down with the word-picture of the little one’s mother pacing back and forth in front of the shack, her hair hanging in strings, her clothing drenched with rain and clinging to her body, her eyes upturned, and her face expressing the most poignant agony. When they left she had thus been pacing to and fro for seven hours and was, no doubt, doing so yet. The mother-heart of the woman could not withstand such an appeal, and soon she was busy in the difficult task of trying to get the little arms into the sleeves of dress and apron. Meanwhile, the two bedraggled men were on their knees striving with that acme of awkwardness of which only men are capable, to ensconce the little feet in stockings and shoes. The dressing of that child was worthy the brush of Raphael or the smile of angels. At three o’clock in the morning the schoolmaster stepped from the buggy and placed the sleeping baby in the mother’s arms, and only the heavenly Father knows the language she spoke as she crooned over her little one. As the schoolmaster wended his way homeward, cold, hungry, and worn he was buoyant in spirit to the point of ecstasy. But he was chastened, for he had stood upon the Mount of Transfiguration and knew as never before that the mission of the schoolmaster is to find and restore the lost child.
CHAPTER XXIX
LONGEVITY
I’m quite in the notion of playing a practical joke on Atropos, and, perhaps, on Methuselah, while I’m about it. I’m not partial to Atropos at the best. She’s such a reckless, uppish, heedless sort of tyrant. She rushes into huts, palaces, and even into the grand stand, and lays about her with her scissors, snipping off threads with the utmost abandon. She wields her shears without any sort of apology or by your leave. Not even a check-book can stay her ravages. Her devastation knows neither ruth nor gentleness. I don’t like her, and have no compunction about playing a joke at her expense. I don’t imagine it will daunt her, in the least, but I can have my fun, at any rate.
It is now just seven o’clock in the evening, and I shall not retire before ten o’clock at the earliest. So here are three good hours for me to dispose of; and I am the sole arbiter in the matter of disposing of them. My neighbor John has a cow, and he is applying the efficiency test to her. He charges her with every pound of corn, bran, fodder, and hay that she eats, and doctor’s bills, too, I suppose, if there are any. Then he credits her with all the milk she furnishes. There is quite a book-account in her name, and John has a good time figuring out whether, judged by net results, she is a consumer or a producer. If I can resurrect sufficient mathematical lore, I think I shall try to apply this efficiency test to my three hours just to see if I can prove that hours are as important as cows. I ought to be able, somehow, to determine whether these hours are consumers or producers.
I read a book the other evening whose title is “Stories of Thrift for Young Americans,” and it made me feel that I ought to apply the efficiency test to myself, and repeat the process every waking hour of the day. But, in order to do this, I must apply the test to these three hours. In my dreamy moods, I like to personify an Hour and spell it with a capital. I like to think of an hour as the singular of Houri which the Mohammedans call nymphs of paradise, because they were, or are, beautiful-eyed. My Hour then becomes a goddess walking through my life, and, as the poet says, _et vera incessu patuit dea_. If I show her that I appreciate her she comes again just after the clock strikes, in form even more winsome than before, and smiles upon me as only a goddess can. Once, in a sullen mood, I looked upon her as if she were a hag. When she returned she was a hag; and not till after I had done full penance did she become my beautiful goddess again.
A young man who had been spending the evening in the home of a neighbor complained that they did not play any games, and did nothing but talk. I could not ask what games he meant, fearing that I might smile in his face if he should say crokinole, tiddledy-winks, or button-button. Later on I learned that much of the talking was done that evening by a very cultivated man who has travelled widely and intelligently, and has a most engaging manner in his fluent discussions of art, literature, archaeology, architecture, places, and peoples. I was sorry to miss such an evening, and think I could forego tiddledywinks with a fair degree of amiability if, instead, I could hear such a man talk. I have seen people yawn in an art gallery. I fear to play tiddledywinks lest my hour may resume the guise of a hag. But that makes me think of Atropos again, and the joke I am planning to play on her. Still, I see that I shall not soon get around to that joke if I persist in these dim generalities, as a schoolmaster is so apt to do.
Well, as I was saying, these three hours are at my disposal, and I must decide what to do with them here and now. In deciding concerning hours I must sit in the judgment-seat whether I like it or not. Tomorrow evening I shall have other three hours to dispose of the same as these, and the next evening three others, and my decision to-night may be far-reaching. In six days I shall have eighteen such hours, and in fifty weeks nine hundred. I suppose that a generous estimate of a college year would be ten hours a day for one hundred and eighty days, or eighteen hundred hours in all. I am quite aware that some college boys will feel inclined to apply a liberal discount to this estimate, but I am not considering those fellows who try to do a month’s work in the week of examination, and spend their fathers’ money for coaching. Now, if eighteen hundred hours constitute a college year then my nine hundred hours are one-half a college year, and it makes a deal of difference what I do with these three hours.
If I had only started this joke on Atropos earlier and had applied these nine hundred hours on my college work, I could have graduated in three years instead of four, and that surely would have been in the line of efficiency. But in those days I was devoting more time and attention to Clotho than to Atropos. I would fain have ignored Lachesis altogether, but she made me painfully conscious of her presence, especially during the finals when, it seemed to me, she was unnecessarily diligent in her vocation. I could have dispensed with much of her torsion with great equanimity. I suppose that now I am trying to square accounts with her by playing this joke on her sister.
So I have decided that I shall read a play of Shakespeare to-night, another one to-morrow evening, and continue this until I have read all that he wrote. In the fifty weeks of the year I can easily do this and then reread some of them many times. I ought to be able to commit to memory several of the plays, too, and that would be good fun. If those chaps back yonder could recite the Koran word for word I shall certainly be able to learn equally well some of these plays. It would be worth while to recite “King Lear,” “Macbeth,” “Othello,” “Hamlet,” “The Tempest,” and “As You Like It,” the last week of the year just before I take my vacation of two weeks. If I can recite even these six plays in those six evenings I shall feel that I did well in deciding for Shakespeare instead of tiddledywinks.
Next year I shall read history, and that will be rare fun, too. In the nine hundred hours I shall certainly be able to read all of Fiske, Mommsen, Rhodes, Bancroft, McMaster, Channing, Bryce, Hart, Motley, Gibbon, and von Holst not to mention American statesmen. About the Ides of December I shall hold a levee and sit in state as the characters of history file by. I shall be able to call them all by name, to tell of the things they did and why they did them, and to connect their deeds with the world as it now is. I can’t conceive of any picture-show equal to that, and all through my year with Shakespeare I shall be looking forward eagerly to my year with the historians. I plainly see that the neighbors will not need to bring in any playthings to amuse and entertain me, though, of course, I shall be grateful to them for their kindly interest. Then, the next year I shall devote to music, and if, by practising for nine hundred hours, I cannot acquire a good degree of facility in manipulating a piano or a violin, I must be too dull to ever aspire to the favor of Terpsichore. If I but measure up to my hopes during this year I shall be saved the expense of buying my music ready-made. The next year I shall devote to art, and by spending one entire evening with a single artist I shall thus become acquainted with three hundred of them. If I become intimate with this number I shall not be lonesome, even if I do not know the others. I think I shall give an art party at the holiday time of that year, and have three hundred people impersonate these artists. This will afford me a good review of my studies in art. It may diminish the gate receipts of the picture-show for a few evenings, but I suspect the world will be able to wag along.
Then the next year I shall study poetry, the next astronomy, and the next botany. Thus I shall come to know the plants of earth, the stars of heaven, and the emotions of men. That ought to ward off ennui and afford entertainment without the aid of the saloon. In the succeeding twelve years I shall want to acquire as many languages, for I am eager to excel Elihu Burritt in linguistic attainments even if I must yield to him as a disciple of Vulcan. If I can learn a language and read the literature of that language each year, possibly some college may be willing to grant me a degree for work _in absentia_. If not, I shall poke along the best I can and try to drown my grief in more copious drafts of work.
And I shall have quite enough to do, for mathematics, the sciences, and the arts and crafts all lie ahead of me in my programme. I plainly see that I have played my last game of tiddledywinks and solitaire. But I’ll have fun anyhow. If I gain a half-year in each twelve-month as I have my programme mapped out, in seventy years I shall have a net gain of thirty-five years. Then, when Atropos comes along with her scissors to snip the thread, thinking I have reached my threescore and ten, I shall laugh in her face and let her know, between laughs, that I am really one hundred and five, and have played a thirty-five-year joke on her. Then I shall quote Bacon at her to clinch the joke: “A man may be young in years but old in hours if he have lost no time.”
CHAPTER XXX
FOUR-LEAF CLOVER
I have no ambition to become either a cynic, a pessimist, or an iconoclast. To aspire in either of these directions is bad for the digestion, and good digestion is the foundation and source of much that is desirable in human affairs. Introspection has its uses, to be sure, but the stomach should have exemption as an objective. A stomach is a valuable asset if only one is not conscious of it. One of the emoluments of schoolmastering is the opportunity it affords for communing with elect souls whose very presence is a tonic. Will is one of these. He has a way of shunting my introspection over to the track of the head or the heart. He just talks along and the first thing I know the heart is singing its way through and above the storm, while the head has been connected up to the heart, and they are doing team-work that is good for me and good for all who meet me. At church I like to have them sing the hymn whose closing couplet is:
“I’ll drop my burden at his feet
And bear a song away.”
I come out strong in singing that couplet, for I like it. In a human sense, that is just what happens when I chat with Will for an hour. When I ask him for bread, he never gives me a stone. On the contrary, he gives me good, white bread, and a bit of cake, besides.
In one of our chats the other day he was dilating upon Henry van Dyke’s four rules, and very soon had banished all my little clouds and made my mental sky clear and bright. When I get around to evolving a definition of education I think I shall say that it is the process of furnishing people with resources for profitable and pleasant conversation. Why, those four rules just oozed into the talk, without any sort of flutter or formality, and made our chat both agreeable and fruitful. Henry Ward Beecher said many good things. Here is one that I caught in the school reader in my boyhood: “The man who carries a lantern on a dark night can have friends all about him, walking safely by the help of its rays and he be not defrauded.” Education is just such a lantern and this schoolmaster, Will, knows how to carry it that it may afford light to the friends about him.
Well, the first of van Dyke’s rules is: “You shall learn to desire nothing in the world so much but that you can be happy without it.” I do wonder if he had been reading in Proverbs: “Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.” Or he may have been reading the statement of St. Paul: “For I have learned, in whatever state I am, therewith to be content.” Or, possibly, he may have been thinking of the lines of Paul Laurence Dunbar,
“Sometimes the sun, unkindly hot,
My garden makes a desert spot;
Sometimes the blight upon the tree Takes all my fruit away from me;
And then with throes of bitter pain Rebellious passions rise and swell–
But life is more than fruit or grain, And so I sing, and all is well.”
I am plebeian enough to be fond of milk and crackers as a luncheon; but I have just a dash of the patrician in my make-up and prefer the milk unskimmed. Sometimes, I find that the cream has been devoted to other, if not higher, uses and that my crackers must associate perforce with milk of cerulean hue. Such a situation is a severe test of character, and I am hoping that at such junctures along life’s highway I may find some support in the philosophy of Mr. van Dyke.
I suspect that he is trying to make me understand that happiness is subjective rather than objective–that happiness depends not upon what we have, but upon what we do with what we have. I couldn’t be an anarchist if I’d try. I don’t grudge the millionaire his turtle soup and caviar. But I do feel a bit sorry for him that he does not know what a royal feast crackers and unskimmed milk afford. If the king and the anarchist would but join me in such a feast I think the king would soon forget his crown and the anarchist his plots, and we’d be just three good fellows together, living at the very summit of life and wishing that all men could be as happy as we.
The next rule is a condensed moral code: “You shall seek that which you desire only by such means as are fair and lawful, and this will leave you without bitterness toward men or shame before God.” No one could possibly dissent from this rule, unless it might be a burglar. I know the grocer makes a profit on the things I buy from him, and I am glad he does. Otherwise, he would have to close his grocery and that would inconvenience me greatly. He thanks me when I pay him, but I feel that I ought to thank him for supplying my needs, for having his goods arranged so invitingly, and for waiting upon me so promptly and so politely. I can’t really see how any customer can feel any bitterness toward him. He gives full weight, tells the exact truth as to the quality of the goods, and in all things is fair and lawful. I have no quarrel with him and cannot understand why others should, unless they are less fair, lawful, and agreeable than the grocer himself. I suspect that the grocer and the butcher take on the color of the glasses we happen to be wearing, and that Mr. van Dyke is admonishing us to wear clear glasses and to keep them clean.
The third rule needs to be read at least twice if not oftener: “You shall take pleasure in the time while you are seeking, even though you obtain not immediately that which you seek; for the purpose of a journey is not only to arrive at the goal, but also to find enjoyment by the way.” I have seen people rushing along in automobiles at the mad rate of thirty or forty miles an hour, missing altogether the million-dollar scenery along the way, in their haste to get to the end of their journey, where a five-cent bag of peanuts awaited them. Had I been riding in an automobile through the streets of Tacoma I might not have seen that glorious cluster of five beautiful roses on a single branch in that attractive lawn. Because of them I always think of Tacoma as the city of roses, for I stopped to look at them. I have quite forgotten the objective point of my stroll; I recollect the roses. When we were riding out from Florence on a tram-car to see the ancient Fiesole I plucked a branch from an olive-tree from the platform of the car. On that branch were at least a dozen young olives, the first I had ever seen. I have but the haziest recollection of the old theatre and the subterranean passages where Catiline and his crowd had their rendezvous; but I do recall that olive branch most distinctly. I cannot improve upon Doctor van Dyke’s statement of the rule, but I can interpret it in terms of my own experiences by way of verifying it. I am sure he has it right.
The fourth rule is worthy of meditation and prayer; “When you attain that which you have desired, you shall think more of the kindness of your fortune than of the greatness of your skill. This will make you grateful and ready to share with others that which Providence hath bestowed upon you; and truly this is both reasonable and profitable, for it is but little that any of us would catch in this world were not our luck better than our deserts.” I shall omit the lesson in arithmetic to-morrow and have, instead, a lesson in life and living, using these four rules as the basis of our lesson. My boys and girls are to have many years of life, I hope, and I’d like to help them to a right start if I can. Some of my many mistakes might have been avoided if my teachers had given me some lessons in the art of living, for it is an art and must be learned. These rules would have helped, could I have known them. I am glad to know that my pupils have faith in me. When I pointed out a nettle to them one day, they avoided it; when I showed them a mushroom that is edible, they accepted the statement without question. So I’ll see what I can do for them to-morrow with these four rules. Then, if we have time, we shall learn the lines of Mrs. Higginson:
“I know a place where the sun is like gold, And the cherry blooms burst with snow, And down underneath is the loveliest nook, Where the four-leaf clovers grow.
One leaf is for hope, and one is for faith, And one is for love, you know,
And God put another in for luck–
If you search, you will find where they grow.
But you must have hope, and you must have faith, You must love and be strong–and so,
If you work, if you wait, you will find the place Where the four-leaf clovers grow.”
CHAPTER XXXI
MOUNTAIN-CLIMBING
Mountain-climbing is rare sport. And it is sport if only one has the courage to do it. We had gone to the top of Vesuvius on the funicular railway; but one man decided to make the climb. We forgot the volcano in our admiration of the climber. Foot by foot he made his way zigzagging this way and that, slipping, falling, and struggling till at last he reached the summit. Then, fifty throats poured forth a lusty cheer to do him honor. He was not good to look at, for his clothing was crumpled and soiled, the veins stood out on his neck, his hair was tousled, his face was red and streaming with sweat; yet, for all that, we cheered him and meant it, too. He acknowledged our applause in an honest, simple way, and then disappeared in the crowd. He was not posing as a heroic figure, but was just an honest mountain-climber who accepted the challenge of the mountain and won. In our cheering we did just what the world does: we gave the laurel wreath to the man who wins in a test of courage.
I think “Excelsior” is pretty good stuff in the way of depicting mountain-climbing, and I always want to cheer that young chap as he fights his way toward the top. He could have stopped down there in the valley, where everything was snug and comfortable, but he chose to climb so as to have a look around. I thought of him one day at Scheidegg. There we were, nearly a mile and a half above sea-level, shivering in the midst of ice and snow in mid-July, but we had a look around that made us glad in spite of the cold. As Virgil says: “It will be pleasing to remember these things hereafter.” I have often noticed that the old soldiers seem to recall the hardest marches, the most severe battles, and the greatest privations more vividly than their every-day experiences.
So the mountain-climbing that I have been doing with my boys and girls stands out like a cameo in my retrospective view. Sometimes we looked back toward the valley, and it seemed so peaceful and beautiful that it caused the mountain before us to seem ominous. At such times, when courage seemed to be oozing, we needed to reinforce one another with words of cheer. The steep places seemed perilously rough at times, and I could hear a stifled sob somewhere in my little company. At such times I would urge myself along at a more rapid pace, that I might reach a higher level and call out to them in heartening tones to hurry on up to our resting-place. We would often sing a bit in the midst of our resting, and when the sob had been changed to a laugh I felt that life was well worth while.
As we toiled upward I was ever on the lookout for a patch of sunlight in the midst of the shadows that it might lure them on. And it never failed. Like magic that sun-spot always quickened their pace, and they often hailed it with a shout. They would even race toward that sunny place, their weariness all gone. When a bird sang we always stopped to listen; and the song acted upon them as the music of a band acts upon drooping soldiers. On the next stage of the journey their eyes sparkled, and their step was more elastic. When one stumbled and fell, we helped him to his feet and praised his effort, wholly ignoring the fall. Sometimes one would become discouraged and would want to drop out of the company and return home. When this happened, we would gather about him and tell him how good it was to have him with us, how he helped us on, and how sorry we should be to have him absent when we reached the top. When he decided to keep on with us, we gave a mighty cheer and then went whistling on our upward way.
We constantly vied with one another in discovering chaste bits of scenery along the way, and we were ever too generous to withhold praise or to appropriate to ourselves the credit that belonged to another. If one found the nest of a bird hidden away in the foliage, we all stopped in admiration. When another discovered a spring gushing out from beneath the rocks, we all refreshed ourselves with the limpid water and poured out our thanks to the discoverer. When a rare flower was found, we took time to examine it minutely till we all felt joy in the flower and in the finder. To us nothing was ever small or negligible that any one of our company discovered. If one started a song we all joined in heartily as if we had been waiting for that one to lead us in the singing. Thus each one, according to his gifts and inclinations, became a leader on one or another of the enterprises connected with our journey.
So, in time, it seemed to us that the big tree came to meet us in order to give its kindly shade for our comfort; that the bird poured forth its song as a special gift to us to give us new courage; that the flower met us at the right time and place to smile its beauty into our lives; that each stream laughed its way to our feet to quench our thirst, and to share with us its coolness; that the mossy bank gave us a special invitation to enjoy its hospitality; that the cloud had heard our wishes and came to shield us from the sun, and that the path came forth from among the thickets to guide us on our way. Because we were winning, all nature seemed to be cheering us on as the people cheered the man at Vesuvius.
Having reached the summit, we sat together in eloquent silence. We had toiled, and struggled, and suffered together, and so had learned to think and feel in unison. Our spirits had become fused in a common purpose, and we could sit in silence and not be abashed. We had become honest with our surroundings, honest with one another, and honest with ourselves, and so could smile at mere conventions and find joy in one another without words. We had encountered honest difficulties–rocks, trees, streams, sloughs, tangles, sand, and sun, and had overcome them by honest effort and so had achieved honesty. We had met and overcome big things, too, and in doing so had grown big. No longer did our hearts flutter in the presence of little things, for we had won poise and serenity.
The fogs had been banished from our minds; our sight had become clear; our spirits had been enlarged; our courage had been made strong, and our faith was lifted up. A new horizon opened up before us that stretched on and on and made us know that life is a big thing. The sky became our companion with all its myriad stars; the sea became our neighbor with all the life it holds, and the landscape became our dooryard, with all its varied beauty and grandeur. The ships upon the sea and the trains upon the land became our messengers of service. The wires and the air sped our thoughts abroad and linked us to the world. We looked straight into the faces of the big elemental things of life and were not afraid.
When we came back among our own people, they seemed to know that some change had taken place and loved us all the more. They came to us for counsel and comfort, paying silent tribute to the wisdom that had come to us from the mountain. They looked upon us not as superiors, but as larger equals. We had learned another language, but had not forgotten theirs. We nestled down in their affections and told them of our mountain, and they were glad.
* * * * *
And now I sit before the fire and watch the pictures in the flickering flames. In my reverie I see my boys and girls, companions in the mountain-climbing, going upon their appointed ways. I see them healing and comforting the sick, relieving distress, ministering to the needy, and supplanting darkness with light. I see them in their efforts to make the world better and more beautiful, and life more blessed. I see them bringing hope and courage and cheer into many lives. They are bringing the spirit of the mountain down into the valley, and men rejoice. Seeing them thus engaged, and hearing them singing as they go, I can but smile and smile.