I still picture a late reflective age when I shall enjoy recalling the
past, and live again my old sensations. But life is more strenuous than
of yore, and even at seventy or eighty, nowadays, no one need consider
himself too old for a fresh, active interest in the world about him.
Your old gentleman of today does not sit in his own corner of the
fireplace and dote over the lost years; he reads the morning papers, and
insists upon going to the theatre with his nieces on wet evenings. Have
I, then, been laying up honey for a winter of discontent that shall
never come?
Besides this distrust of my diaries, I am awakening after seven years to
the fact that, as autobiography, the books are strangely lacking in
interest. They are not convincing. I thought, as I did my clerkly
task, that I should always be I, but a cursory glance at these naive
pages shows that they were written by a thousand different persons, no
one of whom speaks the language of the emotions as I know it today. It
is true, then, my diary has convinced me, that we do become different
persons every seven years. Here is written down rage, hate, delight,
affection and yearning, no word of which is comprehensible to me now;
they leave me quite cold. I am reading the adventures of some one else,
not my own. Who was it? I have forgotten the dialect of my youth. Ah,
indeed, the boy is father of the man! I will be indulgent, as a son
should, to paternal indiscretions!
And yet, for the bare skeleton of my history, these volumes are useful
enough. The pages which, while still wet with ink and tears I
considered lyric essays, have fallen to a merely utilitarian value. I am
thankful, on that account, for them, and for the fact that my
bookkeeping was well systematized and indexed. As outward form goes, my
diaries are models of manner. So for those still under the
old-fashioned spell, who would adopt a plan of entry, let me describe
them.
The especial event of each day, if the day held anything worthy of
remark or remembrance, was boldly noted at the top of the page over the
date. Whirring the leaves I catch many suggestive phrases: "_Dinner at
Mme. Qui Vive's_" (it was there I first tasted champagne), "_Henry
Irving_ in '_Macbeth_'" (but it was not the actor that made that night
famous--I took Kitty Carmine home in a hansom!), "Broke my arm" (or else
I would never have read Marlowe, I fear), and "Met Sally Reynard" (this
was an event, it seemed at that time, worthy of being chronicled in red
ink). So they go. They are the chapter headings in the book of my life.
In the lower left-hand corner of each page I noted the receipt of
letters, the initials of the writers inscribed in little squares, and in
the opposite right-hand corner a complementary hieroglyph kept account
of every reply sent. So, by running over the pages I can note the fury
of my correspondence. (What an industrious scribbler "S.R." was to be
sure! I had not thought we went it quite so hard--and "K.C."--how often
she appears in the lower left, and how seldom in the lower right! I was
a brute, no doubt, and small wonder she married Flemingway!)
Perpendicularly, along the inner margin, I wrote the names of those to
whom I had been introduced that day, and on a back page I kept a
chronological list of the same. (I met Kitty, it seems, on a
Friday--perhaps that accounts for our not hitting it off!) Most of
these are names, and nothing more, now, and it gives my heart a leap to
come across Sally in that list of nonentities. (To think that there was
ever a time when I did not know her!)
Besides all this, the books are extra-illustrated in the most
significant manner. There is hardly a page that does not contain some
trifling memento; here, a theatre coupon pasted in, or a clipping from
the programme, an engraved card or a pencilled note; there a scrap of a
photograph worn out in my pocket-book, somebody's sketched profile, or,
at rare intervals, a wisp of some one's hair! (This reddish curl--was
it Kitty's or from Dora's brow? Oh, I remember, it was Myrtle gave it
me! No, I am wrong; I stole it from Nettie!) I pasted them in with
eager trembling fingers, but I regard them now without a tremour. There
are other pages being filled which interest me more.
Occasionally I open a book, 1895 perhaps, and consult a date to be sure
that Millicent's birthday is on November 12th, or to determine just who
was at Kitty's coming-out dinner. Here is a diagram of the table with
the places of all the guests named. (So I sat beside Nora, did I? And
who was Nora? I have forgotten her name! _Now_ she is Mrs. Alfred
Fortunatus!)
Sometimes I think it would be better to write up my diary in advance, to
fill in the year's pages with what I would like to do, and attempt to
live up to the prophecy. And yet I have had too many unforeseen
pleasures in my life for that. I would rather trust fate than
imagination. So, chiefly because I have kept the book for seven years,
I shall probably keep it seven years more. It gratifies my conceit to
chronicle my small happenings, and somehow, written down in fair script,
they seem important. And besides I am a bit anxious to see just how
many times a certain name, which has lately begun to make itself
prominent, will appear at the top of the pages. I promise to tell you
some time, if Celestine is willing!
*The Perfect Go-between*
Surely the modern invention that has done most to perpetuate Romance is
the telephone. The man that, however used to this machine, can take up
its ear-piece without a thrill of wonder has no soul. The locomotive,
the steamship, the automobile have but made travel a bit more rapid,
they have added no new element of mystery. Even the telegraph fails to
give any true feeling of surprise. It is no whit more wonderful than
that one, after writing a letter and slipping it into a red mail-box,
should be handed a reply by a strange, blue-clad gentleman, after many
days. A telegraphic despatch does not even hold the handwriting of the
sender; it is cold, colourless, metallic.
But a machine that can bring your friend into the same room with you, at
a moment's notice, who can deny the poetry of such a victory over space
and time! Not until some genius invents a thought-transmitter shall a
more stupendous aid to Romance be discovered. For see! It is not only
one's friends that are caught in the net of telephone wires, one can
drag up a whole city full! I have but to sit down at my desk and call
up a number, and he or she must reply. True, I cannot force any one to
answer, but if I have the audacity and persistency, it will go hard if I
do not find some one who is willing to while away a leisure, inquisitive
moment in inconsequent conversation.
It is my privilege to live in a telephone city where the habit is
extraordinarily developed. One out of every sixteen of the population
is connected to that most amiable of go-betweens, the Central Office. I
have the opportunity of investigating some thirty thousand souls at the
ridiculously cheap price of five cents per soul! Not only every
counting-house and shop, doctor's office and corner grocery has its
wire, but every residence with any claims to acquaintance. What Romance
gone to waste! For few, it seems, have imagination enough to embrace
such unlimited opportunities!
This morning Sonia called me at 8:25, apologizing for her
kind-heartedness in letting me sleep when she knew I wished to work.
Think of that for an alarm clock--Sonia's voice, ten miles away! So I
am awakened by the telephone, I call by telephone, flirt by telephone,
shop, market and speculate over the same wire. We do not take long in
utilizing the latest invention here in this hurried land--the city is
ravaged by Telephonitis. One invites friends to dinner, one makes
appointments, one breaks the news of the death of a friend, one proposes
marriage--all by means of this little instrument. I know one lady who
has her machine connected by flexible wires so that she may talk in bed.
She need not be too strict in regard to dress for her interviews--no one
ever knows! I know two old men who while away long evenings together
playing chess, when the weather is too harsh to leave home. Beside each
board stands the faithful receiver; one has but to whisper "K.B. to Q.3"
or some such rigamarole into the nickel-plated "extension" and he has
checkmated his opponent across the Bay!
With such common intercourse as this, many are the comedies of the
telephone. I have myself entertained a visitor with a diversion he will
not soon forget. The day he came I took him to my telephone and
introduced him in turn to a half-dozen ladies of my acquaintance, who
plied him with badinage. We set forth then on a tour of calls, and I
enjoyed his several attempts at identifying the voices he had heard over
the wire. It is not always easy to recognize a voice and remember it.
I remember an unfortunate experience of my own with two sisters which
brought a week's embarrassment, for the voices of members of one family
do have a marvellous similarity in the telephone, and if one is anxious
to call upon Fanny when Elizabeth is out, one must be very sure just
which sister one is speaking to when making an appointment.
The necessity for such precaution has led some of my friends to adopt
telephone methods which must be extremely amusing to one who could hear
both sides of the conversation. In many houses the telephone is
situated in the hall, altogether too near the dining-room for any
confidential communication. If the questioner is careful he may so word
his inquiries that they may be answered by a mere "yes" or "no"; and
papa, smoking after dinner, is none the wiser. If the girl finds it
impossible to reply in unguarded terms, she has been known to say,
somewhat vaguely, "_Of course_," which conveys to the man at the other
end of the wire the fact that she is not alone. Some, too, have more
definite codes. Celestine has arranged with me that when she mentions
the "_Call_" it means the forenoon; the "_Chronicle_" stands for
afternoon, while by the "_Examiner_" I understand that she refers to the
evening. If, then, I ring her up and say, "When can you go walking
today? I want to be sure not to meet that fool Clubberly." Clubberly,
who is at her elbow, hears her reply sweetly, "Really! Yes, I saw it in
the "_Chronicle_"; and how is he to know what it is all about? Oh, he
could have his revenge easily enough, were he not an ass, for he might
be kissing Celestine (horrid thought) even as she is speaking, for all I
could know.
With this romantic battery opposed to her, what chance has poor Mrs.
Grundy? What hard-hearted parent can successfully immure his daughter
while the copper wire strings out toward her proscribed lover? Here is
where love laughs at locksmiths. Were a dozen ineligibles forbidden the
house, the moment mamma's back is turned and she has gone out for her
round of calls, little daughter takes the telephone off the hook and,
presto! she has her room full of clandestine company! Does any rash
young man dare ring her up while her parents are near, she has but to
say, sweetly, "Oh, you have the wrong number!" and hang up. It is too
wonderful. You may lie by telephone, with a straight face, or you may
call a man a liar with impunity. If you have no answer ready to an
ardent impertinence, you need only say nothing and listen--he is
helpless; you need not speak unless you want to. Who made the first
telephone made mischief for a thousand years to come!
_Rrrrrrrrrrng!!!!_ There is Celestine ringing me up now! Pardon me if I
leave you for a moment, for I think she is going to give me her answer
to a very important question. Tremendously important for me! Wish me
good luck! I hope no one will be listening!
*Growing Up*
When I asked Perilla how she first came to realize that she was growing
up, she said, "When I began of my own accord to wash my sticky fingers,
without waiting to be told." I believe she meant it literally, with no
moral significance that should make a parable of the statement. I hope
so, at least, for then by that test I cannot hope to have yet attained
the years of discretion. Little Sister says that she felt "growing
pains," but here is a figure of speech, surely. I suppose she means the
wonder of the passage from a great, wistful ignorance to a limited
knowledge; for the first part of the path of life is a very steep
up-grade.
I myself can point to no one circumstance that revealed to me the vision
of the great march of time that is sweeping us on towards the goal. I
was for long like one who looks from the window of a railway carriage,
too busily engaged in watching the world fly past him to realize his own
motion. Neither long trousers nor razors awoke me from the
child-trance; I saw scorned infants master me by their inches; I heard
rumours of love and death and duty, but I was unmoved. It was a part of
the game of existence, and it seemed natural that persons should be
classified and remain in categories of old and young. I was a spectator
outside the merry-go-round. I was to be rich, of course; I had the mind
to dare and the will to do. I should be wise, too--why not? Sometimes I
should have memories, I thought, not knowing that I was even then living
away my life, and that this was an era to which I should look back and
deem important.
All my reading, too, went to show that I was an amateur at living.
Things seemed really to happen in books, but not to me; there men were
swung in unknown furies, sensations were keen and impelling, and life
had the sharp sting of reality. My own emotions seemed insipid and
inadequate for a citizen of the world. Surely such minor escapades and
trivialities as mine were not worth considering. And so, when the storm
and stress came, I was ill-prepared, and at the first blow my pride went
down. Some devil, as in a dream, whispered in my ear that perhaps I
might not succeed after all, and it came to me as a summons that the
time had come to be out and doing. And I saw that the conquest of my
ambition would be achieved, not by the impetuous onslaught that should
carry all before it, but by the slow and tedious siege, laid with years
of waiting and working and watching. It was then, perhaps, though I did
not know it, that I began to grow up, and became a man. I opened my
eyes and looked about me; it was as if I had been landed fresh from the
country in the busy town, like the Sleeper Awakened. No more
field-faring and trapesing holidays under the blue sky; I must choose my
street and fight my way for it against the throng.
It struck me with a sense of my inferiority that there was an absolute
quality of knowledge I had not mastered. Some of my classmates seemed
to know things, while I had but acquired information. They could swim;
I dared not go in over my head. They had convictions, I had only
opinions; it was the difference between the language of Frenchmen and
they who learn French. Here, I thought, was the final classification,
and I wrote myself down a witless neophyte in the world's mysteries.
For my whole education had been founded upon the value of the verity of
the straight line, and wisdom was my highest ideal. By this standard I
measured myself and my experience. I delighted in the beauty of
science, but of that other beauty which is its own excuse for being, I
did not know. I was as one who saw form without colour, or the outline
without the mass. I had not yet come to myself; I was a child yet, and
the result of my immediate environment--a mental chameleon. A few
generations of my austere ancestors impregnated my blood with their
stern virtues, and it still ran cold and tranquil in my veins. But
there were more remote and subtle influences behind me that must work
themselves out, and in some sub-stratum of consciousness the pure Greek
in me survived.
And so it was Dianeme who brought me at last to the door of the temple,
and I saw with her eyes and heard with her ears, and the world grew
beautiful, an altogether fitting setting for her charms. And then I knew
in very truth that I had grown up; but yet, by a sublime miracle I had
in the same revelation recovered my youth--if, indeed, I had ever really
been young before! Now, succeed or fail as I might, life would always
be fair and interesting, for Dianeme was but one of a divine sisterhood,
and there were many degrees to be taken. So a kind of passion seized me
to know Life's different phases and find the secret of the whole; and
that mood, God willing, shall preserve my virginity to the end.
So here I am, by the grace of Dianeme, on the true road to youth again,
not to that absolute unconcern of all but the present, that I once felt,
nor to the fool's paradise, where, Maida would have it, is the true
happiness--"the ability to fool one's self"--but to a kind of childlike
wonder at things (ah, Little Sister, may you never wander from it as I
did!) and the knowledge of what is really the most worth while. (And
you, Perilla, you need not pretend that you don't know, for the truth
flashes from your jest!)
For this is the very blossom of my youth, the era of knowing, as that
was the era of being, and though there may come other dark days, as
there were before the bud burst into bloom, I have seen the beginning
and I know the law now, and I trust that the fruit of my life, the
doing, may be even more worth the while. And I shall perhaps find that
wisdom and beauty and goodness are but one thing, as the poets say--that
living is a continual growing up, and that age is only a youth that
knows why it is happy!
*A Pauper's Monologue*
Understand, I am not one of those who are always longing to be rich. I
do very well, ordinarily, in the shadow of prosperity, though there
comes upon me periodically the lust for gold, at which times the desire
to rush down-town and spend money indiscreetly must be obeyed. It is a
common symptom, paupers tell me, and carries with it its own remedy,
giving much the same relief that blood-letting did of old, if so be the
practice does not lead to a dangerous hemorrhage. I have my ups and
downs, like most unsalaried Bohemians, thin purse, thick purse, at
erratic intervals, but my spendthrift appetite is curiously independent
of these financial fluctuations. In fact, a miserly restraint is most
likely to seize me when my pocket is full, and I usually grow reckless
when it has no silver lining.
There are few paupers among us who do not conceit themselves to be
artists at spending money, and believe the fit intelligence is most
wanting in those who have the means. I confess that I share their
convictions, having wasted much time in a study of the situation. Like
those planning a foreign tour, I have mapped out the golden road of
Opportunity, and know the itinerary by heart. And, without trespassing
the science of Economy, of which I am criminally ignorant (having been
somewhat prepossessed during my Sophomore courses), I submit there are
active and passive categories into which coupon-cutters may be
relegated. The symbol of your monied man is the cigar, involving a
destructive process, whether applied to food, raiment or ministry to the
senses. The greed of the collector is of the same flavour. It is the
difference between spending the money to see and to stage the play that
I mean.
For why should an access of wealth so dull the brain that the battle
between the kings of hearts and spades seems more interesting than the
game with human knights and pawns? I have often been minded to write an
"Open Letter to Millionaires," and offer myself as a Master of their
Sports, to guide them through fields of untried sensation and novel
enterprises. I have my offers tabulated from an hundred dollars upward,
each involving the inception of activities whose ramifications would
provide diversion for years. There are twenty young men I know of in
this town who are waiting for such a chance. Why should I not be
elected to captain them? I promise you the rise and fall of stocks shall
not be more exciting than our rivalries. Indeed, brains are for sale at
absurd bargains today. Why not play them off against each other in a
game of Life?
But these are dreams never to be realized. I am no promoter, and must
play the beggar's part. Yet I have often wondered how I would be
affected if these hopes came true, and if some capitalist, touched by my
appeal, seeing this good seed cast upon barren ground, opening his heart
and purse-strings, should present me with a modest fortune without
conditions. Could I assume the responsibility of gratitude and fly with
the load of obligation that I myself would assume? By all rules of
fiction, no! Yet if my conscience were seduced I might frame my mind to
accept debonairly and do my best. Tempt me not, millionaires, for this
is my week of longing, and my brain boils with adventurous desires.
Yet, had I the ear of the benefactor, another mood would impel my
renunciation; for, against my will and interest, I am forced to
acknowledge that others are better fitted to be rich than I, who have
been a pauper all my life, and am not so unhappy in my misery. I know
some to whom wealth should come as a right, as has their beauty, and who
play an inconsistent part upon the stage of poverty. There is Dianeme,
who knows the names of all the roses, and can tell one etching from
another. She is so instinct with tact and taste that I feel quite
unworthy of affluence until she has been served. And there, too, is
Little Sister, who is in worse case, having once ridden on high wheels
and nestled against the padded comforts of life, now charioted by street
cars, with a motorman for a driver and a conductor for a footman. And
though it was her reverses that gave me chance to be her friend and
discover her worth, yet I fear I would put back my opportunity ten years
to give her the little luxuries she craves. She has acquired a relish
for the flesh-pots, poor Little Sister, and somehow the weakness becomes
her, as the habit of weeping fitted the eighteenth century ideals of
women. Two more pairs of silk stockings would reinstate her as a lady
complete. Not that anybody but Little Sister and her laundress would
ever see them, but they would give her a nourishing satisfaction that is
of itself worth while.
Yet, again I wonder--if Little Sister grew rich, what would become of
me? I am told that the first pangs of the birth of Fortune are felt in
the unpleasant acquisition of new claimants to friendship, but I do not
believe this is so. I should myself fear to intrude, I am sure. There
would be so many new relations and obligations that I could not take the
friendship simply and naturally. I could make love to her by letter,
perhaps, but not in her carriage. I would miss the ungloved hand of
familiarity and enclose myself in starched formality, though I know the
pain in so doing would be mutual. For the pride of riches is as nothing
to the pride of poverty, and I am very, very poor! But surely Little
Sister must be rich again, even if I have to wait for the second table.
And so I gracefully resign my claims to fortune, where I am so
outclassed, and make off into the open fields towards the Hills of Fame,
where the brougham of Opulence may not follow me, though I fare afoot.
For we do not get rich in my family; there is no uncle in Patagonia
whose death could benefit us, and the bag of diamonds, the hope of whose
discovery sustained my immature youth, no longer haunts my dreams. For
a long time yet I must deny myself the title of gentleman, forced as I
am to carry parcels "over three inches square," which I hear is the test
of fashionable caste. This is my last gasp. I shall be a man again
tomorrow, and if any millionaire is tempted by this appeal, he must make
haste. But I shall not be rung up from sleep tonight. It is the law of
society that Spend helps Save, and Save helps Scrimp, and Scrimp helps
Starve.
*A Young Man's Fancy*
Undoubtedly the most logical, though perhaps the least interesting,
method of opening the discussion of a thesis, is that employed by the
skillful carver who dissects his duck according to the natural divisions
of the subject and proceeds therewith analytically. This is the system
encouraged in academic courses and is said to enable any one to write
upon any subject. But such an essay is mighty hard reading; unless a
writer is so hungry for his theme that he forgets his manners and falls
to without ceremony the chances are that his efforts will receive scant
attention. And so I shyly speak of love.