[Footnote 10: Reprinted from _John Stuyvesant, Ancestor_, by Alvin Johnson.
Copyright, 1919, by Harcourt, Brace and Howe, Inc. By permission of the
author and of the publishers.]
My uncle only by marriage, he is naturally the less intelligible and the
more intriguing to me. I can't say with assurance whether I feel absolutely
at home with him or not, but I think I do. Always he has treated me with
the utmost kindness. That he regards me exactly as a nephew of the blood,
he makes frequent occasion to assure me, especially on his birthday, which
we all make much of, since it is about the only day when we are chartered
to sentimentalize quite shamelessly over him. But behind his solemn face
and straight, quizzical gaze, I often detect a lurking reservation in his
judgment of me. He thinks, I believe, that I have not been altogether
weaned of the potentates and powers I abjured when I crossed the water to
become a member of his family. Not that he greatly cares. Potentates and
powers, emperors, kings, princes, are treasured words in his oratorical
vocabulary--he could not very well do without them. He is a democrat, and
he declares that in the presence of hereditary majesties, he would most
resolutely refuse to bend the knee. No doubt he would, and his instinct is
correct æsthetically as well as morally. It's a stiff knee he wears, and
you can't help smiling at the thought of the two long members of his leg,
tightly cased in striped trousers, arranging themselves in an obsequious
right angle. Erect and stiff, chest out, chin whiskers to front, eyes
blinking independently, my uncle is superb. Or when he raises his hat with
a large, outward gesture of his arm, bowing slightly from the shoulders, in
affable salutation. Or most of all, when his fists clench, his jaws display
big nervous knots, his eyes gleam with hard blue light in wrath over some
palpable iniquity, some base cowardice, some outrageous act of cruelty or
oppression.
The mood of rage is, to be sure, infrequent with him, and he prides himself
in a self-control that forbids him to act upon it. Therefore, certain cocky
foreign fellows, upholders of the duty of fighting at the drop of the hat,
have charged that our uncle would place peace above honor. And some of us,
his nephews, are not exactly easy under the charge. It seems to reflect on
us. But most of us really know better. Our uncle hates trouble, and prefers
argument to fists. But nobody had better presume too much upon his distaste
for violence.
Pugnacity, declares my uncle, is a form of sentimentalism, and all
sentimentalism is despicable. This is a practical world. Determine the
value of what you are after and count the cost. And wherever you can,
reduce all items to dollars and cents. "Aha!" cry the hostile critics of
our house, "what a gross materialist!" And some, even of the nephews of the
blood, repeat the taunt behind our good uncle's back. At first I too
thought there might be something in it. But I was forced to a different
view by dint of reflection on the notorious fact that my uncle is far
readier in a good cause to "shell out" his dollars and cents than any of
his idealistic critics. Reduction of a problem to dollars and cents, I have
come to see, is just his means of arriving at definiteness. My uncle wants
to do a good business, whether in the gross joys of the flesh or in the
benefits of salvation. The Lord's cause, he thinks, ought to be as solvent
as the world's. A naïve view? To be sure, but not one that argues a base
soul.
This insistence of my uncle on definiteness, on the financial solvency of
every enterprise, does to be sure get on the nerves of many of us. He'll
drop into your studio, dispose his long, bony body in your most comfortable
chair and ruminate for hours while you work. You are immersed in a very
significant problem. You are at the point, we will say, of discovering how
to convey the sound of bells by pure color. "May I ask," he says finally,
"what in thunder are you trying to do?" You explain at length,
enthusiastically. He hears you through, with visible effort to suspend
judgment. You pause and scan his face for a responsive glow. He rises, pats
you gently on the shoulder. "My boy, I can put you into a good job down in
the stockyards. Fine prospects, and a good salary to begin with. I ran in
to see your wife and youngsters yesterday and they're looking rather
peaked. Not much of a living for them in this sort of thing, you know. Of
course it is mighty interesting. But don't you think you could manage to do
something with it in your free time?"
It can't be denied, in the matter of the family relation my uncle is
hopelessly reactionary. In his view almost the whole duty of man is to keep
his wife well housed, well dressed, contented, and his children plump and
rosy. To abate a tittle from this requirement my uncle regards as pure
embezzlement. You try to make him see the counterclaims upon you of
science, literature, art. "Yes, yes, those things are all very fine, but
will you rob your own wife and children for them?"
I wonder whether this myopia of my uncle is due to the fact that he is a
confirmed old bachelor, and all women and children are to him pure ideals,
as much sweeter than all other ideals as they are more substantial? He
poses, to be sure, as a depreciator of woman. "Just like a woman," "women's
frivolity," "useless little feminine trinkets," are phrases always on his
lips. But watch his caressing expression as he listens to the chatter of
Cousin Thisbe, the most empty-headed little creature who ever wore glowing
cheeks and bright curls. Let anybody get into trouble with his wife or
sweetheart, and my uncle straightway takes up the cudgels for the lady. The
merits of the case don't matter: a lady is always right, or if she isn't,
it's a mighty mean man who'll insist on it.
His nephews of the blood are firmly convinced that the reason why our uncle
is such a fool about women in general is because he has never been in love
with any woman in particular. Thus do members of a family blind themselves
with dogmas about one another. I, being more or less of an outsider, can
observe without preconceptions. Now I assert, in spite of his consistent
pose of serene indifference to particular charms, my uncle's temperament is
that of a man forever in love with somebody or other. He is strong, he is
simple, he is pure, and should he escape the dart? Depend on it, he has
fallen in love not once or twice, but often and often. And the
probabilities are, he has been loved, though not so often. And--this would
be an impious speculation if I were nephew of the blood--how has he
behaved, in the rare latter event? As a man in the presence of a miracle
done for his sole benefit. He has exulted, then doubted its reality, then
betaken himself to the broad prairie, where he is most at home, to cool his
blood in the north wind, and restore himself to the serenity, the freedom
from entanglements, befitting an uncle at the head of his tribe. This, you
say, is all conjecture, deduced from the behavior of those of his nephews
who most resemble him? No. Do you not recall that early affair of his, with
the dark vivacious lady--Marianne, I believe, was her name? Do you not
recall a later affair with a very young, cold lady from the land of the
snows? Do you not recall his maturer devotion to the noble lady of the
trident, his cousin? And--but I'll not descend to idle gossip.
As you can see, I do not wholly accept my uncle, as he is. I wish he
weren't so insistent upon reducing everything to simple, definite terms,
whether it will reduce to such terms or not. I wish he would give more
thought to making his conduct correct as well as unimpeachable. I'm for him
when his inferiors laugh at him, but I wish he would manage to thwart their
malicious desire to laugh. I wish he were less disposed to scoff gently at
my attempts to direct his education. Just the same, he is the biggest,
kindliest, most honest and honorable tribal head that ever lived. And you
won't find a trace of these reservations in the enthusiasm with which I
shall wish him many thousands of happy returns, next Fourth of July.