Search-Light Letters

Josephine gave a little laugh. "You say the masculine laughter of the world. I assure you that much of the masculine laughter which you associate with the fruit of the grape is associated in the feminine mind with conjugal or maternal tears. I quite understand your appeal to the imagination from the masculine point of view. That is, I suppose the words wine and tobacco bring in their train for man many pleasing and even inspiriting images; that under their influence the soldier believes himself more brave and wins battles in anticipation; that the artist gets a glimpse of his great picture, and that the tired husband and father sees evolve from the bottom of his beer-mug a transfigured reflection of his wife and children. But we women, who, as a sex, have always done without wine and tobacco, know from experience that, however lofty and delightful your visions at such times, there is always a reaction after alcohol, and that we generally get the full benefit of the reaction. If, now, inspiring visions never came to us and other total-abstainers, there would seem to be some reason why we should be willing to bear the brunt of man's inebrieties a little longer; but really, my dear philosopher, is there any reason to believe that we do not entertain visions quite as inspiring and delightful as yours? We drink only tea – too much of it for our nerves, I dare say – but we will gladly give that up if you will abjure alcohol and cigars. There certainly is no poetry in the aroma of tobacco in the curtains, next day, and we pass the morning with it when you have gone down-town. Don't you think there is a great deal of humbug in the notion that in order to laugh lightly and remember gladly men need to be titillated either by wine or tobacco? I'm glad you wouldn't allow that bumptious clergyman to ride in a first-class car, but I don't see why the world should not be just as gay, and many women twice as happy, if there were no wine or tobacco. Only think how light-hearted woman would be if the incubus of man's drunkenness, under which she has staggered for hundreds of years, should be lifted off forever! She would be so bubbling over with happiness that, even though as a consequence man were in the dumps and without visions, she would make him merry in spite of himself."

"Very likely, Josephine. I am disposed to agree with you that the jest and merriment of masculine youth would not be entirely and hopelessly repressed. But you do not take sufficiently into consideration – and in this you imitate the bumptious clergyman who was going to have me removed – the world's cravings and necessities as a world. If, pardon me, men were all women in their appetites, and life were one grand pastoral à la Puvis de Chavannes – if, in short, the world were not the bustling, feverish, perplexing, exhausting, crushing, cruel world, men would not crave stimulants to help them to do their work or to forget it. If there were no alcohol or cigars, would not those who now use either to excess have recourse to some other form of stimulant or fatigue and pain disguiser instead? Why should those who have learned the great lesson of life, self-control, renounce the enjoyment of being artificially strengthened or cheered because others let their appetites run away with them and make beasts of them? I have, indeed, already suggested that it is a dangerous argument to instance an existing state of affairs as a reason against change; but I beg to call your attention to the fact that the world seems to pay very little heed to the lamentations of the teetotalers, so far as total-abstinence is concerned. There has been a change of temper among all classes in the direction of moderation in the use of liquor and wine, and legislation regulating and restricting licenses is becoming popular. But if the wearers of the white ribbon were to make inquiries of the dealers in glass-ware, they would find that no fewer newly married couples, among the educated and well-to-do in every country, buy wine-glasses as a necessary table article, in order to provide wine or beer for those whom they expect to entertain. There are certainly no signs that society, in the best sense, has any intention of adopting prohibition as a cardinal virtue, but many signs that it is seriously determined to make warfare on inebriety, and no longer to proffer it the cloak of social protection when the offenders happen to be what the world used to call gentlemen. One's ideal should not be too remote from probable human conclusions, and it does not seem likely, from present indications, that man, unless he be persuaded that the moderate use of stimulants is seriously injurious to his health, will ever be willing to banish them from the markets of the world because a certain portion of the community has not the necessary intelligence or self-control to use them with discretion. As for tobacco, it is a long cry from now to the millennium, but a philosopher cannot afford, at this stage of the itinerary, to cut off the smoking-car from the first-class portion of the train, for by so doing he might confound even archbishops and other exemplary personages."

To A Young Man or Woman in Search of the Ideal. III

I was interrupted at this point in my letter by the loud ringing of the front door bell. Glancing at the clock, I observed that it was eleven. Consequently, the servants must have gone to bed. Under these circumstances, a philosopher has to open the front door himself, or submit to a prolonged tintinnabulation. "Ting-a-ling-a, ling-a-ling-a-ling" went the bell again.

"It must be a telegram," said Josephine. "I wonder what has happened?"

"Or a dinner-invitation which the servant was told to deliver this morning," I answered. "One would suppose that, after turning out the gas in the hall, one could work without callers."

Having lighted up, and having unbolted the inner door, I beheld, through the glass window of the outer, a young man in a slouch hat. Evidently he was not a telegraph-messenger or a domestic. Nor did he have exactly the aspect of a midnight marauder. Nevertheless, I opened the door merely a crack and inquired, gruffly:

"What do you wish?"

Said a blithe, friendly voice: "I saw your light, and I took the liberty of ringing. Can't you give me three thousand words on the death of the Czar of Russia?"

Before he had finished this sentence, he had backed me, by his persuasive manner, from the vestibule into the hall, and I remembered vaguely that I had seen him somewhere.

"I'm the local correspondent of the New York Despatch," he said, to refresh my memory.

I recollected then that he had tried to interview me six months before on my domestic interior, and that I had politely declined the honor. He was a lean, alert, bright-eyed man of thirty-five with a pleasant smile.

"Isn't it rather late to ring my door-bell?" I inquired, with dignity. (My mental language was, "What do you mean, you infernal young reprobate, by ringing my door-bell at this hour of the night on such an impudent errand?" But, in the presence of the press, even a philosopher is disposed to be diplomatic.)

"I needed you, badly," was the reply. "I've got to wire to New York to-night three thousand words on the death of the Czar."

"What do I know about the Czar of Russia? Why don't you go to the historians or politicians? There are several in the neighborhood. I'm a philosopher."

"I've tried them," he said, with a patient smile. "They were out or in bed. Then I thought of you. Anything you would say on the subject would be read with great interest."

"Pshaw!" I answered.

By this time he had backed me into the dining-room, and, under the influence of diplomacy, I searched for a box of cigars. I had no intention of giving him a single word on the deceased ruler of all the Russias, but I wished to let myself down easy, so to speak, and retain his good-will.

"Ah!" he said, settling in a chair, with a Cabana, "this is the first restful moment I have had to-day." He was pensive during a few puffs, then he added: "A reporter's life is not all strawberry ice-cream. Do you suppose I enjoy rousing a man at this hour of the night? It makes me shiver whenever I do it."

"I should think it might," I answered, in spite of myself. "Some men would be apt to resent it."

"You misunderstand me. I do not shiver from physical fear, but because my sense of propriety is wounded. I dare say," he continued, looking at me narrowly, "that you think I take no interest in the ideal; that you suppose me to be a materialistic Philistine."

You will appreciate that this was startling and especially interesting to me under the circumstances. I, in my turn, examined my visitor more carefully. There were evidences in his countenance of a sensitive soul, and of refined intelligence. The thought occurred to me that here was an opportunity to obtain testimony. "I think that every thoughtful man must take an interest in the ideal," I answered, "and, in spite of the lateness of the hour, I had not set you down as an exception to the rule. Curiously enough, however, I was busy when the bell rang answering a letter from several correspondents in search of the ideal. I will read it to you, if you like, as far as I have got."

Perhaps I hoped that in submitting he would appear slightly crest-fallen. But, on the contrary, he showed obvious enthusiasm at the suggestion, and begged me to fetch my manuscript at once. Josephine met me at the top of the stairs, and whispered that she had been dying with curiosity to know who it was.

"A reporter," I whispered, in reply.

"What does he wish for?"

"Three thousand words on the death of the Czar of Russia," I said, mysteriously; then I picked up my letter and glided away with my finger on my lips. "If he stays too long, dear, you may come down, as a gentle hint."

I began to read, and, as I read, my heart warmed toward my visitor on account of the absorbed attention he paid to my philosophy. "And now," said I, when I had finished, "pray tell what is your ideal? You have told me that you were interested in one."

He shook his head sadly. "No matter about me. It's too late. I can only shiver and go on. But I'm interested in what you're trying to do, and, if you like, I'm willing to throw in a word now and then while you work it out. I'm glad," he added, "that you hit the back numbers a rap."

I told him that he was not exactly intelligible.

"I mean the old familiar aspirants; in particular the lady interested in culture and personal salvation. There was no question about the man of the world and the drummer; one might feel kindly toward them, but of course they must ride second-class, and most newspaper men would ride with them – and some of the editors would have to go third. Easy-going commonness is the curse of democracy, even if I, who am a democrat of the democrats, do say it. But what I like most – and it's the nub of the whole matter – is that you knew enough to throw out that woman; she might equally well have been a man, for there are plenty of the same sort. If you'll excuse my saying so," he said, biting his cigar fiercely, "I shouldn't have expected it of a philosopher like you, and I honor your intelligence because of it. The man or woman of to-day in search of the ideal comes plumb up against sweating, bleeding, yearning democracy, and whoever funks, or shirks the situation has no first-class soul – be he or she ever so delicate, or cultured, or learned."

I could not but feel gratified at his fervor, nor did I mind his bringing his hand down on the table with the last word by way of emphasis, for he had grasped my meaning precisely. Evidently, too, he had taken the bit between his teeth and meant to have his say, for, as he lighted another cigar, his nostrils dilated with suppressed earnestness and his eye gleamed significantly.

"I'm not a man of culture," he continued. "I have the effrontery, from the necessities of my trade, to ring at your door-bell at midnight, and I know my own limitations, but I know what culture is. When I stand on the cliff and watch the waves hurl themselves against the shore – when on a peaceful summer's night I view the heavens in their glory, I realize in my own behalf something of what those who have had more opportunities than I are able to feel, and I know that I am illiterate and common as compared with many. But, Mr. Philosopher, what has been the philosophy of beauty and art and intellect and elegance through all the centuries until lately? Individual seclusion, appropriation, and arrogance. The admirable soul, the admirable genius, the admirable refinement was that which gloried in its superiority to the rest of the world and claimed the right of aloofness. The monk and the nun lived apart from the common life, and were thought to walk nearer heaven because of it. That idea of the priesthood has nearly passed away, but aloofness and arrogance are still too typical of the mental and the social aristocrats. They glory in their own superiority and delicacy, lift their skirts if they're women, hold their noses if they're men, and thank heaven they are not as the masses are. They are charitable, they are sometimes generous, and invariably didactic, but they hold aloof from the common herd. They refuse to open the gates of sympathy, and sometimes it seems as though the gates will never be opened until they are broken down by the masses."

My visitor suddenly stopped, and started to rise from his chair. Turning to investigate the cause of the interruption, I encountered my wife, Josephine, armed with a tray containing a brazier and the essentials for a midnight repast.

"You will be able to talk better if you have something to eat," she exclaimed, affably.

The ceremony of introduction having been performed successfully without causing our guest to notice that we did not know his name, I begged him to continue his address.

"Yes, do," said Josephine, "while I cook the oysters. I could not help overhearing a little of your conversation, so I know the general drift."

[Note.– That means she had been leaning over the banisters, listening.]

"A lunch will taste very good," said the reporter.

[Note.– Here he ran up against one of my pet prejudices, and for a moment I almost forgot that I was doing the honors of my own house. I almost said: "Speaking of democracy and culture, my dear sir, I should like to inquire if you have any authority for your use of the word 'lunch'? As employed by the appropriating and the arrogant it has long meant a meal or a bite between breakfast and dinner; but, as used by democracy, it seems to apply to afternoon tea or late supper equally well."]

"We were speaking of the ideal," he continued, addressing my wife, "and I was just saying that only recently had the world of noblest thought and aims begun to recognize that an ideal life must necessarily include interest in and sympathy for common humanity, and that the mere aristocrat of religion, of culture, or of manners, has ceased to be the Sir Galahad of civilization."

"Indeed it must be so," said Josephine, "and the idea is rapidly gaining ground. People used to be satisfied with making charitable donations; now they investigate facts and conditions and give themselves. But it isn't always easy for those who love beauty to avoid shrinking from people and things not beautiful. There is nothing which freezes a sensitive, artistic nature more quickly than dirt and ugliness, and yet the ideal modern soul does not turn away, but seeks to sympathize and to share. Might you not, dear (Josephine was now addressing me, not the reporter), say that the key-note of the ideal life is refined sympathy?"

"It certainly is an indispensable attribute of it," I answered.

"How much easier it is," mused Josephine, as she stirred the oysters in the melting butter, "to wrap one's self in one's own aesthetic aspirations and to let the common world shift for itself. It was possible, once, to do that and believe one's self a saint, but that day has passed forever. It's very hard, though, sometimes, Mr. Reporter. Constant contact with the common world is liable to make one terribly discouraged unless one has abiding faith in the future of democracy."

"I know it; I know it," he replied, eagerly. "We're a depressing lot – many of us. Don't you suppose I understand how the sensitive soul must suffer when it has to deal with some of us? Take the cheap, ignorant, mercenary, city politician, such as disgraces the aldermanic chair of our large cities – there's a discouraging monster for you. There is a host of others; the shallow, self-sufficient, impertinent type of shop-girl, whose sole concern is her finery and her 'fellow'; the small dealer of a certain sort, who adulterates his wares, lies to maintain his cause, and will not hesitate to burn his stock in order to obtain the insurance money; the sordid number who seek to break the wills of their relations who have devised the property to others; the many, too, who make a mess of marriage, and leave wife or husband on the paltriest pleas. I know them well; they are the people, they are humanity, and they can no longer be ignored and loftily set aside as 'the uneducated mass' by those whose finer instincts cause them to live free from these sins. Hard? Of course it's hard, but the best hope for the improvement of society lies in the education and enlightenment of that mass; and this can be compassed only through the efforts and sympathy of the intelligent and refined."

Just then the clock struck midnight. "Bless me!" he exclaimed, every one will be in bed, and what will become of my telegram on the Czar of Russia? Instead of getting three thousand words from you, I have been giving you that number on your own topic."

"For once, then, I have got the better of a reporter," said I.

"But before I give you any supper, Mr. Reporter," said Josephine, "you must acknowledge, too, that the movement is gaining ground, and that the refined and educated are changing their point of view. Think of the hospitals, think of the museums, think of the colleges, think of the model tenements, the schools for manual training and cooking."

"I do acknowledge it; it is grand and inspiring. I have been merely calling attention to the fact that in the search for the ideal their new point of view must become permanent and extend still farther. To counterbalance your facts I could cite others. Think of the doings of the multi-millionaires, their modern palaces, their extravagant entertainments, their steam-yachts, their home-desecrating wives – a lot of third-class passengers, with no more claim to be considered first-class than the alderman and the shop-girl and the other democrats of whom we were speaking a moment ago. Nothing of the ideal there, and they had such a grand chance! Yes, yes, I do admit, madam, that the efforts and progress of the refined and intelligent during the last quarter of a century have been notable and stirring, but democracy has been neglected for so many centuries that it may prove a little ungrateful at first. And here am I, Mr. Philosopher, keeping your train in three sections waiting all this time."

"The oysters are cooked," said Josephine.

"Five minutes for lunch!" cried the reporter.

[Note.– Confound the man! Why should he call my supper a lunch?]

To A Young Man or Woman in Search of the Ideal. IV

That beatific mental condition associated by my midnight visitor, the reporter, with people of alleged cultivation and æsthetic tastes, when in the presence of the beauties or marvels of nature, like sunset, mountain scenery, ocean calm and ocean storm, is doubtless a familiar experience to you. The wonder book of nature is constantly being held up by poet and painter as the source of human ideality, and all the traditions of civilization urge you to attain that degree of artistic development under the white light of which the seals of that book become loosened, and you are able to read in the evening star and the mountain torrent lessons of inspiration and truth. Next to nature in their æsthetic potency are her hand-maids, music, sculpture, letters and painting – briefly, the civilized arts, the medium by which mortals seek to woo and hold fast to beauty. We listen to the gorgeous anthems of the world's most famous composers, and our souls thrill and vibrate with emotion; life seems grand and everything possible. We stand before the greatest marbles and canvasses, and we seem to have truth within our grasp and nature almost subjugated. How exquisitely falls on the senses the sublimity of the lines

 
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
 

We catch a glimpse there of what we call heaven. Is there any more satisfactory occupation for a thirsty soul than to scan the fairness of the twilight heavens when the evening star shines alone and the saffron or purple glories of the departing day irradiate the west?

 
Noi andavam per lo vespero attenti
Oltre, quanto potean gli occhi allungarsi,
Contro i raggi serotini e lucenti.
 

So wrote Dante in immortal verse, to portray the æsthetic value of a kindred experience.

I selected those lines of Wordsworth because he, of all the poets, suggests more ostensibly in his verse deliberate pursuit of the ideal. Shelley, indeed, reveals a bolder purpose to unmask the infinite, but his mood is oftener that of an audacious stormer of heaven than of a reverent seeker for perfect truth. We feel in Wordsworth a conscious intent to distill from the study of nature and of man a spiritual exhalation, which would enlighten him and enable him, by force of his poetic gifts, to enlighten us as to how best to live. When we think of him, we see him amid the exquisite scenery of his favorite lakes, walking in close communion with God; discerning the manifestations of the infinite in the mountain and the wild flower, in the splendor of the storm and the faithful doings of the humblest lives.

Ever since he wrote Wordsworth has been the patron saint of introspective souls. In his poetry they have found not merely suggestion but a creed. The poet himself was at heart an enthusiast and a revolutionary, and his worship of quiet beauty and subjective refinement was the expression of a design broader and deeper in its scope than many of his followers have been willing to adopt. He revealed not merely the æsthetic significance of the contemplative life which substitutes soul analysis, with God in nature as a guide, for the grosser interests of the flesh, but also the unholiness of class distinctions and of the indifference of man to his fellow-man as distinguished from himself. The followers of Wordsworth were, for the most part, prompt to accept the first without including the second and equally fundamental tenet of his philosophy. What, a quarter of a century ago, was the ordinary practice of the cultivated and refined, who had been stirred either directly or indirectly by the teaching of the great poet to adopt contemplation as the key-note of their daily lives? Their greatest number was in beautiful, rural England; but the spiritual atmosphere breathed by them soon found its way across the Atlantic, and served to exalt and modify the ever moral inclinations of New England.

Picture, if you will, the model country house of the English country gentleman of comfortable means and refined tastes. To begin with, the structure itself is charming; time has bestowed upon it picturesqueness, and art has made it beautiful with the simple but effective arrangement of vines and flowers. There is nothing of the vileness of earth at hand to mar or offend. The proprietor himself, an elder son, has been left with a competence; no riches, but sufficient to enable him to pursue his literary or other refined interests without molestation from pecuniary cares. The interior is tasteful and æsthetically satisfying; the spacious, comfortable rooms contain all that is desirable in the way of upholstery, ornaments, books, and pictures. The large drawing-room windows command a fair expanse of velvet lawn, flanked by stately trees. Beyond lies an undulating acreage of ancestral metes and bounds, rich in verdure and precious with associations. Here lives our gentleman the greater portion of the year; lives aspiringly according to his Wordsworthian creed. He eschews or uses with admirable moderation the coarser pleasures and vanities of life. Unselfishness, gentleness, and nicety of thought and speech are the custom of his household. He himself finds congenial occupation in literary or scientific research, in the hope of adding some book or monograph to the world's store of art or knowledge. His wife, in co-operation with the church, plays a gracious part among their tenants or among the village sick and poor, teaching her daughters to dispense charity in the form of soup, coals, jellies, and blankets. Parents and children alike, jealously intending to attain holiness and culture, continuously take an account of their individual spiritual successes and failures, and though they hold these auditings with God in the church, they renew them often under the inspiring influence of nature.

The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

or, as Dante expressed a similar conception,

 
'Twas now the hour that turneth back desire
In those who sail the sea, and melts the heart
The day they've said to their sweet friends farewell,
And the new pilgrim penetrates with love,
If he doth hear from far away a bell
That seemeth to deplore the dying day.
 

This is the hour when the Wordsworthian spirit, refined, conscientious, aspiring, beauty and duty loving, sees through the splendor of the lucent, saffron sky, heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending. Not always is the vision so adorable. Often enough the gazer knows the bitterness of divine discontent, and finds the golden glory but a bar, shutting out God. In the favorable hour, though, comes the rapture, and the transfiguration; the exquisite, refined feelings seem to find communion with the infinite, and a voice from heaven to say:

Well done, good and faithful servant.

I have selected this experience of the cultivated English household rather than that of the purely religious life as an example, for the reason that in it the æsthetic side is represented in the soul-hunger, and that the existing conditions of earth are, to a certain extent, taken into account. In the purely religious life, the emotions of the exalted soul have, in the past at least, been prone to exclude the actual conditions of human life from consideration. The thought has been that the earthly existence is travail, and at best a discipline; that the joys of life are vanity, and the mundane problems of life unworthy of the interested attention of the heaven-seeking soul. Modern religious theories have modified this point of view, but certainly in some sects still the æsthetic value of existence is almost contemptuously discarded by religion. I have taken the beautiful lives of the Wordsworthians as an example, also because the religious element is so manifestly cherished and cultivated in them. It is intended in them that art and God should work together, or, more accurately, the precept is that the æsthetic side of humanity is one of the noblest manifestations of the infinite within us. It is significant in this connection that though art has often reached its apogee in periods of moral decay, the ruin of the nation, thus robbed of spiritual vitality, has soon followed, in spite of the glory of its sculpture and canvasses. But that is a mere interjection. The point I wish to suggest is this: The sane soul recognizes, when face to face with truth, that what we see in the glory of the sunset, when we think we walk with God, must be, in order to be of value, an inspiration based on the conditions of mundane life. Without this, prayer and adoration become a mere nervous exhalation, reaching out for something which has no more substance than an ignus fatuus. The old saints who lived and died in prayer, ignoring human relations, seem to us to-day to have been wofully deluded. They yearned to be translated from a world to which they had contributed nothing but the desire to be holy. This desire is of the essence of the matter; and so we consent to give their reverences the benison of our distinguished consideration. But aspiring souls, as evidenced by the æsthetic man and woman of culture, presently perceived the error. They recognized that aspiration, to be vital, must start with a conception of the world as it was, and seek a realization of the world as it might be, and that in this seeking lay service to God and preparation for heaven. Proceeding they fixed on unselfish human love and on beauty as the motive of their creed, and endeavored to live lives animated by these principles. This creed has been the real creed of aspiring humanity during the past century and a half, and it still seems sufficient to many. There have been diverse differences of application and administration in connection with it, according as the pendulum swung more or less near to one or the other of the two cardinal points of faith, unselfish love, or exquisite beauty. There have been some who, in their desire to make the relations of man toward those with whom he lived and whom he loved more ideal, have been disposed to ignore the claims of color and elegance; and there have been others so eager in their allegiance to the cause of beauty that they have exalted sense and emotion at the expense of unselfishness and purity. Essentially, however, the ideal life of the modern centuries has sought to develop the individual soul by stimulating its faculties to cherish self-sacrificing devotion to familiar friends, æsthetic appreciation of form, color and sound, and exquisite personal refinement. The Christian life, in its highest form, from this amalgamation of human traits, has constructed an ideal for the soul founded on something tangible and substantial in human consciousness. When the Christian said, "O God, make me pure and noble," it has been no longer necessary to rhapsodize on a heaven concerning which he knew nothing, and to disclaim all interest in this earth. On the contrary, he has appreciated that conceptions of the ideal must be based on human conditions or they cease to be intelligible, and that the soul which seeks God can reach him only through faithfulness to a method of life, the aim of which is to make the best use of earth and its possibilities.