Some years ago I was traveling by railway, no matter whence or
whither. I was in a second-class carriage. We had been long on the
road, and had still some distance before us, when one evening our
journey was brought unexpectedly to an end by the train running into a
siding. The guards opened the doors, we were told that we could
proceed no further, and were required to alight. The passengers were
numerous, and of all ranks and sorts. There were third class, second,
first, with saloon carriages for several great persons of high
distinction. We had ministers of State, judges on circuit, directors,
leading men of business, idle young men of family who were out amusing
themselves, an archbishop, several ladies, and a duke and duchess with
their suite. These favored travelers had Pullman cars to themselves,
and occupied as much room as was allotted to scores of plebeians. I
had amused myself for several days in observing the luxurious
appurtenances by which they were protected against discomfort,--the
piles of cushions and cloaks, the baskets of dainties, the novels and
magazines to pass away the time, and the profound attention which they
met with from the conductors and station-masters on the line. The rest
of us were a miscellaneous crowd,--commercial people, lawyers,
artists, men of letters, tourists moving about for pleasure or because
they had nothing to do; and in third-class carriages, artisans and
laborers in search of work, women looking for husbands or for service,
or beggars flying from starvation in one part of the world to find it
follow them like their shadows, let them go where they pleased. All
these were huddled together, feeding hardly on such poor provisions as
they carried with them or could pick up at the stopping-places. No
more consideration was shown them than if they had been so many
cattle. But they were merry enough: songs and sounds of laughter came
from their windows, and notwithstanding all their conveniences, the
languid-looking fine people in the large compartments seemed to me to
get through their journey with less enjoyment after all than their
poor fellow travelers. These last appeared to be of tougher texture,
to care less for being jolted and shaken, to be better humored and
kinder to one another. They had found life go hard with them wherever
they had been, and not being accustomed to have everything which they
wished for, they were less selfish and more considerate.
The intimation that our journey was for the present at an end came on
most of us as an unpleasant surprise. The grandees got out in a high
state of indignation. They called for their servants, but their
servants did not hear them, or laughed and passed on. The conductors
had forgotten to be obsequious. All classes on the platform were
suddenly on a level. A beggar woman hustled the duchess, as she was
standing astonished because her maid had left her to carry her own
bag. The patricians were pushed about among the crowd with no more
concern than if they had been common mortals. They demanded loudly to
see the station-master. The minister complained angrily of the delay;
an important negotiation would be imperiled by his detention, and he
threatened the company with the displeasure of his department. A
consequential youth who had just heard of the death of his elder
brother was flying home to take his inheritance. A great lady had
secured, as she had hoped, a brilliant match for her daughter; her
work over, she had been at the baths to recover from the dissipation
of the season; difficulty had arisen unlooked for, and unless she was
at hand to remove it the worst consequences might be feared. A banker
declared that the credit of a leading commercial house might fail,
unless he could be at home on the day fixed for his return; he alone
could save it. A solicitor had the evidence in his portmanteau which
would determine the succession to the lands and title of an ancient
family. An elderly gentleman was in despair about his young wife, whom
he had left at home; he had made a will by which she was to lose his
fortune if she married again after his death, but the will was lying
in his desk unsigned. The archbishop was on his way to a synod, where
the great question was to be discussed whether gas might be used at
the altar instead of candles. The altar candles were blessed before
they were used, and the doubt was whether gas could be blessed. The
right reverend prelate conceived that if the gas tubes were made in
the shape of candles the difficulty could be got over, but he feared
that without his moderating influence the majority might come to a
rash decision.
All these persons were clamoring over their various anxieties with the
most naive frankness, the truth coming freely out, whatever it might
be. One distinguished-looking lady in deep mourning, with a sad,
gentle face, alone was resigned and hopeful. It seemed that her
husband had been stopped not long before at the same station. She
thought it possible that she might meet him again.
The station-master listened to the complaints with composed
indifference. He told the loudest that they need not alarm themselves.
The State would survive the absence of the minister. The minister, in
fact, was not thinking of the State at all, but of the party triumph
which he expected; and the peerage which was to be his reward, the
station-master said, would now be of no use to him. The youth had a
second brother who would succeed instead of him, and the tenants would
not be inconvenienced by the change. The fine lady's daughter would
marry to her own liking instead of her mother's, and would be all the
happier for it. The commercial house was already insolvent, and the
longer it lasted the more innocent people would be ruined by it. The
boy whom the lawyer intended to make into a rich baronet was now
working industriously at school, and would grow up a useful man. If a
great estate fell in to him he would be idle and dissolute. The old
man might congratulate himself that he had escaped so soon from the
scrape into which he had fallen. His wife would marry an adventurer,
and would suffer worse from inheriting his fortune. The archbishop was
commended for his anxiety. His solution of the candle problem was no
doubt an excellent one; but his clergy were now provided with a
harmless subject to quarrel over, and if it was adopted they might
fall out over something else which might be seriously mischievous.
"Do you mean, then, that you are not going to send us forward at all?"
the minister inquired sternly.
"You will see," the station-master answered with a curious short
laugh. I observed that he looked more gently at the lady in mourning.
She had said nothing, but he knew what was in her mind, and though he
held out no hope in words that her wish would be gratified, he smiled
sadly, and the irony passed out of his face.
The crowd meanwhile were standing about the platform, whistling tunes
or amusing themselves, not ill-naturedly at the distress of their
grand companions. Something considerable was happening. But they had
so long experienced the ups and downs of things that they were
prepared for what fortune might send. They had not expected to find a
Paradise where they were going, and one place might be as good as
another. They had nothing belonging to them except the clothes they
stood in and their bits of skill in their different trades. Wherever
men were, there would be need of cobblers, and tailors, and smiths,
and carpenters. If not, they might fall on their feet somehow, if
there was work to be done of any sort.
Presently a bell rang, a door was flung open, and we were ordered into
a waiting-room, where we were told that our luggage was to be
examined. It was a large, barely furnished apartment, like the _salle
d'attente_ at the Northern Railway Station at Paris. A rail ran
across, behind which we were all penned; opposite to us was the usual
long table, on which were piled boxes, bags, and portmanteaus, and
behind them stood a row of officials, in a plain uniform with gold
bands round their caps, and the dry peremptory manner which passengers
accustomed to deference so particularly dislike. At their backs was a
screen extending across the room, reaching half-way to the ceiling; in
the rear of it there was apparently an office.
We each looked to see that our particular belongings were safe, but we
were surprised to find that we could recognize none of them. Packages
there were in plenty, alleged to be the property of the passengers who
had come in by the train. They were arranged in the three
classes,--first, second, and third,--but the proportions were
inverted: most of it was labeled as the luggage of the travelers in
fustian, who had brought nothing with them but what they carried in
their hands; a moderate heap stood where the second-class luggage
should have been, and some of superior quality; but none of us could
make out the shapes of our own trunks. As to the grand ladies and
gentlemen, the innumerable articles which I had seen put as theirs
into the van were nowhere to be found. A few shawls and cloaks lay
upon the planks, and that was all. There was a loud outcry; but the
officials were accustomed to it, and took no notice. The
station-master, who was still in charge of us, said briefly that the
saloon luggage would be sent forward in the next train. The late
owners would have no more use for it, and it would be delivered to
their friends.
The late owners! Were we no longer actual owners, then? My individual
loss was not great, and besides, it might be made up to me; for I saw
my name on a strange box on the table, and being of curious
disposition, the singularity of the adventure made it interesting to
me. The consternation of the rest was indescribable. The minister
supposed that he had fallen among communists, who disbelieved in
property, and was beginning a speech on the elementary conditions of
society; when silence was called, and the third-class passengers were
ordered to advance, that their boxes might be opened. Each man had his
own carefully docketed. The lids flew off, and within, instead of
clothes, and shoes, and dressing apparatus, and money, and jewels, and
such-like, were simply samples of the work which he had done in his
life. There was an account-book also, in which were entered the number
of days which he had worked, the number and size of the fields, etc.,
which he had drained and inclosed and plowed, the crops which he had
reaped, the walls which he had built, the metal which he had dug out
and smelted and fashioned into articles of use to mankind, the leather
which he had tanned, the clothes which he had woven,--all entered with
punctual exactness; and on the opposite page, the wages which he had
received, and the share which had been allotted to him of the good
things which he had helped to create.
Besides his work, so specifically called, there were his actions,--his
affection for his parents or his wife and children, his self-denials,
his charities, his purity, his truth, his honesty; or it might be ugly
catalogues of sins and oaths and drunkenness and brutality. But
inquiry into action was reserved for a second investigation before a
higher commissioner. The first examination was confined to the literal
work done by each man for the general good,--how much he had
contributed, and how much society had done for him in return; and no
one, it seemed, could be allowed to go any further without a
certificate of having passed this test satisfactorily. With the
workmen, the balance in most instances was found enormously in their
favor. The state of the case was so clear that the scrutiny was
rapidly got over, and they and their luggage were passed in to the
higher court. A few were found whose boxes were empty, who had done
nothing useful all their lives, and had subsisted by begging and
stealing. These were ordered to stand aside till the rest of us had
been disposed of.
The saloon passengers were taken next. Most of them, who had nothing
at all to show, were called up together and were asked what they had
to say for themselves. A well-dressed gentleman, who spoke for the
rest, said that the whole investigation was a mystery to him. He and
his friends had been born to good fortunes, and had found themselves,
on entering upon life, amply provided for. They had never been told
that work was required of them, either work with their hands or work
with their heads,--in fact, work of any kind. It was right of course
for the poor to work, because they could not honestly live otherwise.
For themselves, they had spent their time in amusements, generally
innocent. They had paid for everything which they had consumed. They
had stolen nothing, taken nothing from any man by violence or fraud.
They had kept the Commandments, all ten of them, from the time when
they were old enough to understand them. The speaker, at least,
declared that he had no breach of any Commandment on his own
conscience, and he believed that he might say as much of his
companions. They were superior people, who had been always looked up
to and well spoken of; and to call upon them to show what they had
done was against reason and equity.
"Gentlemen," said the chief official, "we have heard this many times;
yet as often as it is repeated we feel fresh astonishment. You have
been in a world where work is the condition of life. Not a meal can be
had by any man that some one has not worked to produce. Those who work
deserve to eat; those who do not work deserve to starve. There are but
three ways of living: by working, by stealing, or by begging. Those
who have not lived by the first have lived by one of the other two.
And no matter how superior you think yourselves, you will not pass
here till you have something of your own to produce. You have had your
wages beforehand--ample wages, as you acknowledge yourselves. What
have you to show?"
"Wages!" the speaker said: "we are not hired servants; we received no
wages. What we spent was our own. All the orders we received were that
we were not to do wrong. We have done no wrong. I appeal to the higher
court."
But the appeal could not be received. To all who presented themselves
with empty boxes, no matter who they were, or how excellent their
characters appeared to one another, there was the irrevocable
answer--"No admittance, till you come better furnished." All who were
in this condition, the duke and duchess among them, were ordered to
stand aside with the thieves. The duchess declared that she had given
the finest parties in the season, and as it was universally agreed
that they had been the most tedious, and that no one had found any
pleasure there, a momentary doubt rose whether they might not have
answered some useful purpose in disgusting people with such modes of
entertainment; but no evidence of this was forthcoming: the world had
attended them because the world had nothing else to do, and she and
her guests had been alike unprofitable. Thus the large majority of the
saloon passengers was disposed of. The minister, the archbishop, the
lawyer, the banker, and others who although they had no material work
credited to them had yet been active and laborious in their different
callings, were passed to the superior judges.
Our turn came next,--ours of the second class,--and a motley gathering
we were. Busy we must all have been, from the multitude of articles
which we found assigned to us: manufacturers with their wares,
solicitors with their law-suits, doctors and clergymen with the bodies
and souls which they had saved or lost, authors with their books,
painters and sculptors with their pictures and statues. But the hard
test was applied to all that we had produced,--the wages which we had
received on one side, and the value of our exertions to mankind on the
other,--and imposing as our performances looked when laid out to be
examined, we had been paid, most of us, out of all proportion to what
we were found to have deserved. I was reminded of a large compartment
in the Paris Exhibition, where an active gentleman, wishing to show
the state of English literature, had collected copies of every book,
review, pamphlet, or newspaper which had been published in a single
year. The bulk was overwhelming, but the figures were only decimal
points, and the worth of the whole was a fraction above zero. A few of
us were turned back summarily among the thieves and the fine gentlemen
and ladies: speculators who had done nothing but handle money which
had clung to their fingers in passing through them, divines who had
preached a morality which they did not practice, and fluent orators
who had made speeches which they knew to be nonsense; philosophers who
had spun out of moonshine systems of the universe, distinguished
pleaders who had defeated justice while they established points of
law, writers of books upon subjects of which they knew enough to
mislead their readers, purveyors of luxuries which had added nothing
to human health or strength, physicians and apothecaries who had
pretended to knowledge which they knew that they did not
possess,--these all, as the contents of their boxes bore witness
against them, were thrust back into the rejected herd.
There were some whose account stood better, as having at least
produced something of real merit, but they were cast on the point of
wages: modest excellence had come badly off; the plausible and
unscrupulous had thriven and grown rich. It was tragical, and
evidently a surprise to most of us, to see how mendacious we had been:
how we had sanded our sugar, watered our milk, scamped our
carpentering and mason's work, literally and metaphorically; how in
all things we had been thinking less of producing good work than of
the profit which we could make out of it; how we had sold ourselves to
tell lies and act them, because the public found lies pleasant and
truth expensive and troublesome. Some of us were manifest rogues, who
had bought cheap and sold dear, had used false measures and weights,
had made cotton pass for wool, and hemp for silk, and tin for silver.
The American peddler happened to be in the party, who had put a rind
upon a grindstone and had sold it as a cheese. These were promptly
sifted out and placed with their fellows; only persons whose services
were on the whole greater than the pay which they had received were
allowed their certificates. When my own box was opened, I perceived
that though the wages had been small, the work done seemed smaller
still; and I was surprised to find myself among those who had passed.
The whistle of a train was heard at this moment, coming in upon the
main line. It was to go in half an hour, and those who had been turned
back were told that they were to proceed by it to the place where they
had been originally going. They looked infinitely relieved at the
news; but before they started, a few questions had to be put to them,
and a few alterations made which were to affect their future. They
were asked to explain how they had come to be such worthless
creatures. They gave many answers, which came mainly to the same
thing. Circumstances had been against them. It was all owing to
circumstances. They had been badly brought up. They had been placed in
situations where it had been impossible for them to do better. The
rich people repeated that they had never been informed that any work
was expected of them. Their wants had all been provided for, and it
was unfair to expect that they should have exerted themselves of their
own accord when they had no motive for working. If they had only been
born poor, all would have gone well with them. The cheating tradesman
declared that the first duty of a shopkeeper, according to all
received principles, was to make money and better his condition. It
was the buyer's business to see to the quality of the articles which
he purchased; the shopkeeper was entitled to sell his wares at the
highest price which he could get for them. So, at least, it was
believed and taught by the recognized authorities on the subject. The
orators, preachers, newspaper writers, novel-writers, etc., etc., of
whom there were a great many, appealed to the crowds who came to
listen to them, or bought and read their productions. _Tout le monde_,
it was said, was wiser than the wisest single sage. They had given the
world what the world wished for and approved; they had worked at
supplying it with all their might, and it was extremely hard to blame
them for guiding themselves by the world's judgment. The thieves and
vagabonds argued that they had been brought into existence without
their consent being asked: they had not wished for it; although they
had not been without their pleasures, they regarded existence on the
whole as a nuisance which they would gladly have been spared. Being
alive, however, they had to keep alive; and for all that they could
see, they had as full a right to the good things which the world
contained as anybody else, provided they could get them. They were
called thieves. Law and language were made by the property-owners, who
were their natural enemies. If society had given them the means of
living honestly they would have found it easy to be honest. Society
had done nothing for them--why should they do anything for society?
So, in their various ways, those who had been "plucked" defended
themselves. They were all delighted to hear that they were to have
another chance; and I was amused to observe that though some of them
had pretended that they had not wished to be born, and had rather not
have been born, not one of them protested against being sent back. All
they asked was that they should be put in a new position, and that the
adverse influences should be taken off. I expected that among these
adverse influences they would have mentioned the faults of their
own dispositions. My own opinion had been that half the misdoings
of men came from congenital defects of character which they had
brought with them into the world, and that constitutional courage,
right-mindedness, and practical ability were as much gifts of nature
or circumstance as the accidents of fortune. A change in this respect
was of more consequence than in any other. But with themselves they
were all apparently satisfied, and they required only an improvement
in their surroundings. The alterations were rapidly made. The duchess
was sent to begin her life again in a laborer's cottage. She was to
attend the village school and rise thence into a housemaid. The fine
gentleman was made a plowboy. The authors and preachers were to become
mechanics, and bound apprentices to carpenters and blacksmiths. A
philosopher who, having had a good fortune and unbroken health, had
insisted that the world was as good as it could be made, was to be
born blind and paralytic, and to find his way through life under the
new conditions. The thieves and cheats, who pretended that their
misdemeanors were due to poverty, were to find themselves, when they
arrived in the world again, in palaces surrounded with luxury. The cup
of Lethe was sent round. The past became a blank. They were hurried
into the train; the engine screamed and flew away with them.
"They will be all here again in a few years," the station-master said,
"and it will be the same story over again. I have had these very
people in my hands a dozen times. They have been tried in all
positions, and there is still nothing to show, and nothing but
complaints of circumstances. For my part, I would put them out
altogether." "How long is it to last?" I asked. "Well," he said, "it
does not depend on me. No one passes here who cannot prove that he has
lived to some purpose. Some of the worst I have known made at last
into pigs and geese, to be fatted up and eaten, and made of use that
way. Others have become asses, condemned to carry burdens, to be
beaten with sticks, and to breed asses like themselves for a hundred
generations. All animated creatures tend to take the shape at last
which suits their character."
The train was scarcely out of sight when again the bell rang. The
scene changed as at a theatre. The screen was rolled back, and we who
were left found ourselves in the presence of four grave-looking
persons, like the board of examiners whom we remembered at college. We
were called up one by one. The work which had passed the first ordeal
was again looked into, and the quality of it compared with the talent
or faculty of the producer, to see how far he had done his
best,--whether anywhere he had done worse than he might have done and
knew how to have done; while besides, in a separate collection, were
the vices, the sins, the selfishnesses and ill-humors, with--in the
other scale--the acts of personal duty, of love and kindness and
charity, which had increased the happiness or lightened the sorrows of
those connected with him. These last, I observed, had generally been
forgotten by the owner, who saw them appear with surprise, and even
repudiated them with protest. In the work, of course, both material
and moral, there was every gradation both of kind and merit. But while
nothing was absolutely worthless, everything, even the highest
achievements of the greatest artist or the greatest saint, fell short
of absolute perfection. Each of us saw our own performances, from our
first ignorant beginnings to what we regarded as our greatest triumph;
and it was easy to trace how much of our faults were due to natural
deficiencies and the necessary failures of inexperience, and how much
to self-will or vanity or idleness. Some taint of mean motives,
too,--some desire of reward, desire of praise or honor or wealth, some
foolish self-satisfaction, when satisfaction ought not to have been
felt,--was to be seen infecting everything, even the very best which
was presented for scrutiny.
So plain was this that one of us, an earnest, impressive-looking
person, whose own work bore inspection better than that of most of us,
exclaimed passionately that so far as he was concerned the examiners
might spare their labor. From his earliest years he had known what he
ought to do, and in no instance had he ever completely done it. He had
struggled; he had conquered his grosser faults: but the farther he had
gone, and the better he had been able to do, his knowledge had still
grown faster than his power of acting upon it; and every additional
day that he had lived, his shortcomings had become more miserably
plain to him. Even if he could have reached perfection at last, he
could not undo the past, and the faults of his youth would bear
witness against him and call for his condemnation. Therefore, he said,
he abhorred himself. He had no merit which could entitle him to look
for favor. He had labored on to the end, but he had labored with a
full knowledge that the best which he could offer would be unworthy of
acceptance. He had been told, and he believed, that a high Spirit not
subject to infirmity had done his work for him, and done it perfectly,
and that if he abandoned all claim on his own account, he might be
accepted for the sake of what another had done. This, he trusted, was
true, and it was his sole dependence. In the so-called good actions
with which he seemed to be credited, there was nothing that was really
good; there was not one which was altogether what it ought to have
been.
He was evidently sincere, and what he said was undoubtedly true--true
of him and true of every one. Even in the vehemence of his
self-abandonment a trace lingered of the taint which he was
confessing, for he was a polemical divine; he had spent his life and
gained a reputation in maintaining this particular doctrine. He
believed it, but he had not forgotten that he had been himself its
champion.