In writing as in living, it is easier to see what is right than to do
it. The biographers of Europe would agree that their proper concern
was only what was characteristic of their heroes, and not the details
of human life in general. "In the abstract," they would all agree to
this; yet which of them does it? The difficulty is to discover what is
distinctive.
If that is hard for a man who is writing about a man, it is still
harder for the historian of a bear. If I were a bear, I would not have
been puzzled to know whether the great adventure in the chimney was a
thing to tell, or only what any bears would have done. Not being a
bear, the writer could not ask his inner consciousness. He had to ask
his friends who had bred bears; and when he found that our heroine's
master was the only one of them all who had a house with a chimney,
the problem had to be abandoned as insoluble. So he has decided, like
a certain great author, to take the risk of being tedious rather than
elliptical.
The open-brick fireplace with a chimney was for heating, not for
cooking; and stood in the hall, near the front door. "I could never
discover why it was there," said the unfortunate tenant of the house.
The building was an achievement of the Public Works Department, which
is surrounded by mysteries and has ways past finding out in Burma.
That fireplace and chimney perplexed the two little bears as well as
their master; and once, when there was no fire, they sat down together
on the hearth, and meditated; and as they meditated they lifted up
their eyes and saw the sky! How their hearts did burn within them, as
they gazed upon that light in darkness; and their instinctive
propensity to climb made them get up on their hind legs and gape at
each other, and rub their eyes and look up again. Like the juvenile
hero of Longfellow, they felt the impulse of "Excelsior!" Up they
started, to reach that sky. At first, they were quite composed--it
seemed little harder than going upstairs; and there was no hurry or
flurry. They helped each other. But a chimney that grows narrower as
you go up is disconcerting to the aspiring climber without hands. It
disturbs the centre of gravity in an unusual way. They fell back,
first one and then the other, and again, and again, and again; and
ever, like the spider whose persistence cheered the Bruce, they tried
again, and again, and again; and still they fell. They became
individualistic, but not all at once desperate. There was a sublime
fixity upon their countenances, significant of the primeval elemental
forces which impelled them, yet nevertheless pathetically human. After
all, they were "seeking the light," be it remembered, honestly
"seeking the light." Their blind impulsiveness made them all the
better symbols of humanity. Think of the European scholastics in the
Middle Ages. What were _they_ doing for many centuries but trying to
climb to the sky through a sooty chimney?
Smile if you will and must, but do not laugh. You would have had no
heart for laughing if you had seen the agonies of the bears when
strength failed them, and their falls and bruises were--enough! They
flung themselves upon the ashes of the hearth in a despair that was
equal to that of any man. From nose to tail they covered themselves
with ashes--to say nothing of the soot already there.
However, as Byron sings, and psalmists and fakirs have experienced,
"the heart may break, yet brokenly live on." When they had had enough
of the ashes and the soot, they emerged; and naturally, desiring above
all things to be clean again, they rubbed themselves upon the freshly
painted walls and nice clean furniture; and when the servants ran to
remonstrate, they made for the bedrooms, amidst a general alleluia!
I abstained from asking their master what he said when he came home;
and he seemed to appreciate my forbearance.