mdash;but they were not of my kind. I was the only one
+      of my kind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Circumstance is powerful, but it cannot work alone; it has to have a
+      partner. Its partner is man's <i>temperament</i>&mdash;his natural
+      disposition. His temperament is not his invention, it is <i>born </i>in
+      him, and he has no authority over it, neither is he responsible for its
+      acts. He cannot change it, nothing can change it, nothing can modify it&mdash;except
+      temporarily. But it won't stay modified. It is permanent, like the
+      color of the man's eyes and the shape of his ears. Blue eyes are
+      gray in certain unusual lights; but they resume their natural color when
+      that stress is removed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A Circumstance that will coerce one man will have no effect upon a man of
+      a different temperament. If Circumstance had thrown the bank-note in
+      Caesar's way, his temperament would not have made him start for the
+      Amazon. His temperament would have compelled him to do something with the
+      money, but not that. It might have made him advertise the note&mdash;and
+      WAIT. We can't tell. Also, it might have made him go to New York and
+      buy into the Government, with results that would leave Tweed nothing to
+      learn when it came his turn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very well, Circumstance furnished the capital, and my temperament told me
+      what to do with it. Sometimes a temperament is an ass. When that is the
+      case the owner of it is an ass, too, and is going to remain one. Training,
+      experience, association, can temporarily so polish him, improve him, exalt
+      him that people will think he is a mule, but they will be mistaken.
+      Artificially he IS a mule, for the time being, but at bottom he is an ass
+      yet, and will remain one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By temperament I was the kind of person that DOES things. Does them, and
+      reflects afterward. So I started for the Amazon without reflecting and
+      without asking any questions. That was more than fifty years ago. In all
+      that time my temperament has not changed, by even a shade. I have been
+      punished many and many a time, and bitterly, for doing things and
+      reflecting afterward, but these tortures have been of no value to me; I
+      still do the thing commanded by Circumstance and Temperament, and reflect
+      afterward. Always violently. When I am reflecting, on those occasions,
+      even deaf persons can hear me think.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I went by the way of Cincinnati, and down the Ohio and Mississippi. My
+      idea was to take ship, at New Orleans, for Para. In New Orleans I
+      inquired, and found there was no ship leaving for Para. Also, that there
+      never had BEEN one leaving for Para. I reflected. A policeman came and
+      asked me what I was doing, and I told him. He made me move on, and said if
+      he caught me reflecting in the public street again he would run me in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After a few days I was out of money. Then Circumstance arrived, with
+      another turning-point of my life&mdash;a new link. On my way down, I had
+      made the acquaintance of a pilot. I begged him to teach me the river, and
+      he consented. I became a pilot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By and by Circumstance came again&mdash;introducing the Civil War, this
+      time, in order to push me ahead another stage or two toward the literary
+      profession. The boats stopped running, my livelihood was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Circumstance came to the rescue with a new turning-point and a fresh link.
+      My brother was appointed secretary to the new Territory of Nevada, and he
+      invited me to go with him and help him in his office. I accepted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Nevada, Circumstance furnished me the silver fever and I went into the
+      mines to make a fortune, as I supposed; but that was not the idea. The
+      idea was to advance me another step toward literature. For amusement I
+      scribbled things for the Virginia City <i>Enterprise</i>. One isn't
+      a printer ten years without setting up acres of good and bad literature,
+      and learning&mdash;unconsciously at first, consciously later&mdash;to
+      discriminate between the two, within his mental limitations; and meantime
+      he is unconsciously acquiring what is called a &ldquo;style.&rdquo; One of
+      my efforts attracted attention, and the <i>Enterprise </i>sent for me and
+      put me on its staff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so I became a journalist&mdash;another link. By and by Circumstance
+      and the Sacramento <i>union </i>sent me to the Sandwich Islands for five
+      or six months, to write up sugar. I did it; and threw in a good deal of
+      extraneous matter that hadn't anything to do with sugar. But it was
+      this extraneous matter that helped me to another link.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It made me notorious, and San Francisco invited me to lecture. Which I
+      did. And profitably. I had long had a desire to travel and see the world,
+      and now Circumstance had most kindly and unexpectedly hurled me upon the
+      platform and furnished me the means. So I joined the &ldquo;Quaker City
+      Excursion.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I returned to America, Circumstance was waiting on the pier&mdash;with
+      the <i>last </i>link&mdash;the conspicuous, the consummating, the
+      victorious link: I was asked to <i>write a book</i>, and I did it, and
+      called it <i>The Innocents Abroad</i>. Thus I became at last a member of
+      the literary guild. That was forty-two years ago, and I have been a member
+      ever since. Leaving the Rubicon incident away back where it belongs, I can
+      say with truth that the reason I am in the literary profession is because
+      I had the measles when I was twelve years old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      III
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now what interests me, as regards these details, is not the details
+      themselves, but the fact that none of them was foreseen by me, none of
+      them was planned by me, I was the author of none of them. Circumstance,
+      working in harness with my temperament, created them all and compelled
+      them all. I often offered help, and with the best intentions, but it was
+      rejected&mdash;as a rule, uncourteously. I could never plan a thing and
+      get it to come out the way I planned it. It came out some other way&mdash;some
+      way I had not counted upon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so I do not admire the human being&mdash;as an intellectual marvel&mdash;as
+      much as I did when I was young, and got him out of books, and did not know
+      him personally. When I used to read that such and such a general did a
+      certain brilliant thing, I believed it. Whereas it was not so.
+      Circumstance did it by help of his temperament. The circumstance would
+      have failed of effect with a general of another temperament: he might see
+      the chance, but lose the advantage by being by nature too slow or too
+      quick or too doubtful. Once General Grant was asked a question about a
+      matter which had been much debated by the public and the newspapers; he
+      answered the question without any hesitancy. &ldquo;General, who planned
+      the march through Georgia?&rdquo; &ldquo;The enemy!&rdquo; He added that
+      the enemy usually makes your plans for you. He meant that the enemy by
+      neglect or through force of circumstances leaves an opening for you, and
+      you see your chance and take advantage of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Circumstances do the planning for us all, no doubt, by help of our
+      temperaments. I see no great difference between a man and a watch, except
+      that the man is conscious and the watch isn't, and the man TRIES to
+      plan things and the watch doesn't. The watch doesn't wind
+      itself and doesn't regulate itself&mdash;these things are done
+      exteriorly. Outside influences, outside circumstances, wind the MAN and
+      regulate him. Left to himself, he wouldn't get regulated at all, and
+      the sort of time he would keep would not be valuable. Some rare men are
+      wonderful watches, with gold case, compensation balance, and all those
+      things, and some men are only simple and sweet and humble Waterburys. I am
+      a Waterbury. A Waterbury of that kind, some say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A nation is only an individual multiplied. It makes plans and Circumstance
+      comes and upsets them&mdash;or enlarges them. Some patriots throw the tea
+      overboard; some other patriots destroy a Bastille. The PLANS stop there;
+      then Circumstance comes in, quite unexpectedly, and turns these modest
+      riots into a revolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there was poor Columbus. He elaborated a deep plan to find a new route
+      to an old country. Circumstance revised his plan for him, and he found a
+      new <i>world</i>. And <i>he </i>gets the credit of it to this day. He hadn't
+      anything to do with it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Necessarily the scene of the real turning-point of my life (and of yours)
+      was the Garden of Eden. It was there that the first link was forged of the
+      chain that was ultimately to lead to the emptying of me into the literary
+      guild. Adam's TEMPERAMENT was the first command the Deity ever
+      issued to a human being on this planet. And it was the only command Adam
+      would NEVER be able to disobey. It said, &ldquo;Be weak, be water, be
+      characterless, be cheaply persuadable.&rdquo; The latter command, to let
+      the fruit alone, was certain to be disobeyed. Not by Adam himself, but by
+      his <i>temperament</i>&mdash;which he did not create and had no authority
+      over. For the <i>temperament </i>is the man; the thing tricked out with
+      clothes and named Man is merely its Shadow, nothing more. The law of the
+      tiger's temperament is, Thou shalt kill; the law of the sheep's
+      temperament is Thou shalt not kill. To issue later commands requiring the
+      tiger to let the fat stranger alone, and requiring the sheep to imbue its
+      hands in the blood of the lion is not worth while, for those commands <i>can'T</i>
+      be obeyed. They would invite to violations of the law of <i>temperament</i>,
+      which is supreme, and takes precedence of all other authorities. I cannot
+      help feeling disappointed in Adam and Eve. That is, in their temperaments.
+      Not in <i>them</i>, poor helpless young creatures&mdash;afflicted with
+      temperaments made out of butter; which butter was commanded to get into
+      contact with fire and <i>be melted</i>. What I cannot help wishing is,
+      that Adam and EVE had been postponed, and Martin Luther and Joan of Arc
+      put in their place&mdash;that splendid pair equipped with temperaments not
+      made of butter, but of asbestos. By neither sugary persuasions nor by hell
+      fire could Satan have beguiled <i>them </i>to eat the apple. There would
+      have been results! Indeed, yes. The apple would be intact today; there
+      would be no human race; there would be no YOU; there would be no <i>me</i>.
+      And the old, old creation-dawn scheme of ultimately launching me into the
+      literary guild would have been defeated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      HOW TO MAKE HISTORY DATES STICK
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      These chapters are for children, and I shall try to make the words large
+      enough to command respect. In the hope that you are listening, and that
+      you have confidence in me, I will proceed. Dates are difficult things to
+      acquire; and after they are acquired it is difficult to keep them in the
+      head. But they are very valuable. They are like the cattle-pens of a ranch&mdash;they
+      shut in the several brands of historical cattle, each within its own
+      fence, and keep them from getting mixed together. Dates are hard to
+      remember because they consist of figures; figures are monotonously
+      unstriking in appearance, and they don't take hold, they form no
+      pictures, and so they give the eye no chance to help. Pictures are the
+      thing. Pictures can make dates stick. They can make nearly anything stick&mdash;particularly
+      <i>if you make the pictures yourself</i>. Indeed, that is the great point&mdash;make
+      the pictures <i>yourself</i>. I know about this from experience. Thirty
+      years ago I was delivering a memorized lecture every night, and every
+      night I had to help myself with a page of notes to keep from getting
+      myself mixed. The notes consisted of beginnings of sentences, and were
+      eleven in number, and they ran something like this:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;<i>In that region the weather</i>&mdash;&rdquo; &ldquo;<i>at that
+      time it was a custom</i>&mdash;&rdquo; &ldquo;<i>but in california one
+      never heard</i>&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Eleven of them. They initialed the brief divisions of the lecture and
+      protected me against skipping. But they all looked about alike on the
+      page; they formed no picture; I had them by heart, but I could never with
+      certainty remember the order of their succession; therefore I always had
+      to keep those notes by me and look at them every little while. Once I
+      mislaid them; you will not be able to imagine the terrors of that evening.
+      I now saw that I must invent some other protection. So I got ten of the
+      initial letters by heart in their proper order&mdash;I, A, B, and so on&mdash;and
+      I went on the platform the next night with these marked in ink on my ten
+      finger-nails. But it didn't answer. I kept track of the fingers for
+      a while; then I lost it, and after that I was never quite sure which
+      finger I had used last. I couldn't lick off a letter after using it,
+      for while they could have made success certain it would also have provoked
+      too much curiosity. There was curiosity enough without that. To the
+      audience I seemed more interested in my fingernails than I was in my
+      subject; one or two persons asked me afterward what was the matter with my
+      hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was now that the idea of pictures occurred to me; then my troubles
+      passed away. In two minutes I made six pictures with a pen, and they did
+      the work of the eleven catch-sentences, and did it perfectly. I threw the
+      pictures away as soon as they were made, for I was sure I could shut my
+      eyes and see them any time. That was a quarter of a century ago; the
+      lecture vanished out of my head more than twenty years ago, but I could
+      rewrite it from the pictures&mdash;for they remain. Here are three of
+      them: (Fig. 1).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first one is a haystack&mdash;below it a rattlesnake&mdash;and it told
+      me where to begin to talk ranch-life in Carson Valley. The second one told
+      me where to begin to talk about a strange and violent wind that used to
+      burst upon Carson City from the Sierra Nevadas every afternoon at two o'clock
+      and try to blow the town away. The third picture, as you easily perceive,
+      is lightning; its duty was to remind me when it was time to begin to talk
+      about San Francisco weather, where there IS no lightning&mdash;nor
+      thunder, either&mdash;and it never failed me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I will give you a valuable hint. When a man is making a speech and you are
+      to follow him don't jot down notes to speak from, jot down PICTURES.
+      It is awkward and embarrassing to have to keep referring to notes; and
+      besides it breaks up your speech and makes it ragged and non-coherent; but
+      you can tear up your pictures as soon as you have made them&mdash;they
+      will stay fresh and strong in your memory in the order and sequence in
+      which you scratched them down. And many will admire to see what a good
+      memory you are furnished with, when perhaps your memory is not any better
+      than mine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sixteen years ago when my children were little creatures the governess was
+      trying to hammer some primer histories into their heads. Part of this
+      fun--if you like to call it that--consisted in the memorizing of the
+      accession dates of the thirty-seven personages who had ruled over England
+      from the Conqueror down. These little people found it a bitter, hard
+      contract. It was all dates, they all looked alike, and they wouldn't
+      stick. Day after day of the summer vacation dribbled by, and still the
+      kings held the fort; the children couldn't conquer any six of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With my lecture experience in mind I was aware that I could invent some
+      way out of the trouble with pictures, but I hoped a way could be found
+      which would let them romp in the open air while they learned the kings. I
+      found it, and then they mastered all the monarchs in a day or two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The idea was to make them <i>see </i>the reigns with their eyes; that
+      would be a large help. We were at the farm then. From the house-porch the
+      grounds sloped gradually down to the lower fence and rose on the right to
+      the high ground where my small work-den stood. A carriage-road wound
+      through the grounds and up the hill. I staked it out with the English
+      monarchs, beginning with the Conqueror, and you could stand on the porch
+      and clearly see every reign and its length, from the Conquest down to
+      Victoria, then in the forty-sixth year of her reign&mdash;<i>eight hundred
+      and seventeen years of</i> English history under your eye at once!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      English history was an unusually live topic in America just then. The
+      world had suddenly realized that while it was not noticing the Queen had
+      passed Henry VIII., passed Henry VI. and Elizabeth, and gaining in length
+      every day. Her reign had entered the list of the long ones; everybody was
+      interested now&mdash;it was watching a race. Would she pass the long
+      Edward? There was a possibility of it. Would she pass the long Henry?
+      Doubtful, most people said. The long George? Impossible! Everybody said
+      it. But we have lived to see her leave him two years behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I measured off 817 feet of the roadway, a foot representing a year, and at
+      the beginning and end of each reign I drove a three-foot white-pine stake
+      in the turf by the roadside and wrote the name and dates on it. Abreast
+      the middle of the porch-front stood a great granite flower-vase
+      overflowing with a cataract of bright-yellow flowers&mdash;I can't
+      think of their name. The vase was William the Conqueror. We put his name
+      on it and his accession date, 1066. We started from that and measured off
+      twenty-one feet of the road, and drove William Rufus's stake; then
+      thirteen feet and drove the first Henry's stake; then thirty-five
+      feet and drove Stephen's; then nineteen feet, which brought us just
+      past the summer-house on the left; then we staked out thirty-five, ten,
+      and seventeen for the second Henry and Richard and John; turned the curve
+      and entered upon just what was needed for Henry III.&mdash;a level,
+      straight stretch of fifty-six feet of road without a crinkle in it. And it
+      lay exactly in front of the house, in the middle of the grounds. There
+      couldn't have been a better place for that long reign; you could
+      stand on the porch and see those two wide-apart stakes almost with your
+      eyes shut. (Fig. 2.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That isn't the shape of the road&mdash;I have bunched it up like
+      that to save room. The road had some great curves in it, but their gradual
+      sweep was such that they were no mar to history. No, in our road one could
+      tell at a glance who was who by the size of the vacancy between stakes&mdash;with
+      <i>locality </i>to help, of course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Although I am away off here in a Swedish village (1) and those stakes did
+      not stand till the snow came, I can see them today as plainly as ever; and
+      whenever I think of an English monarch his stakes rise before me of their
+      own accord and I notice the large or small space which he takes up on our
+      road. Are your kings spaced off in your mind? When you think of Richard
+      III. and of James II. do the durations of their reigns seem about alike to
+      you? It isn't so to me; I always notice that there's a foot's
+      difference. When you think of Henry III. do you see a great long stretch
+      of straight road? I do; and just at the end where it joins on to Edward I.
+      I always see a small pear-bush with its green fruit hanging down. When I
+      think of the Commonwealth I see a shady little group of these small
+      saplings which we called the oak parlor; when I think of George III. I see
+      him stretching up the hill, part of him occupied by a flight of stone
+      steps; and I can locate Stephen to an inch when he comes into my mind, for
+      he just filled the stretch which went by the summer-house. Victoria's
+      reign reached almost to my study door on the first little summit; there's
+      sixteen feet to be added now; I believe that that would carry it to a big
+      pine-tree that was shattered by some lightning one summer when it was
+      trying to hit me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We got a good deal of fun out of the history road; and exercise, too. We
+      trotted the course from the conqueror to the study, the children calling
+      out the names, dates, and length of reigns as we passed the stakes, going
+      a good gait along the long reigns, but slowing down when we came upon
+      people like Mary and Edward VI., and the short Stuart and Plantagenet, to
+      give time to get in the statistics. I offered prizes, too&mdash;apples. I
+      threw one as far as I could send it, and the child that first shouted the
+      reign it fell in got the apple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The children were encouraged to stop locating things as being &ldquo;over
+      by the arbor,&rdquo; or &ldquo;in the oak parlor,&rdquo; or &ldquo;up at
+      the stone steps,&rdquo; and say instead that the things were in Stephen,
+      or in the Commonwealth, or in George III. They got the habit without
+      trouble. To have the long road mapped out with such exactness was a great
+      boon for me, for I had the habit of leaving books and other articles lying
+      around everywhere, and had not previously been able to definitely name the
+      place, and so had often been obliged to go to fetch them myself, to save
+      time and failure; but now I could name the reign I left them in, and send
+      the children.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next I thought I would measure off the French reigns, and peg them
+      alongside the English ones, so that we could always have contemporaneous
+      French history under our eyes as we went our English rounds. We pegged
+      them down to the Hundred Years' War, then threw the idea aside, I do
+      not now remember why. After that we made the English pegs fence in
+      European and American history as well as English, and that answered very
+      well. English and alien poets, statesmen, artists, heroes, battles,
+      plagues, cataclysms, revolutions&mdash;we shoveled them all into the
+      English fences according to their dates. Do you understand? We gave
+      Washington's birth to George II.'s pegs and his death to
+      George III.'s; George II. got the Lisbon earthquake and George III.
+      the Declaration of Independence. Goethe, Shakespeare, Napoleon,
+      Savonarola, Joan of Arc, the French Revolution, the Edict of Nantes,
+      Clive, Wellington, Waterloo, Plassey, Patay, Cowpens, Saratoga, the Battle
+      of the Boyne, the invention of the logarithms, the microscope, the
+      steam-engine, the telegraph&mdash;anything and everything all over the
+      world&mdash;we dumped it all in among the English pegs according to its
+      date and regardless of its nationality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the road-pegging scheme had not succeeded I should have lodged the
+      kings in the children's heads by means of pictures&mdash;that is, I
+      should have tried. It might have failed, for the pictures could only be
+      effective <i>when made by the pupil</i>; not the master, for it is the
+      work put upon the drawing that makes the drawing stay in the memory, and
+      my children were too little to make drawings at that time. And, besides,
+      they had no talent for art, which is strange, for in other ways they are
+      like me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I will develop the picture plan now, hoping that you will be able to
+      use it. It will come good for indoors when the weather is bad and one
+      cannot go outside and peg a road. Let us imagine that the kings are a
+      procession, and that they have come out of the Ark and down Ararat for
+      exercise and are now starting back again up the zigzag road. This will
+      bring several of them into view at once, and each zigzag will represent
+      the length of a king's reign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so on. You will have plenty of space, for by my project you will use
+      the parlor wall. You do not mark on the wall; that would cause trouble.
+      You only attach bits of paper to it with pins or thumb-tacks. These will
+      leave no mark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Take your pen now, and twenty-one pieces of white paper, each two inches
+      square, and we will do the twenty-one years of the Conqueror's
+      reign. On each square draw a picture of a whale and write the dates and
+      term of service. We choose the whale for several reasons: its name and
+      William's begin with the same letter; it is the biggest fish that
+      swims, and William is the most conspicuous figure in English history in
+      the way of a landmark; finally, a whale is about the easiest thing to
+      draw. By the time you have drawn twenty-one wales and written &ldquo;William
+      I.&mdash;1066-1087&mdash;twenty-one years&rdquo; twenty-one times, those
+      details will be your property; you cannot dislodge them from your memory
+      with anything but dynamite. I will make a sample for you to copy: (Fig.
+      3).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have got his chin up too high, but that is no matter; he is looking for
+      Harold. It may be that a whale hasn't that fin up there on his back,
+      but I do not remember; and so, since there is a doubt, it is best to err
+      on the safe side. He looks better, anyway, than he would without it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Be very careful and <i>attentive </i>while you are drawing your first
+      whale from my sample and writing the word and figures under it, so that
+      you will not need to copy the sample any more. Compare your copy with the
+      sample; examine closely; if you find you have got everything right and can
+      shut your eyes and see the picture and call the words and figures, then
+      turn the sample and copy upside down and make the next copy from memory;
+      and also the next and next, and so on, always drawing and writing from
+      memory until you have finished the whole twenty-one. This will take you
+      twenty minutes, or thirty, and by that time you will find that you can
+      make a whale in less time than an unpracticed person can make a sardine;
+      also, up to the time you die you will always be able to furnish William's
+      dates to any ignorant person that inquires after them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You will now take thirteen pieces of BLUE paper, each two inches square,
+      and do William II. (Fig. 4.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Make him spout his water forward instead of backward; also make him small,
+      and stick a harpoon in him and give him that sick look in the eye.
+      Otherwise you might seem to be continuing the other William, and that
+      would be confusing and a damage. It is quite right to make him small; he
+      was only about a No. 11 whale, or along there somewhere; there wasn't
+      room in him for his father's great spirit. The barb of that harpoon
+      ought not to show like that, because it is down inside the whale and ought
+      to be out of sight, but it cannot be helped; if the barb were removed
+      people would think some one had stuck a whip-stock into the whale. It is
+      best to leave the barb the way it is, then every one will know it is a
+      harpoon and attending to business. Remember&mdash;draw from the copy only
+      once; make your other twelve and the inscription from memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the truth is that whenever you have copied a picture and its
+      inscription once from my sample and two or three times from memory the
+      details will stay with you and be hard to forget. After that, if you like,
+      you may make merely the whale's <i>head and water-spout</i> for the
+      Conqueror till you end his reign, each time <i>saying </i>the inscription
+      in place of writing it; and in the case of William II. make the <i>harpoon
+      </i>alone, and say over the inscription each time you do it. You see, it
+      will take nearly twice as long to do the first set as it will to do the
+      second, and that will give you a marked sense of the difference in length
+      of the two reigns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next do Henry I. on thirty-five squares of <i>red </i>paper. (Fig. 5.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That is a hen, and suggests Henry by furnishing the first syllable. When
+      you have repeated the hen and the inscription until you are perfectly sure
+      of them, draw merely the hen's head the rest of the thirty-five
+      times, saying over the inscription each time. Thus: (Fig. 6).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You begin to understand now how this procession is going to look when it
+      is on the wall. First there will be the Conqueror's twenty-one
+      whales and water-spouts, the twenty-one white squares joined to one
+      another and making a white stripe three and one-half feet long; the
+      thirteen blue squares of William II. will be joined to that&mdash;a blue
+      stripe two feet, two inches long, followed by Henry's red stripe
+      five feet, ten inches long, and so on. The colored divisions will smartly
+      show to the eye the difference in the length of the reigns and impress the
+      proportions on the memory and the understanding. (Fig. 7.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stephen of Blois comes next. He requires nineteen two-inch squares of <i>yellow</i>
+      paper. (Fig. 8.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That is a steer. The sound suggests the beginning of Stephen's name.
+      I choose it for that reason. I can make a better steer than that when I am
+      not excited. But this one will do. It is a good-enough steer for history.
+      The tail is defective, but it only wants straightening out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next comes Henry II. Give him thirty-five squares of <i>red </i>paper.
+      These hens must face west, like the former ones. (Fig. 9.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This hen differs from the other one. He is on his way to inquire what has
+      been happening in Canterbury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now we arrive at Richard I., called Richard of the Lion-heart because he
+      was a brave fighter and was never so contented as when he was leading
+      crusades in Palestine and neglecting his affairs at home. Give him ten
+      squares of <i>white </i>paper. (Fig. 10).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That is a lion. His office is to remind you of the lion-hearted Richard.
+      There is something the matter with his legs, but I do not quite know what
+      it is, they do not seem right. I think the hind ones are the most
+      unsatisfactory; the front ones are well enough, though it would be better
+      if they were rights and lefts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next comes King John, and he was a poor circumstance. He was called
+      Lackland. He gave his realm to the Pope. Let him have seventeen squares of
+      <i>yellow </i>paper. (Fig. 11.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That creature is a jamboree. It looks like a trademark, but that is only
+      an accident and not intentional. It is prehistoric and extinct. It used to
+      roam the earth in the Old Silurian times, and lay eggs and catch fish and
+      climb trees and live on fossils; for it was of a mixed breed, which was
+      the fashion then. It was very fierce, and the Old Silurians were afraid of
+      it, but this is a tame one. Physically it has no representative now, but
+      its mind has been transmitted. First I drew it sitting down, but have
+      turned it the other way now because I think it looks more attractive and
+      spirited when one end of it is galloping. I love to think that in this
+      attitude it gives us a pleasant idea of John coming all in a happy
+      excitement to see what the barons have been arranging for him at
+      Runnymede, while the other one gives us an idea of him sitting down to
+      wring his hands and grieve over it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We now come to Henry III.; <i>red </i>squares again, of course&mdash;fifty-six
+      of them. We must make all the Henrys the same color; it will make their
+      long reigns show up handsomely on the wall. Among all the eight Henrys
+      there were but two short ones. A lucky name, as far as longevity goes. The
+      reigns of six of the Henrys cover 227 years. It might have been well to
+      name all the royal princes Henry, but this was overlooked until it was too
+      late. (Fig. 12.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is the best one yet. He is on his way (1265) to have a look at the
+      first House of Commons in English history. It was a monumental event, the
+      situation of the House, and was the second great liberty landmark which
+      the century had set up. I have made Henry looking glad, but this was not
+      intentional.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edward I. comes next; <i>light-brown</i> paper, thirty-five squares. (Fig.
+      13.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That is an editor. He is trying to think of a word. He props his feet on
+      the chair, which is the editor's way; then he can think better. I do
+      not care much for this one; his ears are not alike; still, editor suggests
+      the sound of Edward, and he will do. I could make him better if I had a
+      model, but I made this one from memory. But it is no particular matter;
+      they all look alike, anyway. They are conceited and troublesome, and don't
+      pay enough. Edward was the first really English king that had yet occupied
+      the throne. The editor in the picture probably looks just as Edward looked
+      when it was first borne in upon him that this was so. His whole attitude
+      expressed gratification and pride mixed with stupefaction and
+      astonishment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edward II. now; twenty <i>blue </i>squares. (Fig. 14.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Another editor. That thing behind his ear is his pencil. Whenever he finds
+      a bright thing in your manuscript he strikes it out with that. That does
+      him good, and makes him smile and show his teeth, the way he is doing in
+      the picture. This one has just been striking out a smart thing, and now he
+      is sitting there with his thumbs in his vest-holes, gloating. They are
+      full of envy and malice, editors are. This picture will serve to remind
+      you that Edward II. was the first English king who was <i>deposed</i>.
+      Upon demand, he signed his deposition himself. He had found kingship a
+      most aggravating and disagreeable occupation, and you can see by the look
+      of him that he is glad he resigned. He has put his blue pencil up for good
+      now. He had struck out many a good thing with it in his time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edward III. next; fifty <i>red </i>squares. (Fig. 15.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This editor is a critic. He has pulled out his carving-knife and his
+      tomahawk and is starting after a book which he is going to have for
+      breakfast. This one's arms are put on wrong. I did not notice it at
+      first, but I see it now. Somehow he has got his right arm on his left
+      shoulder, and his left arm on the right shoulder, and this shows us the
+      back of his hands in both instances. It makes him left-handed all around,
+      which is a thing which has never happened before, except perhaps in a
+      museum. That is the way with art, when it is not acquired but born to you:
+      you start in to make some simple little thing, not suspecting that your
+      genius is beginning to work and swell and strain in secret, and all of a
+      sudden there is a convulsion and you fetch out something astonishing. This
+      is called inspiration. It is an accident; you never know when it is
+      coming. I might have tried as much as a year to think of such a strange
+      thing as an all-around left-handed man and I could not have done it, for
+      the more you try to think of an unthinkable thing the more it eludes you;
+      but it can't elude inspiration; you have only to bait with
+      inspiration and you will get it every time. Look at Botticelli's
+      &ldquo;Spring.&rdquo; Those snaky women were unthinkable, but inspiration
+      secured them for us, thanks to goodness. It is too late to reorganize this
+      editor-critic now; we will leave him as he is. He will serve to remind us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Richard II. next; twenty-two <i>white </i>squares. (Fig. 16.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We use the lion again because this is another Richard. Like Edward II., he
+      was <i>deposed</i>. He is taking a last sad look at his crown before they
+      take it away. There was not room enough and I have made it too small; but
+      it never fitted him, anyway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now we turn the corner of the century with a new line of monarchs&mdash;the
+      Lancastrian kings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henry IV.; fourteen squares of <i>yellow </i>paper. (Fig. 17.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This hen has laid the egg of a new dynasty and realizes the imposing
+      magnitude of the event. She is giving notice in the usual way. You notice
+      I am improving in the construction of hens. At first I made them too much
+      like other animals, but this one is orthodox. I mention this to encourage
+      you. You will find that the more you practice the more accurate you will
+      become. I could always draw animals, but before I was educated I could not
+      tell what kind they were when I got them done, but now I can. Keep up your
+      courage; it will be the same with you, although you may not think it. This
+      Henry died the year after Joan of Arc was born.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henry V.; nine <i>blue </i>squares. (Fig. 18)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There you see him lost in meditation over the monument which records the
+      amazing figures of the battle of Agincourt. French history says 20,000
+      Englishmen routed 80,000 Frenchmen there; and English historians say that
+      the French loss, in killed and wounded, was 60,000.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henry VI.; thirty-nine <i>red </i>squares. (Fig. 19)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is poor Henry VI., who reigned long and scored many misfortunes and
+      humiliations. Also two great disasters: he lost France to Joan of Arc and
+      he lost the throne and ended the dynasty which Henry IV. had started in
+      business with such good prospects. In the picture we see him sad and weary
+      and downcast, with the scepter falling from his nerveless grasp. It is a
+      pathetic quenching of a sun which had risen in such splendor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edward IV.; twenty-two <i>light-brown</i> squares. (Fig. 20.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That is a society editor, sitting there elegantly dressed, with his legs
+      crossed in that indolent way, observing the clothes the ladies wear, so
+      that he can describe them for his paper and make them out finer than they
+      are and get bribes for it and become wealthy. That flower which he is
+      wearing in his buttonhole is a rose&mdash;a white rose, a York rose&mdash;and
+      will serve to remind us of the War of the Roses, and that the white one
+      was the winning color when Edward got the throne and dispossessed the
+      Lancastrian dynasty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edward V.; one-third of a <i>black </i>square. (Fig. 21.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His uncle Richard had him murdered in the tower. When you get the reigns
+      displayed upon the wall this one will be conspicuous and easily
+      remembered. It is the shortest one in English history except Lady Jane
+      Grey's, which was only nine days. She is never officially recognized
+      as a monarch of England, but if you or I should ever occupy a throne we
+      should like to have proper notice taken of it; and it would be only fair
+      and right, too, particularly if we gained nothing by it and lost our lives
+      besides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Richard III.; two <i>white </i>squares. (Fig. 22.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That is not a very good lion, but Richard was not a very good king. You
+      would think that this lion has two heads, but that is not so; one is only
+      a shadow. There would be shadows for the rest of him, but there was not
+      light enough to go round, it being a dull day, with only fleeting
+      sun-glimpses now and then. Richard had a humped back and a hard heart, and
+      fell at the battle of Bosworth. I do not know the name of that flower in
+      the pot, but we will use it as Richard's trade-mark, for it is said
+      that it grows in only one place in the world&mdash;Bosworth Field&mdash;and
+      tradition says it never grew there until Richard's royal blood
+      warmed its hidden seed to life and made it grow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henry VII.; twenty-four <i>blue </i>squares. (Fig. 23.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henry VII. had no liking for wars and turbulence; he preferred peace and
+      quiet and the general prosperity which such conditions create. He liked to
+      sit on that kind of eggs on his own private account as well as the nation's,
+      and hatch them out and count up the result. When he died he left his heir
+      2,000,000 pounds, which was a most unusual fortune for a king to possess
+      in those days. Columbus's great achievement gave him the
+      discovery-fever, and he sent Sebastian Cabot to the New World to search
+      out some foreign territory for England. That is Cabot's ship up
+      there in the corner. This was the first time that England went far abroad
+      to enlarge her estate&mdash;but not the last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henry VIII.; thirty-eight <i>red </i>squares. (Fig. 24.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That is Henry VIII. suppressing a monastery in his arrogant fashion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edward VI.; six squares of <i>yellow </i>paper. (Fig. 25.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He is the last Edward to date. It is indicated by that thing over his
+      head, which is a <i>last</i>&mdash;shoemaker's last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mary; five squares of <i>black </i>paper. (Fig. 26.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The picture represents a burning martyr. He is in back of the smoke. The
+      first three letters of Mary's name and the first three of the word
+      martyr are the same. Martyrdom was going out in her day and martyrs were
+      becoming scarcer, but she made several. For this reason she is sometimes
+      called Bloody Mary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This brings us to the reign of Elizabeth, after passing through a period
+      of nearly five hundred years of England's history&mdash;492 to be
+      exact. I think you may now be trusted to go the rest of the way without
+      further lessons in art or inspirations in the matter of ideas. You have
+      the scheme now, and something in the ruler's name or career will
+      suggest the pictorial symbol. The effort of inventing such things will not
+      only help your memory, but will develop originality in art. See what it
+      has done for me. If you do not find the parlor wall big enough for all of
+      England's history, continue it into the dining-room and into other
+      rooms. This will make the walls interesting and instructive and really
+      worth something instead of being just flat things to hold the house
+      together.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     1.  Summer of 1899.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE MEMORABLE ASSASSINATION
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Note.&mdash;The assassination of the Empress of Austria at Geneva,
+      September 10, 1898, occurred during Mark Twain's Austrian residence.
+      The news came to him at Kaltenleutgeben, a summer resort a little way out
+      of Vienna. To his friend, the Rev. Jos. H. Twichell, he wrote:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That good and unoffending lady, the Empress, is killed by a madman,
+      and I am living in the midst of world-history again. The Queen's
+      Jubilee last year, the invasion of the Reichsrath by the police, and now
+      this murder, which will still be talked of and described and painted a
+      thousand years from now. To have a personal friend of the wearer of two
+      crowns burst in at the gate in the deep dusk of the evening and say, in a
+      voice broken with tears, 'My God! the Empress is murdered,'
+      and fly toward her home before we can utter a question&mdash;why, it
+      brings the giant event home to you, makes you a part of it and personally
+      interested; it is as if your neighbor, Antony, should come flying and say,
+      'Caesar is butchered&mdash;the head of the world is fallen!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course there is no talk but of this. The mourning is universal
+      and genuine, the consternation is stupefying. The Austrian Empire is being
+      draped with black. Vienna will be a spectacle to see by next Saturday,
+      when the funeral cortege marches.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was strongly moved by the tragedy, impelled to write concerning it. He
+      prepared the article which here follows, but did not offer it for
+      publication, perhaps feeling that his own close association with the court
+      circles at the moment prohibited this personal utterance. There appears no
+      such reason for withholding its publication now.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. B. P.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The more one thinks of the assassination, the more imposing and tremendous
+      the event becomes. The destruction of a city is a large event, but it is
+      one which repeats itself several times in a thousand years; the
+      destruction of a third part of a nation by plague and famine is a large
+      event, but it has happened several times in history; the murder of a king
+      is a large event, but it has been frequent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The murder of an empress is the largest of all large events. One must go
+      back about two thousand years to find an instance to put with this one.
+      The oldest family of unchallenged descent in Christendom lives in Rome and
+      traces its line back seventeen hundred years, but no member of it has been
+      present in the earth when an empress was murdered, until now. Many a time
+      during these seventeen centuries members of that family have been startled
+      with the news of extraordinary events&mdash;the destruction of cities, the
+      fall of thrones, the murder of kings, the wreck of dynasties, the
+      extinction of religions, the birth of new systems of government; and their
+      descendants have been by to hear of it and talk about it when all these
+      things were repeated once, twice, or a dozen times&mdash;but to even that
+      family has come news at last which is not staled by use, has no duplicates
+      in the long reach of its memory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is an event which confers a curious distinction upon every individual
+      now living in the world: he has stood alive and breathing in the presence
+      of an event such as has not fallen within the experience of any traceable
+      or untraceable ancestor of his for twenty centuries, and it is not likely
+      to fall within the experience of any descendant of his for twenty more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Time has made some great changes since the Roman days. The murder of an
+      empress then&mdash;even the assassination of Caesar himself&mdash;could
+      not electrify the world as this murder has electrified it. For one reason,
+      there was then not much of a world to electrify; it was a small world, as
+      to known bulk, and it had rather a thin population, besides; and for
+      another reason, the news traveled so slowly that its tremendous initial
+      thrill wasted away, week by week and month by month, on the journey, and
+      by the time it reached the remoter regions there was but little of it
+      left. It was no longer a fresh event, it was a thing of the far past; it
+      was not properly news, it was history. But the world is enormous now, and
+      prodigiously populated&mdash;that is one change; and another is the
+      lightning swiftness of the flight of tidings, good and bad. &ldquo;The
+      Empress is murdered!&rdquo; When those amazing words struck upon my ear in
+      this Austrian village last Saturday, three hours after the disaster, I
+      knew that it was already old news in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, San
+      Francisco, Japan, China, Melbourne, Cape Town, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta,
+      and that the entire globe with a single voice, was cursing the perpetrator
+      of it. Since the telegraph first began to stretch itself wider and wider
+      about the earth, larger and increasingly larger areas of the world have,
+      as time went on, received simultaneously the shock of a great calamity;
+      but this is the first time in history that the entire surface of the globe
+      has been swept in a single instant with the thrill of so gigantic an
+      event.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And who is the miracle-worker who has furnished to the world this
+      spectacle? All the ironies are compacted in the answer. He is at the
+      bottom of the human ladder, as the accepted estimates of degree and value
+      go: a soiled and patched young loafer, without gifts, without talents,
+      without education, without morals, without character, without any born
+      charm or any acquired one that wins or beguiles or attracts; without a
+      single grace of mind or heart or hand that any tramp or prostitute could
+      envy him; an unfaithful private in the ranks, an incompetent stone-cutter,
+      an inefficient lackey; in a word, a mangy, offensive, empty, unwashed,
+      vulgar, gross, mephitic, timid, sneaking, human polecat. And it was within
+      the privileges and powers of this sarcasm upon the human race to reach up&mdash;up&mdash;up&mdash;and
+      strike from its far summit in the social skies the world's accepted
+      ideal of Glory and Might and Splendor and Sacredness! It realizes to us
+      what sorry shows and shadows we are. Without our clothes and our pedestals
+      we are poor things and much of a size; our dignities are not real, our
+      pomps are shams. At our best and stateliest we are not suns, as we
+      pretended, and teach, and believe, but only candles; and any bummer can
+      blow us out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now we get realized to us once more another thing which we often
+      forget&mdash;or try to: that no man has a wholly undiseased mind; that in
+      one way or another all men are mad. Many are mad for money. When this
+      madness is in a mild form it is harmless and the man passes for sane; but
+      when it develops powerfully and takes possession of the man, it can make
+      him cheat, rob, and kill; and when he has got his fortune and lost it
+      again it can land him in the asylum or the suicide's coffin. Love is
+      a madness; if thwarted it develops fast; it can grow to a frenzy of
+      despair and make an otherwise sane and highly gifted prince, like Rudolph,
+      throw away the crown of an empire and snuff out his own life. All the
+      whole list of desires, predilections, aversions, ambitions, passions,
+      cares, griefs, regrets, remorses, are incipient madness, and ready to
+      grow, spread, and consume, when the occasion comes. There are no healthy
+      minds, and nothing saves any man but accident&mdash;the accident of not
+      having his malady put to the supreme test.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the commonest forms of madness is the desire to be noticed, the
+      pleasure derived from being noticed. Perhaps it is not merely common, but
+      universal. In its mildest form it doubtless is universal. Every child is
+      pleased at being noticed; many intolerable children put in their whole
+      time in distressing and idiotic effort to attract the attention of
+      visitors; boys are always &ldquo;showing off&rdquo;; apparently all men
+      and women are glad and grateful when they find that they have done a thing
+      which has lifted them for a moment out of obscurity and caused wondering
+      talk. This common madness can develop, by nurture, into a hunger for
+      notoriety in one, for fame in another. It is this madness for being
+      noticed and talked about which has invented kingship and the thousand
+      other dignities, and tricked them out with pretty and showy fineries; it
+      has made kings pick one another's pockets, scramble for one another's
+      crowns and estates, slaughter one another's subjects; it has raised
+      up prize-fighters, and poets, and village mayors, and little and big
+      politicians, and big and little charity-founders, and bicycle champions,
+      and banditti chiefs, and frontier desperadoes, and Napoleons. Anything to
+      get notoriety; anything to set the village, or the township, or the city,
+      or the State, or the nation, or the planet shouting, &ldquo;Look&mdash;there
+      he goes&mdash;that is the man!&rdquo; And in five minutes' time, at
+      no cost of brain, or labor, or genius this mangy Italian tramp has beaten
+      them all, transcended them all, outstripped them all, for in time their
+      names will perish; but by the friendly help of the insane newspapers and
+      courts and kings and historians, his is safe to live and thunder in the
+      world all down the ages as long as human speech shall endure! Oh, if it
+      were not so tragic how ludicrous it would be!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was so blameless, the Empress; and so beautiful, in mind and heart, in
+      person and spirit; and whether with a crown upon her head or without it
+      and nameless, a grace to the human race, and almost a justification of its
+      creation; <i>would </i>be, indeed, but that the animal that struck her
+      down re-establishes the doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In her character was every quality that in woman invites and engages
+      respect, esteem, affection, and homage. Her tastes, her instincts, and her
+      aspirations were all high and fine and all her life her heart and brain
+      were busy with activities of a noble sort. She had had bitter griefs, but
+      they did not sour her spirit, and she had had the highest honors in the
+      world's gift, but she went her simple way unspoiled. She knew all
+      ranks, and won them all, and made them her friends. An English fisherman's
+      wife said, &ldquo;When a body was in trouble she didn't send her
+      help, she brought it herself.&rdquo; Crowns have adorned others, but she
+      adorned her crowns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a swift celebrity the assassin achieved. And it is marked by some
+      curious contrasts. At noon last Saturday there was no one in the world who
+      would have considered acquaintanceship with him a thing worth claiming or
+      mentioning; no one would have been vain of such an acquaintanceship; the
+      humblest honest boot-black would not have valued the fact that he had met
+      him or seen him at some time or other; he was sunk in abysmal obscurity,
+      he was away beneath the notice of the bottom grades of officialdom. Three
+      hours later he was the one subject of conversation in the world, the
+      gilded generals and admirals and governors were discussing him, all the
+      kings and queens and emperors had put aside their other interests to talk
+      about him. And wherever there was a man, at the summit of the world or the
+      bottom of it, who by chance had at some time or other come across that
+      creature, he remembered it with a secret satisfaction, and <i>mentioned
+      </i>it&mdash;for it was a distinction, now! It brings human dignity pretty
+      low, and for a moment the thing is not quite realizable&mdash;but it is
+      perfectly true. If there is a king who can remember, now, that he once saw
+      that creature in a time past, he has let that fact out, in a more or less
+      studiedly casual and indifferent way, some dozens of times during the past
+      week. For a king is merely human; the inside of him is exactly like the
+      inside of any other person; and it is human to find satisfaction in being
+      in a kind of personal way connected with amazing events. We are all
+      privately vain of such a thing; we are all alike; a king is a king by
+      accident; the reason the rest of us are not kings is merely due to another
+      accident; we are all made out of the same clay, and it is a sufficiently
+      poor quality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Below the kings, these remarks are in the air these days; I know it as
+      well as if I were hearing them:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE COMMANDER: &ldquo;He was in my army.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE GENERAL: &ldquo;He was in my corps.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE COLONEL: &ldquo;He was in my regiment. A brute. I remember him well.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE CAPTAIN: &ldquo;He was in my company. A troublesome scoundrel. I
+      remember him well.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE SERGEANT: &ldquo;Did I know him? As well as I know you. Why, every
+      morning I used to&mdash;&rdquo; etc., etc.; a glad, long story, told to
+      devouring ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THE LANDLADY: &ldquo;Many's the time he boarded with me. I can show
+      you his very room, and the very bed he slept in. And the charcoal mark
+      there on the wall&mdash;he made that. My little Johnny saw him do it with
+      his own eyes. Didn't you, Johnny?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is easy to see, by the papers, that the magistrate and the constables
+      and the jailer treasure up the assassin's daily remarks and doings
+      as precious things, and as wallowing this week in seas of blissful
+      distinction. The interviewer, too; he tries to let on that he is not vain
+      of his privilege of contact with this man whom few others are allowed to
+      gaze upon, but he is human, like the rest, and can no more keep his vanity
+      corked in than could you or I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some think that this murder is a frenzied revolt against the criminal
+      militarism which is impoverishing Europe and driving the starving poor
+      mad. That has many crimes to answer for, but not this one, I think. One
+      may not attribute to this man a generous indignation against the wrongs
+      done the poor; one may not dignify him with a generous impulse of any
+      kind. When he saw his photograph and said, &ldquo;I shall be celebrated,&rdquo;
+      he laid bare the impulse that prompted him. It was a mere hunger for
+      notoriety. There is another confessed case of the kind which is as old as
+      history&mdash;the burning of the temple of Ephesus.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the inadequate attempts to account for the assassination we must
+      concede high rank to the many which have described it as a &ldquo;peculiarly
+      brutal crime&rdquo; and then added that it was &ldquo;ordained from above.&rdquo;
+      I think this verdict will not be popular &ldquo;above.&rdquo; If the deed
+      was ordained from above, there is no rational way of making this prisoner
+      even partially responsible for it, and the Genevan court cannot condemn
+      him without manifestly committing a crime. Logic is logic, and by
+      disregarding its laws even the most pious and showy theologian may be
+      beguiled into preferring charges which should not be ventured upon except
+      in the shelter of plenty of lightning-rods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I witnessed the funeral procession, in company with friends, from the
+      windows of the Krantz, Vienna's sumptuous new hotel. We came into
+      town in the middle of the forenoon, and I went on foot from the station.
+      Black flags hung down from all the houses; the aspects were Sunday-like;
+      the crowds on the sidewalks were quiet and moved slowly; very few people
+      were smoking; many ladies wore deep mourning, gentlemen were in black as a
+      rule; carriages were speeding in all directions, with footmen and coachmen
+      in black clothes and wearing black cocked hats; the shops were closed; in
+      many windows were pictures of the Empress: as a beautiful young bride of
+      seventeen; as a serene and majestic lady with added years; and finally in
+      deep black and without ornaments&mdash;the costume she always wore after
+      the tragic death of her son nine years ago, for her heart broke then, and
+      life lost almost all its value for her. The people stood grouped before
+      these pictures, and now and then one saw women and girls turn away wiping
+      the tears from their eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In front of the Krantz is an open square; over the way was the church
+      where the funeral services would be held. It is small and old and severely
+      plain, plastered outside and whitewashed or painted, and with no ornament
+      but a statue of a monk in a niche over the door, and above that a small
+      black flag. But in its crypt lie several of the great dead of the House of
+      Habsburg, among them Maria Theresa and Napoleon's son, the Duke of
+      Reichstadt. Hereabouts was a Roman camp, once, and in it the Emperor
+      Marcus Aurelius died a thousand years before the first Habsburg ruled in
+      Vienna, which was six hundred years ago and more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little church is packed in among great modern stores and houses, and
+      the windows of them were full of people. Behind the vast plate-glass
+      windows of the upper floors of a house on the corner one glimpsed terraced
+      masses of fine-clothed men and women, dim and shimmery, like people under
+      water. Under us the square was noiseless, but it was full of citizens;
+      officials in fine uniforms were flitting about on errands, and in a
+      doorstep sat a figure in the uttermost raggedness of poverty, the feet
+      bare, the head bent humbly down; a youth of eighteen or twenty, he was,
+      and through the field-glass one could see that he was tearing apart and
+      munching riffraff that he had gathered somewhere. Blazing uniforms flashed
+      by him, making a sparkling contrast with his drooping ruin of moldy rags,
+      but he took no notice; he was not there to grieve for a nation's
+      disaster; he had his own cares, and deeper. From two directions two long
+      files of infantry came plowing through the pack and press in silence;
+      there was a low, crisp order and the crowd vanished, the square save the
+      sidewalks was empty, the private mourner was gone. Another order, the
+      soldiers fell apart and enclosed the square in a double-ranked human
+      fence. It was all so swift, noiseless, exact&mdash;like a beautifully
+      ordered machine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was noon, now. Two hours of stillness and waiting followed. Then
+      carriages began to flow past and deliver the two or three hundred court
+      personages and high nobilities privileged to enter the church. Then the
+      square filled up; not with civilians, but with army and navy officers in
+      showy and beautiful uniforms. They filled it compactly, leaving only a
+      narrow carriage path in front of the church, but there was no civilian
+      among them. And it was better so; dull clothes would have marred the
+      radiant spectacle. In the jam in front of the church, on its steps, and on
+      the sidewalk was a bunch of uniforms which made a blazing splotch of color&mdash;intense
+      red, gold, and white&mdash;which dimmed the brilliancies around them; and
+      opposite them on the other side of the path was a bunch of cascaded
+      bright-green plumes above pale-blue shoulders which made another splotch
+      of splendor emphatic and conspicuous in its glowing surroundings. It was a
+      sea of flashing color all about, but these two groups were the high notes.
+      The green plumes were worn by forty or fifty Austrian generals, the group
+      opposite them were chiefly Knights of Malta and knights of a German order.
+      The mass of heads in the square were covered by gilt helmets and by
+      military caps roofed with a mirror-like glaze, and the movements of the
+      wearers caused these things to catch the sun-rays, and the effect was fine
+      to see&mdash;the square was like a garden of richly colored flowers with a
+      multitude of blinding and flashing little suns distributed over it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Think of it&mdash;it was by command of that Italian loafer yonder on his
+      imperial throne in the Geneva prison that this splendid multitude was
+      assembled there; and the kings and emperors that were entering the church
+      from a side street were there by his will. It is so strange, so
+      unrealizable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At three o'clock the carriages were still streaming by in single
+      file. At three-five a cardinal arrives with his attendants; later some
+      bishops; then a number of archdeacons&mdash;all in striking colors that
+      add to the show. At three-ten a procession of priests passes along, with
+      crucifix. Another one, presently; after an interval, two more; at
+      three-fifty another one&mdash;very long, with many crosses,
+      gold-embroidered robes, and much white lace; also great pictured banners,
+      at intervals, receding into the distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A hum of tolling bells makes itself heard, but not sharply. At
+      three-fifty-eight a waiting interval. Presently a long procession of
+      gentlemen in evening dress comes in sight and approaches until it is near
+      to the square, then falls back against the wall of soldiers at the
+      sidewalk, and the white shirt-fronts show like snowflakes and are very
+      conspicuous where so much warm color is all about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A waiting pause. At four-twelve the head of the funeral procession comes
+      into view at last. First, a body of cavalry, four abreast, to widen the
+      path. Next, a great body of lancers, in blue, with gilt helmets. Next,
+      three six-horse mourning-coaches; outriders and coachmen in black, with
+      cocked hats and white wigs. Next, troops in splendid uniforms, red, gold,
+      and white, exceedingly showy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the multitude uncover. The soldiers present arms; there is a low
+      rumble of drums; the sumptuous great hearse approaches, drawn at a walk by
+      eight black horses plumed with black bunches of nodding ostrich feathers;
+      the coffin is borne into the church, the doors are closed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The multitude cover their heads, and the rest of the procession moves by;
+      first the Hungarian Guard in their indescribably brilliant and picturesque
+      and beautiful uniform, inherited from the ages of barbaric splendor, and
+      after them other mounted forces, a long and showy array.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the shining crown in the square crumbled apart, a wrecked rainbow,
+      and melted away in radiant streams, and in the turn of a wrist the three
+      dirtiest and raggedest and cheerfulest little slum-girls in Austria were
+      capering about in the spacious vacancy. It was a day of contrasts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Twice the Empress entered Vienna in state. The first time was in 1854,
+      when she was a bride of seventeen, and then she rode in measureless pomp
+      and with blare of music through a fluttering world of gay flags and
+      decorations, down streets walled on both hands with a press of shouting
+      and welcoming subjects; and the second time was last Wednesday, when she
+      entered the city in her coffin and moved down the same streets in the dead
+      of the night under swaying black flags, between packed human walls again;
+      but everywhere was a deep stillness, now&mdash;a stillness emphasized,
+      rather than broken, by the muffled hoofbeats of the long cavalcade over
+      pavements cushioned with sand, and the low sobbing of gray-headed women
+      who had witnessed the first entry forty-four years before, when she and
+      they were young&mdash;and unaware!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A character in Baron von Berger's recent fairy drama &ldquo;Habsburg&rdquo;
+      tells about that first coming of the girlish Empress-Queen, and in his
+      history draws a fine picture: I cannot make a close translation of it, but
+      will try to convey the spirit of the verses:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     I saw the stately pageant pass:
+     In her high place I saw the Empress-Queen:
+     I could not take my eyes away
+     From that fair vision, spirit-like and pure,
+     That rose serene, sublime, and figured to my sense
+     A noble Alp far lighted in the blue,
+     That in the flood of morning rends its veil of cloud
+     And stands a dream of glory to the gaze
+     Of them that in the Valley toil and plod.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A SCRAP OF CURIOUS HISTORY
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Marion City, on the Mississippi River, in the State of Missouri&mdash;a
+      village; time, 1845. La Bourboule-les-Bains, France&mdash;a village; time,
+      the end of June, 1894. I was in the one village in that early time; I am
+      in the other now. These times and places are sufficiently wide apart, yet
+      today I have the strange sense of being thrust back into that Missourian
+      village and of reliving certain stirring days that I lived there so long
+      ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Last Saturday night the life of the President of the French Republic was
+      taken by an Italian assassin. Last night a mob surrounded our hotel,
+      shouting, howling, singing the &ldquo;Marseillaise,&rdquo; and pelting our
+      windows with sticks and stones; for we have Italian waiters, and the mob
+      demanded that they be turned out of the house instantly&mdash;to be
+      drubbed, and then driven out of the village. Everybody in the hotel
+      remained up until far into the night, and experienced the several kinds of
+      terror which one reads about in books which tell of night attacks by
+      Italians and by French mobs: the growing roar of the oncoming crowd; the
+      arrival, with rain of stones and a crash of glass; the withdrawal to
+      rearrange plans&mdash;followed by a silence ominous, threatening, and
+      harder to bear than even the active siege and the noise. The landlord and
+      the two village policemen stood their ground, and at last the mob was
+      persuaded to go away and leave our Italians in peace. Today four of the
+      ringleaders have been sentenced to heavy punishment of a public sort&mdash;and
+      are become local heroes, by consequence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That is the very mistake which was at first made in the Missourian village
+      half a century ago. The mistake was repeated and repeated&mdash;just as
+      France is doing in these latter months.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In our village we had our Ravochals, our Henrys, our Vaillants; and in a
+      humble way our Cesario&mdash;I hope I have spelled this name wrong. Fifty
+      years ago we passed through, in all essentials, what France has been
+      passing through during the past two or three years, in the matter of
+      periodical frights, horrors, and shudderings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In several details the parallels are quaintly exact. In that day, for a
+      man to speak out openly and proclaim himself an enemy of negro slavery was
+      simply to proclaim himself a madman. For he was blaspheming against the
+      holiest thing known to a Missourian, and could NOT be in his right mind.
+      For a man to proclaim himself an anarchist in France, three years ago, was
+      to proclaim himself a madman&mdash;he could not be in his right mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now the original old first blasphemer against any institution profoundly
+      venerated by a community is quite sure to be in earnest; his followers and
+      imitators may be humbugs and self-seekers, but he himself is sincere&mdash;his
+      heart is in his protest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Robert Hardy was our first <i>abolitionist</i>&mdash;awful name! He was a
+      journeyman cooper, and worked in the big cooper-shop belonging to the
+      great pork-packing establishment which was Marion City's chief pride
+      and sole source of prosperity. He was a New-Englander, a stranger. And,
+      being a stranger, he was of course regarded as an inferior person&mdash;for
+      that has been human nature from Adam down&mdash;and of course, also, he
+      was made to feel unwelcome, for this is the ancient law with man and the
+      other animals. Hardy was thirty years old, and a bachelor; pale, given to
+      reverie and reading. He was reserved, and seemed to prefer the isolation
+      which had fallen to his lot. He was treated to many side remarks by his
+      fellows, but as he did not resent them it was decided that he was a
+      coward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All of a sudden he proclaimed himself an abolitionist&mdash;straight out
+      and publicly! He said that negro slavery was a crime, an infamy. For a
+      moment the town was paralyzed with astonishment; then it broke into a fury
+      of rage and swarmed toward the cooper-shop to lynch Hardy. But the
+      Methodist minister made a powerful speech to them and stayed their hands.
+      He proved to them that Hardy was insane and not responsible for his words;
+      that no man <i>could </i>be sane and utter such words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Hardy was saved. Being insane, he was allowed to go on talking. He was
+      found to be good entertainment. Several nights running he made abolition
+      speeches in the open air, and all the town flocked to hear and laugh. He
+      implored them to believe him sane and sincere, and have pity on the poor
+      slaves, and take measures for the restoration of their stolen rights, or
+      in no long time blood would flow&mdash;blood, blood, rivers of blood!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was great fun. But all of a sudden the aspect of things changed. A
+      slave came flying from Palmyra, the county-seat, a few miles back, and was
+      about to escape in a canoe to Illinois and freedom in the dull twilight of
+      the approaching dawn, when the town constable seized him. Hardy happened
+      along and tried to rescue the negro; there was a struggle, and the
+      constable did not come out of it alive. Hardy crossed the river with the
+      negro, and then came back to give himself up. All this took time, for the
+      Mississippi is not a French brook, like the Seine, the Loire, and those
+      other rivulets, but is a real river nearly a mile wide. The town was on
+      hand in force by now, but the Methodist preacher and the sheriff had
+      already made arrangements in the interest of order; so Hardy was
+      surrounded by a strong guard and safely conveyed to the village calaboose
+      in spite of all the effort of the mob to get hold of him. The reader will
+      have begun to perceive that this Methodist minister was a prompt man; a
+      prompt man, with active hands and a good headpiece. Williams was his name&mdash;Damon
+      Williams; Damon Williams in public, Damnation Williams in private, because
+      he was so powerful on that theme and so frequent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The excitement was prodigious. The constable was the first man who had
+      ever been killed in the town. The event was by long odds the most imposing
+      in the town's history. It lifted the humble village into sudden
+      importance; its name was in everybody's mouth for twenty miles
+      around. And so was the name of Robert Hardy&mdash;Robert Hardy, the
+      stranger, the despised. In a day he was become the person of most
+      consequence in the region, the only person talked about. As to those other
+      coopers, they found their position curiously changed&mdash;they were
+      important people, or unimportant, now, in proportion as to how large or
+      how small had been their intercourse with the new celebrity. The two or
+      three who had really been on a sort of familiar footing with him found
+      themselves objects of admiring interest with the public and of envy with
+      their shopmates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The village weekly journal had lately gone into new hands. The new man was
+      an enterprising fellow, and he made the most of the tragedy. He issued an
+      extra. Then he put up posters promising to devote his whole paper to
+      matters connected with the great event&mdash;there would be a full and
+      intensely interesting biography of the murderer, and even a portrait of
+      him. He was as good as his word. He carved the portrait himself, on the
+      back of a wooden type&mdash;and a terror it was to look at. It made a
+      great commotion, for this was the first time the village paper had ever
+      contained a picture. The village was very proud. The output of the paper
+      was ten times as great as it had ever been before, yet every copy was
+      sold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the trial came on, people came from all the farms around, and from
+      Hannibal, and Quincy, and even from Keokuk; and the court-house could hold
+      only a fraction of the crowd that applied for admission. The trial was
+      published in the village paper, with fresh and still more trying pictures
+      of the accused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hardy was convicted, and hanged&mdash;a mistake. People came from miles
+      around to see the hanging; they brought cakes and cider, also the women
+      and children, and made a picnic of the matter. It was the largest crowd
+      the village had ever seen. The rope that hanged Hardy was eagerly bought
+      up, in inch samples, for everybody wanted a memento of the memorable
+      event.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martyrdom gilded with notoriety has its fascinations. Within one week
+      afterward four young lightweights in the village proclaimed themselves
+      abolitionists! In life Hardy had not been able to make a convert;
+      everybody laughed at him; but nobody could laugh at his legacy. The four
+      swaggered around with their slouch-hats pulled down over their faces, and
+      hinted darkly at awful possibilities. The people were troubled and afraid,
+      and showed it. And they were stunned, too; they could not understand it.
+      &ldquo;Abolitionist&rdquo; had always been a term of shame and horror; yet
+      here were four young men who were not only not ashamed to bear that name,
+      but were grimly proud of it. Respectable young men they were, too&mdash;of
+      good families, and brought up in the church. Ed Smith, the printer's
+      apprentice, nineteen, had been the head Sunday-school boy, and had once
+      recited three thousand Bible verses without making a break. Dick Savage,
+      twenty, the baker's apprentice; Will Joyce, twenty-two, journeyman
+      blacksmith; and Henry Taylor, twenty-four, tobacco-stemmer&mdash;were the
+      other three. They were all of a sentimental cast; they were all
+      romance-readers; they all wrote poetry, such as it was; they were all vain
+      and foolish; but they had never before been suspected of having anything
+      bad in them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They withdrew from society, and grew more and more mysterious and
+      dreadful. They presently achieved the distinction of being denounced by
+      names from the pulpit&mdash;which made an immense stir! This was grandeur,
+      this was fame. They were envied by all the other young fellows now. This
+      was natural. Their company grew&mdash;grew alarmingly. They took a name.
+      It was a secret name, and was divulged to no outsider; publicly they were
+      simply the abolitionists. They had pass-words, grips, and signs; they had
+      secret meetings; their initiations were conducted with gloomy pomps and
+      ceremonies, at midnight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They always spoke of Hardy as &ldquo;the Martyr,&rdquo; and every little
+      while they moved through the principal street in procession&mdash;at
+      midnight, black-robed, masked, to the measured tap of the solemn drum&mdash;on
+      pilgrimage to the Martyr's grave, where they went through with some
+      majestic fooleries and swore vengeance upon his murderers. They gave
+      previous notice of the pilgrimage by small posters, and warned everybody
+      to keep indoors and darken all houses along the route, and leave the road
+      empty. These warnings were obeyed, for there was a skull and crossbones at
+      the top of the poster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When this kind of thing had been going on about eight weeks, a quite
+      natural thing happened. A few men of character and grit woke up out of the
+      nightmare of fear which had been stupefying their faculties, and began to
+      discharge scorn and scoffings at themselves and the community for enduring
+      this child's-play; and at the same time they proposed to end it
+      straightway. Everybody felt an uplift; life was breathed into their dead
+      spirits; their courage rose and they began to feel like men again. This
+      was on a Saturday. All day the new feeling grew and strengthened; it grew
+      with a rush; it brought inspiration and cheer with it. Midnight saw a
+      united community, full of zeal and pluck, and with a clearly defined and
+      welcome piece of work in front of it. The best organizer and strongest and
+      bitterest talker on that great Saturday was the Presbyterian clergyman who
+      had denounced the original four from his pulpit&mdash;Rev. Hiram Fletcher&mdash;and
+      he promised to use his pulpit in the public interest again now. On the
+      morrow he had revelations to make, he said&mdash;secrets of the dreadful
+      society.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the revelations were never made. At half past two in the morning the
+      dead silence of the village was broken by a crashing explosion, and the
+      town patrol saw the preacher's house spring in a wreck of whirling
+      fragments into the sky. The preacher was killed, together with a negro
+      woman, his only slave and servant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The town was paralyzed again, and with reason. To struggle against a
+      visible enemy is a thing worth while, and there is a plenty of men who
+      stand always ready to undertake it; but to struggle against an invisible
+      one&mdash;an invisible one who sneaks in and does his awful work in the
+      dark and leaves no trace&mdash;that is another matter. That is a thing to
+      make the bravest tremble and hold back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cowed populace were afraid to go to the funeral. The man who was to
+      have had a packed church to hear him expose and denounce the common enemy
+      had but a handful to see him buried. The coroner's jury had brought
+      in a verdict of &ldquo;death by the visitation of God,&rdquo; for no
+      witness came forward; if any existed they prudently kept out of the way.
+      Nobody seemed sorry. Nobody wanted to see the terrible secret society
+      provoked into the commission of further outrages. Everybody wanted the
+      tragedy hushed up, ignored, forgotten, if possible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so there was a bitter surprise and an unwelcome one when Will Joyce,
+      the blacksmith's journeyman, came out and proclaimed himself the
+      assassin! Plainly he was not minded to be robbed of his glory. He made his
+      proclamation, and stuck to it. Stuck to it, and insisted upon a trial.
+      Here was an ominous thing; here was a new and peculiarly formidable
+      terror, for a motive was revealed here which society could not hope to
+      deal with successfully&mdash;<i>vanity</i>, thirst for notoriety. If men
+      were going to kill for notoriety's sake, and to win the glory of
+      newspaper renown, a big trial, and a showy execution, what possible
+      invention of man could discourage or deter them? The town was in a sort of
+      panic; it did not know what to do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, the grand jury had to take hold of the matter&mdash;it had no
+      choice. It brought in a true bill, and presently the case went to the
+      county court. The trial was a fine sensation. The prisoner was the
+      principal witness for the prosecution. He gave a full account of the
+      assassination; he furnished even the minutest particulars: how he
+      deposited his keg of powder and laid his train&mdash;from the house to
+      such-and-such a spot; how George Ronalds and Henry Hart came along just
+      then, smoking, and he borrowed Hart's cigar and fired the train with
+      it, shouting, &ldquo;Down with all slave-tyrants!&rdquo; and how Hart and
+      Ronalds made no effort to capture him, but ran away, and had never come
+      forward to testify yet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But they had to testify now, and they did&mdash;and pitiful it was to see
+      how reluctant they were, and how scared. The crowded house listened to
+      Joyce's fearful tale with a profound and breathless interest, and in
+      a deep hush which was not broken till he broke it himself, in concluding,
+      with a roaring repetition of his &ldquo;Death to all slave-tyrants!&rdquo;&mdash;which
+      came so unexpectedly and so startlingly that it made everyone present
+      catch his breath and gasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The trial was put in the paper, with biography and large portrait, with
+      other slanderous and insane pictures, and the edition sold beyond
+      imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The execution of Joyce was a fine and picturesque thing. It drew a vast
+      crowd. Good places in trees and seats on rail fences sold for half a
+      dollar apiece; lemonade and gingerbread-stands had great prosperity. Joyce
+      recited a furious and fantastic and denunciatory speech on the scaffold
+      which had imposing passages of school-boy eloquence in it, and gave him a
+      reputation on the spot as an orator, and his name, later, in the society's
+      records, of the &ldquo;Martyr Orator.&rdquo; He went to his death
+      breathing slaughter and charging his society to &ldquo;avenge his murder.&rdquo;
+      If he knew anything of human nature he knew that to plenty of young
+      fellows present in that great crowd he was a grand hero&mdash;and enviably
+      situated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was hanged. It was a mistake. Within a month from his death the society
+      which he had honored had twenty new members, some of them earnest,
+      determined men. They did not court distinction in the same way, but they
+      celebrated his martyrdom. The crime which had been obscure and despised
+      had become lofty and glorified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Such things were happening all over the country. Wild-brained martyrdom
+      was succeeded by uprising and organization. Then, in natural order,
+      followed riot, insurrection, and the wrack and restitutions of war. It was
+      bound to come, and it would naturally come in that way. It has been the
+      manner of reform since the beginning of the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      SWITZERLAND, THE CRADLE OF LIBERTY
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Interlaken, Switzerland, 1891.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It is a good many years since I was in Switzerland last. In that remote
+      time there was only one ladder railway in the country. That state of
+      things is all changed. There isn't a mountain in Switzerland now
+      that hasn't a ladder railroad or two up its back like suspenders;
+      indeed, some mountains are latticed with them, and two years hence all
+      will be. In that day the peasant of the high altitudes will have to carry
+      a lantern when he goes visiting in the night to keep from stumbling over
+      railroads that have been built since his last round. And also in that day,
+      if there shall remain a high-altitude peasant whose potato-patch hasn't
+      a railroad through it, it will make him as conspicuous as William Tell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, there are only two best ways to travel through Switzerland. The
+      first best is afoot. The second best is by open two-horse carriage. One
+      can come from Lucerne to Interlaken over the Brunig by ladder railroad in
+      an hour or so now, but you can glide smoothly in a carriage in ten, and
+      have two hours for luncheon at noon&mdash;for luncheon, not for rest.
+      There is no fatigue connected with the trip. One arrives fresh in spirit
+      and in person in the evening&mdash;no fret in his heart, no grime on his
+      face, no grit in his hair, not a cinder in his eye. This is the right
+      condition of mind and body, the right and due preparation for the solemn
+      event which closed the day&mdash;stepping with metaphorically uncovered
+      head into the presence of the most impressive mountain mass that the globe
+      can show&mdash;the Jungfrau. The stranger's first feeling, when
+      suddenly confronted by that towering and awful apparition wrapped in its
+      shroud of snow, is breath-taking astonishment. It is as if heaven's
+      gates had swung open and exposed the throne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is peaceful here and pleasant at Interlaken. Nothing going on&mdash;at
+      least nothing but brilliant life-giving sunshine. There are floods and
+      floods of that. One may properly speak of it as &ldquo;going on,&rdquo;
+      for it is full of the suggestion of activity; the light pours down with
+      energy, with visible enthusiasm. This is a good atmosphere to be in,
+      morally as well as physically. After trying the political atmosphere of
+      the neighboring monarchies, it is healing and refreshing to breathe in air
+      that has known no taint of slavery for six hundred years, and to come
+      among a people whose political history is great and fine, and worthy to be
+      taught in all schools and studied by all races and peoples. For the
+      struggle here throughout the centuries has not been in the interest of any
+      private family, or any church, but in the interest of the whole body of
+      the nation, and for shelter and protection of all forms of belief. This
+      fact is colossal. If one would realize how colossal it is, and of what
+      dignity and majesty, let him contrast it with the purposes and objects of
+      the Crusades, the siege of York, the War of the Roses, and other historic
+      comedies of that sort and size.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Last week I was beating around the Lake of Four Cantons, and I saw Rutli
+      and Altorf. Rutli is a remote little patch of a meadow, but I do not know
+      how any piece of ground could be holier or better worth crossing oceans
+      and continents to see, since it was there that the great trinity of
+      Switzerland joined hands six centuries ago and swore the oath which set
+      their enslaved and insulted country forever free; and Altorf is also
+      honorable ground and worshipful, since it was there that William, surnamed
+      Tell (which interpreted means &ldquo;The foolish talker&rdquo;&mdash;that
+      is to say, the too-daring talker), refused to bow to Gessler's hat.
+      Of late years the prying student of history has been delighting himself
+      beyond measure over a wonderful find which he has made&mdash;to wit, that
+      Tell did not shoot the apple from his son's head. To hear the
+      students jubilate, one would suppose that the question of whether Tell
+      shot the apple or didn't was an important matter; whereas it ranks
+      in importance exactly with the question of whether Washington chopped down
+      the cherry-tree or didn't. The deeds of Washington, the patriot, are
+      the essential thing; the cherry-tree incident is of no consequence. To
+      prove that Tell did shoot the apple from his son's head would merely
+      prove that he had better nerve than most men and was as skillful with a
+      bow as a million others who preceded and followed him, but not one whit
+      more so. But Tell was more and better than a mere marksman, more and
+      better than a mere cool head; he was a type; he stands for Swiss
+      patriotism; in his person was represented a whole people; his spirit was
+      their spirit&mdash;the spirit which would bow to none but God, the spirit
+      which said this in words and confirmed it with deeds. There have always
+      been Tells in Switzerland&mdash;people who would not bow. There was a
+      sufficiency of them at Rutli; there were plenty of them at Murten; plenty
+      at Grandson; there are plenty today. And the first of them all&mdash;the
+      very first, earliest banner-bearer of human freedom in this world&mdash;was
+      not a man, but a woman&mdash;Stauffacher's wife. There she looms dim
+      and great, through the haze of the centuries, delivering into her husband's
+      ear that gospel of revolt which was to bear fruit in the conspiracy of
+      Rutli and the birth of the first free government the world had ever seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From this Victoria Hotel one looks straight across a flat of trifling
+      width to a lofty mountain barrier, which has a gateway in it shaped like
+      an inverted pyramid. Beyond this gateway arises the vast bulk of the
+      Jungfrau, a spotless mass of gleaming snow, into the sky. The gateway, in
+      the dark-colored barrier, makes a strong frame for the great picture. The
+      somber frame and the glowing snow-pile are startlingly contrasted. It is
+      this frame which concentrates and emphasizes the glory of the Jungfrau and
+      makes it the most engaging and beguiling and fascinating spectacle that
+      exists on the earth. There are many mountains of snow that are as lofty as
+      the Jungfrau and as nobly proportioned, but they lack the frame. They
+      stand at large; they are intruded upon and elbowed by neighboring domes
+      and summits, and their grandeur is diminished and fails of effect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a good name, Jungfrau&mdash;Virgin. Nothing could be whiter; nothing
+      could be purer; nothing could be saintlier of aspect. At six yesterday
+      evening the great intervening barrier seen through a faint bluish haze
+      seemed made of air and substanceless, so soft and rich it was, so
+      shimmering where the wandering lights touched it and so dim where the
+      shadows lay. Apparently it was a dream stuff, a work of the imagination,
+      nothing real about it. The tint was green, slightly varying shades of it,
+      but mainly very dark. The sun was down&mdash;as far as that barrier was
+      concerned, but not for the Jungfrau, towering into the heavens beyond the
+      gateway. She was a roaring conflagration of blinding white.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is said the Fridolin (the old Fridolin), a new saint, but formerly a
+      missionary, gave the mountain its gracious name. He was an Irishman, son
+      of an Irish king&mdash;there were thirty thousand kings reigning in County
+      Cork alone in his time, fifteen hundred years ago. It got so that they
+      could not make a living, there was so much competition and wages got cut
+      so. Some of them were out of work months at a time, with wife and little
+      children to feed, and not a crust in the place. At last a particularly
+      severe winter fell upon the country, and hundreds of them were reduced to
+      mendicancy and were to be seen day after day in the bitterest weather,
+      standing barefoot in the snow, holding out their crowns for alms. Indeed,
+      they would have been obliged to emigrate or starve but for a fortunate
+      idea of Prince Fridolin's, who started a labor-union, the first one
+      in history, and got the great bulk of them to join it. He thus won the
+      general gratitude, and they wanted to make him emperor&mdash;emperor over
+      them all&mdash;emperor of County Cork, but he said, No, walking delegate
+      was good enough for him. For behold! he was modest beyond his years, and
+      keen as a whip. To this day in Germany and Switzerland, where St. Fridolin
+      is revered and honored, the peasantry speak of him affectionately as the
+      first walking delegate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first walk he took was into France and Germany, missionarying&mdash;for
+      missionarying was a better thing in those days than it is in ours. All you
+      had to do was to cure the head savage's sick daughter by a &ldquo;miracle&rdquo;&mdash;a
+      miracle like the miracle of Lourdes in our day, for instance&mdash;and
+      immediately that head savage was your convert, and filled to the eyes with
+      a new convert's enthusiasm. You could sit down and make yourself
+      easy, now. He would take an ax and convert the rest of the nation himself.
+      Charlemagne was that kind of a walking delegate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, there were great missionaries in those days, for the methods were
+      sure and the rewards great. We have no such missionaries now, and no such
+      methods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But to continue the history of the first walking delegate, if you are
+      interested. I am interested myself because I have seen his relics in
+      Sackingen, and also the very spot where he worked his great miracle&mdash;the
+      one which won him his sainthood in the papal court a few centuries later.
+      To have seen these things makes me feel very near to him, almost like a
+      member of the family, in fact. While wandering about the Continent he
+      arrived at the spot on the Rhine which is now occupied by Sackingen, and
+      proposed to settle there, but the people warned him off. He appealed to
+      the king of the Franks, who made him a present of the whole region, people
+      and all. He built a great cloister there for women and proceeded to teach
+      in it and accumulate more land. There were two wealthy brothers in the
+      neighborhood, Urso and Landulph. Urso died and Fridolin claimed his
+      estates. Landulph asked for documents and papers. Fridolin had none to
+      show. He said the bequest had been made to him by word of mouth. Landulph
+      suggested that he produce a witness and said it in a way which he thought
+      was very witty, very sarcastic. This shows that he did not know the
+      walking delegate. Fridolin was not disturbed. He said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Appoint your court. I will bring a witness.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The court thus created consisted of fifteen counts and barons. A day was
+      appointed for the trial of the case. On that day the judges took their
+      seats in state, and proclamation was made that the court was ready for
+      business. Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes passed, and yet no
+      Fridolin appeared. Landulph rose, and was in the act of claiming judgment
+      by default when a strange clacking sound was heard coming up the stairs.
+      In another moment Fridolin entered at the door and came walking in a deep
+      hush down the middle aisle, with a tall skeleton stalking in his rear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Amazement and terror sat upon every countenance, for everybody suspected
+      that the skeleton was Urso's. It stopped before the chief judge and
+      raised its bony arm aloft and began to speak, while all the assembly
+      shuddered, for they could see the words leak out between its ribs. It
+      said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brother, why dost thou disturb my blessed rest and withhold by
+      robbery the gift which I gave thee for the honor of God?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems a strange thing and most irregular, but the verdict was actually
+      given against Landulph on the testimony of this wandering rack-heap of
+      unidentified bones. In our day a skeleton would not be allowed to testify
+      at all, for a skeleton has no moral responsibility, and its word could not
+      be believed on oath, and this was probably one of them. Most skeletons are
+      not to be believed on oath, and this was probably one of them. However,
+      the incident is valuable as preserving to us a curious sample of the
+      quaint laws of evidence of that remote time--a time so remote, so far back
+      toward the beginning of original idiocy, that the difference between a
+      bench of judges and a basket of vegetables was as yet so slight that we
+      may say with all confidence that it didn't really exist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During several afternoons I have been engaged in an interesting, maybe
+      useful, piece of work&mdash;that is to say, I have been trying to make the
+      mighty Jungfrau earn her living&mdash;earn it in a most humble sphere, but
+      on a prodigious scale, on a prodigious scale of necessity, for she couldn't
+      do anything in a small way with her size and style. I have been trying to
+      make her do service on a stupendous dial and check off the hours as they
+      glide along her pallid face up there against the sky, and tell the time of
+      day to the populations lying within fifty miles of her and to the people
+      in the moon, if they have a good telescope there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Until late in the afternoon the Jungfrau's aspect is that of a
+      spotless desert of snow set upon edge against the sky. But by
+      mid-afternoon some elevations which rise out of the western border of the
+      desert, whose presence you perhaps had not detected or suspected up to
+      that time, began to cast black shadows eastward across the gleaming
+      surface. At first there is only one shadow; later there are two. Toward 4
+      P.M. the other day I was gazing and worshiping as usual when I chanced to
+      notice that shadow No. 1 was beginning to take itself something of the
+      shape of the human profile. By four the back of the head was good, the
+      military cap was pretty good, the nose was bold and strong, the upper lip
+      sharp, but not pretty, and there was a great goatee that shot straight
+      aggressively forward from the chin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At four-thirty the nose had changed its shape considerably, and the
+      altered slant of the sun had revealed and made conspicuous a huge buttress
+      or barrier of naked rock which was so located as to answer very well for a
+      shoulder or coat-collar to this swarthy and indiscreet sweetheart who had
+      stolen out there right before everybody to pillow his head on the Virgin's
+      white breast and whisper soft sentimentalities to her in the sensuous
+      music of the crashing ice-domes and the boom and thunder of the passing
+      avalanche&mdash;music very familiar to his ear, for he has heard it every
+      afternoon at this hour since the day he first came courting this child of
+      the earth, who lives in the sky, and that day is far, yes&mdash;for he was
+      at this pleasant sport before the Middle Ages drifted by him in the
+      valley; before the Romans marched past, and before the antique and
+      recordless barbarians fished and hunted here and wondered who he might be,
+      and were probably afraid of him; and before primeval man himself, just
+      emerged from his four-footed estate, stepped out upon this plain, first
+      sample of his race, a thousand centuries ago, and cast a glad eye up
+      there, judging he had found a brother human being and consequently
+      something to kill; and before the big saurians wallowed here, still some
+      eons earlier. Oh yes, a day so far back that the eternal son was present
+      to see that first visit; a day so far back that neither tradition nor
+      history was born yet and a whole weary eternity must come and go before
+      the restless little creature, of whose face this stupendous Shadow Face
+      was the prophecy, would arrive in the earth and begin his shabby career
+      and think it a big thing. Oh, indeed yes; when you talk about your poor
+      Roman and Egyptian day-before-yesterday antiquities, you should choose a
+      time when the hoary Shadow Face of the Jungfrau is not by. It antedates
+      all antiquities known or imaginable; for it was here the world itself
+      created the theater of future antiquities. And it is the only witness with
+      a human face that was there to see the marvel, and remains to us a
+      memorial of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By 4:40 P.M. the nose of the shadow is perfect and is beautiful. It is
+      black and is powerfully marked against the upright canvas of glowing snow,
+      and covers hundreds of acres of that resplendent surface.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime shadow No. 2 has been creeping out well to the rear of the face
+      west of it&mdash;and at five o'clock has assumed a shape that has
+      rather a poor and rude semblance of a shoe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime, also, the great Shadow Face has been gradually changing for
+      twenty minutes, and now, 5 P.M., it is becoming a quite fair portrait of
+      Roscoe Conkling. The likeness is there, and is unmistakable. The goatee is
+      shortened, now, and has an end; formerly it hadn't any, but ran off
+      eastward and arrived nowhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By 6 P.M. the face has dissolved and gone, and the goatee has become what
+      looks like the shadow of a tower with a pointed roof, and the shoe had
+      turned into what the printers call a &ldquo;fist&rdquo; with a finger
+      pointing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If I were now imprisoned on a mountain summit a hundred miles northward of
+      this point, and was denied a timepiece, I could get along well enough from
+      four till six on clear days, for I could keep trace of the time by the
+      changing shapes of these mighty shadows on the Virgin's front, the
+      most stupendous dial I am acquainted with, the oldest clock in the world
+      by a couple of million years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I suppose I should not have noticed the forms of the shadows if I hadn't
+      the habit of hunting for faces in the clouds and in mountain crags&mdash;a
+      sort of amusement which is very entertaining even when you don't
+      find any, and brilliantly satisfying when you do. I have searched through
+      several bushels of photographs of the Jungfrau here, but found only one
+      with the Face in it, and in this case it was not strictly recognizable as
+      a face, which was evidence that the picture was taken before four o'clock
+      in the afternoon, and also evidence that all the photographers have
+      persistently overlooked one of the most fascinating features of the
+      Jungfrau show. I say fascinating, because if you once detect a human face
+      produced on a great plan by unconscious nature, you never get tired of
+      watching it. At first you can't make another person see it at all,
+      but after he has made it out once he can't see anything else
+      afterward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The King of Greece is a man who goes around quietly enough when off duty.
+      One day this summer he was traveling in an ordinary first-class
+      compartment, just in his other suit, the one which he works the realm in
+      when he is at home, and so he was not looking like anybody in particular,
+      but a good deal like everybody in general. By and by a hearty and healthy
+      German-American got in and opened up a frank and interesting and
+      sympathetic conversation with him, and asked him a couple of thousand
+      questions about himself, which the king answered good-naturedly, but in a
+      more or less indefinite way as to private particulars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where do you live when you are at home?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In Greece.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Greece! Well, now, that is just astonishing! Born there?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you speak Greek?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, ain't that strange! I never expected to live to see
+      that. What is your trade? I mean how do you get your living? What is your
+      line of business?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I hardly know how to answer. I am only a kind of foreman, on
+      a salary; and the business&mdash;well, is a very general kind of business.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I understand&mdash;general jobbing&mdash;little of everything&mdash;anything
+      that there's money in.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's about it, yes.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you traveling for the house now?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, partly; but not entirely. Of course I do a stroke of business
+      if it falls in the way&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good! I like that in you! That's me every time. Go on.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was only going to say I am off on my vacation now.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well that's all right. No harm in that. A man works all the
+      better for a little let-up now and then. Not that I've been used to
+      having it myself; for I haven't. I reckon this is my first. I was
+      born in Germany, and when I was a couple of weeks old shipped for America,
+      and I've been there ever since, and that's sixty-four years by
+      the watch. I'm an American in principle and a German at heart, and
+      it's the boss combination. Well, how do you get along, as a rule&mdash;pretty
+      fair?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've a rather large family&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, that's it&mdash;big family and trying to raise them on
+      a salary. Now, what did you go to do that for?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I thought&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course you did. You were young and confident and thought you
+      could branch out and make things go with a whirl, and here you are, you
+      see! But never mind about that. I'm not trying to discourage you.
+      Dear me! I've been just where you are myself! You've got good
+      grit; there's good stuff in you, I can see that. You got a wrong
+      start, that's the whole trouble. But you hold your grip, and we'll
+      see what can be done. Your case ain't half as bad as it might be.
+      You are going to come out all right&mdash;I'm bail for that. Boys
+      and girls?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My family? Yes, some of them are boys&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the rest girls. It's just as I expected. But that's
+      all right, and it's better so, anyway. What are the boys doing&mdash;learning
+      a trade?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, no&mdash;I thought&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a great mistake. It's the biggest mistake you ever
+      made. You see that in your own case. A man ought always to have a trade to
+      fall back on. Now, I was harness-maker at first. Did that prevent me from
+      becoming one of the biggest brewers in America? Oh no. I always had the
+      harness trick to fall back on in rough weather. Now, if you had learned
+      how to make harness&mdash;However, it's too late now; too late. But
+      it's no good plan to cry over spilt milk. But as to the boys, you
+      see&mdash;what's to become of them if anything happens to you?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It has been my idea to let the eldest one succeed me&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, come! Suppose the firm don't want him?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hadn't thought of that, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, look here; you want to get right down to business and stop
+      dreaming. You are capable of immense things&mdash;man. You can make a
+      perfect success in life. All you want is somebody to steady you and boost
+      you along on the right road. Do you own anything in the business?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No&mdash;not exactly; but if I continue to give satisfaction, I
+      suppose I can keep my&mdash;&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep your place&mdash;yes. Well, don't you depend on anything
+      of the kind. They'll bounce you the minute you get a little old and
+      worked out; they'll do it sure. Can't you manage somehow to
+      get into the firm? That's the great thing, you know.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think it is doubtful; very doubtful.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Um&mdash;that's bad&mdash;yes, and unfair, too. Do you
+      suppose that if I should go there and have a talk with your people&mdash;Look
+      here&mdash;do you think you could run a brewery?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have never tried, but I think I could do it after I got a little
+      familiarity with the business.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The German was silent for some time. He did a good deal of thinking, and
+      the king waited with curiosity to see what the result was going to be.
+      Finally the German said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My mind's made up. You leave that crowd&mdash;you'll
+      never amount to anything there. In these old countries they never give a
+      fellow a show. Yes, you come over to America&mdash;come to my place in
+      Rochester; bring the family along. You shall have a show in the business
+      and the foremanship, besides. George&mdash;you said your name was George?&mdash;I'll
+      make a man of you. I give you my word. You've never had a chance
+      here, but that's all going to change. By gracious! I'll give
+      you a lift that'll make your hair curl!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      AT THE SHRINE OF ST. WAGNER
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      Bayreuth, Aug. 2d, 1891
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It was at Nuremberg that we struck the inundation of music-mad strangers
+      that was rolling down upon Bayreuth. It had been long since we had seen
+      such multitudes of excited and struggling people. It took a good half-hour
+      to pack them and pair them into the train&mdash;and it was the longest
+      train we have yet seen in Europe. Nuremberg had been witnessing this sort
+      of experience a couple of times a day for about two weeks. It gives one an
+      impressive sense of the magnitude of this biennial pilgrimage. For a
+      pilgrimage is what it is. The devotees come from the very ends of the
+      earth to worship their prophet in his own Kaaba in his own Mecca.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If you are living in New York or San Francisco or Chicago or anywhere else
+      in America, and you conclude, by the middle of May, that you would like to
+      attend the Bayreuth opera two months and a half later, you must use the
+      cable and get about it immediately or you will get no seats, and you must
+      cable for lodgings, too. Then if you are lucky you will get seats in the
+      last row and lodgings in the fringe of the town. If you stop to write you
+      will get nothing. There were plenty of people in Nuremberg when we passed
+      through who had come on pilgrimage without first securing seats and
+      lodgings. They had found neither in Bayreuth; they had walked Bayreuth
+      streets a while in sorrow, then had gone to Nuremberg and found neither
+      beds nor standing room, and had walked those quaint streets all night,
+      waiting for the hotels to open and empty their guests into the trains, and
+      so make room for these, their defeated brethren and sisters in the faith.
+      They had endured from thirty to forty hours' railroading on the
+      continent of Europe&mdash;with all which that implies of worry, fatigue,
+      and financial impoverishment&mdash;and all they had got and all they were
+      to get for it was handiness and accuracy in kicking themselves, acquired
+      by practice in the back streets of the two towns when other people were in
+      bed; for back they must go over that unspeakable journey with their pious
+      mission unfulfilled. These humiliated outcasts had the frowsy and
+      unbrushed and apologetic look of wet cats, and their eyes were glazed with
+      drowsiness, their bodies were adroop from crown to sole, and all
+      kind-hearted people refrained from asking them if they had been to
+      Bayreuth and failed to connect, as knowing they would lie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We reached here (Bayreuth) about mid-afternoon of a rainy Saturday. We
+      were of the wise, and had secured lodgings and opera seats months in
+      advance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am not a musical critic, and did not come here to write essays about the
+      operas and deliver judgment upon their merits. The little children of
+      Bayreuth could do that with a finer sympathy and a broader intelligence
+      than I. I only care to bring four or five pilgrims to the operas, pilgrims
+      able to appreciate them and enjoy them. What I write about the performance
+      to put in my odd time would be offered to the public as merely a cat's
+      view of a king, and not of didactic value.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day, which was Sunday, we left for the opera-house&mdash;that is to
+      say, the Wagner temple&mdash;a little after the middle of the afternoon.
+      The great building stands all by itself, grand and lonely, on a high
+      ground outside the town. We were warned that if we arrived after four o'clock
+      we should be obliged to pay two dollars and a half apiece extra by way of
+      fine. We saved that; and it may be remarked here that this is the only
+      opportunity that Europe offers of saving money. There was a big crowd in
+      the grounds about the building, and the ladies' dresses took the sun
+      with fine effect. I do not mean to intimate that the ladies were in full
+      dress, for that was not so. The dresses were pretty, but neither sex was
+      in evening dress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The interior of the building is simple&mdash;severely so; but there is no
+      occasion for color and decoration, since the people sit in the dark. The
+      auditorium has the shape of a keystone, with the stage at the narrow end.
+      There is an aisle on each side, but no aisle in the body of the house.
+      Each row of seats extends in an unbroken curve from one side of the house
+      to the other. There are seven entrance doors on each side of the theater
+      and four at the butt, eighteen doors to admit and emit 1,650 persons. The
+      number of the particular door by which you are to enter the house or leave
+      it is printed on your ticket, and you can use no door but that one. Thus,
+      crowding and confusion are impossible. Not so many as a hundred people use
+      any one door. This is better than having the usual (and useless) elaborate
+      fireproof arrangements. It is the model theater of the world. It can be
+      emptied while the second hand of a watch makes its circuit. It would be
+      entirely safe, even if it were built of lucifer matches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If your seat is near the center of a row and you enter late you must work
+      your way along a rank of about twenty-five ladies and gentlemen to get to
+      it. Yet this causes no trouble, for everybody stands up until all the
+      seats are full, and the filling is accomplished in a very few minutes.
+      Then all sit down, and you have a solid mass of fifteen hundred heads,
+      making a steep cellar-door slant from the rear of the house down to the
+      stage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the lights were turned low, so low that the congregation sat in a deep
+      and solemn gloom. The funereal rustling of dresses and the low buzz of
+      conversation began to die swiftly down, and presently not the ghost of a
+      sound was left. This profound and increasingly impressive stillness
+      endured for some time&mdash;the best preparation for music, spectacle, or
+      speech conceivable. I should think our show people would have invented or
+      imported that simple and impressive device for securing and solidifying
+      the attention of an audience long ago; instead of which they continue to
+      this day to open a performance against a deadly competition in the form of
+      noise, confusion, and a scattered interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finally, out of darkness and distance and mystery soft rich notes rose
+      upon the stillness, and from his grave the dead magician began to weave
+      his spells about his disciples and steep their souls in his enchantments.
+      There was something strangely impressive in the fancy which kept intruding
+      itself that the composer was conscious in his grave of what was going on
+      here, and that these divine sounds were the clothing of thoughts which
+      were at this moment passing through his brain, and not recognized and
+      familiar ones which had issued from it at some former time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The entire overture, long as it was, was played to a dark house with the
+      curtain down. It was exquisite; it was delicious. But straightway
+      thereafter, of course, came the singing, and it does seem to me that
+      nothing can make a Wagner opera absolutely perfect and satisfactory to the
+      untutored but to leave out the vocal parts. I wish I could see a Wagner
+      opera done in pantomime once. Then one would have the lovely orchestration
+      unvexed to listen to and bathe his spirit in, and the bewildering
+      beautiful scenery to intoxicate his eyes with, and the dumb acting couldn't
+      mar these pleasures, because there isn't often anything in the
+      Wagner opera that one would call by such a violent name as acting; as a
+      rule all you would see would be a couple of silent people, one of them
+      standing still, the other catching flies. Of course I do not really mean
+      that he would be catching flies; I only mean that the usual operatic
+      gestures which consist in reaching first one hand out into the air and
+      then the other might suggest the sport I speak of if the operator attended
+      strictly to business and uttered no sound.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This present opera was &ldquo;Parsifal.&rdquo; Madame Wagner does not
+      permit its representation anywhere but in Bayreuth. The first act of the
+      three occupied two hours, and I enjoyed that in spite of the singing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I trust that I know as well as anybody that singing is one of the most
+      entrancing and bewitching and moving and eloquent of all the vehicles
+      invented by man for the conveying of feeling; but it seems to me that the
+      chief virtue in song is melody, air, tune, rhythm, or what you please to
+      call it, and that when this feature is absent what remains is a picture
+      with the color left out. I was not able to detect in the vocal parts of
+      &ldquo;Parsifal&rdquo; anything that might with confidence be called
+      rhythm or tune or melody; one person performed at a time&mdash;and a long
+      time, too&mdash;often in a noble, and always in a high-toned, voice; but
+      he only pulled out long notes, then some short ones, then another long
+      one, then a sharp, quick, peremptory bark or two&mdash;and so on and so
+      on; and when he was done you saw that the information which he had
+      conveyed had not compensated for the disturbance. Not always, but pretty
+      often. If two of them would but put in a duet occasionally and blend the
+      voices; but no, they don't do that. The great master, who knew so
+      well how to make a hundred instruments rejoice in unison and pour out
+      their souls in mingled and melodious tides of delicious sound, deals only
+      in barren solos when he puts in the vocal parts. It may be that he was
+      deep, and only added the singing to his operas for the sake of the
+      contrast it would make with the music. Singing! It does seem the wrong
+      name to apply to it. Strictly described, it is a practicing of difficult
+      and unpleasant intervals, mainly. An ignorant person gets tired of
+      listening to gymnastic intervals in the long run, no matter how pleasant
+      they may be. In &ldquo;Parsifal&rdquo; there is a hermit named Gurnemanz
+      who stands on the stage in one spot and practices by the hour, while first
+      one and then another character of the cast endures what he can of it and
+      then retires to die.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the evening there was an intermission of three-quarters of an hour
+      after the first act and one an hour long after the second. In both
+      instances the theater was totally emptied. People who had previously
+      engaged tables in the one sole eating-house were able to put in their time
+      very satisfactorily; the other thousand went hungry. The opera was
+      concluded at ten in the evening or a little later. When we reached home we
+      had been gone more than seven hours. Seven hours at five dollars a ticket
+      is almost too much for the money.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While browsing about the front yard among the crowd between the acts I
+      encountered twelve or fifteen friends from different parts of America, and
+      those of them who were most familiar with Wagner said that &ldquo;Parsifal&rdquo;
+      seldom pleased at first, but that after one had heard it several times it
+      was almost sure to become a favorite. It seemed impossible, but it was
+      true, for the statement came from people whose word was not to be doubted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I gathered some further information. On the ground I found part of a
+      German musical magazine, and in it a letter written by Uhlic thirty-three
+      years ago, in which he defends the scorned and abused Wagner against
+      people like me, who found fault with the comprehensive absence of what our
+      kind regards as singing. Uhlic says Wagner despised &ldquo;<i>jene
+      plapperude music</i>,&rdquo; and therefore &ldquo;runs, trills, and <i>Schnorkel
+      </i>are discarded by him.&rdquo; I don't know what a <i>Schnorkel
+      </i>is, but now that I know it has been left out of these operas I never
+      have missed so much in my life. And Uhlic further says that Wagner's
+      song is true: that it is &ldquo;simply emphasized intoned speech.&rdquo;
+      That certainly describes it&mdash;in &ldquo;Parsifal&rdquo; and some of
+      the other operas; and if I understand Uhlic's elaborate German he
+      apologizes for the beautiful airs in &ldquo;Tannhauser.&rdquo; Very well;
+      now that Wagner and I understand each other, perhaps we shall get along
+      better, and I shall stop calling Waggner, on the American plan, and
+      thereafter call him Waggner as per German custom, for I feel entirely
+      friendly now. The minute we get reconciled to a person, how willing we are
+      to throw aside little needless punctilios and pronounce his name right!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course I came home wondering why people should come from all corners of
+      America to hear these operas, when we have lately had a season or two of
+      them in New York with these same singers in the several parts, and
+      possibly this same orchestra. I resolved to think that out at all hazards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TUESDAY.&mdash;Yesterday they played the only operatic favorite I have
+      ever had&mdash;an opera which has always driven me mad with ignorant
+      delight whenever I have heard it&mdash;&ldquo;Tannhauser.&rdquo; I heard
+      it first when I was a youth; I heard it last in the last German season in
+      New York. I was busy yesterday and I did not intend to go, knowing I
+      should have another &ldquo;Tannhauser&rdquo; opportunity in a few days;
+      but after five o'clock I found myself free and walked out to the
+      opera-house and arrived about the beginning of the second act. My opera
+      ticket admitted me to the grounds in front, past the policeman and the
+      chain, and I thought I would take a rest on a bench for an hour and two
+      and wait for the third act.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment or so the first bugles blew, and the multitude began to
+      crumble apart and melt into the theater. I will explain that this
+      bugle-call is one of the pretty features here. You see, the theater is
+      empty, and hundreds of the audience are a good way off in the
+      feeding-house; the first bugle-call is blown about a quarter of an hour
+      before time for the curtain to rise. This company of buglers, in uniform,
+      march out with military step and send out over the landscape a few bars of
+      the theme of the approaching act, piercing the distances with the gracious
+      notes; then they march to the other entrance and repeat. Presently they do
+      this over again. Yesterday only about two hundred people were still left
+      in front of the house when the second call was blown; in another
+      half-minute they would have been in the house, but then a thing happened
+      which delayed them&mdash;the only solitary thing in this world which could
+      be relied on with certainty to accomplish this, I suppose&mdash;an
+      imperial princess appeared in the balcony above them. They stopped dead in
+      their tracks and began to gaze in a stupor of gratitude and satisfaction.
+      The lady presently saw that she must disappear or the doors would be
+      closed upon these worshipers, so she returned to her box. This
+      daughter-in-law of an emperor was pretty; she had a kind face; she was
+      without airs; she is known to be full of common human sympathies. There
+      are many kinds of princesses, but this kind is the most harmful of all,
+      for wherever they go they reconcile people to monarchy and set back the
+      clock of progress. The valuable princes, the desirable princes, are the
+      czars and their sort. By their mere dumb presence in the world they cover
+      with derision every argument that can be invented in favor of royalty by
+      the most ingenious casuist. In his time the husband of this princess was
+      valuable. He led a degraded life, he ended it with his own hand in
+      circumstances and surroundings of a hideous sort, and was buried like a
+      god.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the opera-house there is a long loft back of the audience, a kind of
+      open gallery, in which princes are displayed. It is sacred to them; it is
+      the holy of holies. As soon as the filling of the house is about complete
+      the standing multitude turn and fix their eyes upon the princely layout
+      and gaze mutely and longingly and adoringly and regretfully like sinners
+      looking into heaven. They become rapt, unconscious, steeped in worship.
+      There is no spectacle anywhere that is more pathetic than this. It is
+      worth crossing many oceans to see. It is somehow not the same gaze that
+      people rivet upon a Victor Hugo, or Niagara, or the bones of the mastodon,
+      or the guillotine of the Revolution, or the great pyramid, or distant
+      Vesuvius smoking in the sky, or any man long celebrated to you by his
+      genius and achievements, or thing long celebrated to you by the praises of
+      books and pictures&mdash;no, that gaze is only the gaze of intense
+      curiosity, interest, wonder, engaged in drinking delicious deep draughts
+      that taste good all the way down and appease and satisfy the thirst of a
+      lifetime. Satisfy it&mdash;that is the word. Hugo and the mastodon will
+      still have a degree of intense interest thereafter when encountered, but
+      never anything approaching the ecstasy of that first view. The interest of
+      a prince is different. It may be envy, it may be worship, doubtless it is
+      a mixture of both&mdash;and it does not satisfy its thirst with one view,
+      or even noticeably diminish it. Perhaps the essence of the thing is the
+      value which men attach to a valuable something which has come by luck and
+      not been earned. A dollar picked up in the road is more satisfaction to
+      you than the ninety-and-nine which you had to work for, and money won at
+      faro or in stocks snuggles into your heart in the same way. A prince picks
+      up grandeur, power, and a permanent holiday and gratis support by a pure
+      accident, the accident of birth, and he stands always before the grieved
+      eye of poverty and obscurity a monumental representative of luck. And then&mdash;supremest
+      value of all-his is the only high fortune on the earth which is secure.
+      The commercial millionaire may become a beggar; the illustrious statesman
+      can make a vital mistake and be dropped and forgotten; the illustrious
+      general can lose a decisive battle and with it the consideration of men;
+      but once a prince always a prince&mdash;that is to say, an imitation god,
+      and neither hard fortune nor an infamous character nor an addled brain nor
+      the speech of an ass can undeify him. By common consent of all the nations
+      and all the ages the most valuable thing in this world is the homage of
+      men, whether deserved or undeserved. It follows without doubt or question,
+      then, that the most desirable position possible is that of a prince. And I
+      think it also follows that the so-called usurpations with which history is
+      littered are the most excusable misdemeanors which men have committed. To
+      usurp a usurpation&mdash;that is all it amounts to, isn't it?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A prince is not to us what he is to a European, of course. We have not
+      been taught to regard him as a god, and so one good look at him is likely
+      to so nearly appease our curiosity as to make him an object of no greater
+      interest the next time. We want a fresh one. But it is not so with the
+      European. I am quite sure of it. The same old one will answer; he never
+      stales. Eighteen years ago I was in London and I called at an Englishman's
+      house on a bleak and foggy and dismal December afternoon to visit his wife
+      and married daughter by appointment. I waited half an hour and then they
+      arrived, frozen. They explained that they had been delayed by an
+      unlooked-for circumstance: while passing in the neighborhood of
+      Marlborough House they saw a crowd gathering and were told that the Prince
+      of Wales was about to drive out, so they stopped to get a sight of him.
+      They had waited half an hour on the sidewalk, freezing with the crowd, but
+      were disappointed at last&mdash;the Prince had changed his mind. I said,
+      with a good deal of surprise, &ldquo;Is it possible that you two have
+      lived in London all your lives and have never seen the Prince of Wales?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Apparently it was their turn to be surprised, for they exclaimed: &ldquo;What
+      an idea! Why, we have seen him hundreds of times.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had seen him hundreds of times, yet they had waited half an hour in
+      the gloom and the bitter cold, in the midst of a jam of patients from the
+      same asylum, on the chance of seeing him again. It was a stupefying
+      statement, but one is obliged to believe the English, even when they say a
+      thing like that. I fumbled around for a remark, and got out this one:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't understand it at all. If I had never seen General
+      Grant I doubt if I would do that even to get a sight of him.&rdquo; With a
+      slight emphasis on the last word.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Their blank faces showed that they wondered where the parallel came in.
+      Then they said, blankly: &ldquo;Of course not. He is only a President.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is doubtless a fact that a prince is a permanent interest, an interest
+      not subject to deterioration. The general who was never defeated, the
+      general who never held a council of war, the only general who ever
+      commanded a connected battle-front twelve hundred miles long, the smith
+      who welded together the broken parts of a great republic and
+      re-established it where it is quite likely to outlast all the monarchies
+      present and to come, was really a person of no serious consequence to
+      these people. To them, with their training, my General was only a man,
+      after all, while their Prince was clearly much more than that&mdash;a
+      being of a wholly unsimilar construction and constitution, and being of no
+      more blood and kinship with men than are the serene eternal lights of the
+      firmament with the poor dull tallow candles of commerce that sputter and
+      die and leave nothing behind but a pinch of ashes and a stink.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I saw the last act of &ldquo;Tannhauser.&rdquo; I sat in the gloom and the
+      deep stillness, waiting&mdash;one minute, two minutes, I do not know
+      exactly how long&mdash;then the soft music of the hidden orchestra began
+      to breathe its rich, long sighs out from under the distant stage, and by
+      and by the drop-curtain parted in the middle and was drawn softly aside,
+      disclosing the twilighted wood and a wayside shrine, with a white-robed
+      girl praying and a man standing near. Presently that noble chorus of men's
+      voices was heard approaching, and from that moment until the closing of
+      the curtain it was music, just music&mdash;music to make one drunk with
+      pleasure, music to make one take scrip and staff and beg his way round the
+      globe to hear it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To such as are intending to come here in the Wagner season next year I
+      wish to say, bring your dinner-pail with you. If you do, you will never
+      cease to be thankful. If you do not, you will find it a hard fight to save
+      yourself from famishing in Bayreuth. Bayreuth is merely a large village,
+      and has no very large hotels or eating-houses. The principal inns are the
+      Golden Anchor and the Sun. At either of these places you can get an
+      excellent meal&mdash;no, I mean you can go there and see other people get
+      it. There is no charge for this. The town is littered with restaurants,
+      but they are small and bad, and they are overdriven with custom. You must
+      secure a table hours beforehand, and often when you arrive you will find
+      somebody occupying it. We have had this experience. We have had a daily
+      scramble for life; and when I say we, I include shoals of people. I have
+      the impression that the only people who do not have to scramble are the
+      veterans&mdash;the disciples who have been here before and know the ropes.
+      I think they arrive about a week before the first opera, and engage all
+      the tables for the season. My tribe had tried all kinds of places&mdash;some
+      outside of the town, a mile or two&mdash;and have captured only nibblings
+      and odds and ends, never in any instance a complete and satisfying meal.
+      Digestible? No, the reverse. These odds and ends are going to serve as
+      souvenirs of Bayreuth, and in that regard their value is not to be
+      overestimated. Photographs fade, bric-a-brac gets lost, busts of Wagner
+      get broken, but once you absorb a Bayreuth-restaurant meal it is your
+      possession and your property until the time comes to embalm the rest of
+      you. Some of these pilgrims here become, in effect, cabinets; cabinets of
+      souvenirs of Bayreuth. It is believed among scientists that you could
+      examine the crop of a dead Bayreuth pilgrim anywhere in the earth and tell
+      where he came from. But I like this ballast. I think a &ldquo;Hermitage&rdquo;
+      scrap-up at eight in the evening, when all the famine-breeders have been
+      there and laid in their mementoes and gone, is the quietest thing you can
+      lay on your keelson except gravel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      THURSDAY.&mdash;They keep two teams of singers in stock for the chief
+      roles, and one of these is composed of the most renowned artists in the
+      world, with Materna and Alvary in the lead. I suppose a double team is
+      necessary; doubtless a single team would die of exhaustion in a week, for
+      all the plays last from four in the afternoon till ten at night. Nearly
+      all the labor falls upon the half-dozen head singers, and apparently they
+      are required to furnish all the noise they can for the money. If they feel
+      a soft, whispery, mysterious feeling they are required to open out and let
+      the public know it. Operas are given only on Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays,
+      and Thursdays, with three days of ostensible rest per week, and two teams
+      to do the four operas; but the ostensible rest is devoted largely to
+      rehearsing. It is said that the off days are devoted to rehearsing from
+      some time in the morning till ten at night. Are there two orchestras also?
+      It is quite likely, since there are one hundred and ten names in the
+      orchestra list.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yesterday the opera was &ldquo;Tristan and Isolde.&rdquo; I have seen all
+      sorts of audiences&mdash;at theaters, operas, concerts, lectures, sermons,
+      funerals&mdash;but none which was twin to the Wagner audience of Bayreuth
+      for fixed and reverential attention. Absolute attention and petrified
+      retention to the end of an act of the attitude assumed at the beginning of
+      it. You detect no movement in the solid mass of heads and shoulders. You
+      seem to sit with the dead in the gloom of a tomb. You know that they are
+      being stirred to their profoundest depths; that there are times when they
+      want to rise and wave handkerchiefs and shout their approbation, and times
+      when tears are running down their faces, and it would be a relief to free
+      their pent emotions in sobs or screams; yet you hear not one utterance
+      till the curtain swings together and the closing strains have slowly faded
+      out and died; then the dead rise with one impulse and shake the building
+      with their applause. Every seat is full in the first act; there is not a
+      vacant one in the last. If a man would be conspicuous, let him come here
+      and retire from the house in the midst of an act. It would make him
+      celebrated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This audience reminds me of nothing I have ever seen and of nothing I have
+      read about except the city in the Arabian tale where all the inhabitants
+      have been turned to brass and the traveler finds them after centuries
+      mute, motionless, and still retaining the attitudes which they last knew
+      in life. Here the Wagner audience dress as they please, and sit in the
+      dark and worship in silence. At the Metropolitan in New York they sit in a
+      glare, and wear their showiest harness; they hum airs, they squeak fans,
+      they titter, and they gabble all the time. In some of the boxes the
+      conversation and laughter are so loud as to divide the attention of the
+      house with the stage. In large measure the Metropolitan is a show-case for
+      rich fashionables who are not trained in Wagnerian music and have no
+      reverence for it, but who like to promote art and show their clothes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Can that be an agreeable atmosphere to persons in whom this music produces
+      a sort of divine ecstasy and to whom its creator is a very deity, his
+      stage a temple, the works of his brain and hands consecrated things, and
+      the partaking of them with eye and ear a sacred solemnity? Manifestly, no.
+      Then, perhaps the temporary expatriation, the tedious traversing of seas
+      and continents, the pilgrimage to Bayreuth stands explained. These
+      devotees would worship in an atmosphere of devotion. It is only here that
+      they can find it without fleck or blemish or any worldly pollution. In
+      this remote village there are no sights to see, there is no newspaper to
+      intrude the worries of the distant world, there is nothing going on, it is
+      always Sunday. The pilgrim wends to his temple out of town, sits out his
+      moving service, returns to his bed with his heart and soul and his body
+      exhausted by long hours of tremendous emotion, and he is in no fit
+      condition to do anything but to lie torpid and slowly gather back life and
+      strength for the next service. This opera of &ldquo;Tristan and Isolde&rdquo;
+      last night broke the hearts of all witnesses who were of the faith, and I
+      know of some who have heard of many who could not sleep after it, but
+      cried the night away. I feel strongly out of place here. Sometimes I feel
+      like the sane person in a community of the mad; sometimes I feel like the
+      one blind man where all others see; the one groping savage in the college
+      of the learned, and always, during service, I feel like a heretic in
+      heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But by no means do I ever overlook or minify the fact that this is one of
+      the most extraordinary experiences of my life. I have never seen anything
+      like this before. I have never seen anything so great and fine and real as
+      this devotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRIDAY.&mdash;Yesterday's opera was &ldquo;Parsifal&rdquo; again.
+      The others went and they show marked advance in appreciation; but I went
+      hunting for relics and reminders of the Margravine Wilhelmina, she of the
+      imperishable &ldquo;Memoirs.&rdquo; I am properly grateful to her for her
+      (unconscious) satire upon monarchy and nobility, and therefore nothing
+      which her hand touched or her eye looked upon is indifferent to me. I am
+      her pilgrim; the rest of this multitude here are Wagner's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TUESDAY.&mdash;I have seen my last two operas; my season is ended, and we
+      cross over into Bohemia this afternoon. I was supposing that my musical
+      regeneration was accomplished and perfected, because I enjoyed both of
+      these operas, singing and all, and, moreover, one of them was &ldquo;Parsifal,&rdquo;
+      but the experts have disenchanted me. They say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Singing! That wasn't singing; that was the wailing,
+      screeching of third-rate obscurities, palmed off on us in the interest of
+      economy.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Well, I ought to have recognized the sign&mdash;the old, sure sign that
+      has never failed me in matters of art. Whenever I enjoy anything in art it
+      means that it is mighty poor. The private knowledge of this fact has saved
+      me from going to pieces with enthusiasm in front of many and many a
+      chromo. However, my base instinct does bring me profit sometimes; I was
+      the only man out of thirty-two hundred who got his money back on those two
+      operas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Is it true that the sun of a man's mentality touches noon at forty
+      and then begins to wane toward setting? Doctor Osler is charged with
+      saying so. Maybe he said it, maybe he didn't; I don't know
+      which it is. But if he said it, I can point him to a case which proves his
+      rule. Proves it by being an exception to it. To this place I nominate Mr.
+      Howells.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I read his <i>Venetian Days</i> about forty years ago. I compare it with
+      his paper on Machiavelli in a late number of <i>Harper</i>, and I cannot
+      find that his English has suffered any impairment. For forty years his
+      English has been to me a continual delight and astonishment. In the
+      sustained exhibition of certain great qualities&mdash;clearness,
+      compression, verbal exactness, and unforced and seemingly unconscious
+      felicity of phrasing&mdash;he is, in my belief, without his peer in the
+      English-writing world. <i>sustained</i>. I entrench myself behind that
+      protecting word. There are others who exhibit those great qualities as
+      greatly as he does, but only by intervaled distributions of rich
+      moonlight, with stretches of veiled and dimmer landscape between; whereas
+      Howells's moon sails cloudless skies all night and all the nights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the matter of verbal exactness Mr. Howells has no superior, I suppose.
+      He seems to be almost always able to find that elusive and shifty grain of
+      gold, the <i>right word.</i> Others have to put up with approximations,
+      more or less frequently; he has better luck. To me, the others are miners
+      working with the gold-pan&mdash;of necessity some of the gold washes over
+      and escapes; whereas, in my fancy, he is quicksilver raiding down a riffle&mdash;no
+      grain of the metal stands much chance of eluding him. A powerful agent is
+      the right word: it lights the reader's way and makes it plain; a
+      close approximation to it will answer, and much traveling is done in a
+      well-enough fashion by its help, but we do not welcome it and applaud it
+      and rejoice in it as we do when <i>the </i>right one blazes out on us.
+      Whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or a
+      newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual, and
+      electrically prompt: it tingles exquisitely around through the walls of
+      the mouth and tastes as tart and crisp and good as the autumn-butter that
+      creams the sumac-berry. One has no time to examine the word and vote upon
+      its rank and standing, the automatic recognition of its supremacy is so
+      immediate. There is a plenty of acceptable literature which deals largely
+      in approximations, but it may be likened to a fine landscape seen through
+      the rain; the right word would dismiss the rain, then you would see it
+      better. It doesn't rain when Howells is at work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And where does he get the easy and effortless flow of his speech? and its
+      cadenced and undulating rhythm? and its architectural felicities of
+      construction, its graces of expression, its pemmican quality of
+      compression, and all that? Born to him, no doubt. All in shining good
+      order in the beginning, all extraordinary; and all just as shining, just
+      as extraordinary today, after forty years of diligent wear and tear and
+      use. He passed his fortieth year long and long ago; but I think his
+      English of today&mdash;his perfect English, I wish to say&mdash;can throw
+      down the glove before his English of that antique time and not be afraid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I will go back to the paper on Machiavelli now, and ask the reader to
+      examine this passage from it which I append. I do not mean examine it in a
+      bird's-eye way; I mean search it, study it. And, of course, read it
+      aloud. I may be wrong, still it is my conviction that one cannot get out
+      of finely wrought literature all that is in it by reading it mutely:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Mr. Dyer is rather of the opinion, first luminously suggested by
+      Macaulay, that Machiavelli was in earnest, but must not be judged as a
+      political moralist of our time and race would be judged. He thinks that
+      Machiavelli was in earnest, as none but an idealist can be, and he is the
+      first to imagine him an idealist immersed in realities, who involuntarily
+      transmutes the events under his eye into something like the visionary
+      issues of reverie. The Machiavelli whom he depicts does not cease to be
+      politically a republican and socially a just man because he holds up an
+      atrocious despot like Caesar Borgia as a mirror for rulers. What
+      Machiavelli beheld round him in Italy was a civic disorder in which there
+      was oppression without statecraft, and revolt without patriotism. When a
+      miscreant like Borgia appeared upon the scene and reduced both tyrants and
+      rebels to an apparent quiescence, he might very well seem to such a
+      dreamer the savior of society whom a certain sort of dreamers are always
+      looking for. Machiavelli was no less honest when he honored the diabolical
+      force of Caesar Borgia than Carlyle was when at different times he
+      extolled the strong man who destroys liberty in creating order. But
+      Carlyle has only just ceased to be mistaken for a reformer, while it is
+      still Machiavelli's hard fate to be so trammeled in his material
+      that his name stands for whatever is most malevolent and perfidious in
+      human nature.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You see how easy and flowing it is; how unvexed by ruggednesses,
+      clumsinesses, broken meters; how simple and&mdash;so far as you or I can
+      make out&mdash;unstudied; how clear, how limpid, how understandable, how
+      unconfused by cross-currents, eddies, undertows; how seemingly unadorned,
+      yet is all adornment, like the lily-of-the-valley; and how compressed, how
+      compact, without a complacency-signal hung out anywhere to call attention
+      to it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are twenty-three lines in the quoted passage. After reading it
+      several times aloud, one perceives that a good deal of matter is crowded
+      into that small space. I think it is a model of compactness. When I take
+      its materials apart and work them over and put them together in my way, I
+      find I cannot crowd the result back into the same hole, there not being
+      room enough. I find it a case of a woman packing a man's trunk: he
+      can get the things out, but he can't ever get them back again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The proffered paragraph is a just and fair sample; the rest of the article
+      is as compact as it is; there are no waste words. The sample is just in
+      other ways: limpid, fluent, graceful, and rhythmical as it is, it holds no
+      superiority in these respects over the rest of the essay. Also, the choice
+      phrasing noticeable in the sample is not lonely; there is a plenty of its
+      kin distributed through the other paragraphs. This is claiming much when
+      that kin must face the challenge of a phrase like the one in the middle
+      sentence: &ldquo;an idealist immersed in realities who involuntarily
+      transmutes the events under his eye into something like the visionary
+      issues of reverie.&rdquo; With a hundred words to do it with, the literary
+      artisan could catch that airy thought and tie it down and reduce it to a
+      concrete condition, visible, substantial, understandable and all right,
+      like a cabbage; but the artist does it with twenty, and the result is a
+      flower.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The quoted phrase, like a thousand others that have come from the same
+      source, has the quality of certain scraps of verse which take hold of us
+      and stay in our memories, we do not understand why, at first: all the
+      words being the right words, none of them is conspicuous, and so they all
+      seem inconspicuous, therefore we wonder what it is about them that makes
+      their message take hold.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The mossy marbles rest
+     On the lips that he has prest
+     In their bloom,
+     And the names he loved to hear
+     Have been carved for many a year
+     On the tomb.
+
+     --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It is like a dreamy strain of moving music, with no sharp notes in it. The
+      words are all &ldquo;right&rdquo; words, and all the same size. We do not
+      notice it at first. We get the effect, it goes straight home to us, but we
+      do not know why. It is when the right words are conspicuous that they
+      thunder:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I go back from Howells old to Howells young I find him arranging and
+      clustering English words well, but not any better than now. He is not more
+      felicitous in concreting abstractions now than he was in translating,
+      then, the visions of the eyes of flesh into words that reproduced their
+      forms and colors:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>In Venetian streets they give the fallen snow no rest. It is at once
+      shoveled into the canals by hundreds of half-naked FACCHINI; and now in
+      St. Mark's Place the music of innumerable shovels smote upon my ear;
+      and I saw the shivering legion of poverty as it engaged the elements in a
+      struggle for the possession of the Piazza. But the snow continued to fall,
+      and through the twilight of the descending flakes all this toil and
+      encounter looked like that weary kind of effort in dreams, when the most
+      determined industry seems only to renew the task. The lofty crest of the
+      bell-tower was hidden in the folds of falling snow, and I could no longer
+      see the golden angel upon its summit. But looked at across the Piazza, the
+      beautiful outline of St. Mark's Church was perfectly penciled in the
+      air, and the shifting threads of the snowfall were woven into a spell of
+      novel enchantment around the structure that always seemed to me too
+      exquisite in its fantastic loveliness to be anything but the creation of
+      magic. The tender snow had compassionated the beautiful edifice for all
+      the wrongs of time, and so hid the stains and ugliness of decay that it
+      looked as if just from the hand of the builder&mdash;or, better said, just
+      from the brain of the architect. There was marvelous freshness in the
+      colors of the mosaics in the great arches of the facade, and all that
+      gracious harmony into which the temple rises, of marble scrolls and leafy
+      exuberance airily supporting the statues of the saints, was a hundred
+      times etherealized by the purity and whiteness of the drifting flakes. The
+      snow lay lightly on the golden globes that tremble like peacocks-crests
+      above the vast domes, and plumed them with softest white; it robed the
+      saints in ermine; and it danced over all its works, as if exulting in its
+      beauty&mdash;beauty which filled me with subtle, selfish yearning to keep
+      such evanescent loveliness for the little-while-longer of my whole life,
+      and with despair to think that even the poor lifeless shadow of it could
+      never be fairly reflected in picture or poem.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through the wavering snowfall, the Saint Theodore upon one of the granite
+      pillars of the Piazzetta did not show so grim as his wont is, and the
+      winged lion on the other might have been a winged lamb, so gentle and mild
+      he looked by the tender light of the storm. The towers of the island
+      churches loomed faint and far away in the dimness; the sailors in the
+      rigging of the ships that lay in the Basin wrought like phantoms among the
+      shrouds; the gondolas stole in and out of the opaque distance more
+      noiselessly and dreamily than ever; and a silence, almost palpable, lay
+      upon the mutest city in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The spirit of Venice is there: of a city where Age and Decay, fagged with
+      distributing damage and repulsiveness among the other cities of the planet
+      in accordance with the policy and business of their profession, come for
+      rest and play between seasons, and treat themselves to the luxury and
+      relaxation of sinking the shop and inventing and squandering charms all
+      about, instead of abolishing such as they find, as is their habit when not
+      on vacation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the working season they do business in Boston sometimes, and a
+      character in <i>the undiscovered country</i> takes accurate note of
+      pathetic effects wrought by them upon the aspects of a street of once
+      dignified and elegant homes whose occupants have moved away and left them
+      a prey to neglect and gradual ruin and progressive degradation; a descent
+      which reaches bottom at last, when the street becomes a roost for humble
+      professionals of the faith-cure and fortune-telling sort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What a queer, melancholy house, what a queer, melancholy street! I don't
+      think I was ever in a street before where quite so many professional
+      ladies, with English surnames, preferred Madam to Mrs. on their
+      door-plates. And the poor old place has such a desperately conscious air
+      of going to the deuce. Every house seems to wince as you go by, and button
+      itself up to the chin for fear you should find out it had no shirt on&mdash;so
+      to speak. I don't know what's the reason, but these material
+      tokens of a social decay afflict me terribly; a tipsy woman isn't
+      dreadfuler than a haggard old house, that's once been a home, in a
+      street like this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Howells's pictures are not mere stiff, hard, accurate
+      photographs; they are photographs with feeling in them, and sentiment,
+      photographs taken in a dream, one might say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As concerns his humor, I will not try to say anything, yet I would try, if
+      I had the words that might approximately reach up to its high place. I do
+      not think any one else can play with humorous fancies so gracefully and
+      delicately and deliciously as he does, nor has so many to play with, nor
+      can come so near making them look as if they were doing the playing
+      themselves and he was not aware that they were at it. For they are
+      unobtrusive, and quiet in their ways, and well conducted. His is a humor
+      which flows softly all around about and over and through the mesh of the
+      page, pervasive, refreshing, health-giving, and makes no more show and no
+      more noise than does the circulation of the blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is another thing which is contentingly noticeable in Mr. Howells's
+      books. That is his &ldquo;stage directions&rdquo;&mdash;those artifices
+      which authors employ to throw a kind of human naturalness around a scene
+      and a conversation, and help the reader to see the one and get at meanings
+      in the other which might not be perceived if entrusted unexplained to the
+      bare words of the talk. Some authors overdo the stage directions, they
+      elaborate them quite beyond necessity; they spend so much time and take up
+      so much room in telling us how a person said a thing and how he looked and
+      acted when he said it that we get tired and vexed and wish he hadn't
+      said it at all. Other authors' directions are brief enough, but it
+      is seldom that the brevity contains either wit or information. Writers of
+      this school go in rags, in the matter of stage directions; the majority of
+      them having nothing in stock but a cigar, a laugh, a blush, and a bursting
+      into tears. In their poverty they work these sorry things to the bone.
+      They say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... replied Alfred, flipping the ash from his cigar.&rdquo; (This
+      explains nothing; it only wastes space.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... responded Richard, with a laugh.&rdquo; (There was nothing to
+      laugh about; there never is. The writer puts it in from habit&mdash;automatically;
+      he is paying no attention to his work; or he would see that there is
+      nothing to laugh at; often, when a remark is unusually and poignantly flat
+      and silly, he tries to deceive the reader by enlarging the stage direction
+      and making Richard break into &ldquo;frenzies of uncontrollable laughter.&rdquo;
+      This makes the reader sad.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... murmured Gladys, blushing.&rdquo; (This poor old shop-worn
+      blush is a tiresome thing. We get so we would rather Gladys would fall out
+      of the book and break her neck than do it again. She is always doing it,
+      and usually irrelevantly. Whenever it is her turn to murmur she hangs out
+      her blush; it is the only thing she's got. In a little while we hate
+      her, just as we do Richard.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... repeated Evelyn, bursting into tears.&rdquo; (This kind keep a
+      book damp all the time. They can't say a thing without crying. They
+      cry so much about nothing that by and by when they have something to cry
+      ABOUT they have gone dry; they sob, and fetch nothing; we are not moved.
+      We are only glad.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They gravel me, these stale and overworked stage directions, these carbon
+      films that got burnt out long ago and cannot now carry any faintest thread
+      of light. It would be well if they could be relieved from duty and flung
+      out in the literary back yard to rot and disappear along with the
+      discarded and forgotten &ldquo;steeds&rdquo; and &ldquo;halidomes&rdquo;
+      and similar stage-properties once so dear to our grandfathers. But I am
+      friendly to Mr. Howells's stage directions; more friendly to them
+      than to any one else's, I think. They are done with a competent and
+      discriminating art, and are faithful to the requirements of a stage
+      direction's proper and lawful office, which is to inform. Sometimes
+      they convey a scene and its conditions so well that I believe I could see
+      the scene and get the spirit and meaning of the accompanying dialogue if
+      some one would read merely the stage directions to me and leave out the
+      talk. For instance, a scene like this, from <i>The Undiscovered Country</i>:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... and she laid her arms with a beseeching gesture on her father's
+      shoulder.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... she answered, following his gesture with a glance.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... she said, laughing nervously.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... she asked, turning swiftly upon him that strange, searching
+      glance.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... she answered, vaguely.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... she reluctantly admitted.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... but her voice died wearily away, and she stood looking into his
+      face with puzzled entreaty.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Howells does not repeat his forms, and does not need to; he can invent
+      fresh ones without limit. It is mainly the repetition over and over again,
+      by the third-rates, of worn and commonplace and juiceless forms that makes
+      their novels such a weariness and vexation to us, I think. We do not mind
+      one or two deliveries of their wares, but as we turn the pages over and
+      keep on meeting them we presently get tired of them and wish they would do
+      other things for a change.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... replied Alfred, flipping the ash from his cigar.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... responded Richard, with a laugh.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... murmured Gladys, blushing.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... repeated Evelyn, bursting into tears.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... replied the Earl, flipping the ash from his cigar.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... responded the undertaker, with a laugh.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... murmured the chambermaid, blushing.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... repeated the burglar, bursting into tears.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... replied the conductor, flipping the ash from his cigar.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... responded Arkwright, with a laugh.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... murmured the chief of police, blushing.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;... repeated the house-cat, bursting into tears.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so on and so on; till at last it ceases to excite. I always notice
+      stage directions, because they fret me and keep me trying to get out of
+      their way, just as the automobiles do. At first; then by and by they
+      become monotonous and I get run over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Howells has done much work, and the spirit of it is as beautiful as
+      the make of it. I have held him in admiration and affection so many years
+      that I know by the number of those years that he is old now; but his heart
+      isn't, nor his pen; and years do not count. Let him have plenty of
+      them; there is profit in them for us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ENGLISH AS SHE IS TAUGHT
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      In the appendix to Croker's Boswell's Johnson one finds this
+      anecdote:
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <i>Cato's Soliloquy</i>.&mdash;One day Mrs. Gastrel set a little
+      girl to repeat to him (Dr. Samuel Johnson) Cato's Soliloquy, which
+      she went through very correctly. The Doctor, after a pause, asked the
+      child:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was to bring Cato to an end?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She said it was a knife.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, my dear, it was not so.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My aunt Polly said it was a knife.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Aunt Polly's knife <i>may do</i>, but it was a <i>dagger</i>,
+      my dear.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He then asked her the meaning of &ldquo;bane and antidote,&rdquo; which
+      she was unable to give. Mrs. Gastrel said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You cannot expect so young a child to know the meaning of such
+      words.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He then said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear, how many pence are there in <i>sixpence</i>?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot tell, sir,&rdquo; was the half-terrified reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On this, addressing himself to Mrs. Gastrel, he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, my dear lady, can anything be more ridiculous than to teach a
+      child Cato's Soliloquy, who does not know how many pence there are
+      in sixpence?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a lecture before the Royal Geographical Society Professor Ravenstein
+      quoted the following list of frantic questions, and said that they had
+      been asked in an examination:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mention all the names of places in the world derived from Julius Caesar or
+      Augustus Caesar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where are the following rivers: Pisuerga, Sakaria, Guadalete, Jalon,
+      Mulde?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All you know of the following: Machacha, Pilmo, Schebulos, Crivoscia,
+      Basecs, Mancikert, Taxhem, Citeaux, Meloria, Zutphen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The highest peaks of the Karakorum range.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The number of universities in Prussia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why are the tops of mountains continually covered with snow (sic)?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Name the length and breadth of the streams of lava which issued from the
+      Skaptar Jokul in the eruption of 1783.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That list would oversize nearly anybody's geographical knowledge.
+      Isn't it reasonably possible that in our schools many of the
+      questions in all studies are several miles ahead of where the pupil is?&mdash;that
+      he is set to struggle with things that are ludicrously beyond his present
+      reach, hopelessly beyond his present strength? This remark in passing, and
+      by way of text; now I come to what I was going to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have just now fallen upon a darling literary curiosity. It is a little
+      book, a manuscript compilation, and the compiler sent it to me with the
+      request that I say whether I think it ought to be published or not. I
+      said, Yes; but as I slowly grow wise I briskly grow cautious; and so, now
+      that the publication is imminent, it has seemed to me that I should feel
+      more comfortable if I could divide up this responsibility with the public
+      by adding them to the court. Therefore I will print some extracts from the
+      book, in the hope that they may make converts to my judgment that the
+      volume has merit which entitles it to publication.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As to its character. Every one has sampled &ldquo;English as She is Spoke&rdquo;
+      and &ldquo;English as She is Wrote&rdquo;; this little volume furnishes us
+      an instructive array of examples of &ldquo;English as She is Taught&rdquo;&mdash;in
+      the public schools of&mdash;well, this country. The collection is made by
+      a teacher in those schools, and all the examples in it are genuine; none
+      of them have been tampered with, or doctored in any way. From time to
+      time, during several years, whenever a pupil has delivered himself of
+      anything peculiarly quaint or toothsome in the course of his recitations,
+      this teacher and her associates have privately set that thing down in a
+      memorandum-book; strictly following the original, as to grammar,
+      construction, spelling, and all; and the result is this literary
+      curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The contents of the book consist mainly of answers given by the boys and
+      girls to questions, said answers being given sometimes verbally, sometimes
+      in writing. The subjects touched upon are fifteen in number: I. Etymology;
+      II. Grammar; III. Mathematics; IV. Geography; V. &ldquo;Original&rdquo;;
+      VI. Analysis; VII. History; VIII. &ldquo;Intellectual&rdquo;; IX.
+      Philosophy; X. Physiology; XI. Astronomy; XII. Politics; XIII. Music; XIV.
+      Oratory; XV. Metaphysics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You perceive that the poor little young idea has taken a shot at a good
+      many kinds of game in the course of the book. Now as to results. Here are
+      some quaint definitions of words. It will be noticed that in all of these
+      instances the sound of the word, or the look of it on paper, has misled
+      the child:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ABORIGINES, a system of mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ALIAS, a good man in the Bible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      AMENABLE, anything that is mean.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      AMMONIA, the food of the gods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ASSIDUITY, state of being an acid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      AURIFEROUS, pertaining to an orifice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CAPILLARY, a little caterpillar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CORNIFEROUS, rocks in which fossil corn is found.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EMOLUMENT, a headstone to a grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EQUESTRIAN, one who asks questions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      EUCHARIST, one who plays euchre.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      FRANCHISE, anything belonging to the French.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IDOLATER, a very idle person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IPECAC, a man who likes a good dinner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      IRRIGATE, to make fun of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MENDACIOUS, what can be mended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      MERCENARY, one who feels for another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PARASITE, a kind of umbrella.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PARASITE, the murder of an infant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PUBLICAN, a man who does his prayers in public.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      TENACIOUS, ten acres of land.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here is one where the phrase &ldquo;publicans and sinners&rdquo; has got
+      mixed up in the child's mind with politics, and the result is a
+      definition which takes one in a sudden and unexpected way:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      REPUBLICAN, a sinner mentioned in the Bible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Also in Democratic newspapers now and then. Here are two where the mistake
+      has resulted from sound assisted by remote fact:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PLAGIARIST, a writer of plays.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      DEMAGOGUE, a vessel containing beer and other liquids.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I cannot quite make out what it was that misled the pupil in the following
+      instances; it would not seem to have been the sound of the word, nor the
+      look of it in print:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ASPHYXIA, a grumbling, fussy temper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      QUARTERNIONS, a bird with a flat beak and no bill, living in New Zealand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      QUARTERNIONS, the name given to a style of art practiced by the
+      Phoenicians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      QUARTERNIONS, a religious convention held every hundred years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SIBILANT, the state of being idiotic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      CROSIER, a staff carried by the Deity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the following sentences the pupil's ear has been deceiving him
+      again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The marriage was illegible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was totally dismasted with the whole performance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He enjoys riding on a philosopher.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She was very quick at repertoire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He prayed for the waters to subsidize.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The leopard is watching his sheep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had a strawberry vestibule.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here is one which&mdash;well, now, how often we do slam right into the
+      truth without ever suspecting it:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men employed by the Gas Company go around and speculate the meter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Indeed they do, dear; and when you grow up, many and many's the time
+      you will notice it in the gas bill. In the following sentences the little
+      people have some information to convey, every time; but in my case they
+      fail to connect: the light always went out on the keystone word:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The coercion of some things is remarkable; as bread and molasses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her hat is contiguous because she wears it on one side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He preached to an egregious congregation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain eliminated a bullet through the man's heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You should take caution and be precarious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The supercilious girl acted with vicissitude when the perennial time came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last is a curiously plausible sentence; one seems to know what it
+      means, and yet he knows all the time that he doesn't. Here is an odd
+      (but entirely proper) use of a word, and a most sudden descent from a
+      lofty philosophical altitude to a very practical and homely illustration:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We should endeavor to avoid extremes&mdash;like those of wasps and bees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And here&mdash;with &ldquo;zoological&rdquo; and &ldquo;geological&rdquo;
+      in his mind, but not ready to his tongue&mdash;the small scholar has
+      innocently gone and let out a couple of secrets which ought never to have
+      been divulged in any circumstances:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+There are a good many donkeys in theological gardens.<br />
+Some of the best fossils are found in theological cabinets.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Under the head of &ldquo;Grammar&rdquo; the little scholars furnish the
+      following information:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+Gender is the distinguishing nouns without regard to sex.<br />
+A verb is something to eat.<br />
+Adverbs should always be used as adjectives and adjectives as adverbs.<br />
+Every sentence and name of God must begin with a caterpillar.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Caterpillar&rdquo; is well enough, but capital letter would have
+      been stricter. The following is a brave attempt at a solution, but it
+      failed to liquify:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they are going to say some prose or poetry before they say the poetry
+      or prose they must put a semicolon just after the introduction of the
+      prose or poetry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chapter on &ldquo;Mathematics&rdquo; is full of fruit. From it I take
+      a few samples&mdash;mainly in an unripe state:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+A straight line is any distance between two places.<br />
+Parallel lines are lines that can never meet until they run together.<br />
+A circle is a round straight line with a hole in the middle.<br />
+Things which are equal to each other are equal to anything else.<br />
+To find the number of square feet in a room you multiply the room by the<br />
+number of the feet. The product is the result.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Right you are. In the matter of geography this little book is unspeakably
+      rich. The questions do not appear to have applied the microscope to the
+      subject, as did those quoted by Professor Ravenstein; still, they proved
+      plenty difficult enough without that. These pupils did not hunt with a
+      microscope, they hunted with a shot-gun; this is shown by the crippled
+      condition of the game they brought in:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      America is divided into the Passiffic slope and the Mississippi valey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      North America is separated by Spain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      America consists from north to south about five hundred miles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The United States is quite a small country compared with some other
+      countrys, but is about as industrious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The capital of the United States is Long Island.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The five seaports of the U.S. are Newfunlan and Sanfrancisco.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The principal products of the U.S. is earthquakes and volcanoes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Alaginnies are mountains in Philadelphia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Rocky Mountains are on the western side of Philadelphia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cape Hateras is a vast body of water surrounded by land and flowing into
+      the Gulf of Mexico.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mason and Dixon's line is the Equator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the leading industries of the United States is mollasses,
+      book-covers, numbers, gas, teaching, lumber, manufacturers, paper-making,
+      publishers, coal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Austria the principal occupation is gathering Austrich feathers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gibraltar is an island built on a rock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Russia is very cold and tyrannical.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sicily is one of the Sandwich Islands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hindoostan flows through the Ganges and empties into the Mediterranean
+      Sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ireland is called the Emigrant Isle because it is so beautiful and green.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The width of the different zones Europe lies in depend upon the
+      surrounding country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The imports of a country are the things that are paid for, the exports are
+      the things that are not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Climate lasts all the time and weather only a few days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The two most famous volcanoes of Europe are Sodom and Gomorrah.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chapter headed &ldquo;Analysis&rdquo; shows us that the pupils in our
+      public schools are not merely loaded up with those showy facts about
+      geography, mathematics, and so on, and left in that incomplete state; no,
+      there's machinery for clarifying and expanding their minds. They are
+      required to take poems and analyze them, dig out their common sense,
+      reduce them to statistics, and reproduce them in a luminous prose
+      translation which shall tell you at a glance what the poet was trying to
+      get at. One sample will do. Here is a stanza from &ldquo;The Lady of the
+      Lake,&rdquo; followed by the pupil's impressive explanation of it:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alone, but with unbated zeal, The horseman plied with scourge and steel;
+      For jaded now and spent with toil, Embossed with foam and dark with soil,
+      While every gasp with sobs he drew, The laboring stag strained full in
+      view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man who rode on the horse performed the whip and an instrument made of
+      steel alone with strong ardor not diminishing, for, being tired from the
+      time passed with hard labor overworked with anger and ignorant with
+      weariness, while every breath for labor he drew with cries full of sorrow,
+      the young deer made imperfect who worked hard filtered in sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I see, now, that I never understood that poem before. I have had glimpses
+      of its meaning, in moments when I was not as ignorant with weariness as
+      usual, but this is the first time the whole spacious idea of it ever
+      filtered in sight. If I were a public-school pupil I would put those other
+      studies aside and stick to analysis; for, after all, it is the thing to
+      spread your mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We come now to historical matters, historical remains, one might say. As
+      one turns the pages he is impressed with the depth to which one date has
+      been driven into the American child's head&mdash;1492. The date is
+      there, and it is there to stay. And it is always at hand, always
+      deliverable at a moment's notice. But the Fact that belongs with it?
+      That is quite another matter. Only the date itself is familiar and sure:
+      its vast Fact has failed of lodgment. It would appear that whenever you
+      ask a public-school pupil when a thing&mdash;anything, no matter what&mdash;happened,
+      and he is in doubt, he always rips out his 1492. He applies it to
+      everything, from the landing of the ark to the introduction of the
+      horse-car. Well, after all, it is our first date, and so it is right
+      enough to honor it, and pay the public schools to teach our children to
+      honor it:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George Washington was born in 1492.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Washington wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1492.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      St. Bartholemew was massacred in 1492.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Brittains were the Saxons who entered England in 1492 under Julius
+      Caesar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The earth is 1492 miles in circumference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To proceed with &ldquo;History&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christopher Columbus was called the Father of his Country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Queen Isabella of Spain sold her watch and chain and other millinery so
+      that Columbus could discover America.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Indian wars were very desecrating to the country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Indians pursued their warfare by hiding in the bushes and then
+      scalping them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Captain John Smith has been styled the father of his country. His life was
+      saved by his daughter Pochahantas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Puritans found an insane asylum in the wilds of America.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Stamp Act was to make everybody stamp all materials so they should be
+      null and void.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Washington died in Spain almost broken-hearted. His remains were taken to
+      the cathedral in Havana.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gorilla warfare was where men rode on gorillas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John Brown was a very good insane man who tried to get fugitives slaves
+      into Virginia. He captured all the inhabitants, but was finally conquered
+      and condemned to his death. The confederasy was formed by the fugitive
+      slaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Alfred the Great reigned 872 years. He was distinguished for letting some
+      buckwheat cakes burn, and the lady scolded him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Henry Eight was famous for being a great widower haveing lost several
+      wives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lady Jane Grey studied Greek and Latin and was beheaded after a few days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      John Bright is noted for an incurable disease.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord James Gordon Bennet instigated the Gordon Riots.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Middle Ages come in between antiquity and posterity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Luther introduced Christianity into England a good many thousand years
+      ago. His birthday was November 1883. He was once a Pope. He lived at the
+      time of the Rebellion of Worms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julius Caesar is noted for his famous telegram dispatch I came I saw I
+      conquered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Julius Caesar was really a very great man. He was a very great soldier and
+      wrote a book for beginners in the Latin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cleopatra was caused by the death of an asp which she dissolved in a wine
+      cup.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The only form of government in Greece was a limited monkey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Persian war lasted about 500 years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Greece had only 7 wise men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Socrates... destroyed some statues and had to drink Shamrock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here is a fact correctly stated; and yet it is phrased with such ingenious
+      infelicity that it can be depended upon to convey misinformation every
+      time it is uncarefully read:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the Salic law no woman or descendant of a woman could occupy the
+      throne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To show how far a child can travel in history with judicious and diligent
+      boosting in the public school, we select the following mosaic:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Abraham Lincoln was born in Wales in 1599.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the chapter headed &ldquo;Intellectual&rdquo; I find a great number of
+      most interesting statements. A sample or two may be found not amiss:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bracebridge Hall was written by Henry Irving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Snow Bound was written by Peter Cooper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The House of the Seven Gables was written by Lord Bryant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Edgar A. Poe was a very curdling writer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cotton Mather was a writer who invented the cotten gin and wrote
+      histories.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beowulf wrote the Scriptures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Johnson survived Shakspeare in some respects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the Canterbury Tale it gives account of King Alfred on his way to the
+      shrine of Thomas Bucket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chaucer was the father of English pottery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chaucer was a bland verse writer of the third century.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chaucer was succeeded by H. Wads. Longfellow an American Writer. His
+      writings were chiefly prose and nearly one hundred years elapsed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shakspere translated the Scriptures and it was called St. James because he
+      did it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the middle of the chapter I find many pages of information concerning
+      Shakespeare's plays, Milton's works, and those of Bacon,
+      Addison, Samuel Johnson, Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Smollett, De Foe,
+      Locke, Pope, Swift, Goldsmith, Burns, Cowper, Wordsworth, Gibbon, Byron,
+      Coleridge, Hood, Scott, Macaulay, George Eliot, Dickens, Bulwer,
+      Thackeray, Browning, Mrs. Browning, Tennyson, and Disraeli&mdash;a fact
+      which shows that into the restricted stomach of the public-school pupil is
+      shoveled every year the blood, bone, and viscera of a gigantic literature,
+      and the same is there digested and disposed of in a most successful and
+      characteristic and gratifying public-school way. I have space for but a
+      trifling few of the results:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lord Byron was the son of an heiress and a drunken man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wm. Wordsworth wrote the Barefoot Boy and Imitations on Immortality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Gibbon wrote a history of his travels in Italy. This was original.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George Eliot left a wife and children who mourned greatly for his genius.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      George Eliot Miss Mary Evans Mrs. Cross Mrs. Lewis was the greatest female
+      poet unless George Sands is made an exception of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bulwell is considered a good writer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir Walter Scott Charles Bronte Alfred the Great and Johnson were the
+      first great novelists.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thomas Babington Makorlay graduated at Harvard and then studied law, he
+      was raised to the peerage as baron in 1557 and died in 1776.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here are two or three miscellaneous facts that may be of value, if taken
+      in moderation:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Homer's writings are Homer's Essays Virgil the Aenid and
+      Paradise lost some people say that these poems were not written by Homer
+      but by another man of the same name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A sort of sadness kind of shone in Bryant's poems.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Holmes is a very profligate and amusing writer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the public-school pupil wrestles with the political features of the
+      Great Republic, they throw him sometimes:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A bill becomes a law when the President vetoes it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The three departments of the government is the President rules the world,
+      the governor rules the State, the mayor rules the city.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first conscientious Congress met in Philadelphia.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Constitution of the United States was established to ensure domestic
+      hostility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Truth crushed to earth will rise again. As follows:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Constitution of the United States is that part of the book at the end
+      which nobody reads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And here she rises once more and untimely. There should be a limit to
+      public-school instruction; it cannot be wise or well to let the young find
+      out everything:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Congress is divided into civilized half civilized and savage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here are some results of study in music and oratory:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An interval in music is the distance on the keyboard from one piano to the
+      next.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A rest means you are not to sing it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Emphasis is putting more distress on one word than another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The chapter on &ldquo;Physiology&rdquo; contains much that ought not to be
+      lost to science:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Physillogigy is to study about your bones stummick and vertebry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Occupations which are injurious to health are cabolic acid gas which is
+      impure blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We have an upper and lower skin. The lower skin moves all the time and the
+      upper skin moves when we do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The body is mostly composed of water and about one half is avaricious
+      tissue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The stomach is a small pear-shaped bone situated in the body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The gastric juice keeps the bones from creaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Chyle flows up the middle of the backbone and reaches the heart where
+      it meets the oxygen and is purified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The salivary glands are used to salivate the body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the stomach starch is changed to cane sugar and cane sugar to sugar
+      cane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The olfactory nerve enters the cavity of the orbit and is developed into
+      the special sense of hearing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The growth of a tooth begins in the back of the mouth and extends to the
+      stomach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If we were on a railroad track and a train was coming the train would
+      deafen our ears so that we couldn't see to get off the track.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, up to this point, none of my quotations have added flavor to the
+      Johnsonian anecdote at the head of this article, let us make another
+      attempt:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The theory that intuitive truths are discovered by the light of nature
+      originated from St. John's interpretation of a passage in the Gospel
+      of Plato.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The weight of the earth is found by comparing a mass of known lead with
+      that of a mass of unknown lead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To find the weight of the earth take the length of a degree on a meridian
+      and multiply by 62 1/2 pounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The spheres are to each other as the squares of their homologous sides.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A body will go just as far in the first second as the body will go plus
+      the force of gravity and that's equal to twice what the body will
+      go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Specific gravity is the weight to be compared weight of an equal volume of
+      or that is the weight of a body compared with the weight of an equal
+      volume.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The law of fluid pressure divide the different forms of organized bodies
+      by the form of attraction and the number increased will be the form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Inertia is that property of bodies by virtue of which it cannot change its
+      own condition of rest or motion. In other words it is the negative quality
+      of passiveness either in recoverable latency or insipient latescence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If a laugh is fair here, not the struggling child, nor the unintelligent
+      teacher&mdash;or rather the unintelligent Boards, Committees, and Trustees&mdash;are
+      the proper target for it. All through this little book one detects the
+      signs of a certain probable fact&mdash;that a large part of the pupil's
+      &ldquo;instruction&rdquo; consists in cramming him with obscure and wordy
+      &ldquo;rules&rdquo; which he does not understand and has no time to
+      understand. It would be as useful to cram him with brickbats; they would
+      at least stay. In a town in the interior of New York, a few years ago, a
+      gentleman set forth a mathematical problem and proposed to give a prize to
+      every public-school pupil who should furnish the correct solution of it.
+      Twenty-two of the brightest boys in the public schools entered the
+      contest. The problem was not a very difficult one for pupils of their
+      mathematical rank and standing, yet they all failed&mdash;by a hair&mdash;through
+      one trifling mistake or another. Some searching questions were asked, when
+      it turned out that these lads were as glib as parrots with the &ldquo;rules,&rdquo;
+      but could not reason out a single rule or explain the principle underlying
+      it. Their memories had been stocked, but not their understandings. It was
+      a case of brickbat culture, pure and simple.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are several curious &ldquo;compositions&rdquo; in the little book,
+      and we must make room for one. It is full of naivete, brutal truth, and
+      unembarrassed directness, and is the funniest (genuine) boy's
+      composition I think I have ever seen:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      ON GIRLS
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      Girls are very stuck up and dignefied in their maner and be have your.
+      They think more of dress than anything and like to play with dowls and
+      rags. They cry if they see a cow in a far distance and are afraid of guns.
+      They stay at home all the time and go to church on Sunday. They are
+      al-ways sick. They are always funy and making fun of boy's hands and
+      they say how dirty. They cant play marbels. I pity them poor things. They
+      make fun of boys and then turn round and love them. I dont beleave they
+      ever kiled a cat or anything. They look out every nite and say oh ant the
+      moon lovely. Thir is one thing I have not told and that is they al-ways
+      now their lessons bettern boys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Mr. Edward Channing's recent article in SCIENCE:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The marked difference between the books now being produced by French,
+      English, and American travelers, on the one hand, and German explorers, on
+      the other, is too great to escape attention. That difference is due
+      entirely to the fact that in school and university the German is taught,
+      in the first place to see, and in the second place to understand what he
+      does see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      A SIMPLIFIED ALPHABET
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      (This article, written during the autumn of 1899, was about the last
+      writing done by Mark Twain on any impersonal subject.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have had a kindly feeling, a friendly feeling, a cousinly feeling toward
+      Simplified Spelling, from the beginning of the movement three years ago,
+      but nothing more inflamed than that. It seemed to me to merely propose to
+      substitute one inadequacy for another; a sort of patching and plugging
+      poor old dental relics with cement and gold and porcelain paste; what was
+      really wanted was a new set of teeth. That is to say, a new <i>alphabet</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The heart of our trouble is with our foolish alphabet. It doesn't
+      know how to spell, and can't be taught. In this it is like all other
+      alphabets except one&mdash;the phonographic. That is the only competent
+      alphabet in the world. It can spell and correctly pronounce any word in
+      our language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That admirable alphabet, that brilliant alphabet, that inspired alphabet,
+      can be learned in an hour or two. In a week the student can learn to write
+      it with some little facility, and to read it with considerable ease. I
+      know, for I saw it tried in a public school in Nevada forty-five years
+      ago, and was so impressed by the incident that it has remained in my
+      memory ever since.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wish we could adopt it in place of our present written (and printed)
+      character. I mean <i>simply </i>the alphabet; simply the consonants and
+      the vowels&mdash;I don't mean any <i>reductions </i>or abbreviations
+      of them, such as the shorthand writer uses in order to get compression and
+      speed. No, I would <i>spell every word out.</i>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I will insert the alphabet here as I find it in Burnz's <small>Phonic
+      Shorthand</small>. (Figure 1) It is arranged<i></i> on the basis of Isaac
+      Pitman's <i>Phonography</i>. Isaac Pitman was the originator and
+      father of scientific phonography. It is used throughout the globe. It was
+      a memorable invention. He made it public seventy-three years ago. The firm
+      of Isaac Pitman &amp; Sons, New York, still exists, and they continue the
+      master's work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What should we gain?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      First of all, we could spell <i>definitely</i>&mdash;and correctly&mdash;any
+      word you please, just by the <i>sound </i>of it. We can't do that
+      with our present alphabet. For instance, take a simple, every-day word <i>phthisis</i>.
+      If we tried to spell it by the sound of it, we should make it TYSIS, and
+      be laughed at by every educated person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Secondly, we should gain in <i>reduction of labor</i> in writing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Simplified Spelling makes valuable reductions in the case of several
+      hundred words, but the new spelling must be <i>learned</i>. You can't
+      spell them by the sound; you must get them out of the book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But even if we knew the simplified form for every word in the language,
+      the phonographic alphabet would still beat the Simplified Speller &ldquo;hands
+      down&rdquo; in the important matter of economy of labor. I will
+      illustrate:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PRESENT FORM: through, laugh, highland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      SIMPLIFIED FORM: thru, laff, hyland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      PHONOGRAPHIC FORM: (Figure 2)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To write the word &ldquo;through,&rdquo; the pen has to make twenty-one
+      strokes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To write the word &ldquo;thru,&rdquo; the pen has to make twelve strokes&mdash;a
+      good saving.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To write that same word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to
+      make only <i>three </i>strokes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To write the word &ldquo;laugh,&rdquo; the pen has to make <i>fourteen
+      </i>strokes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To write &ldquo;laff,&rdquo; the pen has to make the <i>same number</i> of
+      strokes&mdash;no labor is saved to the penman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To write the same word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make
+      only <i>three </i>strokes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To write the word &ldquo;highland,&rdquo; the pen has to make twenty-two
+      strokes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To write &ldquo;hyland,&rdquo; the pen has to make eighteen strokes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To write that word with the phonographic alphabet, the pen has to make
+      only FIVE strokes. (Figure 3)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To write the words &ldquo;phonographic alphabet,&rdquo; the pen has to
+      make fifty-three strokes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To write &ldquo;fonografic alfabet,&rdquo; the pen has to make fifty
+      strokes. To the penman, the saving in labor is insignificant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To write that word (with vowels) with the phonographic alphabet, the pen
+      has to make only <i>seventeen </i>strokes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without the vowels, only <i>thirteen </i>strokes. (Figure 4) The vowels
+      are hardly necessary, this time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We make five pen-strokes in writing an m. Thus: (Figure 5) a stroke down;
+      a stroke up; a second stroke down; a second stroke up; a final stroke
+      down. Total, five. The phonographic alphabet accomplishes the m with a
+      single stroke&mdash;a curve, like a parenthesis that has come home drunk
+      and has fallen face down right at the front door where everybody that goes
+      along will see him and say, Alas!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When our written m is not the end of a word, but is otherwise located, it
+      has to be connected with the next letter, and that requires another
+      pen-stroke, making six in all, before you get rid of that m. But never
+      mind about the connecting strokes&mdash;let them go. Without counting
+      them, the twenty-six letters of our alphabet consumed about eighty
+      pen-strokes for their construction&mdash;about three pen-strokes per
+      letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is <i>three times the number</i> required by the phonographic alphabet.
+      It requires but <i>one </i>stroke for each letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My writing-gait is&mdash;well, I don't know what it is, but I will
+      time myself and see. Result: it is twenty-four words per minute. I don't
+      mean composing; I mean <i>copying</i>. There isn't any definite
+      composing-gait.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very well, my copying-gait is 1,440 words per hour&mdash;say 1,500. If I
+      could use the phonographic character with facility I could do the 1,500 in
+      twenty minutes. I could do nine hours' copying in three hours; I
+      could do three years' copying in one year. Also, if I had a
+      typewriting machine with the phonographic alphabet on it&mdash;oh, the
+      miracles I could do!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I am not pretending to write that character well. I have never had a
+      lesson, and I am copying the letters from the book. But I can accomplish
+      my desire, at any rate, which is, to make the reader get a good and clear
+      idea of the advantage it would be to us if we could discard our present
+      alphabet and put this better one in its place&mdash;using it in books,
+      newspapers, with the typewriter, and with the pen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (Figure 6)&mdash;<i>Man Dog Horse</i>. I think it is graceful and would
+      look comely in print. And consider&mdash;once more, I beg&mdash;what a
+      labor-saver it is! Ten pen-strokes with the one system to convey those
+      three words above, and thirty-three by the other! (Figure 7) I mean, in
+      SOME ways, not in all. I suppose I might go so far as to say in most ways,
+      and be within the facts, but never mind; let it go at <i>some</i>. One of
+      the ways in which it exercises this birthright is&mdash;as I think&mdash;continuing
+      to use our laughable alphabet these seventy-three years while there was a
+      rational one at hand, to be had for the taking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It has taken five hundred years to simplify some of Chaucer's rotten
+      spelling&mdash;if I may be allowed to use so frank a term as that&mdash;and
+      it will take five hundred more to get our exasperating new Simplified
+      Corruptions accepted and running smoothly. And we sha'n't be
+      any better off then than we are now; for in that day we shall still have
+      the privilege the Simplifiers are exercising now: <i>anybody </i>can
+      change the spelling that wants to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>But you can't change the phonographic spelling; there isn't
+      any way.</i> It will always follow the SOUND. If you want to change the
+      spelling, you have to change the sound first.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mind, I myself am a Simplified Speller; I belong to that unhappy guild
+      that is patiently and hopefully trying to reform our drunken old alphabet
+      by reducing his whiskey. Well, it will improve him. When they get through
+      and have reformed him all they can by their system he will be only HALF
+      drunk. Above that condition their system can never lift him. There is no
+      competent, and lasting, and real reform for him but to take away his
+      whiskey entirely, and fill up his jug with Pitman's wholesome and
+      undiseased alphabet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One great drawback to Simplified Spelling is, that in print a simplified
+      word looks so like the very nation! and when you bunch a whole squadron of
+      the Simplified together the spectacle is very nearly unendurable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The da ma ov koars kum when the publik ma be expektd to get rekonsyled to
+      the bezair asspekt of the Simplified Kombynashuns, but&mdash;if I may be
+      allowed the expression&mdash;is it worth the wasted time? (Figure 8)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To see our letters put together in ways to which we are not accustomed
+      offends the eye, and also takes the <i>expression </i>out of the words.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      La on, Makduf, and damd be he hoo furst krys hold, enuf!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It doesn't thrill you as it used to do. The simplifications have
+      sucked the thrill all out of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But a written character with which we are <i>not acquainted</i> does not
+      offend us&mdash;Greek, Hebrew, Russian, Arabic, and the others&mdash;they
+      have an interesting look, and we see beauty in them, too. And this is true
+      of hieroglyphics, as well. There is something pleasant and engaging about
+      the mathematical signs when we do not understand them. The mystery hidden
+      in these things has a fascination for us: we can't come across a
+      printed page of shorthand without being impressed by it and wishing we
+      could read it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Very well, what I am offering for acceptance and adoption is not
+      shorthand, but longhand, written with the <i>Shorthand Alphabet Unreduced</i>.
+      You can write three times as many words in a minute with it as you can
+      write with our alphabet. And so, in a way, it <i>is </i>properly a
+      shorthand. It has a pleasant look, too; a beguiling look, an inviting
+      look. I will write something in it, in my rude and untaught way: (Figure
+      9)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even when <i>I</i> do it it comes out prettier than it does in Simplified
+      Spelling. Yes, and in the Simplified it costs one hundred and twenty-three
+      pen-strokes to write it, whereas in the phonographic it costs only
+      twenty-nine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (Figure 9) is probably (Figure 10).
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us hope so, anyway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      AS CONCERNS INTERPRETING THE DEITY
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      I
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      This line of hieroglyphs was for fourteen years the despair of all the
+      scholars who labored over the mysteries of the Rosetta stone: (Figure 1)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After five years of study Champollion translated it thus:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Therefore let the worship of Epiphanes be maintained in all the temples,
+      this upon pain of death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was the twenty-fourth translation that had been furnished by
+      scholars. For a time it stood. But only for a time. Then doubts began to
+      assail it and undermine it, and the scholars resumed their labors. Three
+      years of patient work produced eleven new translations; among them, this,
+      by Grunfeldt, was received with considerable favor:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The horse of Epiphanes shall be maintained at the public expense; this
+      upon pain of death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the following rendering, by Gospodin, was received by the learned
+      world with yet greater favor:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The priest shall explain the wisdom of Epiphanes to all these people, and
+      these shall listen with reverence, upon pain of death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Seven years followed, in which twenty-one fresh and widely varying
+      renderings were scored&mdash;none of them quite convincing. But now, at
+      last, came Rawlinson, the youngest of all the scholars, with a translation
+      which was immediately and universally recognized as being the correct
+      version, and his name became famous in a day. So famous, indeed, that even
+      the children were familiar with it; and such a noise did the achievement
+      itself make that not even the noise of the monumental political event of
+      that same year&mdash;the flight from Elba&mdash;was able to smother it to
+      silence. Rawlinson's version reads as follows:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Therefore, walk not away from the wisdom of Epiphanes, but turn and follow
+      it; so shall it conduct thee to the temple's peace, and soften for
+      thee the sorrows of life and the pains of death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here is another difficult text: (Figure 2)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is demotic&mdash;a style of Egyptian writing and a phase of the
+      language which had perished from the knowledge of all men twenty-five
+      hundred years before the Christian era.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our red Indians have left many records, in the form of pictures, upon our
+      crags and boulders. It has taken our most gifted and painstaking students
+      two centuries to get at the meanings hidden in these pictures; yet there
+      are still two little lines of hieroglyphics among the figures grouped upon
+      the Dighton Rocks which they have not succeeded in interpreting to their
+      satisfaction. These: (Figure 3)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The suggested solutions of this riddle are practically innumerable; they
+      would fill a book.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus we have infinite trouble in solving man-made mysteries; it is only
+      when we set out to discover the secret of God that our difficulties
+      disappear. It was always so. In antique Roman times it was the custom of
+      the Deity to try to conceal His intentions in the entrails of birds, and
+      this was patiently and hopefully continued century after century, although
+      the attempted concealment never succeeded, in a single recorded instance.
+      The augurs could read entrails as easily as a modern child can read coarse
+      print. Roman history is full of the marvels of interpretation which these
+      extraordinary men performed. These strange and wonderful achievements move
+      our awe and compel our admiration. Those men could pierce to the marrow of
+      a mystery instantly. If the Rosetta-stone idea had been introduced it
+      would have defeated them, but entrails had no embarrassments for them.
+      Entrails have gone out, now&mdash;entrails and dreams. It was at last
+      found out that as hiding-places for the divine intentions they were
+      inadequate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A part of the wall of Valletri having in former times been struck with
+      thunder, the response of the soothsayers was, that a native of that town
+      would some time or other arrive at supreme power. &mdash;<i>Bohn's
+      Suetonius</i>, p. 138.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some time or other.&rdquo; It looks indefinite, but no matter, it
+      happened, all the same; one needed only to wait, and be patient, and keep
+      watch, then he would find out that the thunder-stroke had Caesar Augustus
+      in mind, and had come to give notice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were other advance-advertisements. One of them appeared just before
+      Caesar Augustus was born, and was most poetic and touching and romantic in
+      its feelings and aspects. It was a dream. It was dreamed by Caesar
+      Augustus's mother, and interpreted at the usual rates:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Atia, before her delivery, dreamed that her bowels stretched to the stars
+      and expanded through the whole circuit of heaven and earth.&mdash;<i>Suetonius</i>,
+      p. 139.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was in the augur's line, and furnished him no difficulties, but
+      it would have taken Rawlinson and Champollion fourteen years to make sure
+      of what it meant, because they would have been surprised and dizzy. It
+      would have been too late to be valuable, then, and the bill for service
+      would have been barred by the statute of limitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In those old Roman days a gentleman's education was not complete
+      until he had taken a theological course at the seminary and learned how to
+      translate entrails. Caesar Augustus's education received this final
+      polish. All through his life, whenever he had poultry on the menu he saved
+      the interiors and kept himself informed of the Deity's plans by
+      exercising upon those interiors the arts of augury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his first consulship, while he was observing the auguries, twelve
+      vultures presented themselves, as they had done to Romulus. And when he
+      offered sacrifice, the livers of all the victims were folded inward in the
+      lower part; a circumstance which was regarded by those present who had
+      skill in things of that nature, as an indubitable prognostic of great and
+      wonderful fortune.&mdash;<i>Suetonius</i>, p. 141.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indubitable&rdquo; is a strong word, but no doubt it was justified,
+      if the livers were really turned that way. In those days chicken livers
+      were strangely and delicately sensitive to coming events, no matter how
+      far off they might be; and they could never keep still, but would curl and
+      squirm like that, particularly when vultures came and showed interest in
+      that approaching great event and in breakfast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We may now skip eleven hundred and thirty or forty years, which brings us
+      down to enlightened Christian times and the troubled days of King Stephen
+      of England. The augur has had his day and has been long ago forgotten; the
+      priest had fallen heir to his trade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      King Henry is dead; Stephen, that bold and outrageous person, comes flying
+      over from Normandy to steal the throne from Henry's daughter. He
+      accomplished his crime, and Henry of Huntington, a priest of high degree,
+      mourns over it in his Chronicle. The Archbishop of Canterbury consecrated
+      Stephen: &ldquo;wherefore the Lord visited the Archbishop with the same
+      judgment which he had inflicted upon him who struck Jeremiah the great
+      priest: he died within a year.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stephen's was the greater offense, but Stephen could wait; not so
+      the Archbishop, apparently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The kingdom was a prey to intestine wars; slaughter, fire, and rapine
+      spread ruin throughout the land; cries of distress, horror, and woe rose
+      in every quarter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was the result of Stephen's crime. These unspeakable conditions
+      continued during nineteen years. Then Stephen died as comfortably as any
+      man ever did, and was honorably buried. It makes one pity the poor
+      Archbishop, and wish that he, too, could have been let off as leniently.
+      How did Henry of Huntington know that the Archbishop was sent to his grave
+      by judgment of God for consecrating Stephen? He does not explain. Neither
+      does he explain why Stephen was awarded a pleasanter death than he was
+      entitled to, while the aged King Henry, his predecessor, who had ruled
+      England thirty-five years to the people's strongly worded
+      satisfaction, was condemned to close his life in circumstances most
+      distinctly unpleasant, inconvenient, and disagreeable. His was probably
+      the most uninspiring funeral that is set down in history. There is not a
+      detail about it that is attractive. It seems to have been just the funeral
+      for Stephen, and even at this far-distant day it is matter of just regret
+      that by an indiscretion the wrong man got it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whenever God punishes a man, Henry of Huntington knows why it was done,
+      and tells us; and his pen is eloquent with admiration; but when a man has
+      earned punishment, and escapes, he does not explain. He is evidently
+      puzzled, but he does not say anything. I think it is often apparent that
+      he is pained by these discrepancies, but loyally tries his best not to
+      show it. When he cannot praise, he delivers himself of a silence so marked
+      that a suspicious person could mistake it for suppressed criticism.
+      However, he has plenty of opportunities to feel contented with the way
+      things go&mdash;his book is full of them.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        King David of Scotland... under color of religion caused his followers
+        to deal most barbarously with the English. They ripped open women,
+        tossed children on the points of spears, butchered priests at the
+        altars, and, cutting off the heads from the images on crucifixes, placed
+        them on the bodies of the slain, while in exchange they fixed on the
+        crucifixes the heads of their victims. Wherever the Scots came, there
+        was the same scene of horror and cruelty: women shrieking, old men
+        lamenting, amid the groans of the dying and the despair of the living.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      But the English got the victory.
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        Then the chief of the men of Lothian fell, pierced by an arrow, and all
+        his followers were put to flight. For the Almighty was offended at them
+        and their strength was rent like a cobweb.
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      Offended at them for what? For committing those fearful butcheries? No,
+      for that was the common custom on both sides, and not open to criticism.
+      Then was it for doing the butcheries &ldquo;under cover of religion&rdquo;?
+      No, that was not it; religious feeling was often expressed in that fervent
+      way all through those old centuries. The truth is, He was not offended at
+      &ldquo;them&rdquo; at all; He was only offended at their king, who had
+      been false to an oath. Then why did not He put the punishment upon the
+      king instead of upon &ldquo;them&rdquo;? It is a difficult question. One
+      can see by the Chronicle that the &ldquo;judgments&rdquo; fell rather
+      customarily upon the wrong person, but Henry of Huntington does not
+      explain why. Here is one that went true; the chronicler's
+      satisfaction in it is not hidden:
+    </p>
+    <blockquote>
+      <p>
+        In the month of August, Providence displayed its justice in a remarkable
+        manner; for two of the nobles who had converted monasteries into
+        fortifications, expelling the monks, their sin being the same, met with
+        a similar punishment. Robert Marmion was one, Godfrey de Mandeville the
+        other. Robert Marmion, issuing forth against the enemy, was slain under
+        the walls of the monastery, being the only one who fell, though he was
+        surrounded by his troops. Dying excommunicated, he became subject to
+        death everlasting. In like manner Earl Godfrey was singled out among his
+        followers, and shot with an arrow by a common foot-soldier. He made
+        light of the wound, but he died of it in a few days, under
+        excommunication. See here the like judgment of God, memorable through
+        all ages!
+      </p>
+    </blockquote>
+    <p>
+      This exaltation jars upon me; not because of the death of the men, for
+      they deserved that, but because it is death eternal, in white-hot fire and
+      flame. It makes my flesh crawl. I have not known more than three men, or
+      perhaps four, in my whole lifetime, whom I would rejoice to see writhing
+      in those fires for even a year, let alone forever. I believe I would
+      relent before the year was up, and get them out if I could. I think that
+      in the long run, if a man's wife and babies, who had not harmed me,
+      should come crying and pleading, I couldn't stand it; I know I
+      should forgive him and let him go, even if he had violated a monastery.
+      Henry of Huntington has been watching Godfrey and Marmion for nearly seven
+      hundred and fifty years, now, but I couldn't do it, I know I couldn't.
+      I am soft and gentle in my nature, and I should have forgiven them
+      seventy-and-seven times, long ago. And I think God has; but this is only
+      an opinion, and not authoritative, like Henry of Huntington's
+      interpretations. I could learn to interpret, but I have never tried; I get
+      so little time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All through his book Henry exhibits his familiarity with the intentions of
+      God, and with the reasons for his intentions. Sometimes&mdash;very often,
+      in fact&mdash;the act follows the intention after such a wide interval of
+      time that one wonders how Henry could fit one act out of a hundred to one
+      intention out of a hundred and get the thing right every time when there
+      was such abundant choice among acts and intentions. Sometimes a man
+      offends the Deity with a crime, and is punished for it thirty years later;
+      meantime he has committed a million other crimes: no matter, Henry can
+      pick out the one that brought the worms. Worms were generally used in
+      those days for the slaying of particularly wicked people. This has gone
+      out, now, but in old times it was a favorite. It always indicated a case
+      of &ldquo;wrath.&rdquo; For instance:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... the just God avenging Robert Fitzhilderbrand's perfidy, a worm
+      grew in his vitals, which gradually gnawing its way through his intestines
+      fattened on the abandoned man till, tortured with excruciating sufferings
+      and venting himself in bitter moans, he was by a fitting punishment
+      brought to his end.&mdash;(P. 400.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was probably an alligator, but we cannot tell; we only know it was a
+      particular breed, and only used to convey wrath. Some authorities think it
+      was an ichthyosaurus, but there is much doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, one thing we do know; and that is that that worm had been due
+      years and years. Robert F. had violated a monastery once; he had committed
+      unprintable crimes since, and they had been permitted&mdash;under
+      disapproval&mdash;but the ravishment of the monastery had not been
+      forgotten nor forgiven, and the worm came at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Why were these reforms put off in this strange way? What was to be gained
+      by it? Did Henry of Huntington really know his facts, or was he only
+      guessing? Sometimes I am half persuaded that he is only a guesser, and not
+      a good one. The divine wisdom must surely be of the better quality than he
+      makes it out to be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Five hundred years before Henry's time some forecasts of the Lord's
+      purposes were furnished by a pope, who perceived, by certain perfectly
+      trustworthy signs furnished by the Deity for the information of His
+      familiars, that the end of the world was
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ... about to come. But as this end of the world draws near many things are
+      at hand which have not before happened, as changes in the air, terrible
+      signs in the heavens, tempests out of the common order of the seasons,
+      wars, famines, pestilences, earthquakes in various places; all which will
+      not happen in our days, but after our days all will come to pass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still, the end was so near that these signs were &ldquo;sent before that
+      we may be careful for our souls and be found prepared to meet the
+      impending judgment.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was thirteen hundred years ago. This is really no improvement on the
+      work of the Roman augurs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0015" id="link2H_4_0015">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CONCERNING TOBACCO
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      (Written about 1893; not before published)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As concerns tobacco, there are many superstitions. And the chiefest is
+      this&mdash;that there is a <i>standard </i>governing the matter, whereas
+      there is nothing of the kind. Each man's own preference is the only
+      standard for him, the only one which he can accept, the only one which can
+      command him. A congress of all the tobacco-lovers in the world could not
+      elect a standard which would be binding upon you or me, or would even much
+      influence us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next superstition is that a man has a standard of his own. He hasn't.
+      He thinks he has, but he hasn't. He thinks he can tell what he
+      regards as a good cigar from what he regards as a bad one&mdash;but he can't.
+      He goes by the brand, yet imagines he goes by the flavor. One may palm off
+      the worst counterfeit upon him; if it bears his brand he will smoke it
+      contentedly and never suspect.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Children of twenty-five, who have seven years of experience, try to tell
+      me what is a good cigar and what isn't. Me, who never learned to
+      smoke, but always smoked; me, who came into the world asking for a light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one can tell me what is a good cigar&mdash;for me. I am the only judge.
+      People who claim to know say that I smoke the worst cigars in the world.
+      They bring their own cigars when they come to my house. They betray an
+      unmanly terror when I offer them a cigar; they tell lies and hurry away to
+      meet engagements which they have not made when they are threatened with
+      the hospitalities of my box. Now then, observe what superstition, assisted
+      by a man's reputation, can do. I was to have twelve personal friends
+      to supper one night. One of them was as notorious for costly and elegant
+      cigars as I was for cheap and devilish ones. I called at his house and
+      when no one was looking borrowed a double handful of his very choicest;
+      cigars which cost him forty cents apiece and bore red-and-gold labels in
+      sign of their nobility. I removed the labels and put the cigars into a box
+      with my favorite brand on it&mdash;a brand which those people all knew,
+      and which cowed them as men are cowed by an epidemic. They took these
+      cigars when offered at the end of the supper, and lit them and sternly
+      struggled with them&mdash;in dreary silence, for hilarity died when the
+      fell brand came into view and started around&mdash;but their fortitude
+      held for a short time only; then they made excuses and filed out, treading
+      on one another's heels with indecent eagerness; and in the morning
+      when I went out to observe results the cigars lay all between the front
+      door and the gate. All except one&mdash;that one lay in the plate of the
+      man from whom I had cabbaged the lot. One or two whiffs was all he could
+      stand. He told me afterward that some day I would get shot for giving
+      people that kind of cigars to smoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Am I certain of my own standard? Perfectly; yes, absolutely&mdash;unless
+      somebody fools me by putting my brand on some other kind of cigar; for no
+      doubt I am like the rest, and know my cigar by the brand instead of by the
+      flavor. However, my standard is a pretty wide one and covers a good deal
+      of territory. To me, almost any cigar is good that nobody else will smoke,
+      and to me almost all cigars are bad that other people consider good.
+      Nearly any cigar will do me, except a Havana. People think they hurt my
+      feelings when they come to my house with their life preservers on&mdash;I
+      mean, with their own cigars in their pockets. It is an error; I take care
+      of myself in a similar way. When I go into danger&mdash;that is, into rich
+      people's houses, where, in the nature of things, they will have
+      high-tariff cigars, red-and-gilt girded and nested in a rosewood box along
+      with a damp sponge, cigars which develop a dismal black ash and burn down
+      the side and smell, and will grow hot to the fingers, and will go on
+      growing hotter and hotter, and go on smelling more and more infamously and
+      unendurably the deeper the fire tunnels down inside below the thimbleful
+      of honest tobacco that is in the front end, the furnisher of it praising
+      it all the time and telling you how much the deadly thing cost&mdash;yes,
+      when I go into that sort of peril I carry my own defense along; I carry my
+      own brand&mdash;twenty-seven cents a barrel&mdash;and I live to see my
+      family again. I may seem to light his red-gartered cigar, but that is only
+      for courtesy's sake; I smuggle it into my pocket for the poor, of
+      whom I know many, and light one of my own; and while he praises it I join
+      in, but when he says it cost forty-five cents I say nothing, for I know
+      better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, to say true, my tastes are so catholic that I have never seen any
+      cigars that I really could not smoke, except those that cost a dollar
+      apiece. I have examined those and know that they are made of dog-hair, and
+      not good dog-hair at that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have a thoroughly satisfactory time in Europe, for all over the
+      Continent one finds cigars which not even the most hardened newsboys in
+      New York would smoke. I brought cigars with me, the last time; I will not
+      do that any more. In Italy, as in France, the Government is the only
+      cigar-peddler. Italy has three or four domestic brands: the Minghetti, the
+      Trabuco, the Virginia, and a very coarse one which is a modification of
+      the Virginia. The Minghettis are large and comely, and cost three dollars
+      and sixty cents a hundred; I can smoke a hundred in seven days and enjoy
+      every one of them. The Trabucos suit me, too; I don't remember the
+      price. But one has to learn to like the Virginia, nobody is born friendly
+      to it. It looks like a rat-tail file, but smokes better, some think. It
+      has a straw through it; you pull this out, and it leaves a flue, otherwise
+      there would be no draught, not even as much as there is to a nail. Some
+      prefer a nail at first. However, I like all the French, Swiss, German, and
+      Italian domestic cigars, and have never cared to inquire what they are
+      made of; and nobody would know, anyhow, perhaps. There is even a brand of
+      European smoking-tobacco that I like. It is a brand used by the Italian
+      peasants. It is loose and dry and black, and looks like tea-grounds. When
+      the fire is applied it expands, and climbs up and towers above the pipe,
+      and presently tumbles off inside of one's vest. The tobacco itself
+      is cheap, but it raises the insurance. It is as I remarked in the
+      beginning&mdash;the taste for tobacco is a matter of superstition. There
+      are no standards&mdash;no real standards. Each man's preference is
+      the only standard for him, the only one which he can accept, the only one
+      which can command him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0016" id="link2H_4_0016">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      THE BEE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      It was Maeterlinck who introduced me to the bee. I mean, in the psychical
+      and in the poetical way. I had had a business introduction earlier. It was
+      when I was a boy. It is strange that I should remember a formality like
+      that so long; it must be nearly sixty years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bee scientists always speak of the bee as she. It is because all the
+      important bees are of that sex. In the hive there is one married bee,
+      called the queen; she has fifty thousand children; of these, about one
+      hundred are sons; the rest are daughters. Some of the daughters are young
+      maids, some are old maids, and all are virgins and remain so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every spring the queen comes out of the hive and flies away with one of
+      her sons and marries him. The honeymoon lasts only an hour or two; then
+      the queen divorces her husband and returns home competent to lay two
+      million eggs. This will be enough to last the year, but not more than
+      enough, because hundreds of bees get drowned every day, and other hundreds
+      are eaten by birds, and it is the queen's business to keep the
+      population up to standard&mdash;say, fifty thousand. She must always have
+      that many children on hand and efficient during the busy season, which is
+      summer, or winter would catch the community short of food. She lays from
+      two thousand to three thousand eggs a day, according to the demand; and
+      she must exercise judgment, and not lay more than are needed in a slim
+      flower-harvest, nor fewer than are required in a prodigal one, or the
+      board of directors will dethrone her and elect a queen that has more
+      sense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are always a few royal heirs in stock and ready to take her place&mdash;ready
+      and more than anxious to do it, although she is their own mother. These
+      girls are kept by themselves, and are regally fed and tended from birth.
+      No other bees get such fine food as they get, or live such a high and
+      luxurious life. By consequence they are larger and longer and sleeker than
+      their working sisters. And they have a curved sting, shaped like a
+      scimitar, while the others have a straight one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A common bee will sting any one or anybody, but a royalty stings royalties
+      only. A common bee will sting and kill another common bee, for cause, but
+      when it is necessary to kill the queen other ways are employed. When a
+      queen has grown old and slack and does not lay eggs enough one of her
+      royal daughters is allowed to come to attack her, the rest of the bees
+      looking on at the duel and seeing fair play. It is a duel with the curved
+      stings. If one of the fighters gets hard pressed and gives it up and runs,
+      she is brought back and must try again&mdash;once, maybe twice; then, if
+      she runs yet once more for her life, judicial death is her portion; her
+      children pack themselves into a ball around her person and hold her in
+      that compact grip two or three days, until she starves to death or is
+      suffocated. Meantime the victor bee is receiving royal honors and
+      performing the one royal function&mdash;laying eggs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As regards the ethics of the judicial assassination of the queen, that is
+      a matter of politics, and will be discussed later, in its proper place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During substantially the whole of her short life of five or six years the
+      queen lives in the Egyptian darkness and stately seclusion of the royal
+      apartments, with none about her but plebeian servants, who give her empty
+      lip-affection in place of the love which her heart hungers for; who spy
+      upon her in the interest of her waiting heirs, and report and exaggerate
+      her defects and deficiencies to them; who fawn upon her and flatter her to
+      her face and slander her behind her back; who grovel before her in the day
+      of her power and forsake her in her age and weakness. There she sits,
+      friendless, upon her throne through the long night of her life, cut off
+      from the consoling sympathies and sweet companionship and loving
+      endearments which she craves, by the gilded barriers of her awful rank; a
+      forlorn exile in her own house and home, weary object of formal ceremonies
+      and machine-made worship, winged child of the sun, native to the free air
+      and the blue skies and the flowery fields, doomed by the splendid accident
+      of her birth to trade this priceless heritage for a black captivity, a
+      tinsel grandeur, and a loveless life, with shame and insult at the end and
+      a cruel death&mdash;and condemned by the human instinct in her to hold the
+      bargain valuable!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Huber, Lubbock, Maeterlinck&mdash;in fact, all the great authorities&mdash;are
+      agreed in denying that the bee is a member of the human family. I do not
+      know why they have done this, but I think it is from dishonest motives.
+      Why, the innumerable facts brought to light by their own painstaking and
+      exhaustive experiments prove that if there is a master fool in the world,
+      it is the bee. That seems to settle it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But that is the way of the scientist. He will spend thirty years in
+      building up a mountain range of facts with the intent to prove a certain
+      theory; then he is so happy in his achievement that as a rule he overlooks
+      the main chief fact of all&mdash;that his accumulation proves an entirely
+      different thing. When you point out this miscarriage to him he does not
+      answer your letters; when you call to convince him, the servant
+      prevaricates and you do not get in. Scientists have odious manners, except
+      when you prop up their theory; then you can borrow money of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To be strictly fair, I will concede that now and then one of them will
+      answer your letter, but when they do they avoid the issue&mdash;you cannot
+      pin them down. When I discovered that the bee was human I wrote about it
+      to all those scientists whom I have just mentioned. For evasions, I have
+      seen nothing to equal the answers I got.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the queen, the personage next in importance in the hive is the
+      virgin. The virgins are fifty thousand or one hundred thousand in number,
+      and they are the workers, the laborers. No work is done, in the hive or
+      out of it, save by them. The males do not work, the queen does no work,
+      unless laying eggs is work, but it does not seem so to me. There are only
+      two million of them, anyway, and all of five months to finish the contract
+      in. The distribution of work in a hive is as cleverly and elaborately
+      specialized as it is in a vast American machine-shop or factory. A bee
+      that has been trained to one of the many and various industries of the
+      concern doesn't know how to exercise any other, and would be
+      offended if asked to take a hand in anything outside of her profession.
+      She is as human as a cook; and if you should ask the cook to wait on the
+      table, you know what would happen. Cooks will play the piano if you like,
+      but they draw the line there. In my time I have asked a cook to chop wood,
+      and I know about these things. Even the hired girl has her frontiers;
+      true, they are vague, they are ill-defined, even flexible, but they are
+      there. This is not conjecture; it is founded on the absolute. And then the
+      butler. You ask the butler to wash the dog. It is just as I say; there is
+      much to be learned in these ways, without going to books. Books are very
+      well, but books do not cover the whole domain of esthetic human culture.
+      Pride of profession is one of the boniest bones in existence, if not the
+      boniest. Without doubt it is so in the hive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0017" id="link2H_4_0017">
+       <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      TAMING THE BICYCLE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      (Written about 1893; not before published)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the early eighties Mark Twain learned to ride one of the old high-wheel
+      bicycles of that period. He wrote an account of his experience, but did
+      not offer it for publication. The form of bicycle he rode long ago became
+      antiquated, but in the humor of his pleasantry is a quality which does not
+      grow old.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A. B. P. I
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I thought the matter over, and concluded I could do it. So I went down and
+      bought a barrel of Pond's Extract and a bicycle. The Expert came
+      home with me to instruct me. We chose the back yard, for the sake of
+      privacy, and went to work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mine was not a full-grown bicycle, but only a colt&mdash;a fifty-inch,
+      with the pedals shortened up to forty-eight&mdash;and skittish, like any
+      other colt. The Expert explained the thing's points briefly, then he
+      got on its back and rode around a little, to show me how easy it was to
+      do. He said that the dismounting was perhaps the hardest thing to learn,
+      and so we would leave that to the last. But he was in error there. He
+      found, to his surprise and joy, that all that he needed to do was to get
+      me on to the machine and stand out of the way; I could get off, myself.
+      Although I was wholly inexperienced, I dismounted in the best time on
+      record. He was on that side, shoving up the machine; we all came down with
+      a crash, he at the bottom, I next, and the machine on top.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We examined the machine, but it was not in the least injured. This was
+      hardly believable. Yet the Expert assured me that it was true; in fact,
+      the examination proved it. I was partly to realize, then, how admirably
+      these things are constructed. We applied some Pond's Extract, and
+      resumed. The Expert got on the <i>other </i>side to shove up this time,
+      but I dismounted on that side; so the result was as before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The machine was not hurt. We oiled ourselves up again, and resumed. This
+      time the Expert took up a sheltered position behind, but somehow or other
+      we landed on him again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was full of surprised admiration; said it was abnormal. She was all
+      right, not a scratch on her, not a timber started anywhere. I said it was
+      wonderful, while we were greasing up, but he said that when I came to know
+      these steel spider-webs I would realize that nothing but dynamite could
+      cripple them. Then he limped out to position, and we resumed once more.
+      This time the Expert took up the position of short-stop, and got a man to
+      shove up behind. We got up a handsome speed, and presently traversed a
+      brick, and I went out over the top of the tiller and landed, head down, on
+      the instructor's back, and saw the machine fluttering in the air
+      between me and the sun. It was well it came down on us, for that broke the
+      fall, and it was not injured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Five days later I got out and was carried down to the hospital, and found
+      the Expert doing pretty fairly. In a few more days I was quite sound. I
+      attribute this to my prudence in always dismounting on something soft.
+      Some recommend a feather bed, but I think an Expert is better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Expert got out at last, brought four assistants with him. It was a
+      good idea. These four held the graceful cobweb upright while I climbed
+      into the saddle; then they formed in column and marched on either side of
+      me while the Expert pushed behind; all hands assisted at the dismount.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The bicycle had what is called the &ldquo;wabbles,&rdquo; and had them
+      very badly. In order to keep my position, a good many things were required
+      of me, and in every instance the thing required was against nature.
+      Against nature, but not against the laws of nature. That is to say, that
+      whatever the needed thing might be, my nature, habit, and breeding moved
+      me to attempt it in one way, while some immutable and unsuspected law of
+      physics required that it be done in just the other way. I perceived by
+      this how radically and grotesquely wrong had been the life-long education
+      of my body and members. They were steeped in ignorance; they knew nothing&mdash;nothing
+      which it could profit them to know. For instance, if I found myself
+      falling to the right, I put the tiller hard down the other way, by a quite
+      natural impulse, and so violated a law, and kept on going down. The law
+      required the opposite thing&mdash;the big wheel must be turned in the
+      direction in which you are falling. It is hard to believe this, when you
+      are told it. And not merely hard to believe it, but impossible; it is
+      opposed to all your notions. And it is just as hard to do it, after you do
+      come to believe it. Believing it, and knowing by the most convincing proof
+      that it is true, does not help it: you can't any more DO it than you
+      could before; you can neither force nor persuade yourself to do it at
+      first. The intellect has to come to the front, now. It has to teach the
+      limbs to discard their old education and adopt the new.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The steps of one's progress are distinctly marked. At the end of
+      each lesson he knows he has acquired something, and he also knows what
+      that something is, and likewise that it will stay with him. It is not like
+      studying German, where you mull along, in a groping, uncertain way, for
+      thirty years; and at last, just as you think you've got it, they
+      spring the subjunctive on you, and there you are. No&mdash;and I see now,
+      plainly enough, that the great pity about the German language is, that you
+      can't fall off it and hurt yourself. There is nothing like that
+      feature to make you attend strictly to business. But I also see, by what I
+      have learned of bicycling, that the right and only sure way to learn
+      German is by the bicycling method. That is to say, take a grip on one
+      villainy of it at a time, and learn it&mdash;not ease up and shirk to the
+      next, leaving that one half learned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When you have reached the point in bicycling where you can balance the
+      machine tolerably fairly and propel it and steer it, then comes your next
+      task&mdash;how to mount it. You do it in this way: you hop along behind it
+      on your right foot, resting the other on the mounting-peg, and grasping
+      the tiller with your hands. At the word, you rise on the peg, stiffen your
+      left leg, hang your other one around in the air in a general in indefinite
+      way, lean your stomach against the rear of the saddle, and then fall off,
+      maybe on one side, maybe on the other; but you fall off. You get up and do
+      it again; and once more; and then several times.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this time you have learned to keep your balance; and also to steer
+      without wrenching the tiller out by the roots (I say tiller because it IS
+      a tiller; &ldquo;handle-bar&rdquo; is a lamely descriptive phrase). So you
+      steer along, straight ahead, a little while, then you rise forward, with a
+      steady strain, bringing your right leg, and then your body, into the
+      saddle, catch your breath, fetch a violent hitch this way and then that,
+      and down you go again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But you have ceased to mind the going down by this time; you are getting
+      to light on one foot or the other with considerable certainty. Six more
+      attempts and six more falls make you perfect. You land in the saddle
+      comfortably, next time, and stay there&mdash;that is, if you can be
+      content to let your legs dangle, and leave the pedals alone a while; but
+      if you grab at once for the pedals, you are gone again. You soon learn to
+      wait a little and perfect your balance before reaching for the pedals;
+      then the mounting-art is acquired, is complete, and a little practice will
+      make it simple and easy to you, though spectators ought to keep off a rod
+      or two to one side, along at first, if you have nothing against them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now you come to the voluntary dismount; you learned the other kind
+      first of all. It is quite easy to tell one how to do the voluntary
+      dismount; the words are few, the requirement simple, and apparently
+      undifficult; let your left pedal go down till your left leg is nearly
+      straight, turn your wheel to the left, and get off as you would from a
+      horse. It certainly does sound exceedingly easy; but it isn't. I don't
+      know why it isn't but it isn't. Try as you may, you don't
+      get down as you would from a horse, you get down as you would from a house
+      afire. You make a spectacle of yourself every time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      II
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During the eight days I took a daily lesson of an hour and a half. At the
+      end of this twelve working-hours' apprenticeship I was graduated&mdash;in
+      the rough. I was pronounced competent to paddle my own bicycle without
+      outside help. It seems incredible, this celerity of acquirement. It takes
+      considerably longer than that to learn horseback-riding in the rough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now it is true that I could have learned without a teacher, but it would
+      have been risky for me, because of my natural clumsiness. The self-taught
+      man seldom knows anything accurately, and he does not know a tenth as much
+      as he could have known if he had worked under teachers; and, besides, he
+      brags, and is the means of fooling other thoughtless people into going and
+      doing as he himself has done. There are those who imagine that the unlucky
+      accidents of life&mdash;life's &ldquo;experiences&rdquo;&mdash;are
+      in some way useful to us. I wish I could find out how. I never knew one of
+      them to happen twice. They always change off and swap around and catch you
+      on your inexperienced side. If personal experience can be worth anything
+      as an education, it wouldn't seem likely that you could trip
+      Methuselah; and yet if that old person could come back here it is more
+      than likely that one of the first things he would do would be to take hold
+      of one of these electric wires and tie himself all up in a knot. Now the
+      surer thing and the wiser thing would be for him to ask somebody whether
+      it was a good thing to take hold of. But that would not suit him; he would
+      be one of the self-taught kind that go by experience; he would want to
+      examine for himself. And he would find, for his instruction, that the
+      coiled patriarch shuns the electric wire; and it would be useful to him,
+      too, and would leave his education in quite a complete and rounded-out
+      condition, till he should come again, some day, and go to bouncing a
+      dynamite-can around to find out what was in it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But we wander from the point. However, get a teacher; it saves much time
+      and Pond's Extract.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before taking final leave of me, my instructor inquired concerning my
+      physical strength, and I was able to inform him that I hadn't any.
+      He said that that was a defect which would make up-hill wheeling pretty
+      difficult for me at first; but he also said the bicycle would soon remove
+      it. The contrast between his muscles and mine was quite marked. He wanted
+      to test mine, so I offered my biceps&mdash;which was my best. It almost
+      made him smile. He said, &ldquo;It is pulpy, and soft, and yielding, and
+      rounded; it evades pressure, and glides from under the fingers; in the
+      dark a body might think it was an oyster in a rag.&rdquo; Perhaps this
+      made me look grieved, for he added, briskly: &ldquo;Oh, that's all
+      right, you needn't worry about that; in a little while you can't
+      tell it from a petrified kidney. Just go right along with your practice;
+      you're all right.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he left me, and I started out alone to seek adventures. You don't
+      really have to seek them&mdash;that is nothing but a phrase&mdash;they
+      come to you.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I chose a reposeful Sabbath-day sort of a back street which was about
+      thirty yards wide between the curbstones. I knew it was not wide enough;
+      still, I thought that by keeping strict watch and wasting no space
+      unnecessarily I could crowd through.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of course I had trouble mounting the machine, entirely on my own
+      responsibility, with no encouraging moral support from the outside, no
+      sympathetic instructor to say, &ldquo;Good! now you're doing well&mdash;good
+      again&mdash;don't hurry&mdash;there, now, you're all right&mdash;brace
+      up, go ahead.&rdquo; In place of this I had some other support. This was a
+      boy, who was perched on a gate-post munching a hunk of maple sugar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was full of interest and comment. The first time I failed and went down
+      he said that if he was me he would dress up in pillows, that's what
+      he would do. The next time I went down he advised me to go and learn to
+      ride a tricycle first. The third time I collapsed he said he didn't
+      believe I could stay on a horse-car. But the next time I succeeded, and
+      got clumsily under way in a weaving, tottering, uncertain fashion, and
+      occupying pretty much all of the street. My slow and lumbering gait filled
+      the boy to the chin with scorn, and he sung out, &ldquo;My, but don't
+      he rip along!&rdquo; Then he got down from his post and loafed along the
+      sidewalk, still observing and occasionally commenting. Presently he
+      dropped into my wake and followed along behind. A little girl passed by,
+      balancing a wash-board on her head, and giggled, and seemed about to make
+      a remark, but the boy said, rebukingly, &ldquo;Let him alone, he's
+      going to a funeral.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have been familiar with that street for years, and had always supposed
+      it was a dead level; but it was not, as the bicycle now informed me, to my
+      surprise. The bicycle, in the hands of a novice, is as alert and acute as
+      a spirit-level in the detecting of delicate and vanishing shades of
+      difference in these matters. It notices a rise where your untrained eye
+      would not observe that one existed; it notices any decline which water
+      will run down. I was toiling up a slight rise, but was not aware of it. It
+      made me tug and pant and perspire; and still, labor as I might, the
+      machine came almost to a standstill every little while. At such times the
+      boy would say: &ldquo;That's it! take a rest&mdash;there ain't
+      no hurry. They can't hold the funeral without YOU.&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Stones were a bother to me. Even the smallest ones gave me a panic when I
+      went over them. I could hit any kind of a stone, no matter how small, if I
+      tried to miss it; and of course at first I couldn't help trying to
+      do that. It is but natural. It is part of the ass that is put in us all,
+      for some inscrutable reason.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I was at the end of my course, at last, and it was necessary for me to
+      round to. This is not a pleasant thing, when you undertake it for the
+      first time on your own responsibility, and neither is it likely to
+      succeed. Your confidence oozes away, you fill steadily up with nameless
+      apprehensions, every fiber of you is tense with a watchful strain, you
+      start a cautious and gradual curve, but your squirmy nerves are all full
+      of electric anxieties, so the curve is quickly demoralized into a jerky
+      and perilous zigzag; then suddenly the nickel-clad horse takes the bit in
+      its mouth and goes slanting for the curbstone, defying all prayers and all
+      your powers to change its mind&mdash;your heart stands still, your breath
+      hangs fire, your legs forget to work, straight on you go, and there are
+      but a couple of feet between you and the curb now. And now is the
+      desperate moment, the last chance to save yourself; of course all your
+      instructions fly out of your head, and you whirl your wheel AWAY from the
+      curb instead of TOWARD it, and so you go sprawling on that granite-bound
+      inhospitable shore. That was my luck; that was my experience. I dragged
+      myself out from under the indestructible bicycle and sat down on the curb
+      to examine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I started on the return trip. It was now that I saw a farmer's wagon
+      poking along down toward me, loaded with cabbages. If I needed anything to
+      perfect the precariousness of my steering, it was just that. The farmer
+      was occupying the middle of the road with his wagon, leaving barely
+      fourteen or fifteen yards of space on either side. I couldn't shout
+      at him&mdash;a beginner can't shout; if he opens his mouth he is
+      gone; he must keep all his attention on his business. But in this grisly
+      emergency, the boy came to the rescue, and for once I had to be grateful
+      to him. He kept a sharp lookout on the swiftly varying impulses and
+      inspirations of my bicycle, and shouted to the man accordingly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the left! Turn to the left, or this jackass 'll run over
+      you!&rdquo; The man started to do it. &ldquo;No, to the right, to the
+      right! Hold on! THAT won't do!&mdash;to the left!&mdash;to the
+      right!&mdash;to the LEFT&mdash;right! left&mdash;ri&mdash;Stay where you
+      ARE, or you're a goner!&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And just then I caught the off horse in the starboard and went down in a
+      pile. I said, &ldquo;Hang it! Couldn't you SEE I was coming?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I see you was coming, but I couldn't tell which WAY you
+      was coming. Nobody could&mdash;now, <i>could </i>they? You couldn't
+      yourself&mdash;now, <i>could</i> you? So what could <i>I</i> do?&rdquo;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was something in that, and so I had the magnanimity to say so. I
+      said I was no doubt as much to blame as he was.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within the next five days I achieved so much progress that the boy couldn't
+      keep up with me. He had to go back to his gate-post, and content himself
+      with watching me fall at long range.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a row of low stepping-stones across one end of the street, a
+      measured yard apart. Even after I got so I could steer pretty fairly I was
+      so afraid of those stones that I always hit them. They gave me the worst
+      falls I ever got in that street, except those which I got from dogs. I
+      have seen it stated that no expert is quick enough to run over a dog; that
+      a dog is always able to skip out of his way. I think that that may be
+      true: but I think that the reason he couldn't run over the dog was
+      because he was trying to. I did not try to run over any dog. But I ran
+      over every dog that came along. I think it makes a great deal of
+      difference. If you try to run over the dog he knows how to calculate, but
+      if you are trying to miss him he does not know how to calculate, and is
+      liable to jump the wrong way every time. It was always so in my
+      experience. Even when I could not hit a wagon I could hit a dog that came
+      to see me practice. They all liked to see me practice, and they all came,
+      for there was very little going on in our neighborhood to entertain a dog.
+      It took time to learn to miss a dog, but I achieved even that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I can steer as well as I want to, now, and I will catch that boy out one
+      of these days and run over HIM if he doesn't reform.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.
+    </p>
+
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0018" id="link2H_4_0018"> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      (from <i>My Autobiography</i>)
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      I
+    </h3>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>cattered here and
+      there through the stacks of unpublished manuscript which constitute this
+      formidable Autobiography and Diary of mine, certain chapters will in some
+      distant future be found which deal with "Claimants"&mdash;claimants
+      historically notorious: Satan, Claimant; the Golden Calf, Claimant; the
+      Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, Claimant; Louis XVII., Claimant; William
+      Shakespeare, Claimant; Arthur Orton, Claimant; Mary Baker G. Eddy,
+      Claimant&mdash;and the rest of them. Eminent Claimants, successful
+      Claimants, defeated Claimants, royal Claimants, pleb Claimants, showy
+      Claimants, shabby Claimants, revered Claimants, despised Claimants,
+      twinkle star-like here and there and yonder through the mists of history
+      and legend and tradition&mdash;and, oh, all the darling tribe are clothed
+      in mystery and romance, and we read about them with deep interest and
+      discuss them with loving sympathy or with rancorous resentment, according
+      to which side we hitch ourselves to. It has always been so with the human
+      race. There was never a Claimant that couldn't get a hearing, nor one that
+      couldn't accumulate a rapturous following, no matter how flimsy and
+      apparently unauthentic his claim might be. Arthur Orton's claim that he
+      was the lost Tichborne baronet come to life again was as flimsy as Mrs.
+      Eddy's that she wrote <i>Science And Health</i> from the direct dictation
+      of the Deity; yet in England nearly forty years ago Orton had a huge army
+      of devotees and incorrigible adherents, many of whom remained stubbornly
+      unconvinced after their fat god had been proven an impostor and jailed as
+      a perjurer, and today Mrs. Eddy's following is not only immense, but is
+      daily augmenting in numbers and enthusiasm. Orton had many fine and
+      educated minds among his adherents, Mrs. Eddy has had the like among hers
+      from the beginning. Her Church is as well equipped in those particulars as
+      is any other Church. Claimants can always count upon a following, it
+      doesn't matter who they are, nor what they claim, nor whether they come
+      with documents or without. It was always so. Down out of the long-vanished
+      past, across the abyss of the ages, if you listen, you can still hear the
+      believing multitudes shouting for Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A friend has sent me a new book, from England&mdash;<i>The Shakespeare
+      Problem Restated</i>&mdash;well restated and closely reasoned; and my
+      fifty years' interest in that matter&mdash;asleep for the last three years&mdash;is
+      excited once more. It is an interest which was born of Delia Bacon's book&mdash;away
+      back in that ancient day&mdash;1857, or maybe 1856. About a year later my
+      pilot-master, Bixby, transferred me from his own steamboat to the <i>Pennsylvania</i>,
+      and placed me under the orders and instructions of George Ealer&mdash;dead
+      now, these many, many years. I steered for him a good many months&mdash;as
+      was the humble duty of the pilot-apprentice: stood a daylight watch and
+      spun the wheel under the severe superintendence and correction of the
+      master. He was a prime chess-player and an idolater of Shakespeare. He
+      would play chess with anybody; even with me, and it cost his official
+      dignity something to do that. Also&mdash;quite uninvited&mdash;he would
+      read Shakespeare to me; not just casually, but by the hour, when it was
+      his watch and I was steering. He read well, but not profitably for me,
+      because he constantly injected commands into the text. That broke it all
+      up, mixed it all up, tangled it all up&mdash;to that degree, in fact, that
+      if we were in a risky and difficult piece of river an ignorant person
+      couldn't have told, sometimes, which observations were Shakespeare's and
+      which were Ealer's. For instance:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     What man dare, <i>I</i> dare!
+
+     Approach thou <i>what</i> are you laying in the leads for? what a
+     hell of an idea! like the rugged ease her off a little, ease
+     her off! rugged Russian bear, the armed rhinoceros or the
+     <i>there</i> she goes! meet her, meet her! didn't you <i>know</i> she'd
+     smell the reef if you crowded it like that? Hyrcan tiger;
+     take any shape but that and my firm nerves she'll be in the
+     <i>woods</i> the first you know! stop the starboard! come ahead
+     strong on the larboard! back the starboard!... <i>now</i> then,
+     you're all right; come ahead on the starboard; straighten up
+     and go 'long, never tremble: or be alive again, and dare me
+     to the desert <i>damnation</i> can't you keep away from that greasy
+     water? pull her down! snatch her! snatch her baldheaded!
+     with thy sword; if trembling I inhabit then, lay in the
+     leads!&mdash;no, only with the starboard one, leave the other
+     alone, protest me the baby of a girl. Hence horrible shadow!
+     eight bells&mdash;that watchman's asleep again, I reckon, go down
+     and call Brown yourself, unreal mockery, hence!
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      He certainly was a good reader, and splendidly thrilling and stormy and
+      tragic, but it was a damage to me, because I have never since been able to
+      read Shakespeare in a calm and sane way. I cannot rid it of his explosive
+      interlardings, they break in everywhere with their irrelevant, "What in
+      hell are you up to <i>now</i>! pull her down! more! <i>More!</i>&mdash;there
+      now, steady as you go," and the other disorganizing interruptions that
+      were always leaping from his mouth. When I read Shakespeare now I can hear
+      them as plainly as I did in that long-departed time&mdash;fifty-one years
+      ago. I never regarded Ealer's readings as educational. Indeed, they were a
+      detriment to me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His contributions to the text seldom improved it, but barring that detail
+      he was a good reader; I can say that much for him. He did not use the
+      book, and did not need to; he knew his Shakespeare as well as Euclid ever
+      knew his multiplication table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Did he have something to say&mdash;this Shakespeare-adoring Mississippi
+      pilot&mdash;anent Delia Bacon's book?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes. And he said it; said it all the time, for months&mdash;in the morning
+      watch, the middle watch, and dog watch; and probably kept it going in his
+      sleep. He bought the literature of the dispute as fast as it appeared, and
+      we discussed it all through thirteen hundred miles of river four times
+      traversed in every thirty-five days&mdash;the time required by that swift
+      boat to achieve two round trips. We discussed, and discussed, and
+      discussed, and disputed and disputed and disputed; at any rate, <i>he</i>
+      did, and I got in a word now and then when he slipped a cog and there was
+      a vacancy. He did his arguing with heat, with energy, with violence; and I
+      did mine with the reserve and moderation of a subordinate who does not
+      like to be flung out of a pilot-house that is perched forty feet above the
+      water. He was fiercely loyal to Shakespeare and cordially scornful of
+      Bacon and of all the pretensions of the Baconians. So was I&mdash;at
+      first. And at first he was glad that that was my attitude. There were even
+      indications that he admired it; indications dimmed, it is true, by the
+      distance that lay between the lofty boss-pilotical altitude and my lowly
+      one, yet perceptible to me; perceptible, and translatable into a
+      compliment&mdash;compliment coming down from above the snow-line and not
+      well thawed in the transit, and not likely to set anything afire, not even
+      a cub-pilot's self-conceit; still a detectable complement, and precious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Naturally it flattered me into being more loyal to Shakespeare&mdash;if
+      possible&mdash;than I was before, and more prejudiced against Bacon&mdash;if
+      possible&mdash;than I was before. And so we discussed and discussed, both
+      on the same side, and were happy. For a while. Only for a while. Only for
+      a very little while, a very, very, very little while. Then the atmosphere
+      began to change; began to cool off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A brighter person would have seen what the trouble was, earlier than I
+      did, perhaps, but I saw it early enough for all practical purposes. You
+      see, he was of an argumentative disposition. Therefore it took him but a
+      little time to get tired of arguing with a person who agreed with
+      everything he said and consequently never furnished him a provocative to
+      flare up and show what he could do when it came to clear, cold, hard,
+      rose-cut, hundred-faceted, diamond-flashing <i>reasoning</i>. That was his
+      name for it. It has been applied since, with complacency, as many as
+      several times, in the Bacon-Shakespeare scuffle. On the Shakespeare side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the thing happened which has happened to more persons than to me when
+      principle and personal interest found themselves in opposition to each
+      other and a choice had to be made: I let principle go, and went over to
+      the other side. Not the entire way, but far enough to answer the
+      requirements of the case. That is to say, I took this attitude&mdash;to
+      wit, I only <i>believed</i> Bacon wrote Shakespeare, whereas I <i>knew</i>
+      Shakespeare didn't. Ealer was satisfied with that, and the war broke
+      loose. Study, practice, experience in handling my end of the matter
+      presently enabled me to take my new position almost seriously; a little
+      bit later, utterly seriously; a little later still, lovingly, gratefully,
+      devotedly; finally: fiercely, rabidly, uncompromisingly. After that I was
+      welded to my faith, I was theoretically ready to die for it, and I looked
+      down with compassion not unmixed with scorn upon everybody else's faith
+      that didn't tally with mine. That faith, imposed upon me by self-interest
+      in that ancient day, remains my faith today, and in it I find comfort,
+      solace, peace, and never-failing joy. You see how curiously theological it
+      is. The "rice Christian" of the Orient goes through the very same steps,
+      when he is after rice and the missionary is after <i>him</i>; he goes for
+      rice, and remains to worship.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ealer did a lot of our "reasoning"&mdash;not to say substantially all of
+      it. The slaves of his cult have a passion for calling it by that large
+      name. We others do not call our inductions and deductions and reductions
+      by any name at all. They show for themselves what they are, and we can
+      with tranquil confidence leave the world to ennoble them with a title of
+      its own choosing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now and then when Ealer had to stop to cough, I pulled my
+      induction-talents together and hove the controversial lead myself: always
+      getting eight feet, eight and a half, often nine, sometimes even
+      quarter-less-twain&mdash;as <i>I</i> believed; but always "no bottom," as
+      <i>he</i> said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I got the best of him only once. I prepared myself. I wrote out a passage
+      from Shakespeare&mdash;it may have been the very one I quoted awhile ago,
+      I don't remember&mdash;and riddled it with his wild steamboatful
+      interlardings. When an unrisky opportunity offered, one lovely summer day,
+      when we had sounded and buoyed a tangled patch of crossings known as
+      Hell's Half Acre, and were aboard again and he had sneaked the <i>Pennsylvania</i>
+      triumphantly through it without once scraping sand, and the <i>A. T. Lacey</i>
+      had followed in our wake and got stuck, and he was feeling good, I showed
+      it to him. It amused him. I asked him to fire it off&mdash;<i>read</i> it;
+      read it, I diplomatically added, as only <i>he</i> could read dramatic
+      poetry. The compliment touched him where he lived. He did read it; read it
+      with surpassing fire and spirit; read it as it will never be read again;
+      for <i>he</i> knew how to put the right music into those thunderous
+      interlardings and make them seem a part of the text, make them sound as if
+      they were bursting from Shakespeare's own soul, each one of them a golden
+      inspiration and not to be left out without damage to the massed and
+      magnificent whole.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I waited a week, to let the incident fade; waited longer; waited until he
+      brought up for reasonings and vituperation my pet position, my pet
+      argument, the one which I was fondest of, the one which I prized far above
+      all others in my ammunition-wagon&mdash;to wit, that Shakespeare couldn't
+      have written Shakespeare's works, for the reason that the man who wrote
+      them was limitlessly familiar with the laws, and the law-courts, and
+      law-proceedings, and lawyer-talk, and lawyer-ways&mdash;and if Shakespeare
+      was possessed of the infinitely divided star-dust that constituted this
+      vast wealth, <i>how</i> did he get it, and <i>where</i> and <i>when</i>?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "From books."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From books! That was always the idea. I answered as my readings of the
+      champions of my side of the great controversy had taught me to answer:
+      that a man can't handle glibly and easily and comfortably and successfully
+      the argot of a trade at which he has not personally served. He will make
+      mistakes; he will not, and cannot, get the trade-phrasings precisely and
+      exactly right; and the moment he departs, by even a shade, from a common
+      trade-form, the reader who has served that trade will know the writer <i>hasn't</i>.
+      Ealer would not be convinced; he said a man could learn how to correctly
+      handle the subtleties and mysteries and free-masonries of <i>any</i> trade
+      by careful reading and studying. But when I got him to read again the
+      passage from Shakespeare with the interlardings, he perceived, himself,
+      that books couldn't teach a student a bewildering multitude of
+      pilot-phrases so thoroughly and perfectly that he could talk them off in
+      book and play or conversation and make no mistake that a pilot would not
+      immediately discover. It was a triumph for me. He was silent awhile, and I
+      knew what was happening&mdash;he was losing his temper. And I knew he
+      would presently close the session with the same old argument that was
+      always his stay and his support in time of need; the same old argument,
+      the one I couldn't answer, because I dasn't&mdash;the argument that I was
+      an ass, and better shut up. He delivered it, and I obeyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      O dear, how long ago it was&mdash;how pathetically long ago! And here am
+      I, old, forsaken, forlorn, and alone, arranging to get that argument out
+      of somebody again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When a man has a passion for Shakespeare, it goes without saying that he
+      keeps company with other standard authors. Ealer always had several
+      high-class books in the pilot-house, and he read the same ones over and
+      over again, and did not care to change to newer and fresher ones. He
+      played well on the flute, and greatly enjoyed hearing himself play. So did
+      I. He had a notion that a flute would keep its health better if you took
+      it apart when it was not standing a watch; and so, when it was not on duty
+      it took its rest, disjointed, on the compass-shelf under the breastboard.
+      When the <i>Pennsylvania</i> blew up and became a drifting rack-heap
+      freighted with wounded and dying poor souls (my young brother Henry among
+      them), pilot Brown had the watch below, and was probably asleep and never
+      knew what killed him; but Ealer escaped unhurt. He and his pilot-house
+      were shot up into the air; then they fell, and Ealer sank through the
+      ragged cavern where the hurricane-deck and the boiler-deck had been, and
+      landed in a nest of ruins on the main deck, on top of one of the
+      unexploded boilers, where he lay prone in a fog of scald and deadly steam.
+      But not for long. He did not lose his head&mdash;long familiarity with
+      danger had taught him to keep it, in any and all emergencies. He held his
+      coat-lapels to his nose with one hand, to keep out the steam, and
+      scrabbled around with the other till he found the joints of his flute,
+      then he took measures to save himself alive, and was successful. I was not
+      on board. I had been put ashore in New Orleans by Captain Klinefelter. The
+      reason&mdash;however, I have told all about it in the book called <i>Old
+      Times On The Mississippi</i>, and it isn't important, anyway, it is so
+      long ago.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II
+    </h3>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen I was a
+      Sunday-school scholar, something more than sixty years ago, I became
+      interested in Satan, and wanted to find out all I could about him. I began
+      to ask questions, but my class-teacher, Mr. Barclay, the stone-mason, was
+      reluctant about answering them, it seemed to me. I was anxious to be
+      praised for turning my thoughts to serious subjects when there wasn't
+      another boy in the village who could be hired to do such a thing. I was
+      greatly interested in the incident of Eve and the serpent, and thought
+      Eve's calmness was perfectly noble. I asked Mr. Barclay if he had ever
+      heard of another woman who, being approached by a serpent, would not
+      excuse herself and break for the nearest timber. He did not answer my
+      question, but rebuked me for inquiring into matters above my age and
+      comprehension. I will say for Mr. Barclay that he was willing to tell me
+      the facts of Satan's history, but he stopped there: he wouldn't allow any
+      discussion of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the course of time we exhausted the facts. There were only five or six
+      of them; you could set them all down on a visiting-card. I was
+      disappointed. I had been meditating a biography, and was grieved to find
+      that there were no materials. I said as much, with the tears running down.
+      Mr. Barclay's sympathy and compassion were aroused, for he was a most kind
+      and gentle-spirited man, and he patted me on the head and cheered me up by
+      saying there was a whole vast ocean of materials! I can still feel the
+      happy thrill which these blessed words shot through me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then he began to bail out that ocean's riches for my encouragement and
+      joy. Like this: it was "conjectured"&mdash;though not established&mdash;that
+      Satan was originally an angel in Heaven; that he fell; that he rebelled,
+      and brought on a war; that he was defeated, and banished to perdition.
+      Also, "we have reason to believe" that later he did so and so; that "we
+      are warranted in supposing" that at a subsequent time he traveled
+      extensively, seeking whom he might devour; that a couple of centuries
+      afterward, "as tradition instructs us," he took up the cruel trade of
+      tempting people to their ruin, with vast and fearful results; that by and
+      by, "as the probabilities seem to indicate," he may have done certain
+      things, he might have done certain other things, he must have done still
+      other things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so on and so on. We set down the five known facts by themselves on a
+      piece of paper, and numbered it "page 1"; then on fifteen hundred other
+      pieces of paper we set down the "conjectures," and "suppositions," and
+      "maybes," and "perhapses," and "doubtlesses," and "rumors," and "guesses,"
+      and "probabilities," and "likelihoods," and "we are permitted to thinks,"
+      and "we are warranted in believings," and "might have beens," and "could
+      have beens," and "must have beens," and "unquestionablys," and "without a
+      shadow of doubts"&mdash;and behold!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>Materials?</i> Why, we had enough to build a biography of Shakespeare!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet he made me put away my pen; he would not let me write the history of
+      Satan. Why? Because, as he said, he had suspicions&mdash;suspicions that
+      my attitude in that matter was not reverent, and that a person must be
+      reverent when writing about the sacred characters. He said any one who
+      spoke flippantly of Satan would be frowned upon by the religious world and
+      also be brought to account.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I assured him, in earnest and sincere words, that he had wholly
+      misconceived my attitude; that I had the highest respect for Satan, and
+      that my reverence for him equaled, and possibly even exceeded, that of any
+      member of any church. I said it wounded me deeply to perceive by his words
+      that he thought I would make fun of Satan, and deride him, laugh at him,
+      scoff at him; whereas in truth I had never thought of such a thing, but
+      had only a warm desire to make fun of those others and laugh at <i>them</i>.
+      "What others?" "Why, the Supposers, the Perhapsers, the
+      Might-Have-Beeners, the Could-Have-Beeners, the Must-Have-Beeners, the
+      Without-a-Shadow-of-Doubters, the We-Are-Warranted-in-Believingers, and
+      all that funny crop of solemn architects who have taken a good solid
+      foundation of five indisputable and unimportant facts and built upon it a
+      Conjectural Satan thirty miles high."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What did Mr. Barclay do then? Was he disarmed? Was he silenced? No. He was
+      shocked. He was so shocked that he visibly shuddered. He said the Satanic
+      Traditioners and Perhapsers and Conjecturers were <i>themselves</i>
+      sacred! As sacred as their work. So sacred that whoso ventured to mock
+      them or make fun of their work, could not afterward enter any respectable
+      house, even by the back door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How true were his words, and how wise! How fortunate it would have been
+      for me if I had heeded them. But I was young, I was but seven years of
+      age, and vain, foolish, and anxious to attract attention. I wrote the
+      biography, and have never been in a respectable house since.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III
+    </h3>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ow curious and
+      interesting is the parallel&mdash;as far as poverty of biographical
+      details is concerned&mdash;between Satan and Shakespeare. It is wonderful,
+      it is unique, it stands quite alone, there is nothing resembling it in
+      history, nothing resembling it in romance, nothing approaching it even in
+      tradition. How sublime is their position, and how over-topping, how
+      sky-reaching, how supreme&mdash;the two Great Unknowns, the two
+      Illustrious Conjecturabilities! They are the best-known unknown persons
+      that have ever drawn breath upon the planet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the instruction of the ignorant I will make a list, now, of those
+      details of Shakespeare's history which are <i>facts</i>&mdash;verified
+      facts, established facts, undisputed facts.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      FACTS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      He was born on the 23d of April, 1564.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of good farmer-class parents who could not read, could not write, could
+      not sign their names.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Stratford, a small back settlement which in that day was shabby and
+      unclean, and densely illiterate. Of the nineteen important men charged
+      with the government of the town, thirteen had to "make their mark" in
+      attesting important documents, because they could not write their names.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the first eighteen years of his life <i>nothing</i> is known. They are
+      a blank.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the 27th of November (1582) William Shakespeare took out a license to
+      marry Anne Whateley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next day William Shakespeare took out a license to marry Anne Hathaway.
+      She was eight years his senior.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. In a hurry. By grace of a
+      reluctantly granted dispensation there was but one publication of the
+      banns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Within six months the first child was born.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About two (blank) years followed, during which period <i>nothing at all
+      happened to Shakespeare</i>, so far as anybody knows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came twins&mdash;1585. February.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two blank years follow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then&mdash;1587&mdash;he makes a ten-year visit to London, leaving the
+      family behind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Five blank years follow. During this period <i>nothing happened to him</i>,
+      as far as anybody actually knows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then&mdash;1592&mdash;there is mention of him as an actor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next year&mdash;1593&mdash;his name appears in the official list of
+      players.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next year&mdash;1594&mdash;he played before the queen. A detail of no
+      consequence: other obscurities did it every year of the forty-five of her
+      reign. And remained obscure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Three pretty full years follow. Full of play-acting. Then
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1597 he bought New Place, Stratford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thirteen or fourteen busy years follow; years in which he accumulated
+      money, and also reputation as actor and manager.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime his name, liberally and variously spelt, had become associated
+      with a number of great plays and poems, as (ostensibly) author of the
+      same.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some of these, in these years and later, were pirated, but he made no
+      protest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then&mdash;1610-11&mdash;he returned to Stratford and settled down for
+      good and all, and busied himself in lending money, trading in tithes,
+      trading in land and houses; shirking a debt of forty-one shillings,
+      borrowed by his wife during his long desertion of his family; suing
+      debtors for shillings and coppers; being sued himself for shillings and
+      coppers; and acting as confederate to a neighbor who tried to rob the town
+      of its rights in a certain common, and did not succeed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He lived five or six years&mdash;till 1616&mdash;in the joy of these
+      elevated pursuits. Then he made a will, and signed each of its three pages
+      with his name.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A thoroughgoing business man's will. It named in minute detail every item
+      of property he owned in the world&mdash;houses, lands, sword, silver-gilt
+      bowl, and so on&mdash;all the way down to his "second-best bed" and its
+      furniture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It carefully and calculatingly distributed his riches among the members of
+      his family, overlooking no individual of it. Not even his wife: the wife
+      he had been enabled to marry in a hurry by urgent grace of a special
+      dispensation before he was nineteen; the wife whom he had left husbandless
+      so many years; the wife who had had to borrow forty-one shillings in her
+      need, and which the lender was never able to collect of the prosperous
+      husband, but died at last with the money still lacking. No, even this wife
+      was remembered in Shakespeare's will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He left her that "second-best bed."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And <i>not another thing</i>; not even a penny to bless her lucky
+      widowhood with.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was eminently and conspicuously a business man's will, not a poet's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It mentioned <i>not a single book</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Books were much more precious than swords and silver-gilt bowls and
+      second-best beds in those days, and when a departing person owned one he
+      gave it a high place in his will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The will mentioned <i>not a play, not a poem, not an unfinished literary
+      work, not a scrap of manuscript of any kind</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many poets have died poor, but this is the only one in history that has
+      died <i>this</i> poor; the others all left literary remains behind. Also a
+      book. Maybe two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Shakespeare had owned a dog&mdash;but we need not go into that: we know
+      he would have mentioned it in his will. If a good dog, Susanna would have
+      got it; if an inferior one his wife would have got a dower interest in it.
+      I wish he had had a dog, just so we could see how painstakingly he would
+      have divided that dog among the family, in his careful business way.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He signed the will in three places.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In earlier years he signed two other official documents.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These five signatures still exist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are <i>no other specimens of his penmanship in existence</i>. Not a
+      line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Was he prejudiced against the art? His granddaughter, whom he loved, was
+      eight years old when he died, yet she had had no teaching, he left no
+      provision for her education, although he was rich, and in her mature
+      womanhood she couldn't write and couldn't tell her husband's manuscript
+      from anybody else's&mdash;she thought it was Shakespeare's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Shakespeare died in Stratford, <i>it was not an event</i>. It made no
+      more stir in England than the death of any other forgotten theater-actor
+      would have made. Nobody came down from London; there were no lamenting
+      poems, no eulogies, no national tears&mdash;there was merely silence, and
+      nothing more. A striking contrast with what happened when Ben Jonson, and
+      Francis Bacon, and Spenser, and Raleigh, and the other distinguished
+      literary folk of Shakespeare's time passed from life! No praiseful voice
+      was lifted for the lost Bard of Avon; even Ben Jonson waited seven years
+      before he lifted his.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>So far as anybody actually knows and can prove</i>, Shakespeare of
+      Stratford-on-Avon never wrote a play in his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>So far as anybody knows and can prove</i>, he never wrote a letter to
+      anybody in his life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <i>So far as any one knows, he received only one letter during his life</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So far as any one <i>knows and can prove</i>, Shakespeare of Stratford
+      wrote only one poem during his life. This one is authentic. He did write
+      that one&mdash;a fact which stands undisputed; he wrote the whole of it;
+      he wrote the whole of it out of his own head. He commanded that this work
+      of art be engraved upon his tomb, and he was obeyed. There it abides to
+      this day. This is it:<br /> <br /><span class="indent25">Good friend for
+      Iesus sake forbeare <br /><span class="indent25">To digg the dust encloased
+      heare: <br /><span class="indent25">Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones
+      <br /><span class="indent25">And curst be he yt moves my bones. </span></span></span></span>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the list as above set down will be found <i>every positively known</i>
+      fact of Shakespeare's life, lean and meager as the invoice is. Beyond
+      these details we know <i>not a thing</i> about him. All the rest of his
+      vast history, as furnished by the biographers, is built up, course upon
+      course, of guesses, inferences, theories, conjectures&mdash;an Eiffel
+      Tower of artificialities rising sky-high from a very flat and very thin
+      foundation of inconsequential facts.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      CONJECTURES
+    </h3>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he historians
+      "suppose" that Shakespeare attended the Free School in Stratford from the
+      time he was seven years old till he was thirteen. There is no <i>evidence</i>
+      in existence that he ever went to school at all.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The historians "infer" that he got his Latin in that school&mdash;the
+      school which they "suppose" he attended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They "suppose" his father's declining fortunes made it necessary for him
+      to leave the school they supposed he attended, and get to work and help
+      support his parents and their ten children. But there is no evidence that
+      he ever entered or returned from the school they suppose he attended.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They "suppose" he assisted his father in the butchering business; and
+      that, being only a boy, he didn't have to do full-grown butchering, but
+      only slaughtered calves. Also, that whenever he killed a calf he made a
+      high-flown speech over it. This supposition rests upon the testimony of a
+      man who wasn't there at the time; a man who got it from a man who could
+      have been there, but did not say whether he was nor not; and neither of
+      them thought to mention it for decades, and decades, and decades, and two
+      more decades after Shakespeare's death (until old age and mental decay had
+      refreshed and vivified their memories). They hadn't two facts in stock
+      about the long-dead distinguished citizen, but only just the one: he
+      slaughtered calves and broke into oratory while he was at it. Curious.
+      They had only one fact, yet the distinguished citizen had spent twenty-six
+      years in that little town&mdash;just half his lifetime. However, rightly
+      viewed, it was the most important fact, indeed almost the only important
+      fact, of Shakespeare's life in Stratford. Rightly viewed. For experience
+      is an author's most valuable asset; experience is the thing that puts the
+      muscle and the breath and the warm blood into the book he writes. Rightly
+      viewed, calf-butchering accounts for "Titus Andronicus," the only play&mdash;ain't
+      it?&mdash;that the Stratford Shakespeare ever wrote; and yet it is the
+      only one everybody tried to chouse him out of, the Baconians included.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The historians find themselves "justified in believing" that the young
+      Shakespeare poached upon Sir Thomas Lucy's deer preserves and got haled
+      before that magistrate for it. But there is no shred of respectworthy
+      evidence that anything of the kind happened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The historians, having argued the thing that <i>might</i> have happened
+      into the thing that <i>did</i> happen, found no trouble in turning Sir
+      Thomas Lucy into Mr. Justice Shallow. They have long ago convinced the
+      world&mdash;on surmise and without trustworthy evidence&mdash;that Shallow
+      <i>is</i> Sir Thomas.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next addition to the young Shakespeare's Stratford history comes easy.
+      The historian builds it out of the surmised deer-steeling, and the
+      surmised trial before the magistrate, and the surmised vengeance-prompted
+      satire upon the magistrate in the play: result, the young Shakespeare was
+      a wild, wild, wild, oh, <i>such</i> a wild young scamp, and that
+      gratuitous slander is established for all time! It is the very way
+      Professor Osborn and I built the colossal skeleton brontosaur that stands
+      fifty-seven feet long and sixteen feet high in the Natural History Museum,
+      the awe and admiration of all the world, the stateliest skeleton that
+      exists on the planet. We had nine bones, and we built the rest of him out
+      of plaster of Paris. We ran short of plaster of Paris, or we'd have built
+      a brontosaur that could sit down beside the Stratford Shakespeare and none
+      but an expert could tell which was biggest or contained the most plaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shakespeare pronounced "Venus and Adonis" "the first heir of his
+      invention," apparently implying that it was his first effort at literary
+      composition. He should not have said it. It has been an embarrassment to
+      his historians these many, many years. They have to make him write that
+      graceful and polished and flawless and beautiful poem before he escaped
+      from Stratford and his family&mdash;1586 or '87&mdash;age, twenty-two, or
+      along there; because within the next five years he wrote five great plays,
+      and could not have found time to write another line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is sorely embarrassing. If he began to slaughter calves, and poach
+      deer, and rollick around, and learn English, at the earliest likely moment&mdash;say
+      at thirteen, when he was supposably wrenched from that school where he was
+      supposably storing up Latin for future literary use&mdash;he had his
+      youthful hands full, and much more than full. He must have had to put
+      aside his Warwickshire dialect, which wouldn't be understood in London,
+      and study English very hard. Very hard indeed; incredibly hard, almost, if
+      the result of that labor was to be the smooth and rounded and flexible and
+      letter-perfect English of the "Venus and Adonis" in the space of ten
+      years; and at the same time learn great and fine and unsurpassable
+      literary <i>form</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      However, it is "conjectured" that he accomplished all this and more, much
+      more: learned law and its intricacies; and the complex procedure of the
+      law-courts; and all about soldiering, and sailoring, and the manners and
+      customs and ways of royal courts and aristocratic society; and likewise
+      accumulated in his one head every kind of knowledge the learned then
+      possessed, and every kind of humble knowledge possessed by the lowly and
+      the ignorant; and added thereto a wider and more intimate knowledge of the
+      world's great literatures, ancient and modern, than was possessed by any
+      other man of his time&mdash;for he was going to make brilliant and easy
+      and admiration-compelling use of these splendid treasures the moment he
+      got to London. And according to the surmisers, that is what he did. Yes,
+      although there was no one in Stratford able to teach him these things, and
+      no library in the little village to dig them out of. His father could not
+      read, and even the surmisers surmise that he did not keep a library.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is surmised by the biographers that the young Shakespeare got his vast
+      knowledge of the law and his familiar and accurate acquaintance with the
+      manners and customs and shop-talk of lawyers through being for a time the
+      <i>clerk of a Stratford court</i>; just as a bright lad like me, reared in
+      a village on the banks of the Mississippi, might become perfect in
+      knowledge of the Bering Strait whale-fishery and the shop-talk of the
+      veteran exercises of that adventure-bristling trade through catching
+      catfish with a "trot-line" Sundays. But the surmise is damaged by the fact
+      that there is no evidence&mdash;and not even tradition&mdash;that the
+      young Shakespeare was ever clerk of a law-court.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is further surmised that the young Shakespeare accumulated his
+      law-treasures in the first years of his sojourn in London, through
+      "amusing himself" by learning book-law in his garret and by picking up
+      lawyer-talk and the rest of it through loitering about the law-courts and
+      listening. But it is only surmise; there is no <i>evidence</i> that he
+      ever did either of those things. They are merely a couple of chunks of
+      plaster of Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is a legend that he got his bread and butter by holding horses in
+      front of the London theaters, mornings and afternoons. Maybe he did. If he
+      did, it seriously shortened his law-study hours and his recreation-time in
+      the courts. In those very days he was writing great plays, and needed all
+      the time he could get. The horse-holding legend ought to be strangled; it
+      too formidably increases the historian's difficulty in accounting for the
+      young Shakespeare's erudition&mdash;an erudition which he was acquiring,
+      hunk by hunk and chunk by chunk, every day in those strenuous times, and
+      emptying each day's catch into next day's imperishable drama.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had to acquire a knowledge of war at the same time; and a knowledge of
+      soldier-people and sailor-people and their ways and talk; also a knowledge
+      of some foreign lands and their languages: for he was daily emptying
+      fluent streams of these various knowledges, too, into his dramas. How did
+      he acquire these rich assets?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the usual way: by surmise. It is <i>surmised</i> that he traveled in
+      Italy and Germany and around, and qualified himself to put their scenic
+      and social aspects upon paper; that he perfected himself in French,
+      Italian, and Spanish on the road; that he went in Leicester's expedition
+      to the Low Countries, as soldier or sutler or something, for several
+      months or years&mdash;or whatever length of time a surmiser needs in his
+      business&mdash;and thus became familiar with soldiership and soldier-ways
+      and soldier-talk and generalship and general-ways and general-talk, and
+      seamanship and sailor-ways and sailor-talk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maybe he did all these things, but I would like to know who held the
+      horses in the mean time; and who studied the books in the garret; and who
+      frolicked in the law-courts for recreation. Also, who did the call-boying
+      and the play-acting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For he became a call-boy; and as early as '93 he became a "vagabond"&mdash;the
+      law's ungentle term for an unlisted actor; and in '94 a "regular" and
+      properly and officially listed member of that (in those days) lightly
+      valued and not much respected profession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Right soon thereafter he became a stockholder in two theaters, and manager
+      of them. Thenceforward he was a busy and flourishing business man, and was
+      raking in money with both hands for twenty years. Then in a noble frenzy
+      of poetic inspiration he wrote his one poem&mdash;his only poem, his
+      darling&mdash;and laid him down and died:<br /> <br /><span class="indent25">Good
+      friend for Iesus sake forbeare <br /><span class="indent25">To digg the
+      dust encloased heare: <br /><span class="indent25">Blest be ye man yt
+      spares thes stones <br /><span class="indent25">And curst be he yt moves my
+      bones. </span></span></span></span>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was probably dead when he wrote it. Still, this is only conjecture. We
+      have only circumstantial evidence. Internal evidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shall I set down the rest of the Conjectures which constitute the giant
+      Biography of William Shakespeare? It would strain the Unabridged
+      Dictionary to hold them. He is a brontosaur: nine bones and six hundred
+      barrels of plaster of Paris.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      V
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      "WE MAY ASSUME" <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <span class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>n
+      the Assuming trade three separate and independent cults are transacting
+      business. Two of these cults are known as the Shakespearites and the
+      Baconians, and I am the other one&mdash;the Brontosaurian. </span>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shakespearite knows that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's Works; the
+      Baconian knows that Francis Bacon wrote them; the Brontosaurian doesn't
+      really know which of them did it, but is quite composedly and contentedly
+      sure that Shakespeare <i>didn't</i>, and strongly suspects that Bacon <i>did</i>.
+      We all have to do a good deal of assuming, but I am fairly certain that in
+      every case I can call to mind the Baconian assumers have come out ahead of
+      the Shakespearites. Both parties handle the same materials, but the
+      Baconians seem to me to get much more reasonable and rational and
+      persuasive results out of them than is the case with the Shakespearites.
+      The Shakespearite conducts his assuming upon a definite principle, an
+      unchanging and immutable law: which is: 2 and 8 and 7 and 14, added
+      together, make 165. I believe this to be an error. No matter, you cannot
+      get a habit-sodden Shakespearite to cipher-up his materials upon any other
+      basis. With the Baconian it is different. If you place before him the
+      above figures and set him to adding them up, he will never in any case get
+      more than 45 out of them, and in nine cases out of ten he will get just
+      the proper 31.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let me try to illustrate the two systems in a simple and homely way
+      calculated to bring the idea within the grasp of the ignorant and
+      unintelligent. We will suppose a case: take a lap-bred, house-fed,
+      uneducated, inexperienced kitten; take a rugged old Tom that's scarred
+      from stem to rudder-post with the memorials of strenuous experience, and
+      is so cultured, so educated, so limitlessly erudite that one may say of
+      him "all cat-knowledge is his province"; also, take a mouse. Lock the
+      three up in a holeless, crackless, exitless prison-cell. Wait half an
+      hour, then open the cell, introduce a Shakespearite and a Baconian, and
+      let them cipher and assume. The mouse is missing: the question to be
+      decided is, where is it? You can guess both verdicts beforehand. One
+      verdict will say the kitten contains the mouse; the other will as
+      certainly say the mouse is in the tom-cat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Shakespearite will Reason like this&mdash;(that is not my word, it is
+      his). He will say the kitten <i>may have been</i> attending school when
+      nobody was noticing; therefore <i>we are warranted in assuming</i> that it
+      did so; also, it <i>could have been</i> training in a court-clerk's office
+      when no one was noticing; since that could have happened, <i>we are
+      justified in assuming</i> that it did happen; it <i>could have studied
+      catology in a garret</i> when no one was noticing&mdash;therefore it <i>did</i>;
+      it <i>could have</i> attended cat-assizes on the shed-roof nights, for
+      recreation, when no one was noticing, and have harvested a knowledge of
+      cat court-forms and cat lawyer-talk in that way: it <i>could</i> have done
+      it, therefore without a doubt it <i>did</i>; it <i>could have</i> gone
+      soldiering with a war-tribe when no one was noticing, and learned
+      soldier-wiles and soldier-ways, and what to do with a mouse when
+      opportunity offers; the plain inference, therefore, is that that is what
+      it <i>did</i>. Since all these manifold things <i>could</i> have occurred,
+      we have <i>every right to believe</i> they did occur. These patiently and
+      painstakingly accumulated vast acquirements and competences needed but one
+      thing more&mdash;opportunity&mdash;to convert themselves into triumphant
+      action. The opportunity came, we have the result; <i>beyond shadow of
+      question</i> the mouse is in the kitten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is proper to remark that when we of the three cults plant a "<i>we
+      think we may assume</i>," we expect it, under careful watering and
+      fertilizing and tending, to grow up into a strong and hardy and
+      weather-defying "<i>there isn't a shadow of a doubt</i>" at last&mdash;and
+      it usually happens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We know what the Baconian's verdict would be: "<i>There is not a rag of
+      evidence that the kitten has had any training, any education, any
+      experience qualifying it for the present occasion, or is indeed equipped
+      for any achievement above lifting such unclaimed milk as comes its way;
+      but there is abundant evidence&mdash;unassailable proof, in fact&mdash;that
+      the other animal is equipped, to the last detail, with every qualification
+      necessary for the event. without shadow of doubt the tom-cat contains the
+      mouse</i>."
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      VI
+    </h3>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>hen Shakespeare
+      died, in 1616, great literary productions attributed to him as author had
+      been before the London world and in high favor for twenty-four years. Yet
+      his death was not an event. It made no stir, it attracted no attention.
+      Apparently his eminent literary contemporaries did not realize that a
+      celebrated poet had passed from their midst. Perhaps they knew a
+      play-actor of minor rank had disappeared, but did not regard him as the
+      author of his Works. "We are justified in assuming" this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His death was not even an event in the little town of Stratford. Does this
+      mean that in Stratford he was not regarded as a celebrity of <i>any</i>
+      kind?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We are privileged to assume"&mdash;no, we are indeed <i>obliged</i> to
+      assume&mdash;that such was the case. He had spent the first twenty-two or
+      twenty-three years of his life there, and of course knew everybody and was
+      known by everybody of that day in the town, including the dogs and the
+      cats and the horses. He had spent the last five or six years of his life
+      there, diligently trading in every big and little thing that had money in
+      it; so we are compelled to assume that many of the folk there in those
+      said latter days knew him personally, and the rest by sight and hearsay.
+      But not as a <i>celebrity?</i> Apparently not. For everybody soon forgot
+      to remember any contact with him or any incident connected with him. The
+      dozens of townspeople, still alive, who had known of him or known about
+      him in the first twenty-three years of his life were in the same
+      unremembering condition: if they knew of any incident connected with that
+      period of his life they didn't tell about it. Would they if they had been
+      asked? It is most likely. Were they asked? It is pretty apparent that they
+      were not. Why weren't they? It is a very plausible guess that nobody there
+      or elsewhere was interested to know.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For seven years after Shakespeare's death nobody seems to have been
+      interested in him. Then the quarto was published, and Ben Jonson awoke out
+      of his long indifference and sang a song of praise and put it in the front
+      of the book. Then silence fell <i>again</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For sixty years. Then inquiries into Shakespeare's Stratford life began to
+      be made, of Stratfordians. Of Stratfordians who had known Shakespeare or
+      had seen him? No. Then of Stratfordians who had seen people who had known
+      or seen people who had seen Shakespeare? No. Apparently the inquires were
+      only made of Stratfordians who were not Stratfordians of Shakespeare's
+      day, but later comers; and what they had learned had come to them from
+      persons who had not seen Shakespeare; and what they had learned was not
+      claimed as <i>fact</i>, but only as legend&mdash;dim and fading and
+      indefinite legend; legend of the calf-slaughtering rank, and not worth
+      remembering either as history or fiction.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Has it ever happened before&mdash;or since&mdash;that a celebrated person
+      who had spent exactly half of a fairly long life in the village where he
+      was born and reared, was able to slip out of this world and leave that
+      village voiceless and gossipless behind him&mdash;utterly voiceless.,
+      utterly gossipless? And permanently so? I don't believe it has happened in
+      any case except Shakespeare's. And couldn't and wouldn't have happened in
+      his case if he had been regarded as a celebrity at the time of his death.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When I examine my own case&mdash;but let us do that, and see if it will
+      not be recognizable as exhibiting a condition of things quite likely to
+      result, most likely to result, indeed substantially <i>sure</i> to result
+      in the case of a celebrated person, a benefactor of the human race. Like
+      me.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My parents brought me to the village of Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks
+      of the Mississippi, when I was two and a half years old. I entered school
+      at five years of age, and drifted from one school to another in the
+      village during nine and a half years. Then my father died, leaving his
+      family in exceedingly straitened circumstances; wherefore my
+      book-education came to a standstill forever, and I became a printer's
+      apprentice, on board and clothes, and when the clothes failed I got a
+      hymn-book in place of them. This for summer wear, probably. I lived in
+      Hannibal fifteen and a half years, altogether, then ran away, according to
+      the custom of persons who are intending to become celebrated. I never
+      lived there afterward. Four years later I became a "cub" on a Mississippi
+      steamboat in the St. Louis and New Orleans trade, and after a year and a
+      half of hard study and hard work the U.S. inspectors rigorously examined
+      me through a couple of long sittings and decided that I knew every inch of
+      the Mississippi&mdash;thirteen hundred miles&mdash;in the dark and in the
+      day&mdash;as well as a baby knows the way to its mother's paps day or
+      night. So they licensed me as a pilot&mdash;knighted me, so to speak&mdash;and
+      I rose up clothed with authority, a responsible servant of the United
+      States Government.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now then. Shakespeare died young&mdash;he was only fifty-two. He had lived
+      in his native village twenty-six years, or about that. He died celebrated
+      (if you believe everything you read in the books). Yet when he died nobody
+      there or elsewhere took any notice of it; and for sixty years afterward no
+      townsman remembered to say anything about him or about his life in
+      Stratford. When the inquirer came at last he got but one fact&mdash;no, <i>legend</i>&mdash;and
+      got that one at second hand, from a person who had only heard it as a
+      rumor and didn't claim copyright in it as a production of his own. He
+      couldn't, very well, for its date antedated his own birth-date. But
+      necessarily a number of persons were still alive in Stratford who, in the
+      days of their youth, had seen Shakespeare nearly every day in the last
+      five years of his life, and they would have been able to tell that
+      inquirer some first-hand things about him if he had in those last days
+      been a celebrity and therefore a person of interest to the villagers. Why
+      did not the inquirer hunt them up and interview them? Wasn't it worth
+      while? Wasn't the matter of sufficient consequence? Had the inquirer an
+      engagement to see a dog-fight and couldn't spare the time?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It all seems to mean that he never had any literary celebrity, there or
+      elsewhere, and no considerable repute as actor and manager.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now then, I am away along in life&mdash;my seventy-third year being
+      already well behind me&mdash;yet <i>sixteen</i> of my Hannibal schoolmates
+      are still alive today, and can tell&mdash;and do tell&mdash;inquirers
+      dozens and dozens of incidents of their young lives and mine together;
+      things that happened to us in the morning of life, in the blossom of our
+      youth, in the good days, the dear days, "the days when we went gipsying, a
+      long time ago." Most of them creditable to me, too. One child to whom I
+      paid court when she was five years old and I eight still lives in
+      Hannibal, and she visited me last summer, traversing the necessary ten or
+      twelve hundred miles of railroad without damage to her patience or to her
+      old-young vigor. Another little lassie to whom I paid attention in
+      Hannibal when she was nine years old and I the same, is still alive&mdash;in
+      London&mdash;and hale and hearty, just as I am. And on the few surviving
+      steamboats&mdash;those lingering ghosts and remembrancers of great fleets
+      that plied the big river in the beginning of my water-career&mdash;which
+      is exactly as long ago as the whole invoice of the life-years of
+      Shakespeare numbers&mdash;there are still findable two or three
+      river-pilots who saw me do creditable things in those ancient days; and
+      several white-headed engineers; and several roustabouts and mates; and
+      several deck-hands who used to heave the lead for me and send up on the
+      still night the "Six&mdash;feet&mdash;<i>scant!</i>" that made me shudder,
+      and the "M-a-r-k&mdash;<i>twain!</i>" that took the shudder away, and
+      presently the darling "By the d-e-e-p&mdash;<i>four!</i>" that lifted me
+      to heaven for joy. (1) They know about me, and can tell. And so do
+      printers, from St. Louis to New York; and so do newspaper reporters, from
+      Nevada to San Francisco. And so do the police. If Shakespeare had really
+      been celebrated, like me, Stratford could have told things about him; and
+      if my experience goes for anything, they'd have done it.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+      1.  Four fathoms&mdash;twenty-four feet.
+</pre>
+    <h3>
+      VII
+    </h3>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>f I had under my
+      superintendence a controversy appointed to decide whether Shakespeare
+      wrote Shakespeare or not, I believe I would place before the debaters only
+      the one question, <i>was shakespeare ever a practicing lawyer</i>? and
+      leave everything else out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is maintained that the man who wrote the plays was not merely
+      myriad-minded, but also myriad-accomplished: that he not only knew some
+      thousands of things about human life in all its shades and grades, and
+      about the hundred arts and trades and crafts and professions which men
+      busy themselves in, but that he could <i>talk</i> about the men and their
+      grades and trades accurately, making no mistakes. Maybe it is so, but have
+      the experts spoken, or is it only Tom, Dick, and Harry? Does the exhibit
+      stand upon wide, and loose, and eloquent generalizing&mdash;which is not
+      evidence, and not proof&mdash;or upon details, particulars, statistics,
+      illustrations, demonstrations?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Experts of unchallengeable authority have testified definitely as to only
+      one of Shakespeare's multifarious craft-equipments, so far as my
+      recollections of Shakespeare-Bacon talk abide with me&mdash;his
+      law-equipment. I do not remember that Wellington or Napoleon ever examined
+      Shakespeare's battles and sieges and strategies, and then decided and
+      established for good and all that they were militarily flawless; I do not
+      remember that any Nelson, or Drake, or Cook ever examined his seamanship
+      and said it showed profound and accurate familiarity with that art; I
+      don't remember that any king or prince or duke has ever testified that
+      Shakespeare was letter-perfect in his handling of royal court-manners and
+      the talk and manners of aristocracies; I don't remember that any
+      illustrious Latinist or Grecian or Frenchman or Spaniard or Italian has
+      proclaimed him a past-master in those languages; I don't remember&mdash;well,
+      I don't remember that there is <i>testimony</i>&mdash;great testimony&mdash;imposing
+      testimony&mdash;unanswerable and unattackable testimony as to any of
+      Shakespeare's hundred specialties, except one&mdash;the law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Other things change, with time, and the student cannot trace back with
+      certainty the changes that various trades and their processes and
+      technicalities have undergone in the long stretch of a century or two and
+      find out what their processes and technicalities were in those early days,
+      but with the law it is different: it is mile-stoned and documented all the
+      way back, and the master of that wonderful trade, that complex and
+      intricate trade, that awe-compelling trade, has competent ways of knowing
+      whether Shakespeare-law is good law or not; and whether his law-court
+      procedure is correct or not, and whether his legal shop-talk is the
+      shop-talk of a veteran practitioner or only a machine-made counterfeit of
+      it gathered from books and from occasional loiterings in Westminster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Richard H. Dana served two years before the mast, and had every experience
+      that falls to the lot of the sailor before the mast of our day. His
+      sailor-talk flows from his pen with the sure touch and the ease and
+      confidence of a person who has <i>lived</i> what he is talking about, not
+      gathered it from books and random listenings. Hear him:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Having hove short, cast off the gaskets, and made the bunt of each sail
+      fast by the jigger, with a man on each yard, at the word the whole canvas
+      of the ship was loosed, and with the greatest rapidity possible everything
+      was sheeted home and hoisted up, the anchor tripped and cat-headed, and
+      the ship under headway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The royal yards were all crossed at once, and royals and
+     sky-sails set, and, as we had the wind free, the booms were
+     run out, and all were aloft, active as cats, laying out on
+     the yards and booms, reeving the studding-sail gear; and
+     sail after sail the captain piled upon her, until she was
+     covered with canvas, her sails looking like a great white
+     cloud resting upon a black speck.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Once more. A race in the Pacific:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Our antagonist was in her best trim. Being clear of the
+     point, the breeze became stiff, and the royal-masts bent
+     under our sails, but we would not take them in until we saw
+     three boys spring into the rigging of the <i>California</i>; then
+     they were all furled at once, but with orders to our boys to
+     stay aloft at the top-gallant mast-heads and loose them
+     again at the word. It was my duty to furl the fore-royal;
+     and while standing by to loose it again, I had a fine view
+     of the scene. From where I stood, the two vessels seemed
+     nothing but spars and sails, while their narrow decks, far
+     below, slanting over by the force of the wind aloft,
+     appeared hardly capable of supporting the great fabrics
+     raised upon them. The <i>California</i> was to windward of us, and
+     had every advantage; yet, while the breeze was stiff we held
+     our own. As soon as it began to slacken she ranged a little
+     ahead, and the order was given to loose the royals. In an
+     instant the gaskets were off and the bunt dropped. "Sheet
+     home the fore-royal!"&mdash;"Weather sheet's home!"&mdash;"Lee sheet's
+     home!"&mdash;"Hoist away, sir!" is bawled from aloft. "Overhaul
+     your clew-lines!" shouts the mate. "Aye-aye, sir, all
+     clear!"&mdash;"Taut leech! belay! Well the lee brace; haul taut
+     to windward!" and the royals are set.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      What would the captain of any sailing-vessel of our time say to that? He
+      would say, "The man that wrote that didn't learn his trade out of a book,
+      he has <i>been</i> there!" But would this same captain be competent to sit
+      in judgment upon Shakespeare's seamanship&mdash;considering the changes in
+      ships and ship-talk that have necessarily taken place, unrecorded,
+      unremembered, and lost to history in the last three hundred years? It is
+      my conviction that Shakespeare's sailor-talk would be Choctaw to him. For
+      instance&mdash;from "<i>The Tempest</i>":
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     <i>Master</i>. Boatswain!
+
+     <i>Boatswain</i>. Here, master; what cheer?
+
+     <i>Master</i>. Good, speak to the mariners: fall to 't, yarely, or
+     we run ourselves to ground; bestir, bestir!
+     (<i>Enter Mariners</i>.)
+
+     <i>Boatswain</i>. Heigh, my hearts! cheerly, cheerly, my hearts!
+     yare, yare! Take in the topsail. Tend to the master's
+     whistle.... Down with the topmast! yare! lower, lower! Bring
+     her to try wi' the main course.... Lay her a-hold, a-hold!
+     Set her two courses. Off to sea again; lay her off.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      That will do, for the present; let us yare a little, now, for a change.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If a man should write a book and in it make one of his characters say,
+      "Here, devil, empty the quoins into the standing galley and the
+      imposing-stone into the hell-box; assemble the comps around the frisket
+      and let them jeff for takes and be quick about it," I should recognize a
+      mistake or two in the phrasing, and would know that the writer was only a
+      printer theoretically, not practically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have been a quartz miner in the silver regions&mdash;a pretty hard life;
+      I know all the palaver of that business: I know all about discovery claims
+      and the subordinate claims; I know all about lodes, ledges, outcroppings,
+      dips, spurs, angles, shafts, drifts, inclines, levels, tunnels,
+      air-shafts, "horses," clay casings, granite casings; quartz mills and
+      their batteries; arastras, and how to charge them with quicksilver and
+      sulphate of copper; and how to clean them up, and how to reduce the
+      resulting amalgam in the retorts, and how to cast the bullion into pigs;
+      and finally I know how to screen tailings, and also how to hunt for
+      something less robust to do, and find it. I know the argot of the
+      quartz-mining and milling industry familiarly; and so whenever Bret Harte
+      introduces that industry into a story, the first time one of his miners
+      opens his mouth I recognize from his phrasing that Harte got the phrasing
+      by listening&mdash;like Shakespeare&mdash;I mean the Stratford one&mdash;not
+      by experience. No one can talk the quartz dialect correctly without
+      learning it with pick and shovel and drill and fuse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have been a surface miner&mdash;gold&mdash;and I know all its mysteries,
+      and the dialect that belongs with them; and whenever Harte introduces that
+      industry into a story I know by the phrasing of his characters that
+      neither he nor they have ever served that trade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have been a "pocket" miner&mdash;a sort of gold mining not findable in
+      any but one little spot in the world, so far as I know. I know how, with
+      horn and water, to find the trail of a pocket and trace it step by step
+      and stage by stage up the mountain to its source, and find the compact
+      little nest of yellow metal reposing in its secret home under the ground.
+      I know the language of that trade, that capricious trade, that fascinating
+      buried-treasure trade, and can catch any writer who tries to use it
+      without having learned it by the sweat of his brow and the labor of his
+      hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I know several other trades and the argot that goes with them; and
+      whenever a person tries to talk the talk peculiar to any of them without
+      having learned it at its source I can trap him always before he gets far
+      on his road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so, as I have already remarked, if I were required to superintend a
+      Bacon-Shakespeare controversy, I would narrow the matter down to a single
+      question&mdash;the only one, so far as the previous controversies have
+      informed me, concerning which illustrious experts of unimpeachable
+      competency have testified: <i>Was The Author Of Shakespeare's Works A
+      Lawyer?</i>&mdash;a lawyer deeply read and of limitless experience? I
+      would put aside the guesses and surmises, and perhapses, and
+      might-have-beens, and could-have-beens, and must-have-beens, and,
+      we-are-justified-in-presumings,and the rest of those vague specters and
+      shadows and indefinitenesses, and stand or fall, win or lose, by the
+      verdict rendered by the jury upon that single question. If the verdict was
+      Yes, I should feel quite convinced that the Stratford Shakespeare, the
+      actor, manager, and trader who died so obscure, so forgotten, so destitute
+      of even village consequence, that sixty years afterward no fellow-citizen
+      and friend of his later days remembered to tell anything about him, did
+      not write the Works.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Chapter XIII of <i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i> bears the heading
+      "Shakespeare as a Lawyer," and comprises some fifty pages of expert
+      testimony, with comments thereon, and I will copy the first nine, as being
+      sufficient all by themselves, as it seems to me, to settle the question
+      which I have conceived to be the master-key to the Shakespeare-Bacon
+      puzzle.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      VIII
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      SHAKESPEARE AS A LAWYER (1)
+    </h3>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     (1). From Chapter XIII of <i>The Shakespeare Problem Restated</i>. By
+     George G. Greenwood, M.P. John Lane Company, publishers.
+</pre>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     |The Plays and Poems of Shakespeare supply ample evidence
+     that their author not only had a very extensive and accurate
+     knowledge of law, but that he was well acquainted with the
+     manners and customs of members of the Inns of Court and with
+     legal life generally.
+
+     "While novelists and dramatists are constantly making
+     mistakes as to the laws of marriage, of wills, and
+     inheritance, to Shakespeare's law, lavishly as he expounds
+     it, there can neither be demurrer, nor bill of exceptions,
+     nor writ of error." Such was the testimony borne by one of
+     the most distinguished lawyers of the nineteenth century who
+     was raised to the high office of Lord Chief Justice in 1850,
+     and subsequently became Lord Chancellor. Its weight will,
+     doubtless, be more appreciated by lawyers than by laymen,
+     for only lawyers know how impossible it is for those who
+     have not served an apprenticeship to the law to avoid
+     displaying their ignorance if they venture to employ legal
+     terms and to discuss legal doctrines. "There is nothing so
+     dangerous," wrote Lord Campbell, "as for one not of the
+     craft to tamper with our freemasonry." A layman is certain
+     to betray himself by using some expression which a lawyer
+     would never employ. Mr. Sidney Lee himself supplies us with
+     an example of this. He writes (p. 164): "On February 15,
+     1609, Shakespeare... obtained judgment from a jury against
+     Addenbroke for the payment of No. 6, and No. 1, 5s. 0d.
+     costs." Now a lawyer would never have spoken of obtaining
+     "judgment from a jury," for it is the function of a jury not
+     to deliver judgment (which is the prerogative of the court),
+     but to find a verdict on the facts. The error is, indeed, a
+     venial one, but it is just one of those little things which
+     at once enable a lawyer to know if the writer is a layman or
+     "one of the craft."
+
+     But when a layman ventures to plunge deeply into legal
+     subjects, he is naturally apt to make an exhibition of his
+     incompetence. "Let a non-professional man, however acute,"
+     writes Lord Campbell again, "presume to talk law, or to draw
+     illustrations from legal science in discussing other
+     subjects, and he will speedily fall into laughable
+     absurdity."
+
+     And what does the same high authority say about Shakespeare?
+     He had "a deep technical knowledge of the law," and an easy
+     familiarity with "some of the most abstruse proceedings in
+     English jurisprudence." And again: "Whenever he indulges
+     this propensity he uniformly lays down good law." Of "Henry
+     IV.," Part 2, he says: "If Lord Eldon could be supposed to
+     have written the play, I do not see how he could be
+     chargeable with having forgotten any of his law while
+     writing it." Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke speak of "the
+     marvelous intimacy which he displays with legal terms, his
+     frequent adoption of them in illustration, and his curiously
+     technical knowledge of their form and force." Malone,
+     himself a lawyer, wrote: "His knowledge of legal terms is
+     not merely such as might be acquired by the casual
+     observation of even his all-comprehending mind; it has the
+     appearance of technical skill." Another lawyer and well-
+     known Shakespearean, Richard Grant White, says: "No
+     dramatist of the time, not even Beaumont, who was the
+     younger son of a judge of the Common Pleas, and who after
+     studying in the Inns of Court abandoned law for the drama,
+     used legal phrases with Shakespeare's readiness and
+     exactness. And the significance of this fact is heightened
+     by another, that it is only to the language of the law that
+     he exhibits this inclination. The phrases peculiar to other
+     occupations serve him on rare occasions by way of
+     description, comparison, or illustration, generally when
+     something in the scene suggests them, but legal phrases flow
+     from his pen as part of his vocabulary and parcel of his
+     thought. Take the word 'purchase' for instance, which, in
+     ordinary use, means to acquire by giving value, but applies
+     in law to all legal modes of obtaining property except by
+     inheritance or descent, and in this peculiar sense the word
+     occurs five times in Shakespeare's thirty-four plays, and
+     only in one single instance in the fifty-four plays of
+     Beaumont and Fletcher. It has been suggested that it was in
+     attendance upon the courts in London that he picked up his
+     legal vocabulary. But this supposition not only fails to
+     account for Shakespeare's peculiar freedom and exactness in
+     the use of that phraseology, it does not even place him in
+     the way of learning those terms his use of which is most
+     remarkable, which are not such as he would have heard at
+     ordinary proceedings at <i>Nisi Prius</i>, but such as refer to the
+     tenure or transfer of real property, 'fine and recovery,'
+     'statutes merchant,' 'purchase,' 'indenture,' 'tenure,'
+     'double voucher,' 'fee simple,' 'fee farm,' 'remainder,'
+     'reversion,' 'forfeiture,' etc. This conveyancer's jargon
+     could not have been picked up by hanging round the courts of
+     law in London two hundred and fifty years ago, when suits as
+     to the title of real property were comparatively rare. And
+     besides, Shakespeare uses his law just as freely in his
+     first plays, written in his first London years, as in those
+     produced at a later period. Just as exactly, too; for the
+     correctness and propriety with which these terms are
+     introduced have compelled the admiration of a Chief Justice
+     and a Lord Chancellor."
+
+     Senator Davis wrote: "We seem to have something more than a
+     sciolist's temerity of indulgence in the terms of an
+     unfamiliar art. No legal solecisms will be found. The
+     abstrusest elements of the common law are impressed into a
+     disciplined service. Over and over again, where such
+     knowledge is unexampled in writers unlearned in the law,
+     Shakespeare appears in perfect possession of it. In the law
+     of real property, its rules of tenure and descents, its
+     entails, its fines and recoveries, their vouchers and double
+     vouchers, in the procedure of the Courts, the method of
+     bringing writs and arrests, the nature of actions, the rules
+     of pleading, the law of escapes and of contempt of court, in
+     the principles of evidence, both technical and
+     philosophical, in the distinction between the temporal and
+     spiritual tribunals, in the law of attainder and forfeiture,
+     in the requisites of a valid marriage, in the presumption of
+     legitimacy, in the learning of the law of prerogative, in
+     the inalienable character of the Crown, this mastership
+     appears with surprising authority."
+
+     To all this testimony (and there is much more which I have
+     not cited) may now be added that of a great lawyer of our
+     own times, <i>viz</i>.: Sir James Plaisted Wilde, Q.C. 1855,
+     created a Baron of the Exchequer in 1860, promoted to the
+     post of Judge-Ordinary and Judge of the Courts of Probate
+     and Divorce in 1863, and better known to the world as Lord
+     Penzance, to which dignity he was raised in 1869. Lord
+     Penzance, as all lawyers know, and as the late Mr.
+     Inderwick, K.C., has testified, was one of the first legal
+     authorities of his day, famous for his "remarkable grasp of
+     legal principles," and "endowed by nature with a remarkable
+     facility for marshaling facts, and for a clear expression of
+     his views."
+
+     Lord Penzance speaks of Shakespeare's "perfect familiarity
+     with not only the principles, axioms, and maxims, but the
+     technicalities of English law, a knowledge so perfect and
+     intimate that he was never incorrect and never at fault....
+     The mode in which this knowledge was pressed into service on
+     all occasions to express his meaning and illustrate his
+     thoughts was quite unexampled. He seems to have had a
+     special pleasure in his complete and ready mastership of it
+     in all its branches. As manifested in the plays, this legal
+     knowledge and learning had therefore a special character
+     which places it on a wholly different footing from the rest
+     of the multifarious knowledge which is exhibited in page
+     after page of the plays. At every turn and point at which
+     the author required a metaphor, simile, or illustration, his
+     mind ever turned <i>first</i> to the law. He seems almost to have
+     <i>thought</i> in legal phrases, the commonest of legal expressions
+     were ever at the end of his pen in description or
+     illustration. That he should have descanted in lawyer
+     language when he had a forensic subject in hand, such as
+     Shylock's bond, was to be expected, but the knowledge of law
+     in 'Shakespeare' was exhibited in a far different manner: it
+     protruded itself on all occasions, appropriate or
+     inappropriate, and mingled itself with strains of thought
+     widely divergent from forensic subjects." Again: "To acquire
+     a perfect familiarity with legal principles, and an accurate
+     and ready use of the technical terms and phrases not only of
+     the conveyancer's office, but of the pleader's chambers and
+     the Courts at Westminster, nothing short of employment in
+     some career involving constant contact with legal questions
+     and general legal work would be requisite. But a continuous
+     employment involves the element of time, and time was just
+     what the manager of two theaters had not at his disposal. In
+     what portion of Shakespeare's (i.e., Shakspere's) career
+     would it be possible to point out that time could be found
+     for the interposition of a legal employment in the chambers
+     or offices of practicing lawyers?"
+
+     Stratfordians, as is well known, casting about for some
+     possible explanation of Shakespeare's extraordinary
+     knowledge of law, have made the suggestion that Shakespeare
+     might, conceivably, have been a clerk in an attorney's
+     office before he came to London. Mr. Collier wrote to Lord
+     Campbell to ask his opinion as to the probability of this
+     being true. His answer was as follows: "You require us to
+     believe implicitly a fact, of which, if true, positive and
+     irrefragable evidence in his own handwriting might have been
+     forthcoming to establish it. Not having been actually
+     enrolled as an attorney, neither the records of the local
+     court at Stratford nor of the superior Courts at Westminster
+     would present his name as being concerned in any suit as an
+     attorney, but it might reasonably have been expected that
+     there would be deeds or wills witnessed by him still extant,
+     and after a very diligent search none such can be
+     discovered."
+
+     Upon this Lord Penzance comments: "It cannot be doubted that
+     Lord Campbell was right in this. No young man could have
+     been at work in an attorney's office without being called
+     upon continually to act as a witness, and in many other ways
+     leaving traces of his work and name." There is not a single
+     fact or incident in all that is known of Shakespeare, even
+     by rumor or tradition, which supports this notion of a
+     clerkship. And after much argument and surmise which has
+     been indulged in on this subject, we may, I think, safely
+     put the notion on one side, for no less an authority than
+     Mr. Grant White says finally that the idea of his having
+     been clerk to an attorney has been "blown to pieces."
+
+     It is altogether characteristic of Mr. Churton Collins that
+     he, nevertheless, adopts this exploded myth. "That
+     Shakespeare was in early life employed as a clerk in an
+     attorney's office may be correct. At Stratford there was by
+     royal charter a Court of Record sitting every fortnight,
+     with six attorneys, besides the town clerk, belonging to it,
+     and it is certainly not straining probability to suppose
+     that the young Shakespeare may have had employment in one of
+     them. There is, it is true, no tradition to this effect, but
+     such traditions as we have about Shakespeare's occupation
+     between the time of leaving school and going to London are
+     so loose and baseless that no confidence can be placed in
+     them. It is, to say the least, more probable that he was in
+     an attorney's office than that he was a butcher killing
+     calves 'in a high style,' and making speeches over them."
+
+     This is a charming specimen of Stratfordian argument. There
+     is, as we have seen, a very old tradition that Shakespeare
+     was a butcher's apprentice. John Dowdall, who made a tour in
+     Warwickshire in 1693, testifies to it as coming from the old
+     clerk who showed him over the church, and it is
+     unhesitatingly accepted as true by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps.
+     (Vol. I, p. 11, and Vol. II, pp. 71, 72.) Mr. Sidney Lee
+     sees nothing improbable in it, and it is supported by
+     Aubrey, who must have written his account some time before
+     1680, when his manuscript was completed. Of the attorney's
+     clerk hypothesis, on the other hand, there is not the
+     faintest vestige of a tradition. It has been evolved out of
+     the fertile imaginations of embarrassed Stratfordians,
+     seeking for some explanation of the Stratford rustic's
+     marvelous acquaintance with law and legal terms and legal
+     life. But Mr. Churton Collins has not the least hesitation
+     in throwing over the tradition which has the warrant of
+     antiquity and setting up in its stead this ridiculous
+     invention, for which not only is there no shred of positive
+     evidence, but which, as Lord Campbell and Lord Penzance
+     point out, is really put out of court by the negative
+     evidence, since "no young man could have been at work in an
+     attorney's office without being called upon continually to
+     act as a witness, and in many other ways leaving traces of
+     his work and name." And as Mr. Edwards further points out,
+     since the day when Lord Campbell's book was published
+     (between forty and fifty years ago), "every old deed or
+     will, to say nothing of other legal papers, dated during the
+     period of William Shakespeare's youth, has been scrutinized
+     over half a dozen shires, and not one signature of the young
+     man has been found."
+
+     Moreover, if Shakespeare had served as clerk in an
+     attorney's office it is clear that he must have so served
+     for a considerable period in order to have gained (if,
+     indeed, it is credible that he could have so gained) his
+     remarkable knowledge of the law. Can we then for a moment
+     believe that, if this had been so, tradition would have been
+     absolutely silent on the matter? That Dowdall's old clerk,
+     over eighty years of age, should have never heard of it
+     (though he was sure enough about the butcher's apprentice)
+     and that all the other ancient witnesses should be in
+     similar ignorance!
+
+     But such are the methods of Stratfordian controversy.
+     Tradition is to be scouted when it is found inconvenient,
+     but cited as irrefragable truth when it suits the case.
+     Shakespeare of Stratford was the author of the Plays and
+     Poems, but the author of the Plays and Poems could not have
+     been a butcher's apprentice. Away, therefore, with
+     tradition. But the author of the Plays and Poems <i>must</i> have
+     had a very large and a very accurate knowledge of the law.
+     Therefore, Shakespeare of Stratford must have been an
+     attorney's clerk! The method is simplicity itself. By
+     similar reasoning Shakespeare has been made a country
+     schoolmaster, a soldier, a physician, a printer, and a good
+     many other things besides, according to the inclination and
+     the exigencies of the commentator. It would not be in the
+     least surprising to find that he was studying Latin as a
+     schoolmaster and law in an attorney's office at the same
+     time.
+
+     However, we must do Mr. Collins the justice of saying that
+     he has fully recognized, what is indeed tolerably obvious,
+     that Shakespeare must have had a sound legal training. "It
+     may, of course, be urged," he writes, "that Shakespeare's
+     knowledge of medicine, and particularly that branch of it
+     which related to morbid psychology, is equally remarkable,
+     and that no one has ever contended that he was a physician.
+     (Here Mr. Collins is wrong; that contention also has been
+     put forward.) It may be urged that his acquaintance with the
+     technicalities of other crafts and callings, notably of
+     marine and military affairs, was also extraordinary, and yet
+     no one has suspected him of being a sailor or a soldier.
+     (Wrong again. Why, even Messrs. Garnett and Gosse "suspect"
+     that he was a soldier!) This may be conceded, but the
+     concession hardly furnishes an analogy. To these and all
+     other subjects he recurs occasionally, and in season, but
+     with reminiscences of the law his memory, as is abundantly
+     clear, was simply saturated. In season and out of season now
+     in manifest, now in recondite application, he presses it
+     into the service of expression and illustration. At least a
+     third of his myriad metaphors are derived from it. It would
+     indeed be difficult to find a single act in any of his
+     dramas, nay, in some of them, a single scene, the diction
+     and imagery of which are not colored by it. Much of his law
+     may have been acquired from three books easily accessible to
+     him&mdash;namely, Tottell's <i>Precedents</i> (1572), Pulton's <i>Statutes</i>
+     (1578), and Fraunce's <i>Lawier's Logike</i> (1588), works with
+     which he certainly seems to have been familiar; but much of
+     it could only have come from one who had an intimate
+     acquaintance with legal proceedings. We quite agree with Mr.
+     Castle that Shakespeare's legal knowledge is not what could
+     have been picked up in an attorney's office, but could only
+     have been learned by an actual attendance at the Courts, at
+     a Pleader's Chambers, and on circuit, or by associating
+     intimately with members of the Bench and Bar."
+
+     This is excellent. But what is Mr. Collins's explanation?
+     "Perhaps the simplest solution of the problem is to accept
+     the hypothesis that in early life he was in an attorney's
+     office (!), that he there contracted a love for the law
+     which never left him, that as a young man in London he
+     continued to study or dabble in it for his amusement, to
+     stroll in leisure hours into the Courts, and to frequent the
+     society of lawyers. On no other supposition is it possible
+     to explain the attraction which the law evidently had for
+     him, and his minute and undeviating accuracy in a subject
+     where no layman who has indulged in such copious and
+     ostentatious display of legal technicalities has ever yet
+     succeeded in keeping himself from tripping."
+
+     A lame conclusion. "No other supposition" indeed! Yes, there
+     is another, and a very obvious supposition&mdash;namely, that
+     Shakespeare was himself a lawyer, well versed in his trade,
+     versed in all the ways of the courts, and living in close
+     intimacy with judges and members of the Inns of Court.
+
+     One is, of course, thankful that Mr. Collins has appreciated
+     the fact that Shakespeare must have had a sound legal
+     training, but I may be forgiven if I do not attach quite so
+     much importance to his pronouncements on this branch of the
+     subject as to those of Malone, Lord Campbell, Judge Holmes,
+     Mr. Castle, K.C., Lord Penzance, Mr. Grant White, and other
+     lawyers, who have expressed their opinion on the matter of
+     Shakespeare's legal acquirements....
+
+     Here it may, perhaps, be worth while to quote again from
+     Lord Penzance's book as to the suggestion that Shakespeare
+     had somehow or other managed "to acquire a perfect
+     familiarity with legal principles, and an accurate and ready
+     use of the technical terms and phrases, not only of the
+     conveyancer's office, but of the pleader's chambers and the
+     Courts at Westminster." This, as Lord Penzance points out,
+     "would require nothing short of employment in some career
+     involving <i>constant contact</i> with legal questions and general
+     legal work." But "in what portion of Shakespeare's career
+     would it be possible to point out that time could be found
+     for the interposition of a legal employment in the chambers
+     or offices of practicing lawyers?... It is beyond doubt that
+     at an early period he was called upon to abandon his
+     attendance at school and assist his father, and was soon
+     after, at the age of sixteen, bound apprentice to a trade.
+     While under the obligation of this bond he could not have
+     pursued any other employment. Then he leaves Stratford and
+     comes to London. He has to provide himself with the means of
+     a livelihood, and this he did in some capacity at the
+     theater. No one doubts that. The holding of horses is
+     scouted by many, and perhaps with justice, as being unlikely
+     and certainly unproved; but whatever the nature of his
+     employment was at the theater, there is hardly room for the
+     belief that it could have been other than continuous, for
+     his progress there was so rapid. Ere long he had been taken
+     into the company as an actor, and was soon spoken of as a
+     'Johannes Factotum.' His rapid accumulation of wealth speaks
+     volumes for the constancy and activity of his services. One
+     fails to see when there could be a break in the current of
+     his life at this period of it, giving room or opportunity
+     for legal or indeed any other employment. 'In 1589,' says
+     Knight, 'we have undeniable evidence that he had not only a
+     casual engagement, was not only a salaried servant, as many
+     players were, but was a shareholder in the company of the
+     Queen's players with other shareholders below him on the
+     list.' This (1589) would be within two years after his
+     arrival in London, which is placed by White and Halliwell-
+     Phillipps about the year 1587. The difficulty in supposing
+     that, starting with a state of ignorance in 1587, when he is
+     supposed to have come to London, he was induced to enter
+     upon a course of most extended study and mental culture, is
+     almost insuperable. Still it was physically possible,
+     provided always that he could have had access to the needful
+     books. But this legal training seems to me to stand on a
+     different footing. It is not only unaccountable and
+     incredible, but it is actually negatived by the known facts
+     of his career." Lord Penzance then refers to the fact that
+     "by 1592 (according to the best authority, Mr. Grant White)
+     several of the plays had been written. 'The Comedy of
+     Errors' in 1589, 'Love's Labour's Lost' in 1589, 'Two
+     Gentlemen of Verona' in 1589 or 1590," and so forth, and
+     then asks, "with this catalogue of dramatic work on hand...
+     was it possible that he could have taken a leading part in
+     the management and conduct of two theaters, and if Mr.
+     Phillipps is to be relied upon, taken his share in the
+     performances of the provincial tours of his company&mdash;and at
+     the same time devoted himself to the study of the law in all
+     its branches so efficiently as to make himself complete
+     master of its principles and practice, and saturate his mind
+     with all its most technical terms?"
+
+     I have cited this passage from Lord Penzance's book, because
+     it lay before me, and I had already quoted from it on the
+     matter of Shakespeare's legal knowledge; but other writers
+     have still better set forth the insuperable difficulties, as
+     they seem to me, which beset the idea that Shakespeare might
+     have found time in some unknown period of early life, amid
+     multifarious other occupations, for the study of classics,
+     literature, and law, to say nothing of languages and a few
+     other matters. Lord Penzance further asks his readers: "Did
+     you ever meet with or hear of an instance in which a young
+     man in this country gave himself up to legal studies and
+     engaged in legal employments, which is the only way of
+     becoming familiar with the technicalities of practice,
+     unless with the view of practicing in that profession? I do
+     not believe that it would be easy, or indeed possible, to
+     produce an instance in which the law has been seriously
+     studied in all its branches, except as a qualification for
+     practice in the legal profession."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      This testimony is so strong, so direct, so authoritative; and so
+      uncheapened, unwatered by guesses, and surmises, and maybe-so's, and
+      might-have-beens, and could-have-beens, and must-have-beens, and the rest
+      of that ton of plaster of Paris out of which the biographers have built
+      the colossal brontosaur which goes by the Stratford actor's name, that it
+      quite convinces me that the man who wrote Shakespeare's Works knew all
+      about law and lawyers. Also, that that man could not have been the
+      Stratford Shakespeare&mdash;and <i>wasn't</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Who did write these Works, then?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I wish I knew.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IX
+    </h3>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">D</span>id Francis Bacon
+      write Shakespeare's Works? Nobody knows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We cannot say we <i>know</i> a thing when that thing has not been proved.
+      <i>Know</i> is too strong a word to use when the evidence is not final and
+      absolutely conclusive. We can infer, if we want to, like those slaves....
+      No, I will not write that word, it is not kind, it is not courteous. The
+      upholders of the Stratford-Shakespeare superstition call <i>us</i> the
+      hardest names they can think of, and they keep doing it all the time; very
+      well, if they like to descend to that level, let them do it, but I will
+      not so undignify myself as to follow them. I cannot call them harsh names;
+      the most I can do is to indicate them by terms reflecting my disapproval;
+      and this without malice, without venom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To resume. What I was about to say was, those thugs have built their
+      entire superstition upon <i>inferences</i>, not upon known and established
+      facts. It is a weak method, and poor, and I am glad to be able to say our
+      side never resorts to it while there is anything else to resort to.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when we must, we must; and we have now arrived at a place of that
+      sort.... Since the Stratford Shakespeare couldn't have written the Works,
+      we infer that somebody did. Who was it, then? This requires some more
+      inferring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ordinarily when an unsigned poem sweeps across the continent like a tidal
+      wave whose roar and boom and thunder are made up of admiration, delight,
+      and applause, a dozen obscure people rise up and claim the authorship. Why
+      a dozen, instead of only one or two? One reason is, because there are a
+      dozen that are recognizably competent to do that poem. Do you remember
+      "Beautiful Snow"? Do you remember "Rock Me to Sleep, Mother, Rock Me to
+      Sleep"? Do you remember "Backward, turn, backward, O Time, in thy flight!
+      Make me a child again just for tonight"? I remember them very well. Their
+      authorship was claimed by most of the grown-up people who were alive at
+      the time, and every claimant had one plausible argument in his favor, at
+      least&mdash;to wit, he could have done the authoring; he was competent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Have the Works been claimed by a dozen? They haven't. There was good
+      reason. The world knows there was but one man on the planet at the time
+      who was competent&mdash;not a dozen, and not two. A long time ago the
+      dwellers in a far country used now and then to find a procession of
+      prodigious footprints stretching across the plain&mdash;footprints that
+      were three miles apart, each footprint a third of a mile long and a
+      furlong deep, and with forests and villages mashed to mush in it. Was
+      there any doubt as to who made that mighty trail? Were there a dozen
+      claimants? Where there two? No&mdash;the people knew who it was that had
+      been along there: there was only one Hercules.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There has been only one Shakespeare. There couldn't be two; certainly
+      there couldn't be two at the same time. It takes ages to bring forth a
+      Shakespeare, and some more ages to match him. This one was not matched
+      before his time; nor during his time; and hasn't been matched since. The
+      prospect of matching him in our time is not bright.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Baconians claim that the Stratford Shakespeare was not qualified to
+      write the Works, and that Francis Bacon was. They claim that Bacon
+      possessed the stupendous equipment&mdash;both natural and acquired&mdash;for
+      the miracle; and that no other Englishman of his day possessed the like;
+      or, indeed, anything closely approaching it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Macaulay, in his Essay, has much to say about the splendor and horizonless
+      magnitude of that equipment. Also, he has synopsized Bacon's history&mdash;a
+      thing which cannot be done for the Stratford Shakespeare, for he hasn't
+      any history to synopsize. Bacon's history is open to the world, from his
+      boyhood to his death in old age&mdash;a history consisting of known facts,
+      displayed in minute and multitudinous detail; <i>facts</i>, not guesses
+      and conjectures and might-have-beens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whereby it appears that he was born of a race of statesmen, and had a Lord
+      Chancellor for his father, and a mother who was "distinguished both as a
+      linguist and a theologian: she corresponded in Greek with Bishop Jewell,
+      and translated his <i>Apologia</i> from the Latin so correctly that
+      neither he nor Archbishop Parker could suggest a single alteration." It is
+      the atmosphere we are reared in that determines how our inclinations and
+      aspirations shall tend. The atmosphere furnished by the parents to the son
+      in this present case was an atmosphere saturated with learning; with
+      thinkings and ponderings upon deep subjects; and with polite culture. It
+      had its natural effect. Shakespeare of Stratford was reared in a house
+      which had no use for books, since its owners, his parents, were without
+      education. This may have had an effect upon the son, but we do not know,
+      because we have no history of him of an informing sort. There were but few
+      books anywhere, in that day, and only the well-to-do and highly educated
+      possessed them, they being almost confined to the dead languages. "All the
+      valuable books then extant in all the vernacular dialects of Europe would
+      hardly have filled a single shelf"&mdash;imagine it! The few existing
+      books were in the Latin tongue mainly. "A person who was ignorant of it
+      was shut out from all acquaintance&mdash;not merely with Cicero and
+      Virgil, but with the most interesting memoirs, state papers, and pamphlets
+      of his own time"&mdash;a literature necessary to the Stratford lad, for
+      his fictitious reputation's sake, since the writer of his Works would
+      begin to use it wholesale and in a most masterly way before the lad was
+      hardly more than out of his teens and into his twenties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At fifteen Bacon was sent to the university, and he spent three years
+      there. Thence he went to Paris in the train of the English Ambassador, and
+      there he mingled daily with the wise, the cultured, the great, and the
+      aristocracy of fashion, during another three years. A total of six years
+      spent at the sources of knowledge; knowledge both of books and of men. The
+      three spent at the university were coeval with the second and last three
+      spent by the little Stratford lad at Stratford school supposedly, and
+      perhapsedly, and maybe, and by inference&mdash;with nothing to infer from.
+      The second three of the Baconian six were "presumably" spent by the
+      Stratford lad as apprentice to a butcher. That is, the thugs presume it&mdash;on
+      no evidence of any kind. Which is their way, when they want a historical
+      fact. Fact and presumption are, for business purposes, all the same to
+      them. They know the difference, but they also know how to blink it. They
+      know, too, that while in history-building a fact is better than a
+      presumption, it doesn't take a presumption long to bloom into a fact when
+      <i>they</i> have the handling of it. They know by old experience that when
+      they get hold of a presumption-tadpole he is not going to <i>stay</i>
+      tadpole in their history-tank; no, they know how to develop him into the
+      giant four-legged bullfrog of <i>fact</i>, and make him sit up on his
+      hams, and puff out his chin, and look important and insolent and
+      come-to-stay; and assert his genuine simon-pure authenticity with a
+      thundering bellow that will convince everybody because it is so loud. The
+      thug is aware that loudness convinces sixty persons where reasoning
+      convinces but one. I wouldn't be a thug, not even if&mdash;but never mind
+      about that, it has nothing to do with the argument, and it is not noble in
+      spirit besides. If I am better than a thug, is the merit mine? No, it is
+      His. Then to Him be the praise. That is the right spirit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They "presume" the lad severed his "presumed" connection with the
+      Stratford school to become apprentice to a butcher. They also "presume"
+      that the butcher was his father. They don't know. There is no written
+      record of it, nor any other actual evidence. If it would have helped their
+      case any, they would have apprenticed him to thirty butchers, to fifty
+      butchers, to a wilderness of butchers&mdash;all by their patented method
+      "presumption." If it will help their case they will do it yet; and if it
+      will further help it, they will "presume" that all those butchers were his
+      father. And the week after, they will <i>say</i> it. Why, it is just like
+      being the past tense of the compound reflexive adverbial incandescent
+      hypodermic irregular accusative Noun of Multitude; which is father to the
+      expression which the grammarians call Verb. It is like a whole ancestry,
+      with only one posterity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To resume. Next, the young Bacon took up the study of law, and mastered
+      that abstruse science. From that day to the end of his life he was daily
+      in close contact with lawyers and judges; not as a casual onlooker in
+      intervals between holding horses in front of a theater, but as a
+      practicing lawyer&mdash;a great and successful one, a renowned one, a
+      Launcelot of the bar, the most formidable lance in the high brotherhood of
+      the legal Table Round; he lived in the law's atmosphere thenceforth, all
+      his years, and by sheer ability forced his way up its difficult steeps to
+      its supremest summit, the Lord-Chancellorship, leaving behind him no
+      fellow-craftsman qualified to challenge his divine right to that majestic
+      place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When we read the praises bestowed by Lord Penzance and the other
+      illustrious experts upon the legal condition and legal aptnesses,
+      brilliances, profundities, and felicities so prodigally displayed in the
+      Plays, and try to fit them to the historyless Stratford stage-manager,
+      they sound wild, strange, incredible, ludicrous; but when we put them in
+      the mouth of Bacon they do not sound strange, they seem in their natural
+      and rightful place, they seem at home there. Please turn back and read
+      them again. Attributed to Shakespeare of Stratford they are meaningless,
+      they are inebriate extravagancies&mdash;intemperate admirations of the
+      dark side of the moon, so to speak; attributed to Bacon, they are
+      admirations of the golden glories of the moon's front side, the moon at
+      the full&mdash;and not intemperate, not overwrought, but sane and right,
+      and justified. "At every turn and point at which the author required a
+      metaphor, simile, or illustration, his mind ever turned <i>first</i> to
+      the law; he seems almost to have <i>thought</i> in legal phrases; the
+      commonest legal phrases, the commonest of legal expressions, were ever at
+      the end of his pen." That could happen to no one but a person whose <i>trade</i>
+      was the law; it could not happen to a dabbler in it. Veteran mariners fill
+      their conversation with sailor-phrases and draw all their similes from the
+      ship and the sea and the storm, but no mere <i>passenger</i> ever does it,
+      be he of Stratford or elsewhere; or could do it with anything resembling
+      accuracy, if he were hardy enough to try. Please read again what Lord
+      Campbell and the other great authorities have said about Bacon when they
+      thought they were saying it about Shakespeare of Stratford.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      X
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      THE REST OF THE EQUIPMENT
+    </h3>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>he author of the
+      Plays was equipped, beyond every other man of his time, with wisdom,
+      erudition, imagination, capaciousness of mind, grace, and majesty of
+      expression. Every one has said it, no one doubts it. Also, he had humor,
+      humor in rich abundance, and always wanting to break out. We have no
+      evidence of any kind that Shakespeare of Stratford possessed any of these
+      gifts or any of these acquirements. The only lines he ever wrote, so far
+      as we know, are substantially barren of them&mdash;barren of all of them.
+      <br /><br /><span class="indent25">Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare <br /><span
+      class="indent25">To digg the dust encloased heare: <br /><span
+      class="indent25">Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones <br /><span
+      class="indent25">And curst be he yt moves my bones. </span></span></span></span>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ben Jonson says of Bacon, as orator:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     His language, <i>where he could spare and pass by a jest</i>, was
+     nobly censorious. No man ever spoke more neatly, more
+     pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less
+     idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but
+     consisted of his (its) own graces.... The fear of every man
+     that heard him was lest he should make an end.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      From Macaulay:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     He continued to distinguish himself in Parliament,
+     particularly by his exertions in favor of one excellent
+     measure on which the King's heart was set&mdash;the union of
+     England and Scotland. It was not difficult for such an
+     intellect to discover many irresistible arguments in favor
+     of such a scheme. He conducted the great case of the <i>Post
+     Nati</i> in the Exchequer Chamber; and the decision of the
+     judges&mdash;a decision the legality of which may be questioned,
+     but the beneficial effect of which must be acknowledged&mdash;was
+     in a great measure attributed to his dexterous management.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Again:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     While actively engaged in the House of Commons and in the
+     courts of law, he still found leisure for letters and
+     philosophy. The noble treatise on the <i>Advancement Of
+     Learning</i>, which at a later period was expanded into the <i>De
+     Augmentis</i>, appeared in 1605.
+
+     The <i>Wisdom Of The Ancients</i>, a work which, if it had
+     proceeded from any other writer, would have been considered
+     as a masterpiece of wit and learning, was printed in 1609.
+
+     In the mean time the <i>Novum Organum</i> was slowly proceeding.
+     Several distinguished men of learning had been permitted to
+     see portions of that extraordinary book, and they spoke with
+     the greatest admiration of his genius.
+
+     Even Sir Thomas Bodley, after perusing the <i>Cogitata Et Visa</i>,
+     one of the most precious of those scattered leaves out of
+     which the great oracular volume was afterward made up,
+     acknowledged that "in all proposals and plots in that book,
+     Bacon showed himself a master workman"; and that "it could
+     not be gainsaid but all the treatise over did abound with
+     choice conceits of the present state of learning, and with
+     worthy contemplations of the means to procure it."
+
+     In 1612 a new edition of the <i>Essays</i> appeared, with additions
+     surpassing the original collection both in bulk and quality.
+
+     Nor did these pursuits distract Bacon's attention from a
+     work the most arduous, the most glorious, and the most
+     useful that even his mighty powers could have achieved, "the
+     reducing and recompiling," to use his own phrase, "of the
+     laws of England."
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      To serve the exacting and laborious offices of Attorney-General and
+      Solicitor-General would have satisfied the appetite of any other man for
+      hard work, but Bacon had to add the vast literary industries just
+      described, to satisfy his. He was a born worker.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The service which he rendered to letters during the last
+     five years of his life, amid ten thousand distractions and
+     vexations, increase the regret with which we think on the
+     many years which he had wasted, to use the words of Sir
+     Thomas Bodley, "on such study as was not worthy such a
+     student."
+
+     He commenced a digest of the laws of England, a History of
+     England under the Princes of the House of Tudor, a body of
+     National History, a Philosophical Romance. He made extensive
+     and valuable additions to his Essays. He published the
+     inestimable <i>Treatise De Augmentis Scientiarum</i>.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Did these labors of Hercules fill up his time to his contentment, and
+      quiet his appetite for work? Not entirely:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     The trifles with which he amused himself in hours of pain
+     and languor bore the mark of his mind. <i>The Best Jest-Book In
+     The World</i> is that which he dictated from memory, without
+     referring to any book, on a day on which illness had
+     rendered him incapable of serious study.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      Here are some scattered remarks (from Macaulay) which throw light upon
+      Bacon, and seem to indicate&mdash;and maybe demonstrate&mdash;that he was
+      competent to write the Plays and Poems:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     With great minuteness of observation he had an amplitude of
+     comprehension such as has never yet been vouchsafed to any
+     other human being.
+
+     The <i>Essays</i> contain abundant proofs that no nice feature of
+     character, no peculiarity in the ordering of a house, a
+     garden, or a court-masque, could escape the notice of one
+     whose mind was capable of taking in the whole world of
+     knowledge.
+
+     His understanding resembled the tent which the fairy
+     Paribanou gave to Prince Ahmed: fold it, and it seemed a toy
+     for the hand of a lady; spread it, and the armies of the
+     powerful Sultans might repose beneath its shade.
+
+     The knowledge in which Bacon excelled all men was a
+     knowledge of the mutual relations of all departments of
+     knowledge.
+
+     In a letter written when he was only thirty-one, to his
+     uncle, Lord Burleigh, he said, "I have taken all knowledge
+     to be my province."
+
+     Though Bacon did not arm his philosophy with the weapons of
+     logic, he adorned her profusely with all the richest
+     decorations of rhetoric.
+
+     The practical faculty was powerful in Bacon; but not, like
+     his wit, so powerful as occasionally to usurp the place of
+     his reason and to tyrannize over the whole man.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      There are too many places in the Plays where this happens. Poor old dying
+      John of Gaunt volleying second-rate puns at his own name, is a pathetic
+      instance of it. "We may assume" that it is Bacon's fault, but the
+      Stratford Shakespeare has to bear the blame.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     No imagination was ever at once so strong and so thoroughly
+     subjugated. It stopped at the first check from good sense.
+
+     In truth, much of Bacon's life was passed in a visionary
+     world&mdash;amid things as strange as any that are described in
+     the <i>Arabian Tales</i>... amid buildings more sumptuous than the
+     palace of Aladdin, fountains more wonderful than the golden
+     water of Parizade, conveyances more rapid than the
+     hippogryph of Ruggiero, arms more formidable than the lance
+     of Astolfo, remedies more efficacious than the balsam of
+     Fierabras. Yet in his magnificent day-dreams there was
+     nothing wild&mdash;nothing but what sober reason sanctioned.
+
+     Bacon's greatest performance is the first book of the <i>Novum
+     Organum</i>.... Every part of it blazes with wit, but with wit
+     which is employed only to illustrate and decorate truth. No
+     book ever made so great a revolution in the mode of
+     thinking, overthrew so may prejudices, introduced so many
+     new opinions.
+
+     But what we most admire is the vast capacity of that
+     intellect which, without effort, takes in at once all the
+     domains of science&mdash;all the past, the present and the
+     future, all the errors of two thousand years, all the
+     encouraging signs of the passing times, all the bright hopes
+     of the coming age.
+
+     He had a wonderful talent for packing thought close and
+     rendering it portable.
+
+     His eloquence would alone have entitled him to a high rank
+     in literature.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      It is evident that he had each and every one of the mental gifts and each
+      and every one of the acquirements that are so prodigally displayed in the
+      Plays and Poems, and in much higher and richer degree than any other man
+      of his time or of any previous time. He was a genius without a mate, a
+      prodigy not matable. There was only one of him; the planet could not
+      produce two of him at one birth, nor in one age. He could have written
+      anything that is in the Plays and Poems. He could have written this:<br />
+      <br /><br /><span class="indent20">The cloud-cap'd towers, the gorgeous
+      palaces, <br /><span class="indent20">The solemn temples, the great globe
+      itself, <br /><span class="indent20">Yea, all which it inherit, shall
+      dissolve, <br /><span class="indent20">And, like an insubstantial pageant
+      faded, <br /><span class="indent20">Leave not a rack behind. We are such
+      stuff <br /><span class="indent20">As dreams are made on, and our little
+      life <br /><span class="indent20">Is rounded with a sleep. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Also, he could have written this, but he refrained: <br /><br /><span
+      class="indent20">Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare <br /><span
+      class="indent20">To digg the dust encloased heare: <br /><span
+      class="indent20">Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones <br /><span
+      class="indent20">And curst be he yt moves my bones. </span></span></span></span>
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When a person reads the noble verses about the cloud-cap'd towers, he
+      ought not to follow it immediately with Good friend for Iesus sake
+      forbeare, because he will find the transition from great poetry to poor
+      prose too violent for comfort. It will give him a shock. You never notice
+      how commonplace and unpoetic gravel is until you bite into a layer of it
+      in a pie.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XI
+    </h3>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>m I trying to
+      convince anybody that Shakespeare did not write Shakespeare's Works? Ah,
+      now, what do you take me for? Would I be so soft as that, after having
+      known the human race familiarly for nearly seventy-four years? It would
+      grieve me to know that any one could think so injuriously of me, so
+      uncomplimentarily, so unadmiringly of me. No, no, I am aware that when
+      even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in
+      a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in
+      its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously
+      any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the
+      validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself. We always
+      get at second hand our notions about systems of government; and high
+      tariff and low tariff; and prohibition and anti-prohibition; and the
+      holiness of peace and the glories of war; and codes of honor and codes of
+      morals; and approval of the duel and disapproval of it; and our beliefs
+      concerning the nature of cats; and our ideas as to whether the murder of
+      helpless wild animals is base or is heroic; and our preferences in the
+      matter of religious and political parties; and our acceptance or rejection
+      of the Shakespeares and the Author Ortons and the Mrs. Eddys. We get them
+      all at second hand, we reason none of them out for ourselves. It is the
+      way we are made. It is the way we are all made, and we can't help it, we
+      can't change it. And whenever we have been furnished a fetish, and have
+      been taught to believe in it, and love it and worship it, and refrain from
+      examining it, there is no evidence, howsoever clear and strong, that can
+      persuade us to withdraw from it our loyalty and our devotion. In morals,
+      conduct, and beliefs we take the color of our environment and
+      associations, and it is a color that can safely be warranted to wash.
+      Whenever we have been furnished with a tar baby ostensibly stuffed with
+      jewels, and warned that it will be dishonorable and irreverent to
+      disembowel it and test the jewels, we keep our sacrilegious hands off it.
+      We submit, not reluctantly, but rather gladly, for we are privately afraid
+      we should find, upon examination that the jewels are of the sort that are
+      manufactured at North Adams, Mass.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I haven't any idea that Shakespeare will have to vacate his pedestal this
+      side of the year 2209. Disbelief in him cannot come swiftly, disbelief in
+      a healthy and deeply-loved tar baby has never been known to disintegrate
+      swiftly; it is a very slow process. It took several thousand years to
+      convince our fine race&mdash;including every splendid intellect in it&mdash;that
+      there is no such thing as a witch; it has taken several thousand years to
+      convince the same fine race&mdash;including every splendid intellect in it&mdash;that
+      there is no such person as Satan; it has taken several centuries to remove
+      perdition from the Protestant Church's program of post-mortem
+      entertainments; it has taken a weary long time to persuade American
+      Presbyterians to give up infant damnation and try to bear it the best they
+      can; and it looks as if their Scotch brethren will still be burning babies
+      in the everlasting fires when Shakespeare comes down from his perch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We are The Reasoning Race. We can't prove it by the above examples, and we
+      can't prove it by the miraculous "histories" built by those
+      Stratfordolaters out of a hatful of rags and a barrel of sawdust, but
+      there is a plenty of other things we can prove it by, if I could think of
+      them. We are The Reasoning Race, and when we find a vague file of
+      chipmunk-tracks stringing through the dust of Stratford village, we know
+      by our reasoning bowers that Hercules has been along there. I feel that
+      our fetish is safe for three centuries yet. The bust, too&mdash;there in
+      the Stratford Church. The precious bust, the priceless bust, the calm
+      bust, the serene bust, the emotionless bust, with the dandy mustache, and
+      the putty face, unseamed of care&mdash;that face which has looked
+      passionlessly down upon the awed pilgrim for a hundred and fifty years and
+      will still look down upon the awed pilgrim three hundred more, with the
+      deep, deep, deep, subtle, subtle, subtle expression of a bladder.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XII
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      IRREVERENCE
+    </h3>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>ne of the most
+      trying defects which I find in these&mdash;these&mdash;what shall I call
+      them? for I will not apply injurious epithets to them, the way they do to
+      us, such violations of courtesy being repugnant to my nature and my
+      dignity. The farthest I can go in that direction is to call them by names
+      of limited reverence&mdash;names merely descriptive, never unkind, never
+      offensive, never tainted by harsh feeling. If <i>they</i> would do like
+      this, they would feel better in their hearts. Very well, then&mdash;to
+      proceed. One of the most trying defects which I find in these
+      Stratfordolaters, these Shakesperiods, these thugs, these bangalores,
+      these troglodytes, these herumfrodites, these blatherskites, these
+      buccaneers, these bandoleers, is their spirit of irreverence. It is
+      detectable in every utterance of theirs when they are talking about us. I
+      am thankful that in me there is nothing of that spirit. When a thing is
+      sacred to me it is impossible for me to be irreverent toward it. I cannot
+      call to mind a single instance where I have ever been irreverent, except
+      towards the things which were sacred to other people. Am I in the right? I
+      think so. But I ask no one to take my unsupported word; no, look at the
+      dictionary; let the dictionary decide. Here is the definition:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     <i>Irreverence</i>. The quality or condition of irreverence
+     toward God and sacred things.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      What does the Hindu say? He says it is correct. He says irreverence is
+      lack of respect for Vishnu, and Brahma, and Chrishna, and his other gods,
+      and for his sacred cattle, and for his temples and the things within them.
+      He endorses the definition, you see; and there are 300,000,000 Hindus or
+      their equivalents back of him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The dictionary had the acute idea that by using the capital G it could
+      restrict irreverence to lack of reverence for <i>our</i> Deity and our
+      sacred things, but that ingenious and rather sly idea miscarried: for by
+      the simple process of spelling <i>his</i> deities with capitals the Hindu
+      confiscates the definition and restricts it to his own sects, thus making
+      it clearly compulsory upon us to revere <i>his</i> gods and <i>his</i>
+      sacred things, and nobody's else. We can't say a word, for he has our own
+      dictionary at his back, and its decision is final.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This law, reduced to its simplest terms, is this: 1. Whatever is sacred to
+      the Christian must be held in reverence by everybody else; 2. whatever is
+      sacred to the Hindu must be held in reverence by everybody else; 3.
+      therefore, by consequence, logically, and indisputably, whatever is sacred
+      to <i>me</i> must be held in reverence by everybody else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now then, what aggravates me is that these troglodytes and muscovites and
+      bandoleers and buccaneers are <i>also</i> trying to crowd in and share the
+      benefit of the law, and compel everybody to revere their Shakespeare and
+      hold him sacred. We can't have that: there's enough of us already. If you
+      go on widening and spreading and inflating the privilege, it will
+      presently come to be conceded that each man's sacred things are the <i>only</i>
+      ones, and the rest of the human race will have to be humbly reverent
+      toward them or suffer for it. That can surely happen, and when it happens,
+      the word Irreverence will be regarded as the most meaningless, and
+      foolish, and self-conceited, and insolent, and impudent, and dictatorial
+      word in the language. And people will say, "Whose business is it what gods
+      I worship and what things hold sacred? Who has the right to dictate to my
+      conscience, and where did he get that right?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We cannot afford to let that calamity come upon us. We must save the word
+      from this destruction. There is but one way to do it, and that is to stop
+      the spread of the privilege and strictly confine it to its present limits&mdash;that
+      is, to all the Christian sects, to all the Hindu sects, and me. We do not
+      need any more, the stock is watered enough, just as it is.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would be better if the privilege were limited to me alone. I think so
+      because I am the only sect that knows how to employ it gently, kindly,
+      charitably, dispassionately. The other sects lack the quality of
+      self-restraint. The Catholic Church says the most irreverent things about
+      matters which are sacred to the Protestants, and the Protestant Church
+      retorts in kind about the confessional and other matters which Catholics
+      hold sacred; then both of these irreverencers turn upon Thomas Paine and
+      charge <i>him</i> with irreverence. This is all unfortunate, because it
+      makes it difficult for students equipped with only a low grade of
+      mentality to find out what Irreverence really <i>is</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It will surely be much better all around if the privilege of regulating
+      the irreverent and keeping them in order shall eventually be withdrawn
+      from all the sects but me. Then there will be no more quarreling, no more
+      bandying of disrespectful epithets, no more heartburnings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There will then be nothing sacred involved in this Bacon-Shakespeare
+      controversy except what is sacred to me. That will simplify the whole
+      matter, and trouble will cease. There will be irreverence no longer,
+      because I will not allow it. The first time those criminals charge me with
+      irreverence for calling their Stratford myth an
+      Arthur-Orton-Mary-Baker-Thompson-Eddy-Louis-the-Seventeenth-Veiled-Prophet
+      -of-Khorassan will be the last. Taught by the methods found effective in
+      extinguishing earlier offenders by the Inquisition, of holy memory, I
+      shall know how to quiet them.
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XIII
+    </h3>
+    <p class="pfirst">
+      <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>sn't it odd, when
+      you think of it, that you may list all the celebrated Englishmen,
+      Irishmen, and Scotchmen of modern times, clear back to the first Tudors&mdash;a
+      list containing five hundred names, shall we say?&mdash;and you can go to
+      the histories, biographies, and cyclopedias and learn the particulars of
+      the lives of every one of them. Every one of them except one&mdash;the
+      most famous, the most renowned&mdash;by far the most illustrious of them
+      all&mdash;Shakespeare! You can get the details of the lives of all the
+      celebrated ecclesiastics in the list; all the celebrated tragedians,
+      comedians, singers, dancers, orators, judges, lawyers, poets, dramatists,
+      historians, biographers, editors, inventors, reformers, statesmen,
+      generals, admirals, discoverers, prize-fighters, murderers, pirates,
+      conspirators, horse-jockeys, bunco-steerers, misers, swindlers, explorers,
+      adventurers by land and sea, bankers, financiers, astronomers,
+      naturalists, claimants, impostors, chemists, biologists, geologists,
+      philologists, college presidents and professors, architects, engineers,
+      painters, sculptors, politicians, agitators, rebels, revolutionists,
+      patriots, demagogues, clowns, cooks, freaks, philosophers, burglars,
+      highwaymen, journalists, physicians, surgeons&mdash;you can get the
+      life-histories of all of them but <i>one</i>. Just <i>one</i>&mdash;the
+      most extraordinary and the most celebrated of them all&mdash;Shakespeare!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      You may add to the list the thousand celebrated persons furnished by the
+      rest of Christendom in the past four centuries, and you can find out the
+      life-histories of all those people, too. You will then have listed fifteen
+      hundred celebrities, and you can trace the authentic life-histories of the
+      whole of them. Save one&mdash;far and away the most colossal prodigy of
+      the entire accumulation&mdash;Shakespeare! About him you can find out <i>nothing</i>.
+      Nothing of even the slightest importance. Nothing worth the trouble of
+      stowing away in your memory. Nothing that even remotely indicates that he
+      was ever anything more than a distinctly commonplace person&mdash;a
+      manager, an actor of inferior grade, a small trader in a small village
+      that did not regard him as a person of any consequence, and had forgotten
+      all about him before he was fairly cold in his grave. We can go to the
+      records and find out the life-history of every renowned <i>race-horse</i>
+      of modern times&mdash;but not Shakespeare's! There are many reasons why,
+      and they have been furnished in cart-loads (of guess and conjecture) by
+      those troglodytes; but there is one that is worth all the rest of the
+      reasons put together, and is abundantly sufficient all by itself&mdash;<i>he
+      hadn't any history to record</i>. There is no way of getting around that
+      deadly fact. And no sane way has yet been discovered of getting around its
+      formidable significance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Its quite plain significance&mdash;to any but those thugs (I do not use
+      the term unkindly) is, that Shakespeare had no prominence while he lived,
+      and none until he had been dead two or three generations. The Plays
+      enjoyed high fame from the beginning; and if he wrote them it seems a pity
+      the world did not find it out. He ought to have explained that he was the
+      author, and not merely a <i>nom de plume</i> for another man to hide
+      behind. If he had been less intemperately solicitous about his bones, and
+      more solicitous about his Works, it would have been better for his good
+      name, and a kindness to us. The bones were not important. They will
+      moulder away, they will turn to dust, but the Works will endure until the
+      last sun goes down.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                      MARK TWAIN.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      <i>P.S. March 25</i>. About two months ago I was illuminating this
+      Autobiography with some notions of mine concerning the Bacon-Shakespeare
+      controversy, and I then took occasion to air the opinion that the
+      Stratford Shakespeare was a person of no public consequence or celebrity
+      during his lifetime, but was utterly obscure and unimportant. And not only
+      in great London, but also in the little village where he was born, where
+      he lived a quarter of a century, and where he died and was buried. I
+      argued that if he had been a person of any note at all, aged villagers
+      would have had much to tell about him many and many a year after his
+      death, instead of being unable to furnish inquirers a single fact
+      connected with him. I believed, and I still believe, that if he had been
+      famous, his notoriety would have lasted as long as mine has lasted in my
+      native village out in Missouri. It is a good argument, a prodigiously
+      strong one, and most formidable one for even the most gifted and ingenious
+      and plausible Stratfordolator to get around or explain away. Today a
+      Hannibal <i>Courier-Post</i> of recent date has reached me, with an
+      article in it which reinforces my contention that a really celebrated
+      person cannot be forgotten in his village in the short space of sixty
+      years. I will make an extract from it:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Hannibal, as a city, may have many sins to answer for, but
+     ingratitude is not one of them, or reverence for the great
+     men she has produced, and as the years go by her greatest
+     son, Mark Twain, or S. L. Clemens as a few of the unlettered
+     call him, grows in the estimation and regard of the
+     residents of the town he made famous and the town that made
+     him famous. His name is associated with every old building
+     that is torn down to make way for the modern structures
+     demanded by a rapidly growing city, and with every hill or
+     cave over or through which he might by any possibility have
+     roamed, while the many points of interest which he wove into
+     his stories, such as Holiday Hill, Jackson's Island, or Mark
+     Twain Cave, are now monuments to his genius. Hannibal is
+     glad of any opportunity to do him honor as he had honored
+     her.
+
+     So it has happened that the "old timers" who went to school
+     with Mark or were with him on some of his usual escapades
+     have been honored with large audiences whenever they were in
+     a reminiscent mood and condescended to tell of their
+     intimacy with the ordinary boy who came to be a very
+     extraordinary humorist and whose every boyish act is now
+     seen to have been indicative of what was to come. Like Aunt
+     Becky and Mrs. Clemens, they can now see that Mark was
+     hardly appreciated when he lived here and that the things he
+     did as a boy and was whipped for doing were not all bad,
+     after all. So they have been in no hesitancy about drawing
+     out the bad things he did as well as the good in their
+     efforts to get a "Mark Twain" story, all incidents being
+     viewed in the light of his present fame, until the volume of
+     "Twainiana" is already considerable and growing in
+     proportion as the "old timers" drop away and the stories are
+     retold second and third hand by their descendants. With some
+     seventy-three years young and living in a villa instead of a
+     house, he is a fair target, and let him incorporate,
+     copyright, or patent himself as he will, there are some of
+     his "works" that will go swooping up Hannibal chimneys as
+     long as graybeards gather about the fires and begin with,
+     "I've heard father tell," or possibly, "Once when I." The
+     Mrs. Clemens referred to is my mother&mdash;<i>was</i> my mother.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And here is another extract from a Hannibal paper, of date twenty days
+      ago:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     Miss Becca Blankenship died at the home of William Dickason,
+     408 Rock Street, at 2.30 o'clock yesterday afternoon, aged
+     72 years. The deceased was a sister of "Huckleberry Finn,"
+     one of the famous characters in Mark Twain's <i>Tom Sawyer</i>. She
+     had been a member of the Dickason family&mdash;the housekeeper&mdash;
+     for nearly forty-five years, and was a highly respected
+     lady. For the past eight years she had been an invalid, but
+     was as well cared for by Mr. Dickason and his family as if
+     she had been a near relative. She was a member of the Park
+     Methodist Church and a Christian woman.
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      I remember her well. I have a picture of her in my mind which was graven
+      there, clear and sharp and vivid, sixty-three years ago. She was at that
+      time nine years old, and I was about eleven. I remember where she stood,
+      and how she looked; and I can still see her bare feet, her bare head, her
+      brown face, and her short tow-linen frock. She was crying. What it was
+      about I have long ago forgotten. But it was the tears that preserved the
+      picture for me, no doubt. She was a good child, I can say that for her.
+      She knew me nearly seventy years ago. Did she forget me, in the course of
+      time? I think not. If she had lived in Stratford in Shakespeare's time,
+      would she have forgotten him? Yes. For he was never famous during his
+      lifetime, he was utterly obscure in Stratford, and there wouldn't be any
+      occasion to remember him after he had been dead a week.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Injun Joe," "Jimmy Finn," and "General Gaines" were prominent and very
+      intemperate ne'er-do-weels in Hannibal two generations ago. Plenty of
+      grayheads there remember them to this day, and can tell you about them.
+      Isn't it curious that two "town drunkards" and one half-breed loafer
+      should leave behind them, in a remote Missourian village, a fame a hundred
+      times greater and several hundred times more particularized in the matter
+      of definite facts than Shakespeare left behind him in the village where he
+      had lived the half of his lifetime?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+                                                  MARK TWAIN
+</pre>
+    <h3>
+      THE END
+    </h3>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of What Is Man? And Other Stories, by
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>