In January, 1915, Carl took up his teaching again in real earnest,
commuting to Alamo every night. I would have the boys in bed and the
little supper all ready by the fire; then I would prowl down the road
with my electric torch, to meet him coming home; he would signal in the
distance with his torch, and I with mine. Then the walk back together,
sometimes ankle-deep in mud; then supper, making the toast over the
coals, and an evening absolutely to ourselves. And never in all our
lives did we ask for more joy than that.
That spring we began building our very own home in Berkeley. The months
in Alamo had made us feel that we could never bear to be in the centre
of things again, nor, for that matter, could we afford a lot in the
centre of things; so we bought high up on the Berkeley hills, where we
could realize as much privacy as was possible, and yet where our friends
could reach us--if they could stand the climb. The love of a nest we
built! We were longer in that house than anywhere else: two years almost
to the day--two years of such happiness as no other home has ever seen.
There, around the redwood table in the living-room, by the window
overlooking the Golden Gate, we had the suppers that meant much joy to
us and I hope to the friends we gathered around us. There, on the
porches overhanging the very Canyon itself we had our Sunday
tea-parties. (Each time Carl would plead, "I don't have to wear a stiff
collar, do I?" and he knew that I would answer, "You wear anything you
want," which usually meant a blue soft shirt.)
We had a little swimming-tank in back, for the boys.
And then, most wonderful of all, came the day when the June-Bug was
born, the daughter who was to be the very light of her adoring father's
eyes. (Her real name is Alice Lee.) "Mother, there never really _was_
such a baby, _was_ there?" he would ask ten times a day. She was not
born up on the hill; but in ten days we were back from the hospital and
out day and night through that glorious July, on some one of the porches
overlooking the bay and the hills. And we added our adored Nurse Balch
as a friend of the family forever.
I always think of Nurse Balch as the person who more than any other,
perhaps, understood to some degree just what happiness filled our lives
day in and day out. No one assumes anything before a trained nurse--they
are around too constantly for that. They see the misery in homes, they
see what joy there is. And Nurse Balch saw, because she was around
practically all the time for six weeks, that there was nothing but joy
every minute of the day in our home. I do not know how I can make people
understand, who are used to just ordinary happiness, what sort of a life
Carl and I led. It was not just that we got along. It was an active, not
a passive state. There was never a home-coming, say at lunch-time, that
did not seem an event--when our curve of happiness abruptly rose. Meals
were joyous occasions always; perhaps too scant attention paid to the
manners of the young, but much gurglings, and "Tell some more, daddy,"
and always detailed accounts of every little happening during the last
few hours of separation.
Then there was ever the difficulty of good-byes, though it meant only
for a few hours, until supper. And at supper-time he would come up the
front stairs, I waiting for him at the top, perhaps limping. That was
his little joke--we had many little family jokes. Limping meant that I
was to look in every pocket until I unearthed a bag of peanut candy.
Usually he was laden with bundles--provisions, shoes from the cobbler, a
tennis-racket restrung, and an armful of books. After greetings, always
the question, "How's my June-Bug?" and a family procession upstairs to
peer over a crib at a fat gurgler. And "Mother, there never really _was_
such a baby, _was_ there?" No, nor such a father.
It was that first summer back in Berkeley, the year before the June-Bug
was born, when Carl was teaching in Summer School, that we had our
definite enthusiasm over labor-psychology aroused. Will Ogburn, who was
also teaching at Summer School that year, and whose lectures I attended,
introduced us to Hart's "Psychology of Insanity," several books by
Freud, McDougall's "Social Psychology," etc. I remember Carl's seminar
the following spring--his last seminar at the University of California.
He had started with nine seminar students three years before; now there
were thirty-three. They were all such a superior picked lot, some
seniors, mostly graduates, that he felt there was no one he could ask to
stay out. I visited it all the term, and I am sure that nowhere else on
the campus could quite such heated and excited discussions have been
heard--Carl simply sitting at the head of the table, directing here,
leading there.
The general subject was Labor-Problems. The students had to read one
book a week--such books as Hart's "Psychology of Insanity," Keller's
"Societal Evolution," Holt's "Freudian Wish," McDougall's "Social
Psychology,"--two weeks to that,--Lippmann's "Preface to Politics,"
Veblen's "Instinct of Workmanship," Wallas's "Great Society,"
Thorndike's "Educational Psychology," Hoxie's "Scientific Management,"
Ware's "The Worker and his Country," G.H. Parker's "Biology and Social
Problems," and so forth--and ending, as a concession to the idealists,
with Royce's "Philosophy of Loyalty."
One of the graduate students of the seminar wrote me: "For three years I
sat in his seminar on Labor-Problems, and had we both been there ten
years longer, each season would have found me in his class. His
influence on my intellectual life was by far the most stimulating and
helpful of all the men I have known. . . . But his spirit and influence
will live on in the lives of those who sat at his feet and learned."
The seminar was too large, really, for intimate discussion, so after a
few weeks several of the boys asked Carl if they could have a little
sub-seminar. It was a very rushed time for him, but he said that, if
they would arrange all the details, he would save them Tuesday evenings.
So every Tuesday night about a dozen boys climbed our hill to rediscuss
the subject of the seminar of that afternoon--and everything else under
the heavens and beyond. I laid out ham sandwiches, or sausages, or some
edible dear to the male heart, and coffee to be warmed, and about
midnight could be heard the sounds of banqueting from the kitchen. Three
students told me on graduation that those Tuesday nights at our house
had meant more intellectual stimulus than anything that ever came into
their lives.
One of these boys wrote to me after Carl's death:--
"When I heard that Doc had gone, one of the finest and cleanest men I
have ever had the privilege of associating with, I seemed to have
stopped thinking. It didn't seem possible to me, and I can remember very
clearly of thinking what a rotten world this is when we have to live and
lose a man like Doc. I have talked to two men who were associated with
him in somewhat the same manner as I was, and we simply looked at one
another after the first sentences, and then I guess the thoughts of a
man who had made so much of an impression on our minds drove coherent
speech away. . . . I have had the opportunity since leaving college of
experiencing something real besides college life and I can't remember
during all that period of not having wondered how Dr. Parker would
handle this or that situation. He was simply immense to me at all times,
and if love of a man-to-man kind does exist, then I truthfully can say
that I had that love for him."
Of the letters received from students of those years I should like to
quote a passage here and there.
An aviator in France writes: "There was no man like him in my college
life. Believe me, he has been a figure in all we do over here,--we who
knew him,--and a reason for our doing, too. His loss is so great to all
of us! . . . He was so fine he will always push us on to finding the truth
about things. That was his great spark, wasn't it?"
From a second lieutenant in France: "I loved Carl. He was far more to me
than just a friend--he was father, brother, and friend all in one. He
influenced, as you know, everything I have done since I knew him--for it
was his enthusiasm which has been the force which determined the
direction of my work. And the bottom seemed to have fallen out of my
whole scheme of things when the word just came to me."
From one of the young officers at Camp Lewis: "When E---- told me about
Carl's illness last Wednesday, I resolved to go and see him the coming
week-end. I carried out my resolution, only to find that I could see
neither him nor you. [This was the day before Carl's death.] It was a
great disappointment to me, so I left some flowers and went away. . . . I
simply could not leave Seattle without seeing Carl once more, so I made
up my mind to go out to the undertaker's. The friends I was with
discouraged the idea, but it was too strong within me. There was a void
within me which could only be filled by seeing my friend once more. I
went out there and stood by his side for quite a while. I recalled the
happy days spent with him on the campus. I thought of his kindliness,
his loyalty, his devotion. Carl Parker shall always occupy a place in
the recesses of my memory as a true example of nobility. It was hard for
me to leave, but I felt much better."
From one of his women students: "Always from the first day when I knew
him he seemed to give me a joy of life and an inspiration to work which
no other person or thing has ever given me. And it is a joy and an
inspiration I shall always keep. I seldom come to a stumbling-block in
my work that I don't stop to wonder what Carl Parker would do were he
solving that problem."
Another letter I have chosen to quote from was written by a former
student now in Paris:--
"We could not do without him. He meant too much to us. . . . I come now as
a young friend to put myself by your side a moment and to try to share a
great sorrow which is mine almost as much as it is yours. For I am sure
that, after you, there were few indeed who loved Carl as much as I.
"Oh, I am remembering a hundred things!--the first day I found you both
in the little house on Hearst Avenue--the dinners we used to have . . .
the times I used to come on Sunday morning to find you both, and the
youngsters--the day just before I graduated when mother and I had lunch
at your house . . . and, finally, that day I left you, and you said, both
of you, 'Don't come back without seeing some of the cities of Europe.'
I'd have missed some of the cities to have come back and found you both.
"Some of him we can't keep. The quaint old gray twinkle--the quiet,
half-impudent, wholly confident poise with which he defied all
comers--that inexhaustible and incorrigible fund of humor--those we
lose. No use to whine--we lose it; write it off, gulp, go on.
"But other things we keep, none the less. The stimulus and impetus and
inspiration are not lost, and shall not be. No one has counted the
youngsters he has hauled, by the scruff of the neck as often as not, out
of a slough of middle-class mediocrity, and sent careering off into some
welter or current of ideas and conjecture. Carl didn't know where they
would end, and no more do any of the rest of us. He knew he loathed
stagnation. And he stirred things and stirred people. And the end of the
stirring is far from being yet known or realized."
I like, too, a story one of the Regents told me. He ran into a student
from his home town and asked how his work at the University was going.
The boy looked at him eagerly and said, "Mr. M----, I've been born
again! ["Born again"--those were his very words.] I entered college
thinking of it as a preparation for making more money when I got out.
I've come across a man named Parker in the faculty and am taking
everything he gives. Now I know I'd be selling out my life to make money
the goal. I know now, too, that whatever money I do make can never be at
the expense of the happiness and welfare of any other human being."