Before I had the fever described in the earlier pages, while still a
mere baby, I was sent to a ladies’ school among little girls. There was
only one other boy in the school besides myself, and for him I formed
an attachment. He was a French child, a delicate little chap with large
dreamy eyes and a huge nose, which looked as if it did not belong to
him. He enjoyed the possession of a very beautiful and euphonious
name—Paul de la Croix. Paul and I knew each other as children only
during a few months but we liked each other and played together. We
were the only boys who enjoyed the very special privilege of attending
the ladies’ seminary. We nearly always spent our lunch hours among the
big girls, who were very fond of us, because we were small enough to
mother and protect.
My illness separated me from my little French friend and I did not see
him again until we were nearly men. I met him once more when I was
eighteen and was studying under a tutor for my matriculation at M’Gill
University. My father had decided that I should be a civil engineer.
The reasons for this decision are not very plain to me. Certainly I had
very little inclination towards engineering, but as I showed little
talent in any particular direction, and many spasmodic tendencies in
all directions, his decision was perhaps as wise as any. Possibly he
was influenced by the thought that the life of a civil engineer would
give me an outdoor existence.
I worked with my tutor daily, learning things which I have long since
forgotten, with the exception of Euclid. Euclid always had a particular
charm for me, not so much for the value of the information I received
but for its keen and irresistible reasoning, so clear, plain and
irrefragable.
The mere fact that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are
equal, and if the sides are produced the angles on the other side of
the base will be equal, is nothing to me, but the being able to prove
the fact is a great pleasure.
I am a born unbeliever, and facts are not facts to me because they are
recorded as facts by some one else, or everybody else for that matter.
Like the unbelieving Thomas I want to examine the evidence. So Euclid
appealed to me.
I had, and still have, a great sympathy with many of the Bible
characters who have been held up to opprobrium like Thomas, Baalam,
Ananias and the Pharisee who thanked the Lord he was different from
other people. If there is anything for which a man ought to be thankful
it is that he is different from other people. The story of Ananias I
always found a very thin tale for a greedy money-grabbing church to
tell; it is so transparent.
I liked my tutor very much. He was a very human young man and handled
me with great wisdom. In the winter we skated daily. It was during
the winter of the year Eighteen that I met once more the friend of my
childhood, Paul de la Croix. It was at the skating rink, and I knew
him at once by his nose, which was a more pronounced, protuberant horn
than ever. He had the looks of a hawk and the character of a goose. I
was anything but a manly youth, but Paul was actually effeminate. I saw
him often now for several years, after which he dropped out of my life
entirely. He left an indelible mark upon my character, both musically
and otherwise. It was through him, in fact, that I met the woman who
became my wife, and for this and other things he has my gratitude.
Paul was before all a musician. He sang beautifully, easily and
naturally in a great baritone voice, playing his own accompaniments
with ease, a certain dash, and unerring taste. Such talents as his
are rare and are generally given, I have observed, to effeminate
creatures like Paul. He loved the women, loved particular ones in a
particular way for a short time; but generally he loved them all.
He was a wholesale lover and his affairs were numerous, sometimes
interesting and exciting, and always amusing as told by himself to me,
his confidant. I enjoyed his confidences not so much for themselves as
for the music they led up to. When he was loved by a married woman much
older than himself he always sang particularly well and gave me oceans
of pleasure listening to his prattle and his songs. I would spend night
after night with him, and allow him to babble till he was tired.
“Oh, my dear Jack,” he would say, “it was tragic, I assure you. ‘I
could weep. When will I see you again?’ she asked me. I did not reply;
but went to the piano and sang this.”
Then suiting the action to the word he would go to the piano and sing
Tosti’s “Good-bye” so beautifully that I would nearly weep, although
much inclined to laugh at his mannerisms and his vanity. Many of his
love affairs ended as I have described in a song, after which he would
walk sadly away to flutter about some other flame.
The Toreador song from _Carmen_ always reminds me of Paul. I have
heard it often, but never I think with such soul-stirring vim and gusto
behind it as when he sang it.
In the year Nineteen of my era I matriculated in a kind of way; I
passed, and that is all.
In the same year the religious incubus was lifted from my home. This
had been coming for some time, and at last our house was free. It
was no sudden happening, like the conversion some people seem to
experience; but came about quite logically. Some people take religion
like a disease, and it runs a similar course. They get sick, sicker,
sickest; and then die or recover. With religion they get religious,
more religious, most religious or fanatic, and then they go mad or
suddenly become free-thinkers. People whose emotions are well-balanced
and thoroughly under the control of intellect never go mad over a
religious idea.
About three years prior to the year Nineteen my father had undertaken,
in a burst of religious zeal, to teach a Bible-class in a church which
is to-day a theatre of varieties. He was very successful in this. His
teaching was both attractive and convincing and readily drew young men
and women. For years he had an average attendance at this class of
from fifty to sixty young people. He became so enthusiastic in this
enterprise that it became his one hobby, and the only social life our
family knew was bounded on the North, South, East and West by the
Bible-class. As the Bible-class was made up of plumbers, gasfitters,
counter-jumpers and the like, this did not elevate our social standing
as social standing is gauged by the world. Father devoted all his
leisure time to reading and study for the discourses he delivered to
his young Band of Hope. As a rule he was not a man to do things very
thoroughly; but this work possessed a great fascination for him, and
he pursued it tirelessly and faithfully, with perfect confidence in
himself.
As he read he widened in view, and as he widened, his interest in the
search for truth increased; but truth seemed to elude him. In his
final struggle he floundered about in a bog of statement and authority
that bewildered him. His fall from grace came suddenly when he began
the study of religions in general and other than Christianity. He was
a quick, alert, understanding reader, and he had enormous energy.
He consumed in a comparatively short time a veritable library of
literature on every religion known, both ancient and modern. He delved
into everything—philosophy, metaphysics and natural science. I only
sketch a process which took several years to complete, years of the
hardest work my father ever did.
As his views widened, his discourses to his flock were, of course,
coloured by the change of idea. I do not believe that he realised the
road he was travelling until the parson and the pillars of the church
called upon him for an explanation of certain of his teachings. He
explained, but his elucidation of his position on matters that were
considered vital was not found satisfactory to the narrow-minded jury
which sat upon him. A few weeks later he was driven from the church,
branded with the brand of the infidel—an epithet which all churches
have delighted to use towards those who dare to be faithful to
themselves.
Father’s class followed him in a body, and for some months he lectured
every Sunday afternoon at our home. Through this incident some of his
young men were made uncomfortable in their families, others even in
their business. For this reason father discontinued spreading what he
considered to be the true light.
Whether his faith was founded on fact or fiction, he was true to what
his reason dictated; but he felt that he could not allow himself to be
an injury in any way to young people who had life’s fight to make in
a world that was ready to persecute those who did not toe a line laid
down by some church.
I have always noticed that it has ever been the system of organised
religion to persecute in mean and small ways all those who disagree
with it. All the willingness to go even farther and use the faggot, the
stake and the rack still remains in our midst, among a very large class
who are enthusiastic and ignorant, but full of faith in some fetish.
They only lack the power. I have yet to learn that any man branded as
an unbeliever has ever in the smallest way persecuted anybody. Nearly
all religions foster fear in man’s heart, and fear always fights, which
explains the bloody history of Christian peoples.