As you cross the Atlantic by the Southern route the "sighting of
the Azores" is one incident of your voyage. Just before daybreak
the ship is shaking and the passengers roused by the deep tones
of the big steam whistle.
One by one shivering forms straggle up from below, like reluctant
spirits answering a premature last call. Bare feet in slippers,
and shivering forms with overcoats over nightgowns, gradually
line the rails.
On the left there appears, apparently, a heavy, dark bank of
clouds:
"The Azores!" shouts down from the bridge your yellow-whiskered
captain, looking as cheerful and warm as though it were noon.
You watch, shiver and blink as the light grows stronger behind
the pinkish clouds in the east. The dark cloud settles into
solid land. You see it clearly. Sharply outlined against the
sky stands, forty miles long, a mammoth saw with huge teeth,
irregular, sharp. The power of old-time volcanoes made all of
that land, and those sharp saw-teeth, pointing toward the sky,
are the destroyers of long ago, cold and dead now, but telling
ominously of the power that lies hidden below.
Between you and the brightening sunrise, suspended in the "crow's
nest," half way up the mast, stands the sailor who watches the
sea for you through the night. He calls out, and ahead to the
left you see a small boat filled with human beings that seem
scarcely as big as your finger. Your ship could plough through
miles of such small boats-- but out there in the ocean, just as
well as inside the biggest court-house, LAW rules, and the big
ship must turn out for the small fishing boat.
You realize the power and beauty of law, as our governor and
sustainer. You see that laws of little men reach out two
thousand miles into the sea. You think of the laws of the
universe that stretch across the immeasurable distances of time
and space, protecting ALL, and insuring ultimate fulfilment
of the destinies of all the worlds.
As those fishermen of the Azores work safely, under full
protection, in their little lost corner of the great ocean, so
we, in our little world, our little insignificant corner of
space, work out our tiny problems safely under the splendid
protection of Divine Law and wisdom sent to us from some far- off
point of which we know nothing.
The light of the rising sun brings out from shore many other
small boats, each with its load of men who wave their arms to the
steamship and cheer against the sound of the waves and wind. To
them that ship is like the fast express that passes the country
railroad station, or the comet that whirls round our sun and off
again.
Those fishermen feel that THEY are the REAL world; the steamship
and outside creation are only half imagined, interesting
phenomena. You look down from the deck and the fishermen seem
unreal little ornaments of your European excursion. And so the
two sets of human beings go their ways--to each nothing is
important, save that which each is doing.
There are great planets and suns that roll past us across this
cosmic ocean of ether. Our pathetic little round earth looks to
them as that fishing-boat of the Azores looks to you. And WE
think of those great interstellar travellers as the fisherman in
his little boat thinks of the ocean liner--the great star to us
is merely an interesting feature of OUR sky. And we actually
wonder whether there is any thought on that big, distant sun; any
intelligence on the vast ship that ploughs the ocean of limitless
space. ----
The high ridge of volcanic peaks and the others near it are made
fertile and green by soil gradually developed through the
centuries by seeds brought across the ocean by winds and birds.
The tops of the mountains are black lava. Lakes of black water
fill some of the quiet craters. Only, here and there, the rising
sulphur smoke from rocky fissures tells of heat and power
smouldering.
The last great eruption of the volcanoes occurred a little more
than two hundred years ago--so the inhabitants laugh if you speak
of danger. They forget that two hundred years in the earth's
life is as two minutes in the life of a man--and that what a man
did two minutes since he may do again.
Fences are built across the fields of thin soil that cover the
lava. Each inch of that land thrown up by fire "belongs" to some
man. White houses stand at the edges of deep lava canyons
running from the mountain tops to the sea's edge canyons made by
pouring lava or by the splitting of the mountains under fearful
pressure.
Children play about the blocks of lava--and all their lives, no
matter where they may go, those children will think of that
far-off island as the only real home, and of black lava blocks as
the only REAL kind of stone.
From your passing boat you cannot see these children. Their
little lives, lost in the far-off sea, seem as unimportant as the
lives of the fish that swim below you.
But some child playing there to-day may be like that other island
child, Napoleon, and live to make the rest of the world talk
about the island that bred him. Or, better still, some one of
those children, with a brain made powerful by solitude and noble
thought, may have the idea that shall help us all, teach us more
and more to think kindly of each other and help each other,
instead of passing each other coldly and indifferently as the big
ship passes the little, far-off island.
NO NAPOLEONIC CHESS PLAYER ON AN AIR CUSHION
ZANGWILL'S IDEA IS FALSE--WHY CHESS PLAYING STUNTS GENIUS
Mr. Zangwill's keen intellect, straining hard for striking
pictures and word effects, sees falsely the great general of the
future. He says:
"The Napoleon of the future will be an epileptic chess player,
carried about the field of battle on an air cushion."
In this condensed, picturesque fashion Mr. Zangwill expresses
sententiously a number of mistaken ideas. He thinks that the
game of war is like the game of chess, and that the future world
conqueror will be a great chess player, using men as pawns and
the world as his chess-board.
He observes the curious and interesting historical fact that of
the world's great conquerors many, including the two greatest,
Napoleon and Alexander, were afflicted with that mysterious
disease, epilepsy. He concludes that the great general of the
future will probably be a confirmed epileptic.
The ability of a fighting man to-day resides largely, of course,
in the brain. The general's MUSCLES no longer count as a
fighting factor. His battles are won or lost inside of his
SKULL. Mr. Zangwill concludes that the future great general will
have a mind developed to an abnormal extent at the expense of the
body--he sees in the future world conqueror an abnormal creature,
a giant brain perched on a miserable, wasted body, so feeble and
delicate that it must be carried about the field of battle on an
air cushion to prevent shocks. ----
The quotation from Zangwill which we print above contains only
twenty-one words. Rarely have so many errors, so many
fundamental yet plausible errors, been crowded into so little
space.
The Napoleon of the future, the great conqueror, will NOT be a
chess player. The real Napoleon whom we know had no love for
chess or any other waste of time, or any other form of self-
indulgence.
Chess is no game for a Napoleon, or for any other man who wants
to embody real accomplishment in the story of his life.
CHESS IS A WEAK GAME, FOR IT ADMITS ALL KINDS OF RULES AND ALL
KINDS OF FOREORDAINED IMPOSSIBILITIES.
The man who makes the world's great success will not be bound by
rules. The great men of the world are great because they refuse
to ADMIT impossibilities.
The man who plays chess has two knights, and these knights he can
only send two squares in one direction and one square in another,
or one square in one direction and two squares in the other. His
two bishops can only move diagonally across the board, one on the
white and one on the black. His castles lumber along on straight
lines. His king cannot be touched or taken, and the game ends
when the king is in fatal danger. The queen, in the dull game we
call chess, can do almost anything.
But Napoleon was really a great man, and the game of life that he
played was very different from the chess game.
When the king was in hopeless danger, Napoleon's game had just
begun. Others before him had looked upon kings on the board of
life as the chess player looks upon the wooden or ivory king
before him.
But to Napoleon kings were pawns, to be moved around and made
ridiculous. When he felt like it, he made pawns into kings--the
descendant of one of his pawn-kings reigns to-day in Sweden.
Napoleon's game deprived the queen of all power--she was less
than a pawn. HIS game sent the bishops hopping back and forth,
diagonally or at right angles, as he saw fit. He created knights
to his heart's content, and he taught them to move as he wanted.
Napoleon was great because there was nothing of the chess player
about him. He did not admit of regular, foreordained moves on
the chess-board or on the board of life. HE REFUSED TO CONSIDER
ANYTHING IMPOSSIBLE UNTIL HE HAD TRIED IT. He tells us himself
that he deserved credit for crossing the Alps, not that he
accomplished a difficult feat, but because he refused to believe
those who declared the feat impossible.
If anybody said "Check" to Napoleon, he kicked over the
chess-board and began a new game of his own--that was what
surprised the poor, dull old Austrian generals in Italy.
No; the real great man is no chess player, he has no chess
player's mind. And do you, Mr. Reader, waste no time at chess,
if you have any idea of being WORTH WHILE in a big or a little
way. ----
The Napoleon of the future will be no epileptic. That terrible
disease has afflicted many of the noblest intellects, and it is
undoubtedly a disease brought on, or at least intensified, by
great intellectual activity and a lack of co-ordination between
the mental and physical operations of the body. But some great
men have been great, not because of that terrible disease, but in
spite of it. Science will conquer that trouble, as it has
conquered others, and the scientist to do this work will be,
himself, one of the world's great men. ----
The Napoleon of the future will be no huge-brained dwarf, with
feeble body, carried on an air cushion.
It is true that many great men of to-day are relatively small in
body. The gigantic muscle, thick legs, broad shoulders and hairy
chests of the successful Viking have nothing to do with modern
achievement.
But it is also true that to-day, as always, the healthy mind
lives in a healthy body, and lives ON a healthy body.
As well expect to find the most perfect fruit on a withered,
half-dead tree, as to find the most able brain in a withered,
half-dead body. The blood is the life of the brain, and unless a
HEALTHY body supplies HEALTHY blood the brain's chance is small.
Napoleon, it's true, was at one time a physical wreck--BUT DON'T
FORGET THAT HIS GREATNESS WAS ALSO A WRECK AT THAT TIME.
The GREAT Napoleon operated in a body tireless and powerful
enough to remain thirty consecutive hours on horseback. It was a
body so powerful that criminal neglect and stupid ignorance of
the laws of health were powerless against it for many years.
The Napoleon that went to St. Helena dwelt in a worn-out body, a
fat, degenerate perversion of the Napoleon that conquered the
world.
The great conqueror of the future, ladies and gentlemen, will be
a splendidly original brain, working through a perfectly
developed body, AND WORKING FOR THE MASS OF THE PEOPLE, FOR THEIR
FARE, NOT FOR THEIR CONQUEST AND OPPRESSION.
All of which is respectfully submitted to our readers for
discussion and criticism.
A GIRL'S FACE IN THE GASLIGHT AND AN IMPORTANT PART OF THE
WORLD'S WORK
On a corner of Rector street, down near the river, a loud drum
was beating. A guitar and a tambourine competed shrilly with the
drum's dull booming. Slowly a careless crowd gathered round the
Salvation Army workers.
There were bare-headed women, little girls holding little babies
in their arms, sailors drunk, and one or two sober, 'longshoremen
pleased with the sound of the drum, and a few of the thin, hungry
faces that disturb our well-fed happiness.
The man beat his drum, standing erect and proud in his army
uniform.
The two thin, nervous young women played on guitar and tambourine
with all their force, striving to gather the crowd whom they
hoped to make better men and women.
Thirty or forty people gathered--glad to accept any noise and
excitement in their dull lives.
The music stopped, and a young girl stepped to the centre of the
circle.
She was frightened. Her voice was weak at first. Gradually her
thin, pale face grew animated.
Her blue eyes dilated. In dull, routine way, doing her best,
earning respectful silence from the night crowd, she told her
story:
"I was bad. I tried to be good. But I couldn't do it with my
own strength. I asked God to save me. He did save me. He will
save you, if you will ask Him."
She spoke with a strong German accent. With all her deep,
earnest soul, with all her poor, limited mental force, she longed
to help the men and women around. As she spoke she bent her head
farther and farther back, until her eyes looked up to the sky.
There, with perfect faith, she saw the God whose work she was
humbly doing in the muddy streets and flickering gaslight of the
riverside.
While she could control her voice and her deep emotion she talked
on her one theme--the power of God to help the helpless. But she
BELIEVED, and she FELT what she said. Soon the tears ran over
from her upturned eyes, and she could speak no more.
Then a man began--thickset, earnest, with a strong Scotch accent.
He talked to the men about him in a rough way that appealed to
them. ----
As the crowd stood listening many passed. A few were
contemptuous; the majority were indifferent.
If you see these workers you ask perhaps:
"What good do they do?"
That is the question that may be asked of every man that ever
lived, and only One can answer it.
The thin, white-faced girl, playing, singing and PREACHING in the
dirty street, does this:
She touches the heart of a half-drunken man. Turning from the
saloon door he goes home, and takes to his wife and children as
much of his wages as is left, a feeling of repentance, good
resolutions.
Her tears are answered by the tears of miserable girls and women
who sink back into the shadow as they watch her pure face.
Through them she helps to undo the horrible, soul-destroying work
of brutal civilization. ----
Mysteriously, diversely, the work of the world is done.
The storm, endless in its power, washes down the mountain-tops to
fertilize the valley.
The tiny earthworm works in darkness, crumbling up its little
patch of earth to make it fit food for plants.
Each does its work.
The mighty intellect with cyclonic force gives to mankind grand,
general views of cosmic grandeur, and introduces to minds
prepared the "eternal silences," and the vast serene fields of
divine law.
THE "CRIMINAL" CLASS
DID THIS VIEW OF IT EVER OCCUR TO YOU?
Much interest just now in CRIMINALS.
Much horror aroused by depravity.
Many plans more or less appropriate for making the air pure.
Many good men, politicians, women and bishops, who spent the
Summer at the seaside willing now to spend a few days wiping
"CRIME" off the earth. ----
What is CRIME? Who are the criminals? Who makes the criminals?
Do criminals viciously and voluntarily arise among us, eager to
lead hunted lives, eager to be jailed at intervals, eager to
crawl in the dark, dodge policemen, work in stripes and die in
shame? Hardly.
Will you kindly and patiently follow the lives, quickly sketched,
of a boy and a girl?