they give an insight into life. I deprecate the vice of excessive
novel-reading in young persons. But for myself I wish that there were
more really interesting novels to read. Most of the old ones I have
read already."
A smile flickered around the circle. "What do you call old?" asked the
Cynic. "Have you read 'The Vulgarities of Antoinette'?"
"Nonsense," said the Publisher; "some novels grow as old in a
twelvemonth as others do in a decade. A book is not really aged until
it ceases to be advertised. 'The Celestial Triplets,' for example. But
fortunately it is a poor year that does not produce at least three new
novelists of distinction."
"For my part," said the True Story Teller, seated on her throne among
the rocks and dispensing gentle influence like the silent sweetness of
the summer afternoon, "for my part, I am not sure that fiction is the
only kind of literature worth reading. Essays, biography, history and
poetry still have their attractions for me. But what I should like to
know is what made one kind of novel so popular yesterday, and what puts
another kind in its place to-day, and what kind is likely to last
forever? What gives certain novels their amazing vogue?"
"A new public," answered the Cynic. "Popular education has done it.
Fifty years ago thinking and reading went together. But nowadays
reading is the most familiar amusement of the thoughtless. It is the
new public that buys four hundred thousand copies of a novel in a
single year."
"A striking explanation," said the Critic, "but, you know, De Quincey
said practically the same thing more than fifty years ago in his essay
on Oliver Goldsmith. Yet the sale of 'The Prude of Pimlico' exceeds the
sale of the leading novel of De Quincey's day by at least five hundred
per cent. How do you explain that?"
"Very simply," said the Cynic. "A thousand _per centum_ increase in the
new public; stock of intelligence still more freely watered."
"But you are not answering my question about the different kinds of
novels," said the lady. "Tell me why the types of fiction change."
"Fashion, dear lady," replied the Cynic. "It is like tight sleeves and
loose sleeves. People feel comfortable when they wear what everybody is
wearing and read what everybody is reading. The art of modern
advertising is an appeal to the instinct of imitation. Our friend the
Publisher has become a millionaire by discovering that the same law
governs the sale of books and of dry-goods."
"Not at all," interrupted the Critic; "your explanation is too crude
for satire and too shallow for science. There is a regular evolution in
fiction. First comes the external type, the novel of plot; then the
internal type, the novel of character; then the social type, the novel
of problem and purpose. The development proceeds from outward to
inward, from objective to subjective, from simplicity to complexity."
"But," said the lady, "if I remember rightly, the facts happened the
other way. 'Pamela' and 'Joseph Andrews' and 'Caleb Williams' are
character novels; 'Waverley' and 'Ivanhoe' are adventure novels.
Kingsley wrote 'Yeast' and 'Alton Locke' before 'Westward Ho!' and
'Hypatia.' 'Bleak House' and 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' are older than 'Lorna
Doone' and 'David Balfour.' The day before yesterday it was all
character-sketching, mainly Scotch; the day before that it was all
problem-solving, chiefly religious; yesterday it was all
adventure-seeking, called historical because it seems highly
improbable; and to-day it is a mixture of automobile-journeys and
slum-life. It looks to me as if there must be somebody always ready to
read some kind of fiction, but his affections are weather-cocky."
"I don't object to a few characters in a novel," said the Man of
Business, "provided they do something interesting."
"Right," said the Publisher; "the public always knows what is
interesting, provided it is properly pointed out. Now here is a little
list of our most profitable new books: a story of a beautiful Cow-boy,
a Kentucky love-tale, a narrative of the Second Crusade, a romance
about an imaginary princess and two motor-cars, a modern society story
with vivid descriptions of the principal New York restaurants and Monte
Carlo--all of these have passed the forty-thousand line. We send out
the list with a statement to that effect, and advise people not to lose
the chance of reading books that have aroused so much interest."
"It seems to me," put in the Doctor of Divinity, "that some of the
modern books do not give me as much insight into life as I should like.
I perused 'The Prisoner on a Bender' the other day without getting a
single illustration for a sermon. But I continue to read novels from a
sense of duty, to keep in touch with my young people."
"I think," began my Uncle Peter (and this solemn announcement made
everyone attentive), "I think you have failed to discern a certain law
of periodicity which governs the formal variations of fiction. This
periodicity is natural to the human mind, and it also has relations to
profound social movements. The popularity of the novels of Fielding,
Richardson, and Smollett, whose characters were mainly drawn from
humble life, was due to the rise of the same spirit of democracy that
produced the American and French Revolutions. The reaction to the
romantic and historical novel, under Scott and his followers, was a
revival of the aristocratic spirit. It took a historical form because
the past had been made vivid to the popular imagination by the great
historians of the eighteenth century. The purpose novels, which took
the lead in the middle of the nineteenth century, were another
reaction, and came out of the social ferment of the times. The general
pictures of society and manners which followed were written for a
public that was fairly well-to-do and contented with itself. The later
realistic studies of life in its lowest forms were the offspring of the
scientific spirit. And the latest reaction to the novel of adventure,
with its emphasis on daring and virility, is connected with the
remarkable revival of imperialism. But while fiction is specifically
the most transient of forms, generically it is the most permanent.
Therefore, our young Man of Letters must write a novel. That is what
the public wants."
"Yes," cried the Publisher, "a novel of adventure in Cromwell's time.
That period is up, just now, and has not been worked out."
"A novel of purpose," said the Critic; "that is the highest type of
fiction."
"A novel of character," said the Cynic. "A change in fashion is due.
Take the President of a Trust for your hero, and make him repent under
the pressure of the Social Boycott. The public loves surprises."
"Why not write the Great American Novel?" said the Doctor of Divinity.
"I have heard several demands for it."
"A good love story," said the Man of Business, "or perhaps a detective
story, would be the best thing to sell."
"The one point on which your friends seem agreed," said the True Story
Teller, with a smile, "is that the public gives you an order for a
novel."
"Well, you know, I have written one already," answered the young Man of
Letters, very quietly.
"Why didn't you tell us?" chorused the others. "Why haven't you
published it?"
He hesitated a moment before answering: "It did not seem to me good
enough."
"My young friend," said the Publisher, with his most impressive and
benevolent air, "we have your welfare at heart. You may write essays
and stories and poems as a recreation, or for some future age. But this
is the day of the novel, and you are wasting your chance unless you
publish one as soon as possible. Touch your novel up, or give it to me
as it is. You will certainly make a big thing out of it."
"Perhaps," said the young Man of Letters, thoughtfully; "but what if I
would rather write the things that please me most, and try to do good
work?"
My Uncle Peter looked at him half-quizzically, yet with a smile of
benevolent approval, and conferred upon him the honour and reward of
escorting the True Story Teller home in his canoe that evening, across
the swirling river, where the molten gold of sunset ran slowly to the
sea.
SOME REMARKS ON GULLS
WITH A FOOT-NOTE ON A FISH
I
CITY GULLS
The current estimate of the sea-gull as an intellectual force is
compressed into the word "gullibility"--a verbal monument of contempt.
But when we think how many things the gull does that we cannot do--how
he has mastered the arts of flying and floating, so that he is equally
at home in the air and on the water; how cleverly he adapts himself to
his environment, keeping warm among the ice-floes in winter and cool
when all the rest of the folks at the summer watering-places are
sweltering in the heat; how well he holds his own against the
encroachments of that grasping animal, man, who has driven so many
other wild creatures to the wall, and over it into extinction; how
prudently he accepts and utilizes all the devices of civilization which
suit him, (such as steamship-lanes across the Atlantic, and
dumping-scows in city harbors, and fish-oil factories on the seashore),
without becoming in the least civilized himself--in short, when we
consider how he succeeds in doing what every wise person is trying to
do, living his own proper life amid various and changing circumstances,
it seems as if we might well reform the spelling of that supercilious
word, and write it "gull-ability."
But probably the gull would show no more relish for the compliment than
he has hitherto shown distaste for the innuendo; both of them being
inedible, and he of a happy disposition, indifferent to purely academic
opinions of his rank and station in the universe. Imagine a gull being
disquieted because some naturalist solemnly averred that a hawk or a
swallow was a better master of the art of flight; or a mocking-bird
falling into a mood of fierce resentment or nervous depression because
some professor of music declared that the hermit thrush had a more
spontaneous and inspired song! The gull goes a-flying in his own way
and the mocking-bird sits a-singing his roundelay, original or
imitated, just as it comes to him; and neither of them is angry or
depressed when a critic makes odious comparisons, because they are both
doing the best that they know with "a whole and happy heart." Not so
with poets, orators, and other human professors of the high-flying and
cantatory arts. They are often perturbed and acerbated, and sometimes
diverted from their proper course by the winds of adverse comment.
When Cicero Tomlinson began his career as a public speaker he showed a
very pretty vein of humour, which served to open his hearers' minds
with honest laughter to receive his plain and forcible arguments. But
someone remarked that his speaking lacked dignity and weight; so he
loaded himself with the works of Edmund Burke; and now he discusses the
smallest subject with a ponderosity suited to the largest. The charm of
Alfred Tennyson Starling's early lyrics was unmistakable. But in an
evil day a newspaper announced that his poetry smelled of the lamp and
was deficient in virility. Alfred took it painfully to heart, and fell
into a violent state of Whitmania. Have you seen his patient imitations
of the long-lined, tumultuous one?
After all, the surest way to be artificial is to try to be natural
according to some other man's recipe.
One reason why the wild children of nature attract our eyes, and give
us an inward, subtle satisfaction in watching them, is because they
seem so confident that their own way of doing things is, for them at
least, the best way. They let themselves go, on the air, in the water,
over the hills, among the trees, and do not ask for admiration or
correction from people who are differently built. The sea-gulls flying
over a busy port of commerce, or floating at ease on the discoloured,
choppy, churned-up waves of some great river,
"Bordered by cities, and hoarse
With a thousand cries,"
are unconscious symbols of nature's self-reliance and content with her
ancient methods. Not a whit have they changed their manner of flight,
their comfortable, rocking-chair seat upon the water, their creaking,
eager voice of hunger and excitement, since the days when the port was
a haven of solitude, and the river was crossed only by the red man's
canoe passing from forest to forest. They are untroubled by the
fluctuations of trade, the calms and tempests which afflict the stock
market, the hot waves and cold waves of politics. They do not fash
themselves about the fashions--except, perhaps, that silly and
barbarous one of adorning the headgear of women with the remains of
dead gulls. They do not ask whether life is worth living, but launch
themselves boldly upon the supposition that it is, and seem to find it
interesting, various, and highly enjoyable, even among wharves,
steamboats, and factory chimneys.
My first acquaintance with these untamed visitors of the metropolis was
"When that I was a littel tine boy,"
and lived on the Heights of Brooklyn. A nurse, whose hateful official
relation was mitigated by many amiable personal qualities--she was a
rosy Irish girl--had the happy idea of going, now and then, for a "day
off" and a breath of fresh air, on one of the ferry-boats that ply the
waters of Manhattan. Sometimes she took one of the ordinary ferries
that went straight over to New York and back again; but more often she
chose a boat that proposed a longer and more adventurous voyage--to
Hoboken, or Hunter's Point, or Staten Island. We would make the trip to
and fro several times, but Biddy never paid, so far as my memory goes,
more than one fare. By what arrangement or influence she made the
deckhands considerately blind to this repetition of the journey without
money and without price, I neither knew nor cared, being altogether
engaged with playing about the deck and admiring the wonders of the
vasty deep.
The other boats were wonderful, especially the big sailing-ships, which
were far more numerous then than they are now. The steam tugs, with
their bluff, pushing, hasty manners, were very attractive, and I
wondered why all of them had a gilt eagle, instead of a gull, on top of
the wheel-house. A little rowboat, tossing along the edge of the
wharves, or pushing out bravely for Governor's Island, seemed to be
full of perilous adventure. But most wonderful of all were the
sea-gulls, flying and floating all over the East River and the North
River and the bay.
Where did they come from? It was easy to see where they got their
living; they were "snappers-up of unconsidered trifles" from every
passing vessel whose cabin-boy threw the rubbish overboard. If you
could succeed in getting off the peel of an orange in two or three big
pieces, or if you could persuade yourself to leave a reasonably large
core of an apple, or, best of all, if you had the limp skin of a yellow
banana, you cast the forbidden fruit into the water, and saw how
quickly one of the gulls would pick it up, and how beautifully the
others would fight him for it. Evidently gulls have a wider range of
diet than little boys; also they have never been told that it is wrong
to fight.
"How greedy they are! What makes some of them white and some of them
gray? They must be different kinds; or else the gray ones are the
father and mother gulls. But if that is so, it is funny that the white
ones are the best fliers and seem able to take things away from the
gray ones. How would you like to fly like that? They swoop around and
go just where they want to. Perhaps that is the way the angels fly;
only of course the angels are much larger, and very much more
particular about what they eat. Isn't it queer that all the gulls have
eyes just alike--black and shiny and round, just like little
shoe-buttons? How funnily they swim! They sit right down on the water
as if it wasn't wet. Don't you wish you could do that? Look how they
tuck up their pinky feet under them when they fly, and how they turn
their heads from side to side, looking for something good to eat. See,
there's a great big flock all together in the water, over yonder, must
be a thousand hundred. Now they all fly up at once, like when you tear
a newspaper into little scraps and throw a handful out of the window.
Where do you suppose they go at night? Perhaps they sleep on the water.
That must be fun! Do they have gulls in Ireland, Biddy, and are all
their eyes black and shiny?"
"Sure!" says Biddy. "An' they do be a hundred toimes bigger an' foiner
than these wans. The feathers o' thim shoines in the sun loike silver
and gowld, an' their oyes is loike jools, an' they do be floying
fasther then the ships can sail. If ye was only seein' some o' thim
rale Oirish gulls, ye'd think no more o' these little wans!"
This increases your determination to go to the marvellous green island
some day; but it does not in the least diminish your admiration for the
gulls of Manhattan. In the summer, when you go to the seaside and watch
the
"Gray spirits of the sea and of the shore"
sailing over the white beach or floating on the blue waves of the
unsullied ocean, you wonder whether these country gulls are happier
than the city gulls. That they are different you are sure, and also
that they must have less variety in their diet, hardly any banana-skins
and orange-peel at all. But then they have more fish, and probably more
fun in catching them.
These are memories of old times--the ancient days before the Great
Invasion of the English Sparrows--the good old days when orioles and
robins still built their nests in Brooklyn trees, and Brooklyn streets
still resounded to the musical cries of the hucksters: "Radishees!
_new_ radishees!" or "Ole clo' an' bottles! any _ole_ clo' to sell!" or
"Shad O! _fre-e-sh_ shad!" In that golden age we played football around
the old farmhouse on Montague Terrace, coasted down the hill to Fulton
Ferry, and made an occasional expedition to Manhattan to observe the
strange wigwams and wild goats of the tribe of squatters who inhabited
the rocky country south of the newly discovered Central Park. _Eheu
fugaces!_
There was a long interval of years after that when the sea-gulls of the
harbour did not especially interest me. But now again, of late, I have
begun to find delight in them. Conscience, awakened by responsibility,
no longer permits those surreptitiously repeated voyages without a
repeated fare. But I go through the gate at the end of each voyage, and
consider twelve cents a reasonable price for the pleasure of travelling
up and down the North River for an hour and watching the city gulls in
their winter holiday.
I know a little more about them now. They are almost all herring gulls,
although occasionally a stray bird of another species may be seen. The
dark-gray ones are the young. They grow lighter and more
innocent-looking as they grow older, until they are pure white, except
the back and the top of the wings, which are of the softest pearl gray.
The head and neck, in winter, are delicately pencilled with dusky
lines. The bill is bright yellow and rather long, with the upper part
curved and slightly hooked, for a good hold on slippery little fish.
The foot has three long toes in front and a foolish little short one
behind. The web between the front toes goes down to the tips; but it
makes only a small paddle, after all, and when it comes to swimming,
the loon and the duck and several other birds can easily distance the
gull. It is as a floater that he excels in water sports; he rides the
waves more lightly and gracefully than any other creature.
"The gull, high floating like a sloop unladen,
Lets the loose water waft him as it will;
The duck, round-breasted as a rustic maiden,
Paddles and plunges, busy, busy, still."
But it is when the gull rises into the air, where, indeed, he seems to
spend most of his time, that you perceive the perfection of his design
as a master of motion. The spread of his wings is more than twice the
length of his body, and every feather of those long, silvery-pearly,
crescent fans seems instinct with the passion and the skill of flight.
He rises and falls without an effort; he swings and turns from side to
side with balancing motions like a skater; he hangs suspended in the
air immovable as if he were held there by some secret force of
levitation; he dives suddenly head foremost and skims along the water,
feet dangling and wings flapping, to snatch a bit of food from the
surface with his crooked golden bill. If the morsel is too large for
him to swallow, look how quickly three or four other gulls will follow
him, trying to take it away. How he turns and twists and dodges, and
how cleverly they head him off and hang on his airy trail, like winged
hounds, giving tongue with thin and querulous voices, half laughing and
half crying and altogether hungry. He cannot say a word, for his mouth
is full. He gulps hastily at his booty, trying to get it down before
the others catch him. But it is too big for his gullet, and he drops it
in the very act and article of happy deglutition. The largest and
whitest of his pursuers scoops up the morsel almost before it touches
the waves, and flaps away to enjoy his piratical success in some quiet
retreat.
What a variety of cooking the gulls enjoy from the steamships and
sailing-vessels of various nationalities which visit Manhattan! French
cooks, Italian, German, Spanish, English, Swedish--cooks of all races
minister to their appetites. Whenever a panful of scraps is thrown out
from the galley, a flock of gulls may be seen fluttering over their
fluent _table d'hôte_. Their shrill, quavering cries of joy and
expectancy sound as if the machinery of their emotions were worked by
rusty pulleys; their sharp eyes glisten, and their great wings flap and
whirl together in a confusion of white and gray. It is said that they
do useful service as scavengers of the harbor. No doubt; but to me they
commend themselves chiefly as visible embodiments and revelations of
the mystery, wonder, and gladness of flight.
What do we know about it, after all? We call this long-winged fellow
_Larus argerdatus smithsonianus_. We find that his normal temperature
is about two degrees higher than ours, and that he breathes faster, and
that his bones are lighter, and that his body is full of air-sacs,
fitting him to fly. But how does he do it? How does he poise himself on
an invisible ledge of air,
"Motionless as a cloud ...
That heareth not the loud winds when they call,
And moveth altogether if it move at all?"
How does he sail after a ship, with wings outspread, against the wind,
never seeming to move a feather? You understand how a kite mounts upon
the breeze: the string holds it from going back, so it must go up. But
where is the string that holds the gull?
I like these city gulls because they come to us in winter, when the
gypsy part of our nature is most in need of comforting reminders that
the world is not yet entirely dead or civilized. A man that I know once
wrote a poem about them, and sent it to a magazine. It was evidently an
out-of-door poem and so the editor put it in the midsummer number,--when
you might cross the ferry a hundred times without seeing a single gull.
They do not begin to come to town until October; and it is well on into
November before their social season begins. In March and April they
begin to flit again, and by May they are all away northward, to the
inland lakes among the mountains, or to the rocky islands of the Maine
coast. Let us follow them.
II
A GULL PARADISE
In the waters south of Cape Cod, where blue-fish and other gamy surface
swimmers are found, the gulls are often useful guides to the fisherman.
When he sees a great flock of them fluttering over the water, he
suspects that the objects of his pursuit are there, feeding from below
on the squid, the shiners, or the skip-jack, on which the gulls are
feeding from above. So the fisherman sails as fast as possible in that
direction, wishing to drag his trolls through the school of fish while
they are still hungry. But in the colder waters around the island of
Mount Desert, where the blue-fish have never come and the mackerel have
gone away, the sign of the fluttering gulls does not indicate fish to
be caught, but fish which have already been caught, and which some
other fisherman is cleaning for the market as he hurries home. The
gulls follow his boat and glean from the waves behind it. They are
commentators now, not prophets.