Shakespeare was a prophet of many ages beside his own; Dickens was a
champion of the lowly and oppressed; Scott was a delicate weaver of the
fairy fabric of romance; but Victor Hugo was an analyst of human life and
experience. Without adornment or polish, his books are cross-sections of
the feelings and doings of men. His knife cuts deep enough to reveal the
workings of the inner laws.
In Jean Valjean, the criminal, we have the story of a man who taught the
world how low a man can fall and how well a fallen man can rise. In
Gwynplaine, the laughing man, we have the story of one who taught the
world how close may be the relation between the laughing countenance and
the serious spirit.
In the story of Gwynplaine two things stand out supremely. The first is
the power and significance of a smile that could not come off. The second
is the supreme importance and sacredness of humanity.
The smile that could not come off was written upon his countenance with a
knife. Gwynplaine was the son of an English nobleman. Stolen when a baby
by a band of wandering showmen, he was trained for exhibition. They
operated upon his helpless baby features and shaped them into a perpetual
grin. From that day forth, no matter what were the feelings within him or
the outlook in the path ahead of him, he carried a laughing face. He had
been fashioned into a curiosity, but in some ways a very wholesome kind
of curiosity.
Had the story of Gwynplaine never done more than to remind the world of
the value of laughter, it would have served its time and purpose well. No
generation can well get on without those who make it their business to
keep the smiles alive on the faces of the people. The world may laugh at
them and pass them by as clowns, but the ages will have to honor them for
having kept weary hearts hopeful when everything seemed to be crumbling
away beneath them.
The place of the humorist in literature is sometimes placed at a discount,
but not properly so. The maker of fun whose humor was clean and genuine is
a benefactor of his age, not to say a minister of righteousness. The hand
of Justice lays an unfading wreath of honor upon the grave of the man who
has helped to keep the world glad. He has planted roses where otherwise
there would have been only thorns. He has scattered beauty and light where
otherwise the shadows would have been left to reign supreme.
One of the chief points in the story of Gwynplaine, however, was the fact
that his smile was permanent and unfading. It was written indelibly upon
his features and could be affected by no tempest either of joy or pain.
His soul might be weary and his courage dead, but the world could never
find it out by looking at his face. However often he may have been a
troubled man, through it all he was a laughing man.
It is all well enough to smile when one is gay, but the real hero is the
one who keeps on smiling after the world has turned blue before his gaze.
Anyone can look happy when he _is_ happy, but only the unusual man
can keep a merry countenance when hopes die, ties are sundered, dreams
crash in shattered fragments, and the rich promises of life prove to have
been empty mirages of vain expectation. The smile “that cannot come off”
is the smile worth while.
The happiest-faced woman I ever knew was one whose life story would cast
a tremor of dread upon any company. She had faced her floods of sorrow,
had shed her tears, and then had come off with the victory of an undying
cheerfulness which never inflicted upon another the troubles which had
been hers.
One day it was discovered that Gwynplaine, the wandering showman, was a
man of noble blood. As such, he was entitled to a seat in the House of
Lords. On the night when he went to take his seat among the peers of
England, many curious eyes were fastened upon his grinning features. He
sat and listened to the speeches. Eloquent things were being said, but
they did not bear the note of thoughtfulness of the needs and rights of
the lowly. These were men who had never tasted the lot of the poor. He
could never forget the need and the neglect which he had seen and known.
Then a dramatic thing happened. Gwynplaine rose in his place as though to
speak. A suppressed titter swept over the great chamber. He opened his
lips and began to speak. At the sound of his words the wave of merriment
subsided. They carried a burden of heartbreak, though they fell from
grinning lips. “My lords,” he said, “I bring you news—news of the
existence of mankind.”
This was the message the assembly needed to hear. Executive chambers and
halls of legislation had been all too slow in welcoming it. When it came,
it fell from the lips of a noble showman with a perpetual grin upon
his face.
Gwynplaine had a full heart, and it was full of the needs and the burdens
of men. One word was ringing back and forth through the chambers of his
thought. That word was Humanity. In it was represented the outstanding
fact in human thinking—the fact of the existence of humanity. It suggested
the highest aim of all government—the good of humanity. It pointed out the
path of all proper human endeavor—the advancement of humanity.
Humanity has been the one great concern of the Almighty Himself. He
measures the good or the evil of a thing by the question of its
helpfulness or its hurtfulness of people. He brooded over the race until
it grew to manhood. When it sinned He suffered for it. He has never
hesitated to go to any length for the sake of people. Such is also the
spirit of those who enter into the secrets of His plans.
The word humanity is not limited to a fortunate few, but it includes those
of every station; it does not refer to a single race or color, but it has
a place for all mankind; it does not mean a given economic or industrial
class, but it covers the cases of employer and employe alike; it does not
stop at a given social caste, but in its plan one is as good as another.
Humanity includes all men, and the person who has never yet taken it into
his heart has not yet developed as great a heart as the man of the future
will find it necessary to have.
Humanity knows no dividing line, and whoever lays them down will simply
sow the seeds of sorrow and trouble. Class consciousness is an evil thing,
no matter by what class it is possessed. Wars come from national lines of
division in sympathy and fraternity. Strifes come from industrial and
social dividing lines. There is no place in the creative plan for jealousy
and enmity.
The world can never come to its golden year until it has made manhood the
one basis for the estimate of a man. It must recognize good as good, and
evil as evil, regardless of where they are found; it must hold light to be
light and darkness to be darkness, whosoever they may be; and men must be
recognized as the most important element in the scheme of things.
When the day of settled peace comes again, and the world once more sits
clothed and in its right mind, our business will be the protection,
nurture, and uplift of humanity. Meanwhile, may there come some teacher
who can lead the peoples to think of one another in terms of fraternity,
and teach each man to think of each other man as a neighbor and to trust
him as a friend.