regarded by the public as a sort of licensed assassin. Yet almost any
one can think of people who drive a car and take no pleasure in spilling
blood. The common belief that automobile killing is a favourite sport
among our best families seems to be based on the fact that in nine cases
out of ten the occupants of a man-slaying automobile bear such
well-known Knickerbocker names as Mr. William Moriarty, chauffeur; his
friend, Mr. James Dugan, who is prominent in coal-heaving circles; and
their friends, the Misses Mayme Schultz and Bessie Goldstein. At bottom,
it would seem, most of the criticism directed against the automobile is
based on its failure to take a hog and turn him into a gentleman. But in
this respect automobiles are like many of our colleges. The comforting
thing is that the life of the automobile hog is an uncertain one. Sooner
or later he runs down a steep place into the sea, like certain of his
species mentioned in the Bible, and the question adjusts itself.
Meanwhile, however, the decent motorist must suffer for the other's
sins. A friend says: "The only time I dare be seen in my machine is
between 11 A.M. and 4 P.M. Before that time people point me out as a
'joy-rider' returning from a night's debauch. After that time I am a
'joy-rider' bound for a night of it." The complaint rings true. The
exhilaration aroused by a punctured tire in the open country gathers
strength from the remarks of the spectators who wonder if you made your
money honestly. In town a defective sparkplug brings the close attention
of a crowd which exchanges opinions as to whether the lady in the
tonneau is your wife. All agree that you must have mortgaged your home
to buy the machine.
And yet it is evident that much misunderstanding could be avoided if we
had a simple code of rules for people who cross the street just as there
are regulations for the autoist. A few such rules suggest themselves: 1.
If one is about to cross the street in front of an auto, one should do
so either before the man in the car succumbs to heart failure or after,
but not while the driver is wrestling with death; it is in such cases
that one is apt to get hurt. 2. If one is in the middle of the road and
sees a car approaching, one should move either (_a_) away from the car,
(_b_) towards the car, (_c_) to the right, (_d_) to the left, or (_e_)
stand still; under no circumstances should one attempt to combine (_a_),
(_b_), (_c_), (_d_), and (_e_). 3. The safest place from which to
ascertain the make of an automobile or to estimate its cost is the
sidewalk.
XXX
THE SAMPLE LIFE
The hour, the occasion, and the scene were conducive to melancholy. We
had walked a good fifteen miles into the open country and back again
under chilly clouds, and were now paying for it with an empty sense of
weariness and disenchantment. There is nothing so depressing as a bare
room lit up by flaring gas-jets against the gloom of a late afternoon of
rain; and the lights in Scipione's little cellar restaurant flared away
in the most outrageous manner. Harding, across the table from me,
wretchedly fluttered the pages of a popular magazine and looked
ill-natured and horribly unkempt. The new table-cloths had not yet been
laid for dinner. The sawdust on the floor was mostly mire. Angelina,
the cook, was screaming at Paolo and Francesca, who were trying to boil
the cat. It was very dreary.
"Harding," I said, "you were insisting only a little while ago that life
is always beautiful."
"So it is," he replied, too listless to be defiant. "To some people."
"To whom?"
"Well, to the two here, for instance," and he pointed to a pair of
handsome lovers playing golf all over a double page in the advertising
section of his magazine. "Do you mean to say these two ever know what
ugliness is, or pain, or want? Or ever grow old? Or cease to love? Here
is the perfect life for you."
"Are you so sure of that?" said some one over my shoulder, and I turned
about sharply to look into the most entrancing face I have ever beheld
in man or woman. It was Apollo standing there above me, or if not he, at
least one of the divine youths that the Greeks have left for us in
undying marble. He made Scipione's grimy cellar luminous with beauty.
"I beg your pardon for intruding," he said, seating himself at our table
as joyously confident and as simple as an immortal should be. "But I
feel myself competent to speak on the point you have raised because the
Advertising Supplement you refer to is my own home. This very young man
playing golf is, as you will observe, no other than myself."
There was no denying the amazing resemblance.
"You say the Advertising Supplement is your home," I collected myself
sufficiently to ask, "but just how do you mean that?"
"Literally," he replied. "My whole life, and for that matter my parents'
life before me, has been spent in the pages you are now fingering. My
name is Pinckney, Walter Pinckney, and if you are sufficiently
interested in my career I should be glad to describe it."
"Go ahead," cried Harding, with almost ferocious earnestness.
"If I begin a bit back before my birth," said Pinckney, "you will be
patient with me. I will not detain you very long."
"Begin where you please," said Harding in the same grim manner; "only
begin."
"My father," commenced young Pinckney, "at eighteen, was a sickly
country lad with less than the usual elementary education and no other
prospects than a life of drudgery on the old farm. But there was in him
an elemental strength of will that was sufficient, as it turned out, to
master fate. You have read his life again and again in the Advertising
Pages of our magazines. On his nineteenth birthday, as I have heard him
tell many a time, he began the reshaping of his life by investing the
small sum of fifty cents in a manual of home exercise and enrolling
himself at the same time with one of our best-known correspondence
schools, which offered an attractive course in engineering and
scientific irrigation. Simultaneously, from that day he carried on the
work of his bodily and intellectual redemption. We still have at home a
collection of the various domestic utensils which he employed in his
daily training--an old armchair; a broom; a large gilt portrait frame
through which he would leap twenty-five times every morning; a marble
clock; a pair of water buckets; an old trunk lid, and other articles of
the kind. Close beside his gymnastic apparatus we keep three trunkfuls
of note-books and reports representing as many years devoted labour at
his studies. At the age of twenty-six my father was a veritable Hercules
and held the position of assistant to the chief engineer of an
important Eastern railroad. It was shortly after he had won this place
that he met my mother."
The caressing fondness with which he uttered the last word imparted to
his seemingly supreme beauty an added warmth of appeal.
"Her, too, you have met in the Advertising Columns. She had begun to
teach school when a mere girl; but when her father's death threw upon
her young shoulders the burden of three little children and a helpless
mother, she had risen to her greater needs. She succeeded in quadrupling
her income by learning to write short stories, criticism, and verse,
from a literary bureau which charged her a nominal fee for instruction
and purchased her output at extremely generous rates for disposal among
the leading magazines. When my father first saw her--it was in the
course of a Fourth of July excursion to Niagara Falls which, including a
three days' stay at the best hotels, was offered to the public at half
the usual cost--she had sent the eldest boy through college, her younger
sister was teaching school, and she was free to follow the inclinations
of her heart."
"You were fortunate in the selection of your immediate ancestry," said
Harding.
"Was I not?" Pinckney responded in a flush of grateful recognition. "But
that is not all. The house in which I was born, though generally
recognized as one of the finest examples of Queen Anne architecture in
reinforced concrete, was put up by my father, unassisted, from plans
which he purchased for a ridiculously small sum. Its every nook was the
abiding-place of love, of quiet content, and of nurturing comfort. The
furnace was equipped with the latest automatic devices so that it had to
be started only once a year. It was then left to the care of my mother,
who used to give it only a few minutes' attention every day without
going to the trouble of divesting herself of the gown of fine white lawn
which she always wore."
"My dear fellow," I could not keep from exclaiming, "you have almost
explained yourself. In such surroundings how could you help growing up
into what you are?"
"That is what I say, sir," he came back at me eagerly. "But you must
call to mind, also, the fostering personal care that was bestowed upon
us children. Take the matter of diet. Coffee, cocoa, excessive sweets,
every food-element tending to narcotise or over-stimulate the system was
rigorously excluded. Instead we had the numerous grain preparations that
assist nature by contributing directly to the development of our
particular faculties. In my case, for instance, it had been decided some
time before I was born that in the course of time I should enter West
Point. With that end in view Farinette, because of its muscle-building
powers, was made the principal constituent of my bill of fare. Later,
when my parents thought that the pulpit offered better chances of a
successful career, Farinette was replaced by Panema, which is notably
efficacious in the production of cerebral tissue. Just as I was taking
my examinations for college it was finally determined that the sphere of
corporation finance held out unrivalled facilities for advancement, and
Panema gave way to Hydronuxia, which acts particularly on the
imaginative faculties. As for my sisters, they fared no worse than I.
You surely have seen them in the Advertising Pages in all their splendid
bloom. Saved from overwork by soaps that make heavy washing a pleasure,
eternally youthful through the use of electric massage, they smile at
you through the reticulations of the tennis racket which the champion
played with at Newport, or recline under parasols in the bow of canoes
that will neither sink nor upset. They are very fond of playing Chopin
on a mechanical piano while the moonlight streams over the floor of the
open veranda."
Here Harding broke in sharply. "You began by differing with me on the
possibility of finding complete happiness in life, and you have done
nothing but refute your own position from the very first. I admit there
are certain essentials toward the perfect life that you have not
mentioned, but I haven't the least doubt that you already possess them
or that they will come to you in time. I mean such things as riches or
love."
"Ah, love," Pinckney murmured, and the shadow of a cloud passed over his
divine brow.
"Surely," I said, "_you_ have not sought for what love has to give and
sought in vain?"
"No," he replied thoughtfully, "I have not failed to win love. But does
love bring with it untouched felicity; that is what I ask." He
hesitated. "I will not attempt to describe her. I really could not, you
know, except in a feeble way, by saying that even to other eyes than
mine she is a woman more wonderful than any of my sisters, if that is at
all possible. We loved at first sight. I had run down for a Sunday
afternoon to Garden Towers-by-the-Sea, a beautiful suburb which a number
of enterprising citizens had built up out of a sand waste to meet the
needs of the tired urban worker who, in his expensive and uncomfortable
city flat, finds himself longing for the life-giving breeze of the ocean
and the sight of a bit of God's open country. I was walking down the
main street of the village, wearing the loosely shaped and well-padded
garments that were then popular with young men, and carrying a set of
golf-sticks in my right hand and a bull terrier under my arm. Then I saw
her. She was sitting on the porch of the house which her father had
purchased for one-third of what its value became when the completion of
extensive rapid-transit improvements brought it within thirty-five
minutes of the New York City Hall. We loved and told each other. My
father, at first, insisted that before assuming the responsibilities of
marriage a man should be in receipt of a larger independent income than
I could boast of. But when Alice pleaded that she could be of help by
raising high-grade poultry for the urban market and organising
subscribers' clubs for the magazines, my father yielded. We are to be
married in two months, sir."
Harding spoke up impatiently. "Still I fail to see where your
unhappiness lies."
"Did I say unhappiness? That is not at all the word, sir. It is rather
a sense of awe that seizes us both at times, when we are together, as
though we were in the presence of unseen influences; as though, rather,
a world not our own were projecting itself into our well-defined lives.
I have shown you that Alice and I belong to a very real, very
matter-of-fact world. But there are times when we seem to be walking in
a land of strange sounds and sights and of shadows that fan our cheeks
as they flit by."
"Oh, well," I said, "when two fond young people are together the limits
of the visible world are apt to undergo undue extension."
"Let me be specific," said Pinckney. "We first became aware of this
state of things some weeks ago. We were walking one afternoon at
twilight through a stretch of woods not far from the shore when all at
once we were conscious that the familiar aspect of things had vanished.
The park had become a virgin forest. Two savage figures girded with
skins were panting in deadly combat. One had sunk his thumbs into the
eye-sockets of his opponent, who, in turn, had buried his teeth in the
flesh of the other's arm. A wild creature, almost hidden in the long
tangle of her hair, crouched there, the only spectator of the battle,
chanting in weird tones: 'Ai! Ai! the call of the wild summons you to
the death-grapple, oh Men, and me to sing who am Woman! Fight on, oh
Men; for it is Good! The Race, the Sons of your strong loins through the
dizzy whirl-dance of all time, are watching you. Match man-strength
against man-strength, breath-rhythm against breath-rhythm, and
knee-thrust against knee-thrust!' And then one of the combatants fell,
and the victor with a yell of triumph seized the woman by the hair and,
flinging her over his shoulder, staggered off, and we heard them call
to each other, 'Oh, my Male!' 'Oh, my Female!' Then we were in our own
grove by the beach and Alice whispered dreamily, 'Dearest, how tame are
our lives.'"
"I think I begin to understand," said I. "What happened was simply that
you had walked right out of the Advertising Supplement into the Fiction
pages; and that was Jack London. Had you other experiences of the kind?"
"On another occasion," he resumed, "we were walking on the beach and
again in a flash we had lost our footing in the world we knew. We were
in a magnificent ballroom. The chandeliers were Venetian, the orchestra
was Hungarian, the decorations were priceless orchids. Every woman wore
a tiara with chains of pearls. There were stout dowagers, callow youths,
gamblers, and blacklegs, and, among the many handsome men, one of about
five-and-thirty, with a wonderfully cut chin, bending sedulously over a
glorious, slender girl whose eyes attested the purity of her soul and
fidelity unto death. 'Dearest,' she was saying, 'what does it matter
that my father was the greatest Greek scholar in America and my mother
the most beautiful woman south of Mason and Dixon's line? What that I
have ten million dollars and can ride, shoot, swim, golf, tennis, dance,
sing, compose, cook, and interpret the Irish sagas? I love you though
you have only twelve thousand a year.' And all over the hall we caught
such phrases as, 'Yes, he dropped 25,000 on Non Sequitur at Bennings.'
'Oh, just down for three weeks at Palm Beach, you know.' 'Two millions
in three weeks, they say, mostly out of Copper and Q.C.B.' 'Yes, just
back from South Dakota on the best of terms.' Then the room vanished, we
were by the sea, and Alice said wistfully, 'How limited our lives are,
dear.'"
I said: "My theory holds good. That was Robert Chambers, I am sure. Go
on."
"I have told you enough," said Pinckney, "to show what I mean by the
shadow over our happiness. It will pass away, of course. In the meantime
I try to explain to Alice that these are phantoms we vision, of no
relation to the practical life that we must lead on our side of the
boundary line; I tell her that these things we see are not, and never
have been and never will be. Am I right, do you think, sir?"
"Quite right," I told him.
XXXI
THE COMPLETE COLLECTOR--IV
"My latest fad," said Cooper, "is this little library of the greatest
names in literature. It is by no means complete, but the nucleus is
there."
When Cooper speaks of his fads he does himself injustice. The world
might think them fads, or worse. But I, who know the man, know that his
fondness for the insignificant or the extraordinary is something more
than eccentricity, something more than a collector's appetite run amuck.
In reality, Cooper's soul goes out to the worthless objects he
frequently brings together into odd little museums. He loves them
precisely because they are insignificant. His whole life has been a
silent protest against the arrogance of success, of high merit, of rare
value. His heart is always on the side of the _Untermensch_, a name
given by the Germans, a learned people, to what we call the under-dog.
"My collection," said Cooper, "is as yet confined almost entirely to
authors in the English language. Here is my Shakespeare, a first
edition, I believe, though undated. The year, I presume, was about 1875.
The title, you see, is comprehensive: 'The Nature of Evaporating
Inflammations in Arteries After Ligature, Accupressure, and Torsion.'
Edward O. Shakespeare, who wrote the book, is not a debated personality.
His authorship of the book is unquestioned, and I assure you it is a
comfort to handle a text which you know left its author's mind exactly
as it now confronts you in the page.
"Next to the Shakespeare you find my Dickens volumes, two in number.
Albert Dickens published, in 1904, his 'Tests of Forest Trees.' It has
been praised in authoritative quarters as an excellent work of its kind.
An older book is 'Dickens's Continental A B C,' a railway guide which I
am fond of thinking of as the probable instrument of a vast amount of
human happiness. Imagine the happy meetings and reunions which this
chubby little book has made possible--husbands and wives, fathers and
children, lovers, who from the most distant corners of the earth have
sought and found each other by means of the Dickens railway time-tables.
To how many beds of illness has it brought a comforter, to how many
habitations of despair--but I must not preach. I call your attention to
the next volume, Byron. From the title, 'A Handbook of Lake Minnetonka,'
you will perceive that it is in the same class as my Dickens."
Cooper drew his handkerchief to flip the dust from a thin octavo in
sheepskin. "This Emerson," he said, "is the earliest in date of my
Americana. William Emerson's 'A Sermon on the Decease of the Rev. Peter
Thacher' appeared in 1802, at a time when people still thought it worth
while to utilise the death of a good man by putting him into a book for
the edification of the living. The adjoining two volumes are by Spencer.
Charles E. Spencer's 'Rue, Thyme, and Myrtle' is a sheaf of dainty
poetry which was very popular in Philadelphia during the second decade
after the Civil War. Do we still write poetry as single-heartedly as
people did? It may be. Perhaps we might find out by comparing this other
volume by Edwin Spencer, 'Cakes and Ale,' published in 1897, with the
Philadelphia Spencer of forty years ago.
"I must hurry you through the rest of my books," said Cooper. "Thomas
James Thackeray's 'The Soldier's Manual of Rifle-Firing' appeared in
1858, and undoubtedly had its day of usefulness. Thomas Kipling was
professor of divinity at Cambridge University toward the end of the
eighteenth century. In 1793 he edited the volume I now hold in my hand,
'Codex Bezæ,' one of the most precious of our extant MSS. of the New
Testament. I like to think of that fine old Cambridge professor's name
as bound up with patient, self-effacing scholarship and a highly
developed spirituality. But I digress. Cast your eye over this little
group of foreign writers. Here is Dumas,--Jean Baptiste Dumas,--whose
'Leçons sur la philosophic chimique,' delivered in 1835, were considered
worthy of being published thirty years later. The quaint volume that
comes next is by Du Maurier, who was French ambassador to the Hague
about 1620. The title, in the Dutch, is 'Propositie gedan door den
Heere van Maurier,' etc.--'Propositions Advanced by the Sieur du
Maurier,' one of the Regent's able and merry-hearted diplomats, I take
it. And here is Goethe; he would repay your reading. Rudolf Goethe's
'Mitteilungen ueber Obst- und Gartenbau' is one of the standard works on
horticulture.
"And finally," said Cooper with a flash of pride quite unusual in him,
"the treasure of my little library--Homer; again a first edition."
"Homer!" I cried. "An _editio princeps_!"
"Nearly one hundred and fifty years old," he said. "The Rev. Henry Homer
deserved well of his British countrymen when he gave to the world--it
was in 1767--his 'Inquiry Into the Measures of Preserving and Improving
the Publick Roads of this Kingdom.'"
Cooper sat down and eyed me doubtfully, as if awaiting an unfavourable
opinion. His face quite lit up when I hastened to assure him that his
library was one of the most impressive collections it had ever been my
good fortune to know.
"Very few collections," I told him, "bear the impress of a personality.
As a rule they are shopfuls of costly masterpieces such as any
multi-millionaire may have if he doesn't prefer horses or monkey
dinners. But how often does one find a treasure-house like yours,
Cooper, revealing an exquisitely discriminating taste in co-operation
with the bold originality of the true amateur?"
XXXII
CHOPIN'S SUCCESSORS
"It is his own composition, the final word in modern music," I had been
told. "He does not merely play the concerto; he lives it. Be sure to
watch his face." It was not a very impressive face as artists go. It was
rather heavy, rather sullen, and seemingly incapable of mirroring more
than the elementary passions. The great pianist entered the hall almost
unwillingly, and wound his way among the musicians with consummate
indifference to the roar of applause that greeted him. You might have
said that he was once more a little boy being scourged to his piano day
after day by parents who had been told that they had brought forth a
genius. He half-dropped into his seat, glanced wearily about him, then
let his eyes sink expressionless on the keyboard and his hands fall flat
on his knees, nerveless, heavy, apathetic.
The orchestra leader poised his baton and the two-score strings under
his command swung into a noble andante. The artist at the piano slowly
raised his eyes to a level with the top of his instrument, his lips just
parted as if in halting wonder at something he alone in the great hall
could see, the hands made as if to lift themselves from his knees. "Look
at his face," my neighbour said. I looked and saw that the dull mask was
slightly changing, that some emotion at last was rising to the surface
of that stolid countenance, striking its cloudy aspect with the first
anticipations of breaking light. Would that cloud dissolve? Would the
light completely break and irradiate player, piano, and audience, all
equally keyed up to the delayed climax? Would those massive hands rise
slowly, slowly, and hanging aloft an instant crash down in a rage of
harmony upon keyboard and auditors' hearts? No. The clouds once more
swept over that massive face. The player moistened his lips with his
tongue, half-turned on his chair, and slowly swept the hall with an
indifferent, almost a disdainful eye. Then he sank into his former
lassitude. His hands dropped to his side without striking the keys.
Evidently the time had not come. The violins in the orchestra sang on.