his nature Francis from the first transcended the sphere of
ecclesiasticism, and lived in the freedom of the spirit. In an age when
ritualism was triumphant he chose an unsacerdotal ministry. At a time
when the highest piety was supposed to manifest itself in the building
and adornment of churches, he insisted on the higher grace of charity.
When a case of need was presented to him, he said: “Sell the ornaments
on the altar of the Blessed Virgin. Be assured that she would be more
pleased to have her altar without adornment than to see the gospel of
her Son any longer set at naught.”
Pope Innocent had many who came with ambitious plans. There were always
monks who desired to be abbots, and priests who desired to be bishops.
But one day Brother Francis came desiring that he and certain poor
brethren might be allowed to live according to the rule of the gospel.
They were not content to be poor after the conventional fashion of the
great monastic institutions, where corporate wealth was married to
individual poverty. Their poverty should be real. Almost everything had
been organized around a treasury. They would like to organize brotherly
kindness, patience, humility, and love according to their own laws.
And the request was made so simply that Pope Innocent could do nothing
but grant it, though it made his own ambitions stand out in startling
contrast.
* * * * *
The life of St. Francis was very mediæval, which was but another way of
saying that its idealism was not balanced by the scientific temper. Men
in those days delighted in paradoxes, and were contented with no half
measures. His experience was different from ours. He did not confront
the poverty of the slums of our great cities. It was the poverty of
Umbria. It was a poverty that was acquainted with hunger and which wore
coarse garments, but it had the freedom of the fields and the open
roads. We have problems to solve with which he was unacquainted.
Yet there is something in his daring paradox which attracts us. Beneath
all its extravagance there is a vitality in the joyous worship of My
Lady Poverty. For what is worship? It is, literally, worth-ship. It is
the recognition of intrinsic values. It is just here that the modern
man is beginning to be distrustful of himself. He has been marvelously
successful in obtaining his desires, but has he desired the best
things? In the height of his achievement he cannot help asking, “After
all, is it worth what it has cost?”
Things turn out differently from what had been expected. A life devoted
to personal gain is likely to be disappointing. A whole community which
has no other means of estimating worth than the increase in wealth
is still more disappointing. It has no proper means of government. A
plutocracy is but another name for moral anarchy. Special interests
become intolerably domineering and override the common good. In a
society where everything is measured by money, where is the limitation
to despotism? What is to prevent the rich man from buying up his
neighbors and using all their talents to serve his own narrow purposes?
He is able to pay for the best food and drink and shelter. Why may he
not bend to his will the best human ability?
The answer comes from the iconoclasts, who strike boldly at the idols
of the market-place. They have something that is not for sale, and they
can afford to laugh at the highest bidders. They are not asking favors.
They are likely to be inexperienced in the ways of the world, but the
world fears them as it fears all forces which it cannot understand.
They cannot be cajoled or threatened, for they have learned that it is
possible to be happy and poor.
My Lady Poverty has still her worshipers. She has long been honored by
the devotion of true artists. The man of science gravely acknowledges
her, and confesses without shame that he is too busy to make money.
There are statesmen who are the despair of the party managers
because when the question comes, “What can we do for you?” they
answer “Nothing.” Every now and then there occurs that disconcerting
phenomenon which we call genius. It upsets all calculations and refuses
to respond to the law of supply and demand. The second best may be
bought, but the very best is given away. Now and then, too, out of
our conventional gentilities there comes an ideal gentleman. He would
adorn the most exclusive circles, were it not that he has a passion for
the best society, and he has learned that the best society is never
exclusive. He takes the part of the uttermost man, and finds his joy
in the companionship of those who are aspiring and struggling. And
there is the increasing number of the nature-lovers who enter into
the religious feelings which St. Francis voiced in “The Song of the
Creatures.” They love one who could worship out of doors, and speak
familiarly of Master Sun and Brother Wind and Sister Water. As they
sit around their campfires they join heartily in the praise of Brother
Fire. “He is jocund, robust, and strong and bright.”
They love to read again the story of how St. Francis and Brother Masseo
stopped at noon under a tree where there was a broad smooth stone to
serve as a table for their simple meal. Close by was a spring of cold
water.
“What a treasure we have here!” cried Francis in delight.
“Father,” answered Brother Masseo, “how can you talk so when we have no
tablecloth or knife or cup!”
Brother Masseo voices the opinion of the majority, but there are
increasing numbers of true Franciscans. St. Francis is the patron saint
of those who believe in Nature as well as in Grace. In spite of all his
austerities he is endeared to us because he represented the bohemianism
of piety.
AS HE SEES HIMSELF
The exercises of Commencement Day had been unusually interesting,
though prolonged. I had attended them all. I had listened to the wisdom
of the selected members of the graduating class, and afterwards to the
less dignified but more optimistic remarks of the old graduates. The
general impression that I received was that though the country had been
in danger, the worst was over.
Returning home I found a caller waiting for me in the library. He was a
rather handsome man in his way, but a close observer might have noticed
a certain shiftiness in his eyes and hard lines about his mouth, and
perhaps other signs of a misspent life. Not being a close observer, I
did not notice any of these things. He struck me as an ordinary person
with whom it might be a pleasure to talk. I was somewhat surprised at
his first remark, which was made by way of introduction.
“I am,” he said, “well known to the police, and am said to be the most
dangerous criminal of my class now at large. I am an expert forger and
have served time in four prisons.”
His frank statement was preliminary to the request for a temporary
loan that would enable him to complete the work of reformation, that
was endangered by a lack of funds. It was late in the day, and before
acceding to his request it was necessary that there should be some
investigation, so I asked him to call on the morrow.
“I have been at the Commencement exercises all day,” I said, “and am
not in a condition to be of much help to you just now; but if you would
like to stay a while and chat, I should be glad.”
He welcomed the suggestion, and, now that the matter of business had
been postponed, he was at his ease. In a friendly way he made me
acquainted with the general theory of forging and check-raising,--at
least so far as it is intelligible to the lay mind. His criticism of
prison management was acute, and he pointed out the seamy side of
the plans of the reformers. I listened with docility to his story of
the under world. He was a well-educated man with an appreciation of
good literature, which was a characteristic, he informed me, of most
forgers. He was especially interested in sociology, and had all its
best phrases at his tongue’s end. He attributed all his misfortunes
to Society. For one thing I listened in vain,--the admission that in
some respects he might himself have been remiss. The idea of reciprocal
obligation did not seem to have any place in his philosophy. As
delicately as I could I tried to turn the conversation from the sin
of Society, which I readily acknowledged, to the less obvious point
of personal responsibility. Granting that Society was imperfectly
organized, that juries were ignorant, and judges lacking in the quality
of mercy, and prison wardens harsh, and chaplains too simple-minded,
were there not faults on the other side that it might be profitable to
correct? It was of no use to try to induce such currents of thought;
they were quickly short-circuited.
At last I said, “You have told me what you did before you concluded to
reform. I am curious to know how, in those days, you looked at things.
Was there anything which you wouldn’t have done, not because you were
afraid of the law, but because you felt it would be wrong?”
“Yes,” he said, “there is one thing I never would do, because it always
seemed low down. I never would steal.”
It was evident that further discussion would be unprofitable without
definition of terms. I found that by stealing he meant petty larceny,
which he abhorred. In our condemnation of the sneak thief and the
pickpocket we were on common ground. His feeling of reprobation was,
if anything, more intense than that which I felt at the time. He
alluded to the umbrellas and other portable articles he had noticed
in the hallway. Any one who would take advantage of an unsuspecting
householder by purloining such things was a degenerate. He had no
dealings with such moral imbeciles.
It seemed to me that I might press the analogy which instantly occurred
to me between “stealing” and forgery.
“Do they not,” I said, “seem to you to amount to very much the same
thing?”
I had struck a wrong note. Analogies are ticklish things to handle,
for things which are alike in certain respects are apt to be quite
different in other respects. His mind was intent on the differences.
The sneak thief, he told me, is a vulgar fellow of no education. The
forger and the check-raiser are experts. They are playing a game. Their
wits are pitted against the wits of the men who are paid high salaries
for detecting them. They belong to quite different spheres. If we are
looking for analogies we should look up and not down.
“You wanted to know,” he said, “what was the difference between
stealing and check-raising. Now, let me ask you a question. What’s
the difference between check-raising and some of those big financial
operations we’ve all been reading about? Suppose I have a check for
five dollars, and I put my brains into it and I manipulate it so that I
can pass it off for five hundred. I shove it in to the cashier and he
takes it. Before he finds out his mistake, I have made myself scarce.
What’s the difference between that transaction and what the ‘big
fellows’ on the street are doing?” He mentioned several names that I
had not thought of in that connection.
“The difference,” said I, “is--” Then it occurred to me that it was a
subject to which I should give further thought. So we postponed the
conversation till he should call again--which he never did.
* * * * *
I may be doing injustice to my friend the forger, but he gave me the
impression that he considered himself to be, on the whole, a rather
admirable character. His proposed change of business seemed to be
rather a concession to the prejudices of the legal profession than
the result of any personal scruple. As he saw himself he was a man of
idealistic temper whose ideals conflicted with social usage. Society
was all the time getting into his way, and in the inevitable collisions
he had usually the worst of it. He regretted this, but he bore no
malice. By the time a man has reached middle life and accumulated a
good deal of experience he takes the world as he finds it.
He had encased himself in a moral system which was self-consistent and
which explained to his own satisfaction all that had happened to him.
One thing fitted into another, and there was no room for self-reproach.
* * * * *
Many attempts have been made to depict the character of an
accomplished scamp. But Gil Blas and Roderick Random and Jonathan
Wild the Great are after all seen from the outside. The author
may attempt to do them justice, but there is a vein of irony that
reveals a judgment of his own. They lack the essential element of
incorrigibility, which is that the scamp does not suspect himself, has
not found himself out.
No novelist has ever been able to give such a portraiture of a
complacent criminal as was given a century ago in the autobiography of
Stephen Burroughs.
Burroughs was the son of a worthy clergyman of Hanover, New Hampshire,
and from the outset was looked upon as a black sheep. As a mere
boy he ran away from home and joined the army, and then with equal
irresponsibility deserted. He became a ship’s surgeon, a privateersman,
then a self-ordained minister, a counterfeiter, a teacher of youth,
a founder of libraries, and a miscellaneous philanthropist. He was a
patriot and an optimist and an enthusiastic worker in the cause of
general education. He was chock-full of fine sentiment and had a gift
for its expression. He enjoyed doing good, though in his own way, and
never neglected any opportunity to rebuke those who he felt were in
the wrong. He had a desire to reform the world, and had no doubt of
the plans which he elaborated. He was capable on occasions of acts
of magnanimity, which, while not appreciated by the public, gave him
great pleasure in the retrospect. The intervals between his various
enterprises were spent in New England jails. These experiences only
deepened his love of liberty, which was one of the passions of his life.
Burroughs had a happy disposition that enabled him to get a measure of
satisfaction out of all the vicissitudes of his life. He had learned
neither to worry nor to repine. He was not troubled by the harsh
judgments of his fellow men, for he had learned to find his happiness
in the approbation of his own conscience.
He writes: “I possess an uncommon share of sensibility, and at the same
time maintain an equality of mind that is uncommon, particularly in the
midst of those occurrences which are calculated to wound the feelings.
I have learned fortitude in the school of adversity. In draining the
cup of bitterness to its dregs, I have been taught to despise the
occurrences of misfortune. This one thing I fully believe, that our
happiness is more in our power than is generally thought, or at least
we have the ability of preventing that misery which is so common to
unfortunate situations. No state or condition in life, but from which
we may (if we exercise that reason which the God of Nature has given
us) draw comfort and happiness. We are too apt to be governed by the
opinions of others, and if they think our circumstances unhappy, to
consider them so ourselves, and of course make them so. The state of
mind is the only criterion of happiness or misery.”
It was from this lofty point of view that Stephen Burroughs wrote the
history of his own life. His tendency to didacticism interferes with
the limpid flow of the narrative. Sometimes a whole chapter will be
given over to moralizings, but the observations are never painful. They
all reveal the author’s cheerful acquiescence in the inevitability of
his own actions. Along with this there is the air of chastened surprise
over the fact that he was made the object of persecution.
At the very beginning of the narrative one recognizes an independence
which would do credit to a better man. In New England, clergymen
have always been looked upon as making good ancestors, and Burroughs
might have been pardoned if he had shown some family pride. From this
weakness he was free. “I am,” he says, “the only son of a clergyman,
living in Hanover, in the State of New Hampshire; and were any to
expect merit from their parentage, I might justly look for that
merit. But I am so far a Republican that I consider a man’s merit to
rest entirely with himself, without any regard to family, blood, or
connection.”
The accounts of the escapades of his boyhood are intermingled with
dissertations on the education of youth. “I have been in the habit
of educating youth for seven years, constantly; in the course of
my business I have endeavored to study the operations of the human
heart, that I might be able to afford that instruction which would be
salutary; and in this I find one truth clearly established, viz.: a
child will endeavor to be what you make him think mankind in general
are.”
The neglect of this truth on the part of his parents and teachers was
the cause of much annoyance to Burroughs. Throughout his life he was
the innocent victim of an educational mistake. Though after a while he
learned to forgive the early injustice, one can see that it rankled.
He endeavored to think well of mankind in general, but it was more
difficult than if he had been habituated to the exercise in infancy.
At Dartmouth young Burroughs was peculiarly unfortunate; he fell into
bad company. As an unkind fate would have it, his room-mate was an
exemplary young man who was studying for the ministry. It appears that
this misguided youth attempted to entice him into what he describes
as “a sour, morose, and misanthropic line of conduct.” Nothing could
have been more disastrous. “To be an inmate with such a character, you
will readily conceive, no way comported with a disposition like mine,
and consequently we never enjoyed that union and harmony of feeling in
our intercourse as room-mates which was necessary for the enjoyment of
social life.”
To the malign influence of his priggish room-mate several misfortunes
were attributed. In endeavoring to restore the moral equilibrium which
had been disturbed by the too great scrupulosity of his chum, he
exerted too much strength in the other direction. The result was that
“a powerful triumvirate” was formed against him in the Faculty. The
triumvirate triumphed and his connection with Dartmouth ended suddenly.
This gave occasion to a chapter on the failure of the institutions of
learning to prepare for real life. The author declares “more than one
half of the time spent in the universities, according to their present
establishment on this continent, is thrown away, and that my position
is founded in fact I will endeavor to prove.”
I do not see how his argument is affected by the fact to which the
editor calls attention in a carping footnote. “It is not strange that
the author should reason in this manner. He was expelled from college
in the second quarter of his second year, and in fact he studied but
little while he was a member.” The editor, I fear, had a narrow mind
and judged according to an academic standard which Burroughs would have
despised.
From the uncongenial limitations of a college town it was a
satisfaction to escape to sea. Here Burroughs’s versatility stood him
in good stead. “Having no doctor engaged, I undertook to act in that
capacity; and after obtaining the assistance, advice, and direction
of an old practitioner, together with marks set on each parcel of
medicine, I thought myself tolerably well qualified to perform the
office of a physician on board the ship.”
From his seafaring life Burroughs returned with his reputation under
a cloud. There were ugly rumors afloat which were readily believed by
a censorious world. For once he confesses that his philosophy failed
him. “I returned to my father’s house sunken and discouraged; the world
appeared a gloomy chaos; the sun arose to cast a sickly glimmer on
surrounding objects; the flowers of the field insulted my feelings with
their gayety and splendor; the frolicsome lamb, the playful kitten, and
the antic colt were beheld with those painful emotions which are beyond
description. Shall all nature, shall the brute creation break out into
irregular transports, by the overflowing of pleasing sensations, whilst
I am shut out from even the dim rays of hope?”
Certainly not. To a mind constituted as was his there was an absurdity
in the very suggestion. The brute creation should not have any monopoly
of comfortable sensations, so he cheered up immediately and spent the
next year loafing around his father’s house.
He had been on the coast of Africa and had taken part in some strange
scenes, but his moral sense had not been blunted to such an extent
that he could not grieve over some infractions of the moral law which
he observed in peaceful Hanover. He regretted that he had been led
inadvertently by a young man named Huntington to join a party which
robbed a farmer’s beehive.
“For some unaccountable reason or other, youth are carried away with
false notions of right and wrong. I know, for instance, that Huntington
possessed those principles of integrity that no consideration would
have induced him to deprive another of any species of property, except
fruit, bees, pigs, and poultry. And why it is considered by youth that
depriving another of these articles is less criminal than stealing any
other kind of property, I cannot tell.”
Burroughs himself was inclined to take a harsher view of these
transgressions than he did of some others; for example, of
counterfeiting, in which he was afterwards for a time engaged during
one of his brief pastorates.
The argument by which his scruples in this particular were overcome
are worth repeating. The law was indeed violated in its letter, but
might not a justification be found by one who interpreted it in a large
spirit of charity?
“Money is of itself of consequence only as we annex to it a nominal
value as the representation of property. Therefore we find the only
thing necessary to make a matter valuable is to induce the world to
deem it so; and let that esteem be raised by any means whatever, yet
the value is the same, and no one becomes injured by receiving it at
the valuation.”
The principle of fiat money having been established, the only question
that remained was whether the circumstances of the times were such as
to justify him in issuing the fiat. The answer was in the affirmative.
“That an undue scarcity of cash now prevails is a truth too obvious
for me to attempt to prove. Hence whoever contributes to increase the
quantity of cash does not only himself but likewise the community an
essential benefit.”
It was in his attempt to benefit the community in this way that he
first experienced the ingratitude of republics, being landed in the
Northampton jail.
But to see Burroughs at his best one must enter into his thoughts at
that crisis in his life when he determined that his true vocation was
preaching. He lingers fondly on his emotions at that period. It was at
a time when he had been driven out of Hanover for conduct which had
outraged the feelings of that long-suffering community.
“One pistareen was all the ready cash I had on hand, and the suddenness
with which I departed deprived me of the chance to raise more.
Traveling on leisurely I had time for reflection.”
As was usually the case when he reflected, he grew more serene and
enjoyed a frame of mind that bordered on the heroic.
“I began to look about me to see what was to be done in my present
situation and to what business I could turn my attention. The practice
of law, which would have been most to my mind, I could not undertake
until I had spent some time in the study, which would have been
attended with expense far beyond my abilities; therefore this object
must be laid aside. Physic was under the same embarrassments; business
in the mercantile line I could not pursue for want of capital. ...
What can be done? There is one thing, said contrivance, that you can
do, and it will answer your purpose--preach.”
The idea came to him as an inspiration, but immediately there was
suggested an objection which to a less resourceful mind would have
seemed insuperable. “What an appearance should I make in my present
dress? which consisted of a light gray coat, with silver-plated
buttons, green vest, and red velvet breeches.”
Down the Connecticut valley he trudged, calling to mind his father’s
old sermons and gradually working himself into a state of pious
rapture. The heart of no young pulpiteer beat with more appropriate
emotions than his, when on the next Sunday, under an assumed name,
he preached his first sermon in the village of Ludlow. “I awoke with
anxious palpitation for the issue of the day. I considered this as the
most important scene of my life--that, in a great measure, my future
happiness or wretchedness depended on my conduct this day. The time for
assembling approached! I saw the people come together. My feelings were
up in arms against me, my heart would almost leap into my mouth. What
a strange thing, said I, is man! Why am I thus perturbated by these
whimsical feelings!”