I
The plain man on a plain day wakes up, slowly or quickly according to
his temperament, and greets the day in a mental posture which might be
thus expressed in words:
"Oh, Lord! Another day! What a grind!"
If you ask me whom I mean by the plain man, my reply is that I mean
almost every man. I mean you. I certainly mean me. I mean the rich and
the poor, the successful and the unsuccessful, the idle and the
diligent, the luxurious and the austere. For, what with the limits of
digestion, the practical impossibility of wearing two neckties at
once, the insecurity of investments, the responsibilities of wealth
and of success, the exhaustingness of the search for pleasure, and the
cheapness of travel--the real differences between one sort of plain
man and another are slight in these times. (And indeed they always
were slight.)
The plain man has a lot to do before he may have his breakfast--and he
must do it. The tyrannic routine begins instantly he is out of bed. To
lave limbs, to shave the jaw, to select clothes and assume them--these
things are naught. He must exercise his muscles--all his muscles
equally and scientifically--with the aid of a text-book and of
diagrams on a large card; which card he often hides if he is expecting
visitors in his chamber, for he will not always confess to these
exercises; he would have you believe that he alone, in a world of
simpletons, is above the faddism of the hour; he is as ashamed of
these exercises as of a good resolution, and when his wife happens to
burst in on them he will pretend to be doing some common act, such as
walking across the room or examining a mole in the small of his back.
And yet he will not abandon them. They have an empire over him. To
drop them would be to be craven, inefficient. The text-book asserts
that they will form one of the pleasantest parts of the day, and that
he will learn to look forward to them. He soon learns to look forward
to them, but not with glee. He is relieved and proud when they are
over for the day.
He would enjoy his breakfast, thanks to the strenuous imitation of
diagrams, were it not that, in addition to being generally in a hurry,
he is preoccupied. He is preoccupied by the sense of doom, by the
sense that he has set out on the appointed path and dare not stray
from it. The train or the tram-car or the automobile (same thing) is
waiting for him, irrevocable, undeniable, inevitable. He wrenches
himself away. He goes forth to his fate, as to the dentist. And just
as he would enjoy his breakfast in the home, so he would enjoy his
newspaper and cigarette in the vehicle, were it not for that
ever-present sense of doom. The idea of business grips him. It matters
not what the business is. Business is everything, and everything is
business. He reaches his office--whatever his office is. He is in his
office. He must plunge--he plunges. The day has genuinely begun now.
The appointed path stretches straight in front of him, for five, six,
seven, eight hours.
Oh! but he chose his vocation. He likes it. It satisfies his
instincts. It is his life. (So you say.) Well, does he like it? Does
it satisfy his instincts? Is it his life? If truly the answer is
affirmative, he is at any rate not conscious of the fact. He is aware
of no ecstasy. What is the use of being happy unless he knows he is
happy? Some men know that they are happy in the hours of business, but
they are few. The majority are not, and the bulk of the majority do
not even pretend to be. The whole attitude of the average plain man to
business implies that business is a nuisance, scarcely mitigated. With
what secret satisfaction he anticipates that visit to the barber's in
the middle of the morning! With what gusto he hails the arrival of an
unexpected interrupting friend! With what easement he decides that he
may lawfully put off some task till the morrow! Let him hear a band or
a fire-engine in the street, and he will go to the window with the
eagerness of a child or of a girl-clerk. If he were working at golf
the bands of all the regiments of Hohenzollern would not make him turn
his head, nor the multitudinous blazing of fireproof skyscrapers. No!
Let us be honest. Business constitutes the steepest, roughest league
of the appointed path. Were it otherwise, business would not be
universally regarded as a means to an end.
Moreover, when the plain man gets home again, does his wife's face say
to him: "I know that your real life is now over for the day, and I
regret for your sake that you have to return here. I know that the
powerful interest of your life is gone. But I am glad that you have
had five, six, seven, or eight hours of passionate pleasure"? Not a
bit! His wife's face says to him: "I commiserate with you on all that
you have been through. It is a great shame that you should be
compelled to toil thus painfully. But I will try to make it up to you.
I will soothe you. I will humour you. Forget anxiety and fatigue in my
smiles." She does not fetch his comfortable slippers for him, partly
because, in this century, wives do not do such things, and partly
because comfortable slippers are no longer worn. But she does the
equivalent--whatever the equivalent may happen to be in that
particular household. And he expects the commiseration and the solace
in her face. He would be very hurt did he not find it there.
And even yet he is not relaxed. Even yet the appointed path stretches
inexorably in front, and he cannot wander. For now he feels the cogs
and cranks of the highly complex domestic machine. At breakfast he
declined to hear them; they were shut off from him; he was too busy to
be bothered with them. At evening he must be bothered with them. Was
it not he who created the machine? He discovers, often to his
astonishment, that his wife has an existence of her own, full of
factors foreign to him, and he has to project himself, not only into
his wife's existence, but into the existences of other minor
personages. His daughter, for example, will persist in growing up. Not
for a single day will she pause. He arrives one night and perceives
that she is a woman and that he must treat her as a woman. He had not
bargained for this. Peace, ease, relaxation in a home vibrating to the
whir of such astounding phenomena? Impossible dream! These phenomena
were originally meant by him to be the ornamentation of his career,
but they are threatening to be the sole reason of his career. If his
wife lives for him, it is certain that he lives just as much for his
wife; and as for his daughter, while she emphatically does not live
for him, he is bound to admit that he has just got to live for
her--and she knows it!
To gain money was exhausting; to spend it is precisely as exhausting.
He cannot quit the appointed path nor lift the doom. Dinner is
finished ere he has begun to recover from the varied shock of home.
Then his daughter may negligently throw him a few moments of charming
cajolery. He may gossip in simple idleness with his wife. He may
gambol like any infant with the dog. A yawn. The shadow of the next
day is upon him. He must not stay up too late, lest the vigour
demanded by the next day should be impaired. Besides, he does not want
to stay up. Naught is quite interesting enough to keep him up. And
bed, too, is part of the appointed, unescapable path. To bed he goes,
carrying ten million preoccupations. And of his state of mind the
kindest that can be said is that he is philosophic enough to hope for
the best.
And after the night he wakes up, slowly or quickly according to his
temperament, and greets the day with:
"Oh, Lord! Another day! What a grind!"