I held it truth with him who sings
To one clear harp of divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
Indeed, I must have been a very remarkable child, how remarkable I had
not hitherto suspected! Evidently, too, I displayed an early tendency
to melancholia, for I find I was admonished in the following words,
with their incontestable statement of fact:
Be still, sad heart, and cease repining,
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining.
Whether my sadness was caused by too much reflection on the fact that
life is real, life is earnest, and the grave is not its goal, or on
the fact that Bill Carter's air-gun cost more than mine, I cannot now
recall. Either cause would have been sufficient. At any rate I
apparently braced up and smiled once more, for the next page is blank.
That means I went fishing!
Poor kiddies! Shall we grown-ups never learn that their minds don't
work as ours do, and what may be poetry for some of us is cod-liver
oil for them? Why must we be forever nagging them at home with "Don't
do this" and "Don't do that," and forever preaching at them in school
with ponderous prose platitudes cut up into lengths? How much wiser
than we they are, who know that life is free and pleasant and full of
melody and beautiful things, and dreams more real than reality, and
reality born of the dream! Yet we try our best to convince them that
they are wrong. We see to it that Longfellow lies about them in their
infancy.
But perhaps all this is changed since my day, and the nightmare this
battered memory-gem book recalls to my mind is no longer a load on the
children of the present. I profoundly hope so. Can it be that the
present revival of poetry is due to the passing of the memory-gem
book? At least, no teacher would have the courage to set her class the
task of copying Amy Lowell or _The Spoon River Anthology_!
[Illustration]
_The Bad Manners of Polite People_
All my life I have suffered from politeness--not my own, but the
politeness of other people. So far as I know, nobody has ever accused
me of being polite. I suspect that I must be, however, for hitherto I
have borne the politeness of other people without a protest. But I
must protest now, if only to vindicate my lack of politeness; in other
words, to prove my good manners.
For what I object to in polite people is their bad manners. It is this
I have suffered from, as, I suspect, have many thousands of my
fellows, to whom life is real and earnest, and gabble not its goal. As
a rule, the politer the person the worse are his (or more often,
perhaps, her) manners. The limit is reached when the amateur is sunk
entirely in the professional, and that curious product of "Society" is
developed, the professional hostess. I cannot better illustrate my
theme than with a description of the professional hostess.
I call her professional because all the joy of entertaining for its
own sake has gone out of her work. She does not invite people to her
parties because she is glad to see them, because she is interested in
them, or wishes to give them pleasure. She invites them because to
entertain them is a part of her day's work--whether her work be to get
into a certain social stronghold, to keep that stronghold against
assault, or merely to kill time, her arch-enemy. And, in performing
this task of hers, she has developed a technique of politeness which
is to the amateur's technique what the professional golf-player's
style is to the form of the mere bumblepuppy. Her politeness is
astonishingly brilliant, flexible, resourceful. It is aspired to by
the lowly and aped on the stage. And yet her manners are the worst in
the world.
Let us suppose her about to give a dinner. She is trimmed down to the
fashionable slenderness (perhaps), and brilliant with jewels. Cannel
coal snaps pleasantly in the drawing-room grate, and the lights are
gratefully shaded. A guest or two arrive, whom she greets with affable
handshake. The man moves over to the fire, warming his back; his wife
talks to the hostess rapidly, in the way women have when they seem to
think it better to say anything than not to speak at all. But the
hostess is quite at her ease. Her politeness is triumphant. Presently
she turns to the man, who is, perhaps, an author.
"Your new book," she begins, as if she had been waiting all day to ask
that question, "--what is it going to be about? I'm tremendously eager
to know."
Already the genial fire has warmed the noted author after his chilling
ride in a street car to this mansion of luxury. The kindly question
positively expands him. He launches eagerly into his answer.
"You see," he begins, "the great modern question is--"
But suddenly he is aware that he has no listener. His hostess has gone
toward the door with outstretched hand, and his own wife is gazing at
the gowns of the women entering. The author turns and prods the grate
with his toe. Perhaps, if he is new at being "entertained," he fancies
that his hostess will presently return to hear his answer. He holds it
in readiness. Poor man!
The newcomers are brought into the circle. When introductions are
necessary, they are made with studied informality. And then the author
hears the hostess say to a big, energetic woman, who is among the
arrivals, "Oh, dear Miss Jones, I have heard so much about your
perfectly splendid work down there among the horrid poor! I did _so_
want to hear you talk about it at the Colonial Club, this afternoon,
but I simply _couldn't_ get there. Won't you tell me just a bit of
what you said?"
The tone of entreaty betrays the utmost interest. The big, energetic
woman smiles, and begins, "Well," she says, "I was just trying to get
the members interested in our new health-tenement for consumptives.
You see, we need--"
Then she, too, becomes aware that her audience has departed toward the
door. She turns about to see if anybody else was listening, but nobody
was. The other women are engaged in inspecting the newcomers. The men
are looking uncomfortable, or chatting with one another. Only the
author's sympathetic gaze meets hers.
The guests have all gathered by now, but dinner is not yet announced.
The hostess moves easily among them, stopping by each with a winning
smile, to ask some carefully chosen personal question. Each as
politely replies, only to find himself talking to the empty air.
There is soon a confused babble of voices, a whir of windy words--and
no one hears.
The author watches her, still curious to know whether she will
remember that she has not yet heard his answer. But she has quite
forgotten. She moves, the incarnate spirit of politeness, about the
room, rousing trains of eager ideas in her guests, and as speedily
leaving them to run down a side-track into a bumper.
She has no real interest in any of them, probably she has no real
understanding of them. She thinks her manners are above reproach,
that she is treating her guests in the most exemplary fashion. In
reality, nothing could be worse than her manners, and she is treating
her guests most shabbily. By being polite, she ends by being rude. For
nothing is so rude in this world as to ask a man a question about some
subject close to his heart when you have no intention of listening to
his answer, nor any interest in it. The hostess thinks to feed his
vanity; she ends by wounding it. She thinks to make her guests
comfortable; she ends by making them uncomfortable.
The best manners I have ever seen were possessed by the most impolite
man I have ever known. As a result, nobody that he ever invited to his
house felt uncomfortable there. He was interested in all kinds and
conditions of people, all kinds and conditions of activities. If he
asked you a question, it was because he wanted to hear your answer. He
paid you the compliment of assuming that it was worth listening to,
and other people waited till you were through. At his table you
weren't supposed to confine your talk to the sweet young thing on your
left, who was more interested in the gay young blade on _her_ left,
nor to the sedate, elderly female person on your right, who was more
interested in the bishop on _her_ right. Talk was largely for the
whole table; and if you hadn't some definite contribution to make, you
were usually glad to keep still.
I say nobody ever felt uncomfortable in his house. That is not quite
true. Occasionally the person who expressed an opinion on a subject he
knew nothing about must have felt uncomfortable. For, though he was
listened to gravely while speaking, conversation was at once resumed
as if nothing whatever had been said.
Nothing could have been more conventionally impolite. And yet the act
was so utterly free from sham that it seemed the only decorous and
decent thing to do. Thus was the dignity of conversation maintained;
thus was each man and woman made to feel his or her worth along
personal lines of endeavor; thus was a true democratic spirit
preserved, which is the real essence of good manners. True democracy
consists in bringing each man out, not in reducing him to a common
level of inanity. Good manners consist in showing him respect for what
is worthy of respect in him, treating him as a rational human being,
not as a mere social unit who deposits his hard-won opinions, along
with his hat and stick, in the care of the butler when he enters the
house.
That is why men have, as a rule, better manners than women, though
they are far less polite. A man respects the judgment of a specialist
on any given subject, and he is rather intolerant of the snap
judgments of the dabbler or the dilettante. He listens, if forced to,
with unconcealed impatience to the babbling of his pretty neighbor at
table about art, perhaps, or engineering, or some other topic
concerning which her ignorance is as profound as her cocksureness is
lofty. But, after all, to be polite to her is to insult a whole race
of engineers or artists! Put one of them beside him, and see how
readily he will listen.
Politeness too often consists of shamming. Good manners are the
absence of sham. It is not the gentleman's place, certainly, to insult
the lady. Good manners seldom go quite so far as that. But even
politeness cannot expect him to endure the torture for more than a
limited time, especially if the topic chosen chances to be his own
specialty. It is his place to lead the conversation, as gently as
possible, back upon more neutral ground, where he may find what
consolation he can in sprightly personalities--while praying for the
coffee.
I enjoy the privilege of acquaintance with a very charming person, who
has never paid a compliment to her sex except by being a woman. Some
of her sex say that she is a delightful hostess and very beautiful.
Others say that she is atrociously rude, and they "can't see what it
is people admire in her." Most men adore her. She herself says that
the only people she cares to entertain are those who have earned their
own living. Her reasons are, I believe, interesting and significant.
She earns her own living, I may state, and a very considerable one,
for she is famous and highly successful in her branch of artistic
endeavor. Socially, one may say of her, in that atrocious phrase which
implies a queer jumble of values, that she is "very much in demand."
But, though a man in livery opens her front door, the street-cars
bring quite as many guests to her house as do expensively purring
motor-cars.
"For," as she puts it, "I can stand the talk of the average woman in
'Society' just about fifteen minutes, and then I have to scream. I
don't know how the fiction arose that American women of the leisure
classes are so superior mentally to the women of other nations. The
fact is, they are not. The fact is, that they are so superficial that
a person who has really _done_ something--I don't mean who has played
at it, but who has really under the spur of necessity got to the
bottom of some one subject--can hardly endure their conversation. They
chatter, chatter, chatter, about everything under heaven, and if you
happen to know anything about any of the subjects, it is simply
torture to listen.
"Life is too short, and too interesting, and the world too full of
real people, to bother with the folks who don't know their business.
The man or woman who has had to be self-supporting has got to the
bottom of some branch of activity, however small, and learned
humility. To learn that mastery of even a tiny subject requires
effort and concentration and skill, is to learn respect for other
subjects; and it is to learn, too, how to listen.
"Nobody can listen who isn't truly interested, and who hasn't the
grasp of mind to appreciate the complexities of a craft not his own,
who doesn't know enough to know when he doesn't know anything. If I'm
going to talk my shop, I want to talk it with folks who've been in it.
If I'm going to hear some other shop discussed, it must be by someone
who is familiar with that, not by directoired dabblers who, you feel
after three minutes have elapsed, don't know a thing about the
subject. If politeness consists in letting them suppose that I take
any stock in what they say, then I plead guilty to being a boor."
Probably no one who has experienced the awful ordeal of listening to
some female chatter about his chosen subject, or who has undergone the
even worse ordeal of dropping great thoughts of his own into the deep,
deep pools of her incomprehension, will fail of sympathy with my
friend.
"But I tire you," said an incessant gabbler one day to the great Duc
de Broglie.
"No, no," replied the duke; "I wasn't listening."
[Illustration]
_On Giving up Golf Forever_
Last season I gave up golf forever two days before our course opened
in May, on the evenings of June 17th and July 4th, at noon on July
27th, on the evenings of August 2nd, 9th, 15th, and 21st, at 11:15
A.M. on Labor Day, again Labor Day evening, on September 19th, 23rd,
30th, and October 3rd, 11th and 18th. I am writing this in
mid-January, when the drifts are piled five feet deep over our
bunkers, and the water-carries are frozen solid. I have played my last
game of golf. The coming season I shall devote to the intensive
cultivation of my garden. The links have no allure for me.
"And if," says my wife, "I could believe that, I should be happier
than ever before in the long years of my golf widowhood."
"But you can," I answer, with grieved surprise.
She looks at me, with that superior and tolerant smile women know so
well how to assume.
"You men are all such children!" is her, it seems to me, somewhat
irrelevant retort.
I fell to musing on my friend, the noted war correspondent (now a
Major in the United States Army in France). All things considered, he
was the most consistent, or perhaps I should say persistent, quitter
the game of golf has ever known. He used to quit forever on an average
of three times a week, and I have known him to abandon the game twice
during a round, which is something of a record. He played every summer
on our beautiful Berkshire course, which crosses and recrosses the
winding Housatonic, not to mention sundry swamps, and boasts the most
luxuriant fairway, and by the same token the rankest rough, in all
America. It is the course Owen Johnson once immortalized in his story,
_Even Threes_.
How well I remember that peaceful, happy May, back in 1914! Our course
had emerged from its annual spring flood, newly top-dressed with rich
river silt, and a few warm days brought the turf through the scars and
made the whole glorious expanse of fairway, winding through the silver
willows, a velvet carpet. I had given my orders to the greens-keepers,
and gone to New York for a day or two--reluctantly, of course--and
there met the famous war correspondent, in those peaceful times out of
a regular job and turned novelist _pro tem_. He had just relieved
himself of his final chapter, and readily yielded to my persuasions to
return with me to the velvet field and the whistling drive. We
"entrained," as he would say in one of his military dispatches.
As far as the Massachusetts-Connecticut state-line he talked of
Mexican revolutions, Theodore Roosevelt, Japanese art, _vers libre_,
mushrooms, and such other topics as were of interest in the spring of
1914. But at the state-line, chancing a look out of the window, he saw
the doming billow of blue mountains which marks the entrance to our
Berkshire intervales, and a strange gleam came into his eyes. His
square jaws set. His whole countenance was transformed. Turning back
to me, he half hissed, grimly,--
"I am _not_ going to press this season!"