The next evening Wright had business down town.
"Carlin was right last night," began Miller, "when he said that all men
were naturally lazy. Laziness is a fixed principle in this world. I can
prove it by my friend Wand down at Pioche.
"When he was not so old as he has been these last few years, he made a
visit to San Francisco, and one day, passing a building on Fourth
street, saw within several hives of bees, evidently placed there to be
sold. Some whim led him within the building and, from the man in charge,
he learned that in California, because of the softer climate, bees
worked quite nine months in the year; that a good swarm of bees would
gather a certain number of pounds of honey in a season, which sold
readily at a certain price, making a tremendous percentage on the cost
of the bees, which was, if I remember correctly, one hundred dollars per
hive. The idea seemed to strike Wand. He had fifteen hundred dollars,
and all that day he was mentally estimating how much money could be made
out of fifteen swarms of bees in a year. The figures looked exceedingly
encouraging. They always do, you know, when your mind is fixed upon a
certain business which you want to engage in.
"That evening Wand happened to meet a friend who had just come in from
Honolulu. This friend was enthusiastic over the Hawaiian Islands. There
was perpetual summer there and ever-blooming flowers. Before one flower
cast its leaves, others on the same tree were budding. Their glory was
ever before the eyes and their incense ever upon the air.
"Wand fell asleep that night trying to estimate how much money a swarm
of bees would make a year in a land of perpetual summer. The conclusion
was that next morning Wand bought twelve hives of bees, and that
afternoon sailed with them for Honolulu.
"He found a lovely place for his bees, and saw with kindling pleasure
that they readily assimilated with the new country and went to work with
apparent enthusiasm.
"The bees worked steadily until, in their judgment, it was time for
winter to come. Then they ceased to work, remained in their hives until
they ate up their hoarded wealth, and then, as Wand expresses it, 'took
to the woods.'
"He borrowed the money necessary to pay his passage to San Francisco,
and ever since has sworn that bees are like men, 'natural loafers,' that
will not work unless they are forced to. He believes that the much
lauded ant would be the same way if it were not urged on to work
perpetually by the miser's fear of starvation."
Carlin suggested that the question be tested nearer home, and called
out, "Yap Sing!"
The Mongolian came in from the kitchen and Carlin interrogated him.
"Yap, do you like to work?"
"Yes, me heap likee workee."
"How many hours a day do you like to work, Yap?"
"Maybe eight hour, maybe ten hour, maybe slixteen hour."
"We give you forty dollars a month. Would you work harder if we paid you
fifty dollars?"
"No. Me thinkee not," answered Yap, adroitly. "You sabbie, you hire me,
me sellee you my time. Me workee all the slame, forty doll's, fifty
doll's, one hundred doll's. No diffelence."
"Yap, suppose you were to get $3,000, would you work then?"
"Oh, yes. Me workee all the slame, now."
"Suppose, Yap, you had $5,000--what then?"
"Me workee all the slame."
"Do you ever buy stocks?"
"Slum time buy lettle; not muchee."
"Suppose, Yap, that some time stocks would go up and make you $20,000,
would you work then?"
The Chinaman, with eyes blazing, replied vehemently: "Not one d----d
bittee."
The Club agreed that Carlin had pretty well settled a vexed question,
that conditions which would make both the bee and the Chinaman idlers,
would be apt to very soon cause the Caucasian to lie in the shade.
"And yet," mused Brewster, "there are mighty works going on everywhere.
This Nation to-day makes a showing such as this world never saw before.
From sea to sea, for three thousand miles, the chariot wheels of toil
are rolling and roaring as they never did in any other land. The energy
that is exhausted daily amounts to more than all the world's working
forces did a hundred years ago. The thing to grieve about is not that
there is not enough work being performed, but that in this intensely
practical, and material age, the gentler graces in the hearts of men are
being neglected. In the race for wealth the higher aspirations are being
smothered. If from the 'tongue-less past' there could be awakened the
silent voices, the cry which would be heard over all others would be: 'I
had some golden thoughts; I meant to have given them expression, but the
swiftly moving years with their cares were too much for me, and I died
and made no sign.'
"If there is such a thing as a ghost of memory, all the aisles of the
past are full of wailing voices, wailing over facts unspoken, over
eloquence that died in passionate hearts unuttered, over divine poems
that never were set to earthly music. Aside from native indolence, most
men are struggling for bread, and when the day's work is completed,
brain and hand are too weary for further effort. So the years drift by
until the zeal of young ambition loses its electric thrill; until cares
multiply; until infirmities of body keep the chords of the soul out of
tune, and the night follows, and the long sleep. There were great
soldiers before Achilles or Hector, but there were no Homers, or if
there were, they were dissipated fellows, or they were absorbed in
business, or, under the clear Grecian sky, it was their wont to dream
the beautiful days away, and so, no sounds were uttered, of the kind
which, booming through space, strike at last on the immortal heights,
and there make echoes which thrill the earth with celestial music ever
after. If fortune had not made an actor of Shakespeare, and if his
matchless spirit, working in the line of his daily duties, had not felt
that all the plays offered were mean and poor, as wanting in dramatic
power as they were false to human nature, and so was roused to fill a
business need, the chances are a thousand to one that he 'would have
died with all his music in him,' and would, to-day, have been as
entirely lost in oblivion as are the boors who were his neighbors. Just
now there is not much hope for our own country, and probably will not be
for another century. Present efforts are all for wealth and power and
are almost all earthly. Everything is calculated from a basis of coin.
Before that, brains are cowed, and for it Beauty reserves her sweetest
smiles. The men who are pursuing grand ideas with no motive more selfish
than to make the masses of the world nobler, braver and better, or to
give new symphonies to life, are wondrously few. There are splendid
triumphs wrought, but they are almost every one material and practical.
"The men who created the science of chemistry dreamed of finding the
elixir of life; the modern chemist pursues the study until he invents a
patent medicine or a baking powder, and then all his energies are
devoted to selling his discovery.
"In its youthful vitality the Nation has performed wonders, and from the
masses individuals have solved many of nature's mysteries and bridled
many elemental forces.
"The winds have been forced to swing open the doors to their caves and
show where they are brewed; the lightnings have submitted to curb and
rein; the ship goes out against the tempest, carried forward on its own
iron arms; the secret of the sunlight has been fathomed and a
counterfeit light created; the laws which govern sound have been
mastered until the human voice now thrills a wire and is caught with
perfect distinctness sixty miles away, and a thousand other such
triumphs have been achieved.
"But no deathless poem has been written, no immortal picture has been
called to life on canvas; no master hand has touched the cold stone and
transfigured it into something which seems ready, like the fabled statue
of the old master, to warm into life and smiles.
"Souls surcharged at first with celestial fire have waited for the work
of the bodies to be finished, that they might materialize into words of
form and splendor, waited until the tenement around them fell away and
left them unvoiced, to seek a purer sphere, and a generation, three
generations have died with their deepest tints unpainted, their sweetest
music unsung.
"This is one of the penalties attached to the laying of the foundations
of new States. There is too much to be accomplished, too many purely
material struggles to be made, and so hearts are stifled and souls,
glowing with celestial fervor, are forbidden an altar on which to kindle
their sacred flame.
"England struggled a thousand years before a man appeared to shame
wealth, power and titles with the majesty of a divine mind. Perhaps it
will be as long in the United States before some glorified spirit will
appear to show by example that the things which this generation is
struggling most for are mere dust, which, when obtained, are but Dead
Sea apples to the lips of hope."
"But Brewster," said Harding, "do you not think that a good miner is of
more use to the world than a bad sculptor?"
"Suppose," said Carlin, "we were all to stop this four dollars a day
business of ours and go to writing poetry, who would pay the Chinaman
and settle the grocery bills at the end of the month?"
"Were not the Argonauts making pretty good use of their time," asked
Miller, "when in twelve years they dug up and gave to the world nearly a
thousand millions of dollars and caused such a change in the business of
the country as comes to the fainting man's circulation through a
transfusion of healthy blood into his veins?"
"Did you not tell us last evening," said Ashley, "that when a poor man
earned a home for his wife and babies, that to him came the perfume and
the light?"
"I carved out some beautiful stories and shpoke any amount of illegint
poethry to Maggie Murphy, but it would not do," said Corrigan.
"There is a mirage before Brewster's eyes to-night," said Miller; "the
business of most men is to earn bread."
Then Brewster, bristling up, responded:
"My answer to all of you is this: Man's first duty is to provide for
himself, and for those dependent upon him, by honest toil, either of
hand or brain, or both. For a long time you have each worked eight hours
out of the twenty-four; perhaps eight hours more have been absorbed in
eating and sleeping. What have you done with the other eight hours? You
are miners. You can set timbers in line, you can lie on your backs and
hit a drill above you with perfect precision; but could you make a
draught of a mine, or clothe a description of one in good language on
paper? You look upon a piece of ore, but can you test it and tell how
much it is worth? These are all legitimate parts of your business as
miners, and I refer to them merely to illustrate that in the excitements
of this city, and the dream of getting rich in stock speculations, you
have not only neglected your better natures, but have failed to
thoroughly accomplish yourselves in your real business. You can see what
you have actually lost, but you cannot estimate the pleasure you have
been denying yourselves. Then when you are too old to work, what
amusements and diversions are you preparing for old age?"
"For that, matter," said Miller, "ask the man who fell down the Alta
shaft last week, 800 feet to the sump, and the pieces of whose body,
that could be found, were sewed up in canvas to be brought to the
surface."
Then there was a silence for several minutes until a freight train, with
two locomotives (a double header), came up the heavy grade from Gold
Hill and, when opposite the house of the Club, both locomotives
whistled. At this Corrigan said:
"Hear those black horses neigh! What a hail they give to the night! What
a power they have under their black skins! I wonder if they don't think
sometimes, the off-colored monsters."
"If the steam engine has not reflective faculties it ought to have,"
said Harding. "The highest pleasures which a man, in his normal state,
can have are the approving whispers of his own soul. If in the iron
frame of the steam engine there could be hidden a soul, what whispers
would thrill it in these days! Methinks they would be something like
this:
"'When I was born Invention gave to Progress a child which was to be to
the modern world what the Genii were to the ancient world, except that I
am real, while the Genii were but dreams. In me man finds the
materialization of a dream which haunted mortals through the centuries,
while the world was slowly pressing onward to a better state. At my
birth men were glad to give to me their burdens, because I could carry
them without fatigue. They thought me but a dumb slave to do their
bidding; they saw that I could add greatly to their achievements by
enabling them to overcome heavy matter, and with tireless feet to chase
the swift hours. I cannot add to man's actual years, but I can make one
hour for him equal to a day in the olden time. At first my work was
confined to the closely peopled regions. But at length I was pushed out
beyond the settlements of men, and then something of the divinity within
me began to assert itself. Savage man and the wild beast retired before
me; when the path was made for me into the immemorial hills, before my
scream the scream of the eagle died away. The lordly bird spread his
wings to seek more impenetrable crags. Following in my wake,
civilization came; homes sprang up, temples to art and to learning were
upreared, and on the air, which but a year before was startled only by
barbarous cries, there fell the benediction of children's voices, as
with swinging satchels in their hands, they sang their songs going to
and returning from schools. Then man began to discover that there was
more to me than polished iron and brass; more than a heart of fire and a
breath of steam. In my headlight they began to discover a faint
reflection of the Infinite light, and in whispers began to say: "It is
not a dumb slave; rather it is to Progress an evangel." As my power
increased, it was seen that as the wild man and wild beast fled before
me, old bigotries and old superstitions likewise fled, snarling like
wolves, from my path; man moved up to a higher plane, and as he
comprehended himself better, his thoughts were led upward; with enlarged
ideas and deeper reverence, he turned to the contemplation of the First
Great Cause who thrilled the dull matter of the universe with His own
celestial light and order, and established that nothing was made in
vain. And now a path is to be made down where the terrible Spaniard
wrested an empire from the Aztecs; where, with the sword, he hewed down
the altars on which human sacrifices were made, and built up new altars
consecrated to Christianity. The people there will gather around me and
rejoice. They think only of material things; how I will carry their
burdens, take from them the fatigue of travel and increase their trade.
They do not know that mine is a higher mission; that as I do their work
there is to gradually fade from the faith that holds them, the
superstitions which for centuries have environed their better selves and
benumbed their grander energies. They will not realize, what is true,
that angels still walk with men; that it is the near presence of the
angels of Progress, Truth, Free Thought, Mercy and Eternal Justice, all
rejoicing, which will give the thrill to their hearts. As yet my work
has hardly commenced. It is not yet fifty years since I became a power
in the world. Wait until I am better understood, until the smooth paths
are made for me through all the wilderness, over all the rivers and
hills, and I am given dominion over all the deep seas, that I may
swiftly bring together the children of men, till gradually the nations
will take on common thoughts and return to that tongue which was
universal when the world was young, and, as yet, man walked in the clear
image of his Creator. Then armies will melt away before me as savage
tribes now do; then no more cannons will be cast, no more swords
fashioned. Then, through my example, labor in the walks of peace will
become exalted; then the thirst for gold will cease, because I will till
the field, drive the loom, and take from man all that is servile or
gross in toil; and gradually the wild beast in men's souls will be bred
out, and in the peace of perfect brotherhood men will possess the earth,
and I will be the good angel that will take away the burdens.'"
As if in response to the words of Harding, just as he finished, the
whistles all up and down the great lode sounded for the eleven o'clock
change of shift, and the Club retired with this remark from Corrigan:
"Harding, they heard what yez was remarkin' upon, and now hear the whole
row of them cheerin' your spache."