For days two men had been together, tramping, driving, boating, eating,
sleeping, talking. And when the time for separation came, one said to
the other: "Will you please give a message to your wife? Tell her for
me, if you will, that she has made her husband into a real comrade."
That man would have been at a loss to tell what are the elements that go
to the making up of a good comrade. In fact, he intimated as much on the
last day of the excursion. "You can no more tell the things that go to
make up a real comrade than you can explain the things that make a
landscape beautiful; you can only see and rejoice."
Just so, it is possible to see instances of good comradeship and
rejoice.
In order that there may be real comradeship between two individuals it
is not at all necessary that they shall belong to the same station in
life. One of those to whom John Muir, the great naturalist, proved
himself a true comrade was a guide who many times went with him into the
fastnesses of the high Sierras of California. "It was great to hear him
talk," the guide has said. "Often we sat together like two men who had
always known each other. It wasn't always necessary to talk; often there
would be no word said for half an hour. But we understood each other in
the silence."
Nor is it essential that people shall be much together before they can
be real comrades. Theodore Roosevelt and Joel Chandler Harris knew one
another by reputation only until the red letter day when Uncle Remus
entered the door of the White House, in response to an urgent letter of
invitation in which the President wrote: "Presidents may come and
presidents may go, but Uncle Remus stays put. Georgia has done a great
many things for the Union, but she has never done more than when she
gave Joel Chandler Harris to American literature." When the two
animal-lovers finally came together there was real comradeship. That the
reporters understood this was evident from the wire one of them sent to
his paper: "Midnight--Mr. Harris has not returned to his hotel. The
White House is ablaze with light. It is said that Mr. Harris is telling
the story of Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby." But the Georgian's own
colloquial account of the memorable session with his comrade at
Washington was more explicit:
"There are things about the White House that'll astonish you ef ever you
git there while Teddy is on hand. It's a home; it'll come over you like
a sweet dream the minnit you git in the door.... It's a kind of feelin'
that you kin have in your own house, if you've lived right, but it's the
rarest thing in the world that you kin find it in anybody else's
house.... We mostly talked of little children an' all the pranks they're
up to from mornin' till night, an' how they draw old folks into all
sorts of traps, and make 'em play tricks on themselves. That's the
kinder talk I like, an' I could set up long past my bedtime an' listen
to it. Jest at the right time, the President would chip in wi' some of
his adventures wi' the children.... I felt just like I had been on a
visit to some old friend that I hadn't seen in years."
When Robert Louis Stevenson and Edward Livingston Trudeau spent days
together at Dr. Trudeau's Adirondack sanitarium--the one as patient, the
other as physician--they proved that true comradeship is possible even
when men's tastes are most unlike. It was possible because they knew how
to ignore differences and to find common ground in the worth-while
things. "My life interests were bound up in the study of facts, and in
the laboratory I bowed duly to the majesty of fact, wherever it might
lead," Dr. Trudeau wrote. "Mr. Stevenson's view was to ignore or avoid
as much as possible unpleasant facts, and live in a beautiful,
extraneous and ideal world of fancy. I got him one day into the
laboratory, from which he escaped at the first opportunity.... On the
other hand, I knew well I could not discuss intelligently with him the
things he lived among and the masterly work he produced, because I was
incompetent to appreciate to the full the wonderful situations his
brilliant mind evolved and the high literary merit of the work in which
he described the flights of his great genius."
Yet these two men were great companions, for in spite of differences as
to details, their hopes and ambitions and ideals all pointed to the best
things in life. After the author's departure, he sent to the doctor a
splendidly bound set of his works, first writing in each volume a
whimsical bit of rhyme, composed for the occasion.
Though all of these men were real comrades, there is a higher
manifestation of comradeship than this. This was shown in the relation
of Daniel Coit Gilman, later President of Johns Hopkins University, when
he wrote to a fellow student of the deepest things in his life:
"I don't wish merely to thank you in a general way for writing as you
did an expression of sympathy, but more especially to respond to the
sentiments on Christian acquaintance which you there bring out. I agree
with you most fully and only regret that I did not know at an earlier
time upon our journey what were your feelings upon a few such topics. I
tell you, Brace, that I hate cant and all that sort of thing as much as
you or anyone else can do. It is not with everyone that I would enjoy a
talk upon religious subjects. I hardly ever wrote a letter on them to
those I know best. But when anyone believes in an inner life of faith
and joy, and is willing to talk about it in an earnest, everyday style
and tone, I do enjoy it most exceedingly."
Theodore Storrs Lee cultivated the relation of a comrade with his fellow
students that he might talk to them, without cant, on the deepest things
of life. His biographer says: "Many a time did he seek out men in lonely
rooms, bewildered or weakened by the college struggles. Many a quiet
talk did he have as he and his selected companion trod his favorite
walk. No one else in college had so many intimate talks with so many
men.... On one occasion, when he was urging a friend to give his life to
Christian service, he seemed to be unsuccessful--until, on leaving the
man at the close of the walk, he made a genial, large-minded remark that
opened the way to the heart of his friend." ... "It was only natural
that I should try to meet him half-way," the friend said later, in
explanation of his own changed attitude. He had been won by real
comradeliness. "It was this devotion to the men in college that led him
into the holy of holies of many a man's heart," wrote a friend, "causing
many of us to feel in a very real way the sentiment expressed by Mrs.
Browning:
"The face of all the world is changed, I think
Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul."