Part 9
The historians are troubled by their lack of authentic material. They are like the magicians, astrologers, sorcerers, and Chaldeans of the court of Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar had a dream that he knew was very important, but before he could get it interpreted by his wise men he forgot what it was. They were good at interpretations, and could have made one to fit if only the king had brought the dream with him so that they could try it on. But that was the very thing he could not do.
The founders of London and Paris had doubtless their dreams of the future; but alas! they have long since been forgotten. But Chicago has not had time to forget. Everything is still vivid. Men walk the streets of the great city who remember it when it was no bigger than the Londinium of the time of the Cæsars. They have with their own eyes watched every step in the civic development and they have been a part of all that they have seen. The Londoner has seen only a passing phase of his London; the greater part of its history is received on hearsay evidence. The Chicagoan sees his Chicago steadily and sees it whole. No wonder that there is a self-consciousness about the new metropolis that is not to be found in the old. Its greatness has been thrust upon it suddenly, and there is a full realization of its value.
The genuine American who is the maker of the new fortunes of the world, and who is in love with his work, has not been adequately portrayed in literature. It requires an ample imagination to do justice to his character. There must be a mingling of realism and romance. The realism must not be the minute, painstaking portraiture of a Miss Austen, but the hearty, out-of-door reality of a Fielding. The American Fielding has not yet appeared, but what a good time he will have when he comes! What a host of characters after his own heart he will find! The American Scott, too, is called for to give us a story of American life which will read as well on the edge of a clearing in the forest as “The Lady of the Lake” did in the trenches of Torres Vedras, when the soldiers forgot the enemy’s shells as they gave a glorious shout over the poet’s lines, which their captain was reading to them. I like that story, in spite of the fact that a recent critic declares that to like it shows an uncultivated taste. “This is not,” he says, “a test of poetry. An audience less likely to be critical, a situation less likely to induce criticism, can hardly be imagined.” Nevertheless, Scott would much rather have written lines that rang true to soldiers in the hour of battle, than to have been given a high mark by the most competent corrector of daily themes.
The imagination of Hawthorne, brooding over the past, repeopled the House of the Seven Gables with the successive generations. But there is another kind of romance, in which the imagination is projected into the future. Looking at the new house not yet enclosed against the storm, it dreams dreams and sees visions. There is a story there, also, and the best of it is that it is to be continued.
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A shrewd old New England farmer recounted to me the warlike exploits of his family. He himself had been in Gettysburg, and each generation since the time of the French and Indian wars had had its soldier. His son had been shot at Santiago. “The bullet went clean through his body,” he said, indicating a course which seemed to me necessarily fatal. I expressed sympathy. “Oh, it didn’t hurt him much,” he said, “it seemed to go through a vacant spot.”
That there are vacant spots in the character of the typical man of the Western world no one would be more ready to admit than he. His shortcomings are obvious. Yet most of those which have been harshly commented upon by the world are of the kind that might be commended to the consideration of the kindly Pardoner. Some of his weaknesses touch upon nobleness. Those who best know his environment and the work he has done are most ready to grant him a reasonable degree of indulgence.
The most serious charges against him are that he is a boastful materialist enamored of crude bulk, and that he has trampled upon the old sanctities and is a worshiper of the almighty dollar. There is some color for these charges in his manners, but those who make them have certainly not understood his spirit. “The Western Goth,” Lowell called him. The Goths had a bad reputation once as wanton destroyers of ancient art. But after they had had their fling and had settled down, the Teutonic barbarians showed that they could make a thing or two themselves. Gothic has long since ceased to be a term of reproach. Even in the destruction of the ancient, archæologists now admit that the Goths did not do as much harm as was at first feared. The real destroyers of ancient Rome have been the Romans.
From the fact that western America is a place where people are actively engaged in making money, and that they find their work so interesting that they like to talk about it, the superficial observer jumps at the conclusion that this is the seat of the cult of wealth-worship. But there is a vast difference between making a thing and worshiping it. It is reported that one of the varied industries of Great Britain is the manufacture of molten images. It is undoubtedly a sin, but the British manufacturer comforts himself with the reflection that he only breaks half the commandment; he makes the idol, but he does not bow down before it.
Worship is not talkative or boastful. It is reserved and self-abasing. The worshiper accepts the superiority of the object of his devotion as a fact not to be questioned. For such serious-minded worship of wealth go to the English moral tales so popular a generation or two ago, before the wave of democracy came in. Then the affluent Squire and his lady were lifted into the place of superior beings. They dispensed bounty after the manner of Providence to their poorer neighbors, and there was no thought of questioning their ways. They were rich, as had been their fathers and mothers before them, and all other virtues were attributed to them by fond superstition.
The men of the Western mining camps, where millionaires are made in a day, have no conception of such a reverential attitude toward the possessor of wealth. When you see them in the eager pursuit of dollars, you are watching not their religion, but their sport. They care for money as the fox-hunter cares for the fox. They admire the man who wins the prize, in proportion to the skill and pluck which he has exhibited. But there are no illusions of a personal superiority imparted by the possession of property. That is impossible in a community where everybody is acquainted with the short and simple annals of the rich.
The man who is conspicuously successful in the national sport is undoubtedly an object of interest, but it is interest of the superficial sort. He is not the man whom the people delight to honor, and he usually has the good sense to know it. In a Western newspaper my attention was attracted by the headlines: “Noah a Millionaire.” It seems that some one had calculated that, even after making allowance for the low price of labor and materials in his day, the Ark must have cost over half a million dollars, and that Noah must have had at least a million in order prudently to undertake the work. It put the patriarch in a fresh light, and I read the article diligently, as did most of my fellow passengers on the train. But that was the end of it; our opinions about diluvian and antediluvian matters remained unchanged. I suppose that the publicity given to the doings of our conspicuously rich contemporaries has no greater significance.
The millionaire who cares for the admiration of his fellow-citizens must do more than accumulate. When he has made his fortune the next question is, “What will he do with it?” He must do something or sink into the rank of nobodies. Even the most selfish and parsimonious feels that something is required of him. A great part of the stream of new wealth may be wasted, so far as the higher interests of society are concerned, but a certain part of it is pretty certain to be directed toward those same higher interests. The process is like that which goes on with an hydraulic ram. Where there is a good stream of water, one can afford to lose most of it. The waste water, before it escapes down the hill, pumps a slender but sufficient stream into the second story.
Indeed, it is the interest of our millionaires in art, science, and religion which has created a puzzling ethical problem. They are not content to be mere money-getters. They aspire to be benefactors on a large scale. But what if the wealth so freely offered has not been honestly come by? What if the best institutions should hesitate to receive it? The poor rich man cannot contemplate such a refusal with equanimity. It would interfere with the fulfillment of his most cherished plans. To have unlimited opportunities to make money, and to be hindered in giving it away, seems to him like building a trunk line of railroad and then being denied terminal facilities. Of course he could change his plans and keep it all himself, but to a man who had been accustomed to “doing things” that would be a humiliating anti-climax.
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The fact that the American is greatly absorbed in his work with material things is no sufficient basis of the charge of materialism that is lightly brought against him. The crucial question is, “What do the things stand for in his mind? Are they finalities, or are they means to an end?” The most appalling picture of a purely materialistic civilization is that given in the book of the Revelation. It is an inventory of the wealth of the Babylon which was Imperial Rome. The inventory is an indictment. “The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, and cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men.”
The heart grows sick when the list of commodities ends with the “souls of men.” What were they worth, measured against all that goes before?
A very different impression comes as we read Joaquin Miller’s exultant cry over the West:--
O heart of the world’s heart, West! my West! Look up! Look out! There are fields of kine, There are clover fields that are red as wine,
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There are emerald seas of corn and cane,
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There are isles of oak and a harvest plain Where brown men bend to the bending grain, There are temples of God and towns new born.
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And the hearts of oak and the hands of horn Have fashioned them all, and a world beside.
This frank delight in the riches of the earth is not materialistic. The souls of men are not in the market. They form the supreme standard of value. Materialism is not a disease to which nations are subject in their lusty youth. It comes with senile decay.
Sometimes when we are wearied with the intense activity of modern life we quote the saying, “Things are in the saddle.” Perhaps our sympathy is misplaced. If the poor Things could speak, they would tell us that, so far from being in the saddle, they are under the lash of furious young idealists who give them no rest. It is the nature of a Thing to “stay put,” but these headstrong youths despise this conservative bias. They are no respecters of Things, being wholly absorbed in Purposes.
To see Things in undisputed possession, go into “the best room” of a respectable old farmhouse. Here the Thing has the place of honor, and the Person is a base intruder, having no rights of his own. The priestess hovers occasionally around her sacred Things, waving her feather duster as a mystic wand, and then leaves them in respectful gloom. Nothing short of a death in the family would induce her to disturb them. Go into a busy workshop, and you may see how the Thing may be taught to know its place. It is always at the mercy of the innovating Intelligence. When a new Idea comes, the old Thing which had heretofore had a useful function is thrown aside. It is still as good as it ever was, but it is not good enough. It must go to the scrap pile.
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The man of the West is likely to offend against the standards of propriety in speech. When he begins to explain the character of his country, he is accused of inaccuracy. His prospectus is not always confirmed by the Table of Contents. He has acquired the habit of “talking large.” This prejudices many people against him. They accuse him of willful exaggeration, and if he be the promoter of some commercial enterprise, they impute to him a mercenary motive.
But he is in reality quite sincere. If he talks large, it is only because he feels large. His is a language natural to those who are engaged in creative work, and who foresee great things. It is like “the large utterance of the early gods.” He does not feel called upon to limit his statements to the facts that are already apparent; he expects the facts to grow up to his statements. He is not shooting at a fixed target, but at a flying mark; if he is to hit it, he must aim a little ahead.
Another reason for this large utterance is that in a new country the ordinary man identifies himself with his community in a way impossible to any but very great magnates in an old civilization. He feels very much as did the kings and earls he has read about. How proudly on the Shakespearean stage a great noble will speak of himself as Norfolk or Northumberland! It is as if his personality had been multiplied by so many square miles. He is no longer a mere individual,--he is a whole county.
An American may have much the same sense of territorial aggrandizement by identifying himself with a promising community in its first stage of growth. He is not a unit lost in a multitude. His town has a fine name and a glorious future. Some day these glories may be divided among thousands, now they are his own. He is proud of the town, and the pride is more satisfying because he is it.
I once camped for a whole month in the city of Naples on the shores of the Pacific. I knew it was a city, for a huge sign announced the fact to every one who passed by the beautiful, secluded spot. Unlike some of the boom towns of that period, Naples had an inhabitant, whom I had occasion frequently to meet. When I addressed him, it was hard for me to use his surname, as I would with a common man. For to me he was Naples. It would have seemed appropriate for him to speak in blank verse.
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There are those who look upon the Western delight in the idea of bigness as an evidence of vulgarity of sentiment and of the lack of idealism. They have a scorn of those who habitually think of quantity rather than of quality. But the man of fastidious taste should not be allowed to have it all his own way. One poet may be inspired by “the murmur of a hidden brook in the leafy month of June.” But another may prefer to stand on the shore of the ocean and feel its immensity. He is tremendously impressed by its size. It is a big thing. But the ocean is as poetical as the brook, though in its own huge way.
There are some things wherein quality is the first consideration. They are the luxuries of life. But when we come to the prime necessities, the first question is in regard to the adequacy of the supply. When a sentimental young lady was seated at dinner next to a great poet, she waited, awestruck, for him to give utterance to a fine thought. The only gem he vouchsafed was, “How do you like your mutton? I like mine in hunks.” The poet was a man of sound sense. There is one law for poetry and another for mutton. Poetry is precious, and a little goes a long way; we can get on without any but the best. But mutton should be served more generously.
It is the glory of the West that it treats what elsewhere are the luxuries of the few as the necessities of the many. It dispenses even “the higher education” not in dainty morsels, but in hunks.
Old Mrs. Means, in “The Hoosier Schoolmaster,” formulated the wisdom of the pioneer. “You see, this ’ere bottom land was all Congress land in them there days and sold for a dollar and a quarter, and I says to my old man, ‘Jack,’ says I, ‘do you git a plenty while you’re gittin’. Git a plenty while you’re gittin’,’ says I, ‘for ’twont be no cheaper than ’tis now;’ and it haint, and I knowed ’twouldn’t.”
Translate Mrs. Means’s shrewd maxim into the terms of idealism, and you have the characteristic contribution of the West. The old prudential maxims, which were true enough in a finished civilization, may well be disregarded by those who face a great new opportunity. They can well afford to preëmpt more territory than they can at present cultivate. When one’s aims are selfish, the desire to get a plenty is mere greed, but in the altruist it rises into “the enthusiasm for humanity.” It is the ambition to supply the wants of men no longer in niggardly fashion, but in full measure.
In two directions the expectation of moral amplitude in things American is fulfilled,--in Education and in Charity. Here we feel that the people have been aroused to the need of making plentiful provision, not only for immediate necessities, but for future growth. Along these lines we think and plan nationally.
But there are some questions which give pause to the most boastful patriot. Where is the distinctive American Art which interprets in a broad, fresh way the genius of the land, and where is the public that would recognize it and delight in it if it should appear? Where is the great American Church able splendidly to organize the forces of spiritual freedom as Rome organized the principles of ecclesiastical authority? How is the vision of her prophets fulfilled?
And thou, America, For the scheme’s culmination, its thought and its reality, For these (not for thyself) thou hast arrived. Thou, too, surroundest all, Embracing, carrying, welcoming all, thou too by pathways broad and new, To the ideal tendest. The measured faiths of other lands, the grandeurs of the past Are not for thee, but grandeurs of thine own, Deific faiths and amplitudes, absorbing, comprehending all.
Where are these “deific faiths and amplitudes” that are worthy of the land embodied?
America presents new problems for statesmanship; where are the large-hearted, clear-eyed men who give themselves to the task? Here and there we see them. In the crisis of the nation’s life nature came to the rescue.
For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw, And, choosing sweet clay from the breast Of the unexhausted West, With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true.
That is the kind of manhood America needs. Is the supply equal to the demand? The growth of wealth in the Republic has been marvelous. Has there been evolved a wisdom equal to the task of justly distributing what enterprise has created? We hear of American “Captains of Industry.” How far have they realized Carlyle’s idea when he gave the title to those whose success lies not in personal gain but in ability to be real leaders of men? How far has America produced great captains, able to bring into commerce and manufacture the soldierly virtues of courage, loyalty, and willing obedience?
When he considers these things the just critic must say to the Republic, “Thou art weighed in the balances and found wanting.” But let him not hastily assume that he is reading the mystic handwriting on the wall, the _Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin_, that foretells the fall of nations. Let him rather talk as to a young athlete who has not come up to the mark, “You have done much, but you have not yet done your best! You are yet wanting in some essential elements. You must try again.”
The American idealist recognizes the present failures, but it does not quench his high spirits. They come to him as challenges. He takes his falls as Adam and Eve took theirs. After the first shock was over there was a healthy reaction.
Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon; The world was all before them where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.
The most hopeful sign of the times is the number of young Americans who have become conscious of the grave evils that beset their country, but who neither whine nor scold nor prophesy ill. The pioneer spirit is strong within them. They attack the abuses of democracy with a cheery iconoclasm. They are impelled to their work not merely by a sense of duty; they find their fun in it. It is with a sense of exhilaration that we watch these pioneers. Their world is all before them. We are anxious to see what they will make of it.
A COMMUNITY OF HUMORISTS
[Illustration]
Humor is not usually looked upon as a civic virtue. It is for the most part confined to a modest sphere of usefulness, and is accepted as an alleviation to the lot of the private man. He learns to find pleasure in his small misadventures and to smile amiably at his discomfitures. The most ancient pleasantries have almost always an element of domesticity. They form the silver lining to the clouds that sometimes gather over the most peaceful homes. What comfort an ancient Hebrew must have taken in the text from Ecclesiasticus: “As climbing up a sandy way is to the feet of the aged, so is a wife full of words to a quiet man.” The quiet man would murmur to himself, “How true!” He would seize the simile as a dog snatches a bone, and would carry it off to enjoy it by himself.