the pioneer. “You see, this ’ere bottom land was all Congress land in
them there days and sold for a dollar and a quarter, and I says to my
old man, ‘Jack,’ says I, ‘do you git a plenty while you’re gittin’. Git
a plenty while you’re gittin’,’ says I, ‘for ’twont be no cheaper than
’tis now;’ and it haint, and I knowed ’twouldn’t.”
Translate Mrs. Means’s shrewd maxim into the terms of idealism, and you
have the characteristic contribution of the West. The old prudential
maxims, which were true enough in a finished civilization, may well be
disregarded by those who face a great new opportunity. They can well
afford to preëmpt more territory than they can at present cultivate.
When one’s aims are selfish, the desire to get a plenty is mere greed,
but in the altruist it rises into “the enthusiasm for humanity.” It
is the ambition to supply the wants of men no longer in niggardly
fashion, but in full measure.
In two directions the expectation of moral amplitude in things American
is fulfilled,--in Education and in Charity. Here we feel that the
people have been aroused to the need of making plentiful provision,
not only for immediate necessities, but for future growth. Along these
lines we think and plan nationally.
But there are some questions which give pause to the most boastful
patriot. Where is the distinctive American Art which interprets in a
broad, fresh way the genius of the land, and where is the public that
would recognize it and delight in it if it should appear? Where is
the great American Church able splendidly to organize the forces of
spiritual freedom as Rome organized the principles of ecclesiastical
authority? How is the vision of her prophets fulfilled?
And thou, America,
For the scheme’s culmination, its thought and its reality,
For these (not for thyself) thou hast arrived.
Thou, too, surroundest all,
Embracing, carrying, welcoming all, thou too by pathways broad and
new,
To the ideal tendest.
The measured faiths of other lands, the grandeurs of the past
Are not for thee, but grandeurs of thine own,
Deific faiths and amplitudes, absorbing, comprehending all.
Where are these “deific faiths and amplitudes” that are worthy of the
land embodied?
America presents new problems for statesmanship; where are the
large-hearted, clear-eyed men who give themselves to the task? Here and
there we see them. In the crisis of the nation’s life nature came to
the rescue.
For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw,
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast
Of the unexhausted West,
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true.
That is the kind of manhood America needs. Is the supply equal to the
demand? The growth of wealth in the Republic has been marvelous. Has
there been evolved a wisdom equal to the task of justly distributing
what enterprise has created? We hear of American “Captains of
Industry.” How far have they realized Carlyle’s idea when he gave
the title to those whose success lies not in personal gain but in
ability to be real leaders of men? How far has America produced great
captains, able to bring into commerce and manufacture the soldierly
virtues of courage, loyalty, and willing obedience?
When he considers these things the just critic must say to the
Republic, “Thou art weighed in the balances and found wanting.” But let
him not hastily assume that he is reading the mystic handwriting on the
wall, the _Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin_, that foretells the fall of
nations. Let him rather talk as to a young athlete who has not come up
to the mark, “You have done much, but you have not yet done your best!
You are yet wanting in some essential elements. You must try again.”
The American idealist recognizes the present failures, but it does not
quench his high spirits. They come to him as challenges. He takes his
falls as Adam and Eve took theirs. After the first shock was over there
was a healthy reaction.
Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon;
The world was all before them where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.
The most hopeful sign of the times is the number of young Americans who
have become conscious of the grave evils that beset their country, but
who neither whine nor scold nor prophesy ill. The pioneer spirit is
strong within them. They attack the abuses of democracy with a cheery
iconoclasm. They are impelled to their work not merely by a sense of
duty; they find their fun in it. It is with a sense of exhilaration
that we watch these pioneers. Their world is all before them. We are
anxious to see what they will make of it.
A COMMUNITY OF HUMORISTS
[Illustration]
Humor is not usually looked upon as a civic virtue. It is for the most
part confined to a modest sphere of usefulness, and is accepted as an
alleviation to the lot of the private man. He learns to find pleasure
in his small misadventures and to smile amiably at his discomfitures.
The most ancient pleasantries have almost always an element of
domesticity. They form the silver lining to the clouds that sometimes
gather over the most peaceful homes. What comfort an ancient Hebrew
must have taken in the text from Ecclesiasticus: “As climbing up a
sandy way is to the feet of the aged, so is a wife full of words to a
quiet man.” The quiet man would murmur to himself, “How true!” He would
seize the simile as a dog snatches a bone, and would carry it off to
enjoy it by himself.
But it would never occur to him to treat the large affairs of the
community in this fashion. Here everything seems too dignified to allow
of pleasant conceits. The quiet man could not treat the prolixity of
his social superiors as he could the too long drawn out wisdom of his
wife. He must take it, as he would take the invariable laws of nature,
with unsmiling acquiescence. Lord Bacon in his list of works that ought
to be undertaken declared the need of one to be entitled “Sober Satire;
or the Insides of Things.” Such sober satire might express the moods
of a philosophical statesman, who could contrast the inside of great
affairs with the outside. It implies a certain familiarity with the
institutions of society which the common man does not possess.
Now and then, however, there is a reversal of the usual relation. The
community is of such a nature that each member can see through it and
all around it. The ordinary citizen becomes a philosopher indulging
habitually in sober satire. He knows that things are not as they
seem, and is pleased at the discovery. In such a case humor envelops
everything and becomes the last word of sociological wisdom.
So it was in a community which I fondly remember. It was not much
to look at, this brand-new Nevada mining town. The main street
swaggered up the gulch in a devil-may-care fashion, as if saying
to the teamsters, “You may take me or leave me.” To the north it
pointed to an alkali flat, and to the south to a dusty old mountain,
which was immensely richer than it seemed. On the mountain side were
hoisting works and hundreds of prospect holes which menaced the lives
of the unwary. In the gulch were smelters which belched forth divers
kinds of fumes. To the stranger they seemed to threaten wholesale
asphyxiation, but to the citizen they gave the place the character of
a health resort. An analysis of the air showed that it contained more
chemicals than were to be found in the most famous mineral springs.
Certain it was that there were enough to kill off all germs of
contagious diseases. The community felt the need of no further hygienic
precautions, and put its trust in its daily fumigations. No green thing
was in sight, not so much as a grass blade, for the fumes were not
only germicides, but also herbicides. On the main street were saloons
and gambling houses, in close proximity to two or three struggling
churches. There were two daily newspapers, each of which kept us
informed of the other’s manifold iniquities. A narrow-gauge railroad
had its terminus at the foot of the gulch. Once a day a mixed train
would depart for the world that lay beyond the alkali flat. Some of
the passengers would be “going below,” which meant nothing worse than
a trip to California; others were promoters going East on missions of
mercy to benighted capitalists. The promoter was our nearest approach
to a professional philanthropist. As for the rest, the chief impression
was of dust. It would roll in great billows down the gulch; it seemed
as if the mountains had been pulverized. Then the wind would change and
the dust billows would roll back. No matter how long it blew, there was
always more where it came from.
I cannot explain to an unsympathetic reader why it was that we found
life in our dusty little metropolis so charming, and why it was that
we felt such pity for those who had never experienced the delights of
our environment. Nor can I justify to such a reader the impulse which
led a woman whose husband had died far away in New England to bring his
body back to be laid to rest in the bare little cemetery amid the sage
brush.
“It’s not such a homelike country as the other,” I ventured.
“No,” she answered, “it isn’t, but he liked it.”
And so did we all; and the liking was not the less real because
it was an acquired taste. There was nothing in it akin to serious
public spirit. It was a whimsical liking, like that of Touchstone for
Audrey,--“An ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own; a poor humour of
mine, sir, to take that that no man else will.”
When several thousand people, set down in the midst of a howling
wilderness, tacitly agree to consider it as the garden of the Lord,
they can do much. It pleases the ephemeral community to make believe
that it is permanent. The camp organizes itself into a city, with
all the offices and dignities appertaining thereto. Civilization is
extemporized like a game of dumb crambo. It amuses the citizens to
see their beloved city going about in institutions several sizes too
large for it. Nothing is taken literally. Humor is accepted not as a
private possession, but as a public trust, and cultivated in a spirit
of generous coöperation.
In the town were men whose education and experience had been in
the great world. There were mine superintendents who a little while
ago might have been in Germany or Cornwall; there were assayers and
engineers fresh from the great technical schools, and “experts” full of
geological lore. The mines were as rich in litigation as in silver, and
there were lawyers great and small.
But all were dominated by one typical character who was accepted as
the oracle of the land,--“The Honest Miner.” To him saloons were
dedicated with alluring titles, such as “The Honest Miner’s Delight”
and “The Honest Miner’s Rest.” At the end of the gulch was “The Honest
Miner’s Last Chance,”--one which he seldom missed. The newspapers and
political orators appealed to his untutored judgments as the last word
of political wisdom. He occupied the position which elsewhere is held
by the “Sturdy Yeoman” or the “Solid Business Man.”
The Honest Miner of the Far West is one of those typical Americans who
are builders of commonwealths. His impress is upon the western half of
our continent. He is a nomad, the last of a long line of adventurers
to whom the delight of the new world is in its newness. Sometimes his
work is permanent, but he never is quite sure. His habitual mood is one
of sober satire.
I know nothing more pleasant than to sit with an old-timer who has
spent years in prospecting for silver and gold, and listen to his
reminiscences. Here is a philosopher indeed, one with an historic
perspective. He has the experience of the Wandering Jew, without his
world-weariness. He has seen the rise and fall of cities and the
successive dynasties of mining kings. His life has been a mingling of
society and solitude. With his pack upon his back he has wandered into
desert places where no man had been since the making of the world,--at
least, no man with an eye to the main chance. A few weeks later the
lonely cañon has become populated with eager fortune-seekers. The camp
becomes a city which to the eyes of the Honest Miner is one of the
wonders of the world. A year later he revisits the scene, and it is as
Tadmor in the Wilderness. He pauses to refresh his mind with ancient
history, and then passes on to join in a new “excitement.” He measures
time by these excitements as the Greeks measured it by Olympiads.
He loves to tell of the ups and downs of his own fortune. There is
no bitterness in his memory of his failures. They relieve the record
from the monotony that belongs to assured success. His successes
are not less gratifying because, like all things earthly, they have
had a speedy ending. A dozen times he has “struck it rich.” He has
thrown away his pick and shovel and gone below to bask in the smiles
of fortune. He has indulged in vague dreams of going to Europe, of
looking up his family tree, and of cultivating grammar and other fine
arts. Fortune continued to smile, but after a while her smile became
sardonic, and with a wink she said, “Time’s up!” Then the Honest Miner
would take up his pick and shovel and return to his work, neither a
sadder nor a wiser man,--in fact, exactly the same kind of man he was
before. That Experience is a teacher is a pedantic theory which he
rejects with scorn. Experience is not a schoolmaster, Experience is a
chum who likes to play practical jokes upon him. Just now he has given
him a tumble and got the laugh on him. But just wait awhile! And he
chuckles to himself as he thinks how he will outwit Experience.
All the traditions of the mining country confirm him in his point of
view: Listen to what Experience says, and then do just the opposite.
It is the unexpected that happens. The richest diggings bear the most
lugubrious names. The Montanian delights to tell of the riches taken
out of Last Chance Gulch. The Arizonian for years boasted of the gayety
of Tombstone and the amazing prosperity of the Total Wreck Mine.
* * * * *
Certain physiologists are now telling us that the poetic praise of
wine is based upon a mistake. Alcohol, they say, is not a stimulant,
but a depressant. It does not stimulate the imagination so much as it
depresses the critical faculty so that dullness may easily pass for
wit. An idea will occur to a sober man as being rather bright, but
before he has time to express it he sees that it is not so. Under the
inhibition of good sense he holds his tongue and saves his reputation.
But in a convivial company the inhibition is removed. Everybody says
whatever is uppermost in his mind. The mice play, not because they are
more lively than before, but only because the cat is away.
On first hearing this theory, it seemed to me that it was the most
powerful temperance argument which could be formulated. But I am not
sure but that it leaves the matter very much where it found it. After
all, the man who is oppressed by the dullness of his ordinary condition
would enjoy feeling brilliant, even if he were not really so.
In trying to recall any specific instances of wit and humor in my
Nevada town, I am compelled to fall back on the theory of the removal
of inhibition. Life was not more amusing there than elsewhere,--it
only seemed so. There were no “best people” whose critical judgments
inhibited the self-expression of less favored classes. Every one
feeling at liberty to be himself and to express his own opinion,
unfailing variety was assured. Society, being composed of all sorts and
conditions of men, was in a state of perpetual effervescence. A very
ordinary man, who elsewhere might have passed unnoticed in a life of
drudgery, became a notable character.
There, for example, was Old Multitude, so called from the many oxen
attached to the huge wagons he convoyed to the distant mines. He was a
bull-whacker of the old school. His surname had long been lost in the
abyss of time. Old Multitude was not looked upon as a mere individual.
The public had adopted him, and he had become an institution.
When he was about to depart, a crowd would gather on the main street,
as the inhabitants of a little seaport town gather to watch the
departure of a ship. Old Multitude bore his honors meekly, but he was
conscious that he was the chief actor in an important social function.
There was nothing ill-advised in his actions, and his words were fitly
chosen as he walked down the line, addressing to each beast of his
multitudinous team the appropriate malediction. His wide vocabulary
on such occasions contrasted strangely with his usual taciturnity.
The words taken by themselves were blood-curdling enough, but as they
rose and fell in mighty undulations it seemed as if he were intoning a
liturgy.
And there was Old Tansy, a bit of wreckage from the times of ’49. There
was a tradition that Tansy had seen better days; at least, it was hard
to imagine how he could have seen worse. He lived without visible means
of support, and yet he was not submerged. It pleased the community
to accept Tansy as a character worth knowing in spite of his fallen
fortunes. His obvious failings were always clothed in soft euphemisms.
No one could say that he had ever seen him drunk, and on the other hand
no one would be so rash as to assert that he had ever seen him sober.
In the border land between moderate drinking and inebriety, Tansy dwelt
in peace.
What most endeared Tansy to his fellows was his mild religiosity, which
manifested itself in persistent church-going. He was no fair-weather
Christian. There was no occasion when he would not desert his
favorite saloon to take his accustomed place in the back pew of the
Presbyterian church. Only once did Tansy express an opinion in regard
to the services which he so assiduously attended. A minister passing
through the town preached a lurid sermon on the future punishment of
the wicked. He spared no materialistic imagery to make his remarks
effective. At the close of the service Tansy, instead of going out, as
was his custom, went forward and, grasping the minister’s hands, said
in a tone of quiet satisfaction, “Parson, it done me good.”
Just what the nature of the good was he did not indicate. I suppose
that there was something in the unction of the preacher that recalled
memories of the past.
There was one person whom I always recall with peculiar pleasure. To
see him coming over the divide in a cloud of dust was to see one of the
typical forms of creation. He was known, on account of the huge pair
of goggles which he wore, as “Four-Eyed Nick.” He dwelt in a cabin in
the most desolate part of the mountain, and he fitted his environment
perfectly. He seemed as natural a product of the soil as the sage
brush, for like it he had learned to exist where there was very little
water.
Great was the joy in the community when one day Four-Eyed Nick
announced that he had struck pay ore and that he was about to
celebrate his good fortune by getting married. Every one was intensely
interested. The newspapers made an especial feature of the approaching
marriage in high life. Nick was dazed by the sudden glare of publicity.
Who should be invited? His generous heart rebelled against any
discrimination, and he solved his problem by saying, “Come one! Come
all!” He engaged every vehicle in the town to be at the disposal of
such of his fellow citizens as would honor him with their presence at
his nuptials.
It would have delighted the heart of Chaucer to have seen the
procession of wedding guests wending their way over the ten miles of
abominable mountain road to Nick’s cabin. Not on the road to Canterbury
was there more variety or more hearty good fellowship. Nick had invited
the town, and the town was bent on showing its appreciation of the
compliment. The mayor and members of the city council, the lawyers,
editors, doctors, clergymen, gamblers, mining experts, saloon-keepers,
and honest miners all joined heartily in doing honor to one whom they,
for the moment, agreed to consider their most distinguished fellow
citizen.
No one could remain long in assured obscurity. It pleased the community
to turn its search-light now upon one member and now upon another, and
give him a brief experience of living in the public eye. Greatness of
one sort or another was sure to be thrust upon one in the course of
the year. The choicest spirits of the town were always collaborating
in some work of high-grade fiction, and were on the lookout for
interesting material. It would have been churlish for any one when his
turn came to have refused to be a notability.
An English writer laments the fact that the schools send out thousands
of persons whose imaginations have been stifled by the too prosaic
discipline which they have undergone. “Why,” he says, “is it that
ninety-nine persons out of a hundred lose this faculty in the earliest
period of their childhood? It is simply because their bringing up has
consisted in the persistent inoculation with the material facts of
life, and the correspondingly persistent elimination of all imaginative
ideas.”
He blames parents who give their children mechanical toys, especially
if they are well made. Even a doll should not have too much
verisimilitude. “It would be better to place a bundle of rags in
the arms of a little girl, and tell her to imagine it to be a baby.
She would, if left to herself with no other resource than her own
fancy learn to exercise all her dormant powers of imagination and
originality.”
That kind of education the Honest Miner has carried into mature life.
He is full of imaginative ideas. The barest shanty is glorified in his
eyes if it bears the sign “Palace Hotel” or “Delmonico’s.” If he cannot
have the thing, he takes satisfaction in the name. Above all else, he
craves variety.
The inhabitants of Gold Hill used to relate with pleasure the exploits
of Sandy Bowers. When he struck an incredibly rich pocket in the
mountain, Sandy built for himself a huge and expensive mansion in
Washoe Valley. He imported all kinds of trees from foreign lands, none
of which would grow. He filled his house with pianos, and when some one
suggested sheet music he telegraphed to New York: “Send me some sheet
music, one of every kind.”
It was the desire for one of every kind which induced our community,
when it put off the habits of a “camp” and became a “city,” to lift
into temporary prominence an elderly farmer from Pennsylvania who had
drifted into Nevada without changing any of his ways. He came from
York County, where he would have gone on his way unnoticed, for there
were so many like him. But in the silver country he was different
from the common run of fortune-seekers, therefore he was made much of.
Some local Diogenes turned his lantern upon him and discovered that he
was an honest man, honest in a plodding, Pennsylvania Dutch fashion.
“Honest John” became a man of note. Then some one suggested that we had
“in our midst a grand old man.” That was enough to make the political
fortune of the honest man. He was elected to a position of power in the
new city government, for every one was anxious to see what our “grand
old man” would do.
He proved a thorn in the flesh of the politicians. He introduced a
reign of rigid economy which made the local statesmen despair of the
Republic. It was decided that the city had had too much of a good
thing. The Grand Old Man should be deposed,--he should not be mayor,
nor member of the council, nor any such thing.
But the municipal charter had been conceived in that generous fashion
which is proper to a state where there are offices in excess of the
needs of the population. The Grand Old Man discovered that there was
one office which had been overlooked by the astute politicians: that
of the Superintendent of Streets and Sidewalks. The streets had not
been clearly differentiated from the surrounding desert, and, as for
sidewalks, the citizens had been accustomed to cut across the country
wherever it pleased them. The highways having been left to the kindly
influence of Nature, it never occurred to any one that they should be
officially superintended. The Grand Old Man cast a ballot for himself
as Superintendent of Streets and Sidewalks, and when the returns were
in, it was found that his name led all the rest. He was declared
elected by a majority of one.