flashing speeding automobile six people: there was an old gentleman
(very trig and alert) who had hunted tigers in India and had buried
three wives; there was a woman who was one of the most proud and vain
women in the world, as well as one of the most beautiful; there was
a man who had carried through a great panic in Wall Street, and who
wore an invisible halo of prayers of widows and orphans; there was a
middle-aged woman with a broken heart, whose lover had been buried at
sea; there was a fresh-looking young girl chained to the rock of modern
conventions, and a square-jawed handsome young Perseus, who was in love
with her and determined to rescue her and carry her away to dwell with
poverty and himself on a claim in eastern Idaho.
Flash, flash! They are moving pictures, they are gone! What might they
not have been, what might they not have contributed, very especially
to the host's children, in the way of lessons and knowledge and
education, had they remained long enough to be guests! What? Education?
But the children all go to school, and to the best to be had; and the
little one there is just starting in under the Montessori method. You
should see how amazingly, from fifty-seven varieties, she can select
and grade the different shades and colors.
Madame Montessori recommends that children be under the care of a
"directress" (note the name) in the "Houses of Childhood," each day,
the day to begin at eight and to last until six, in a schoolroom
where the Montessori "method" is practised by means, mainly, of the
"didactic material"! The thing revolts me. I do not say, "What time
for arithmetic and geography, and the sterner realities of schooling?"
No, nor do I complain as does Sir Walter Scott when he touches on
Waverley's education, you remember, that "the history of England is now
reduced to a game at cards." I say to myself more solemnly, "But what
time is left for life? What time for guests?"
They have a great care of children's education nowadays. We were
neglected to a higher learning and abandoned to a larger fate. There
were guests coming! We made off to don our best dresses and behaviors.
We hoped to be worthy the gracious occasion. We meant to try. Life was
at the door.
It was not mere shrewdness in St. Paul, surely, when he recommended the
Romans so earnestly to be "given to hospitality"; but a wistfulness as
well, and a certain longing for a high education to be given unto them;
and it was his correspondents' welfare he had in mind, you remember,
rather than the welfare of their guests, when he bade the Hebrews that
they "be not forgetful to entertain strangers"; for--now note carefully
the sequel--"for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."
I have an old friend who is on his way, I am told by those in
authority, to be one of our great modern psychologists. He gives
anxious thought to the education of his children. Lately, he approached
me seriously in the matter of his boy's educational needs. Would I
talk them over with him? He wished to consult me. I looked for a
careful discussion of "methods," and was ready with all my arguments
concerning the Montessori teachings. Instead, he inquired, "Now when
will you come and visit us? a real visit, I mean? That is what I wanted
to ask you. It is with that that I am most concerned. That is exactly
what Jack needs."
I am needed as a guest in their house, for the sake of the children! My
heart rises at the thought! Cheered, I seem to see ahead, clearly, a
time when, if we do not provide them with guests, we shall think that
we have shamefully neglected our children's education; when we will no
more deny them visitors, than we would now neglect to have them taught
to read.
To love life for ourselves and others; to be forever interested in it;
to be loyal to it, and that down to the grave; to dwell helpfully and
appreciatively with one's kind; to understand others as generously as
is possible to faulty human nature, and to make ourselves understood
as much as is consistent with courtesy; these are, I take it, the fine
flower of culture; here is all that I would dare call education, or
presume to think of permanent importance.
And by no means, I feel sure, can youth be led to all this so readily,
so happily, so effectually, as by means of the age-old virtue of
hospitality. These things are things which guests bring with them,
knowing it not, and bestow on those who are not aware of the bestowal.
And our most advanced ideal, that of "universal brotherhood" and a
"federation of the world"--what is this, I ask you, but a glad sharing
of life in a society to which all will be welcome, with bread and wine
and greeting denied to none, and guest and host fulfilling an equal
obligation?
This is the old manner of entertaining, and--I ask your patience--it is
God's manner, not less. The gentle sympathy, the unfailing hospitality
of my mother,--how gentle and understanding she was of all types which
frequented the old house!--her patience and hospitality had in them,
I like to think, some resemblance to that larger patience of Him in
whose House of Life we do but for a time visit, some of us how gayly,
how romantically, some how fretfully and inconsiderately, lingering
past our time; some contributing but idle gossip; some lending to the
hearth-fires the glow of poetic dreams; some adding truth or dignity
of our own; some possessed of foibles and accomplished in failures;
some shining with hopes of final successes that shall never be ours.
Yet all of us, by the grace of God, and God be thanked, even so, adding
somewhat to the meaning of life, edifying when we least know it,
teaching when we are wholly unaware; helpful, instructive, even in our
blunders, profiting others by the often profitless lessons and fables
of our lives; enlightening when we are most ignorant of so doing, and
even when our own lives are darkened. In a word, _guests_; and what is
of even sweeter import, all of us understood, condoned, valued, pitied,
loved, by the Master of the House; welcomed by his world that has long
looked for our coming; served by his servants; waited upon by wind and
wave and those others who do his bidding; afforded the bread of life to
eat, given the wine of life to drink; warmed by the shining, welcoming
sun; lighted by no less candles than the stars; and with rest and
peace, and a bed at last for every one.
THE DISAPPOINTMENTS AND VICISSITUDES OF MICE
I
There is, I am persuaded, a tendency in many of us to reckon too
absorbedly our own difficulties and to give but scant regard to the
difficulties of others. This I have observed frequently, not only in
our associations with those of our own kind, but very especially in our
relations with creatures that we assume to be of a lower order than
ourselves.
I believe my own opportunity for observing the difficulties and
disappointments of certain members of the animal kingdom to have been
somewhat exceptional. It first came to me by way of residence in a very
delightful house in the country, in which it was my privilege to live.
It is an old house, as age goes in America, eighty or more years having
passed over the oldest of its low gables. Before we came to it, the
owner had not lived in it for many years. People had camped there from
time to time; it had served during one summer as sanctuary to some
episcopal nuns, who set up a chapel in one of its twenty-two rooms, and
tinkled matins and vespers in and out of its twilit chambers; but they
remained a short two months only and then went on again, they and their
chanted services, leaving it voiceless and tenantless--tenantless, that
is, as to human kind.
When we came to it there were many problems, difficult enough,
certainly, to be met before the beautiful old rooms of pleasing and
aristocratical proportions could be made comfortable and livable. But I
know now that I reckoned these problems far too curiously, and with too
scant regard for the far greater difficulties that our advent must have
put upon all the shy creature-folk who had up to that time found the
old place convenient and habitable enough.
In front of the house a wide brook brawls, or pauses in little pools,
to meditate under the hazel light of the birches and maples of a most
lovely woodland. Into this woodland the long veranda, running the
length of the house, faces directly. It is but a step--say, rather,
the mere dip of a wing--from the branches of the trees to the
more sheltered safety of those cornices and crevices of pillar and
window-frame where nests may be built so commodiously, away from storm
and uncertainty of many kinds; so, too, it is but a step, or let us say
a mere flying-squirrel-leap, from the drooping wood branches to the
mossy veranda roof, and thence a swift squirrel-run, of no distance
at all, along the varied eaves, and under them where secret openings
offer, and then but a flash of four-footed speed, to the inviting
safety and quiet of the old rafter attic--an ideal place to raise baby
squirrels.
When we arrived that day, the house was occupied, at its edges and
corners, and even between its closed attic shutters, by birds of every
householding and houseloving variety; and in between its many walls,
and in its upper rooms and closets and air-chambers and low, long
attic, by squirrels and chipmunks; and here, there, and everywhere, as
we learned later, in all manner of unobservable but plainly audible
places, by mice.
At the time I was not aware of the completeness of this occupancy; but
looking back now with full knowledge, I have a sense of shame and
crudeness as I think what our coming must have meant to all those many
denizens of that long, rambling, quiet old mansion. I had then, it must
be remembered, not a thought of them. We were reckoning so absorbedly
all our own difficulties and discomforts of moving attendant on our
arrival, that we gave not so much as a thought to their calamities of
withdrawal.
The birds were the first to go. I remember the frightened dart of one
of them close to my face when I first stepped from the front hall on
to the veranda. Such a frightened whirr and clipping and cutting of
the air to get through it and away, as if a panic had seized her. And
another on the branches just beyond the veranda, on her way, no doubt,
back to her nest on the window-casing, where now she dared not alight.
Such incredulous flitting from branch to branch, such twitching of
tail and wings, such anxious twitterings and turnings of the head,
such bird exclamations! Then she spread her wings and flew away, no
doubt to circulate the news. What Huns and Vandals had entered on her
possessions and threatened the country of her safety!
I think the first week, certainly the second, at most, saw all the
birds gone. The squirrels and chipmunks, too, though they stayed on
a trifle later, were not long in departing. There were councils and
hurried scamperings, hushed pauses, and now and then--when I got an
actual glimpse of one of them--an attitude of intent listening, a tiny
paw held dangling in front of a visibly beating heart; then the quick,
noiseless drop to all-fours, the drooped tail, the flash of speed;
then the leap into leafy invisibility--only the branches left swaying,
remembering.
We had an Irish cook, who called all this tribe--red squirrels, gray
squirrels, and chipmunks,--indiscriminately "the munks."
"God bless us! Look at the munks, mum! How they do race and carry on!"
She came to me the second morning, after what I take to have been a
sleepless night. "Did you hear last night, mum? 'Twas a shame to any
decent house. And but for its bein' here in this heathen country, at
the back of God's field, and not a Christian locomotive to be had for
miles, I'd pack up and be gone before I'd stand another night of their
riotin'! I can't stand the rakish things, mum." The last in a high,
nervous key.
"What is it you cannot stand?"
"The munks, mum!"
It was she, a devout daughter of the Church, who had said it. I made no
amendment; I only, I am sorry to say, offered her as consolation this:--
"Don't worry about them. They will not stay now we are here. They will
find other homes for themselves."
Yes, I said just that, and gave it to her for consolation.
II
So much for the birds and squirrels, those altogether shy denizens
given to quick abdication. But the mice, being, I suppose, of a
somewhat more reasoning and philosophical order, more given to
treaty and capitulation, remained, after I know not what cautious
considerations and watchful consultations among themselves. That these
must have been sufficiently serious, I am convinced, for we heard at
first very little indeed of their doings; as if they intended to wait
and study this phenomenon of our usurpation before taking any risk
with powers so unlikely and unknown.
But as time passed, their attitude toward the heavens and their
horoscope must have altered. Doubtless there was some hope that matters
were not so bad as the old and experienced among them had prophesied.
Appropriately quiet in the day, in the night they began to dare, and
to recover what was, I suppose, some of their erstwhile freedom, or
old-time happiness. They began cautiously to come and go; to advance
creepingly; to explore; to inquire and pry; to examine and study; and I
think, no doubt, to report.
The usurpers, it seems, had a strange way of lying quiet at night (of
all times!), and pursuing their busy activities in the day, when all
good mouse citizens were in bed and asleep! Well, so far so good.
Perhaps the mice set this down to a special providence. However that
may be, it is certain that they acted on the intelligence; for at
night, having now become well informed as to our habits, they began
to come and go, if still a little cautiously, yet with more and more
freedom.
I used to lie awake listening to them. One would scurry across the
floor wildly overhead, forget something, and run back for it. Another,
carrying a burden, would in fright or haste drop it, scamper away as if
terrified (oh, good gracious!) and then would dare to go back for it,
and roll it away soundingly into safety. I am inclined to think that a
certain pleasure was attendant on these dangers, and that among them,
as among ourselves, the brave were the gay; for there were among them
now--oh, bead-eyed, venturesome spirits!--certain delicate squeakings
that had all the effect of laughter. I could have sworn their feet
tittered; there was--I do assure you I am speaking the truth--something
giggling in their gait.
They were not, I am sure, without their Colchases and Cassandras; but,
despite these, they began ere long to have certain celebrations. Go to!
Let old White-Whiskers, who foretold calamity, take himself off and lie
with his nose on his paws! There are better things in the world than
prudence!
Celebrations there certainly were, though of what exact kind I am
unable to state; weddings, very likely; town meetings, it may be,
with the ladies present and welcome; picnics, in all probability; and
christenings, I lean to believe, at which I make little doubt they
drank deliriously of dandelion wine. One must not demand too curiously
where they got it. I really have no idea. I keep my own well corked.
I only know that circumstantial evidence is strongly in favor of the
belief that they had it, and that in large quantities. How else is
it conceivable they could so far forget our presence and their own
risk? For I heard them coming home late one night between the rafters,
shortly before dawn, in an openly riotous manner. Prudence they had
flung to the winds. Their behavior was wholly ramshackle and reckless.
Such squeakings! such tumblings and titterings and scramblings as could
only have occurred among those totally oblivious to all danger! Such a
drunken dropping of acorns and other picnic viands! with little shrieks
from the ladies! Too evidently they had determined to eat and drink and
be merry, let come what would.
I could not help laughing myself with them, yet I sobered, too, at such
recklessness on their part. This was no mere indiscretion; it was
sheer folly.
I have no way of knowing whether any Daniel rose to warn them. If so,
he was not heeded. The feast went on uninterrupted. Or, it is possible,
too, they had not the requisite education or conscience to enable them
to read the moonlight on the rafter wall for writing of an ominous
character.
When I wakened in the morning, not a sound or evidence. Like Bottom, it
seemed to me that I had had a most rare vision, for daylight had laid a
hushing and dispersing hand on them also. Then, suddenly, I knew it all
for reality. Not a beady eye among them, of course, that was not closed
now; in the daytime twilight of old rafters, all of them, without
doubt, slept, dandelion deep, their noses and their whiskers on their
tails.
Meanwhile, time and events went forward. Miss Layng, a North-of-Ireland
woman who kept house for us, while I attended to the work required of
me in my study, appeared before me with a white and sleepless face.
Miss Layng had ominous colored hair, which she heaped each morning in
an exact manner above a face in which delicate health, gentleness, and
unalterable determination were composite. She stood before me now, like
an allegorical figure of Justice, or Commerce, or Law, bearing in one
outheld hand a magenta "Dutchman's head" cheese.
"You heard them?"
She spoke with quiet severity.
I looked inquiring, innocent.
She disregarded this, as a person too much above a lie herself to
recognize one.
"I think we shall need six traps, at least. Cook says she will not stay
unless they go. She says one ran across her face last night!"
(Oh, the riotousness of them! More than I had suspected!)
At this moment the cook herself appeared, far less allegorical,
comfortingly real, a lemon-squeezer in one hand.
"Oh, mum, I can't be saying exactly whether it did or not. Maybe it
did, belike it didn't. But they do get me that nervous with what they
_might_ do!"
"You can see from this," antiphonied Miss Layng, solemnly.
She turned the Holland cheese toward me. In its side was eaten what
could only be called a cavern. She stood there exhibiting it, eloquent,
without need of words.
Meanwhile, my own mental processes were busy, delightedly. Of course!
of course! Here was a revelation and an accounting! It was this,
undoubtedly, that had been the occasion of so much merriment and
wild celebration. And how altogether natural! For days they had been
fearful, and oppressed with dark anxiety. What harm might not such a
race as ourselves bring them! Other powers had fled before us. They
had remained! But who dared tell the outcome? Dark prophecies! Sombre
forebodings! Unthinkable possibilities! And then,--then,--when the
dark-minded and old among them pointed out optimism as the sheerest
folly,--then came this proof of unlooked-for benevolence! Age and
pessimism received their due. Caution and timorousness were flung
to the winds. Old wives and grandfathers were flouted, and their
cautiousness set down to sheer envy and crabbedness. The day and the
victory were in the hands of the young, the optimistic, the full of
faith! Come, ladies; come gentlemen! Pay no heed to these pessimistic
aged people. Preserve your faith in life! Here is good warrant!
Quick! uncork the bottles! Bring the baskets along! This is a day for
feasting, for feasting! Look upon this magenta miracle of benevolence,
and be convinced. Life is kind!
Where is a man with heart and imagination so dead who would not
understand, by the light of all this, why the night had seen such
celebration? How well understood, now, was the daring of the gentlemen,
the almost hysterical gayety of the ladies!
Meanwhile Miss Layng waited.
"I thought I would get six traps, but wished to speak of it first,
otherwise you might wonder to see so many on the bill at the end of the
month."
In this cryptic yet crystalline fashion the problem of their fate was
presented to me. There was put before me a choice, a clear choice,
between the proper maintaining of an honorable household, the retaining
of a housekeeper and a cook with all that this implied as to my own
comfort, and--a whole community of I know not how many fathers,
mothers, children, step-children, brothers, half-brothers, uncles,
aunts, cousins, first cousins once removed, prophets, sibyls, lawgivers.
Need I say which I felt constrained to choose?
Six were caught the first night.
III
Six the first night! In the very midst of their rejoicings and the
apparent favor of their divinity--six! What a subject for a rodent
Æschylus! How they must have set themselves to ponder it! How and by
what neglect or unintentional disrespect had they offended the gods,
who but a while before had shone so kind! Six! And, as in the reapings
of war among ourselves, these were bound to have been the best and most
adventurous spirits. I paused to look at only one of them. What a sleek
and likely fellow he was! What a bead of an eye! What a father of a
family he would have made, nay, perhaps was!
After that I asked Miss Layng to spare me all bulletins and statistics;
but by the frequency with which I came across her in the halls, or just
emerging from closets, holding far from her, between horrified fingers,
a small magenta trap rigged with wires and a dangling tail, I knew the
number was large.
I knew, too, by signs other and quite as authentic. The riotous
junketings had indeed ceased. The community was without doubt sobered,
and, it may be, led to think of its sins, its gods having turned
against it. There was less frolic and gladness in the world than there
had been.
I confess, all this seemed to me a loss, or, more exactly, a kind of
waste. The wiser and the brooding East does not throw such things
away. Are there not many folk in India, of tawny skin and gentle eye,
who regard the humbler orders as sacred? There in that land are not
the monkeys (and I cannot believe them to be a less destructive or
garrulous race) welcome to the temples? There does not Kim's sacred
bull go about and select the best vegetables for himself?
I was discontent with our order of things, not to say
conscience-stricken, and thought much about it. How we patronize and
humiliate and rout and exterminate these humbler folk! With how marked
an arrogance we deal with them! How we impose our morals upon them,
and bid them live up to our laws or be gone! They must exist in the
presence of a perpetual ultimatum. No court is held for their benefit.
There is no appeal possible save to mouse-traps with their inevitable
death-penalty. There is no more chance of getting their case correctly
stated before us than before the White Queen. Who ever listened to even
their most able and eloquent attorney?
"My lords," he begins, with nervous whiskers, "the case of my client is
one that especially commends itself to human clemency. Six little ones
at home, my lords, and not a mouthful to eat! If this, my lords, if
this be not--"
"Off with his head! Sentence first" (the inevitable sentence!),
"verdict afterward!"
So we behave ourselves atrociously toward these, who, though of a
humbler order, are yet susceptible, I doubt not, of sensibilities and
sorrows and enjoyments; we, who in turn are so ready to abuse our own
order for their atrocities when we do not happen to be a party to them.