THIS PICTURE AND THIS.
After awhile, as he did not appear, Molly went up to find him: she was
anxious he should know how heartily she valued his _real_ opinion.
“I have got a little poem here--if you can call it a poem--a few lines I
wrote last Christmas: would you mind looking at it, and telling me if it
is anything?”
“So, my bird of paradise, you sing too?” said Walter.
“Very little. A friend to whom I sent it, took it, without asking me, to
one of the magazines for children, but they wouldn’t have it. Tell me if
it is worth printing. Not that I want it printed--not a bit!”
“I begin to think, Molly, that anything you write must be worth
printing! But I wonder you should ask one who has proved himself so
incompetent to give a true opinion, that even what he has given he is
unable to defend!”
“I shall always trust your opinion, Walter--only it must be an opinion:
you gave a judgment then without having formed an opinion. Shall I
read?”
“Yes, please, Molly. I never used to like having poetry read to me, but
you _can_ read poetry!”
“This is easy to read!” said Molly.
“See the countless angels hover!
See the mother bending over!
See the shepherds, kings and cow!
What is baby thinking now?
Oh, to think what baby thinks
Would be worth all holy inks!
But he smiles such lovingness,
That I will not fear to guess!--
‘Father called; you would not come!
Here I am to take you home!
‘For the father feels the dearth
Of his children round his hearth--
‘Wants them round and on his knee--
That’s his throne for you and me!’
Something lovely like to this
Surely lights that look of bliss!
Or if something else be there,
Then ‘tis something yet more fair;
For within the father’s breast
Lies the whole world in its nest,”
She ceased.
Walter said nothing. His heart was full. What verses were these beside
Lufa’s fire-works!
“You don’t care for them!” said Molly, sadly, but with the sweetest
smile. “It’s not that I care so much about the poetry; but I do love
what I thought the baby might be thinking: it seems so true! so fit to
be true!”
“The poetry is lovely, anyhow!” said Walter. “And one thing I am sure
of--the father will not take me on his knee, if I go on as I have been
doing! You must let me see everything you write, or have written, Molly!
Should you mind?”
“Surely not, Walter! We used to read everything we thought might be
yours!”
“Oh, don’t!” cried Walter. “I can’t bear to think of the beastly
business!--I beg your pardon, Molly; but I am ashamed of the thing.
There was not one stroke of good in the whole affair!”
“I admit,” said Molly, “the kind of thing is not real work, though it
may well be hard enough! But all writing about books and authors is not
of that kind. A good book, like a true man, is well worth writing about
by any one who understands it. That is very different from making it
one’s business to sit in judgment on the work of others. The mental
condition itself of habitual judgment is a false one. Such an attitude
toward any book requiring thought, and worthy of thought, renders it
impossible for the would-be judge to know what is in the book. If, on
the other hand, the book is worth little or nothing, it is not worth
writing about, and yet has a perfect claim to fair play. If we feel
differently at different times about a book we know, how am I to know
the right mood for doing justice to a new book?”
“I am afraid the object is to write, not to judge righteous judgment!”
“One whose object is to write, and with whom judgment is the mere
pretext for writing, is a parasite, and very pitiful, because, being a
man, he lives as a flea lives. You see, Walter, by becoming a critic,
you have made us critical--your father and me! We have talked about
these things ever since you took to the profession!”
“Trade, Molly!” said Walter, gruffly.
“A profession, at least, that is greater than its performance! But it
has been to me an education. We got as many as we were able of the books
you took pains with, and sometimes could not help doubting whether you
had seen the object of the writer. In one you dwelt scornfully on the
unscientific allusions, where the design of the book was perfectly
served by those allusions, which were merely to illustrate what the
author meant. Your social papers, too, were but criticism in another
direction. We could not help fearing that your criticism would prove a
quicksand, swallowing your faculty for original, individual work. Then
there was one horrid book you reviewed!”
“Well, I did no harm there! I made it out horrid enough, surely!”
“I think you did harm. I, for one, should never have heard of the book,
and nobody down here would, I believe, if you had not written about it!
You advertised it! Let bad books lie as much unheard of as may be. There
is no injustice in leaving them alone.”
Walter was silent.
“I have no doubt,” he said at length, “that you are out and out right,
Molly! Where my work has not been useless, it has been bad!”
“I do not believe it has been always useless,” returned Molly. “Do you
know, for instance, what a difference there was between your notices of
the first and second books of one author--a lady with an odd name--I
forget it? I have not seen the books, but I have the reviews. You must
have helped her to improve!”
Walter gave a groan.
“My sins are indeed finding me out!” he said. Then, after a
pause--“Molly,” he resumed, “you can’t help yourself--you’ve got to be
my confessor! I am going to tell you an ugly fact--an absolute
dishonesty!”
From beginning to end he told her the story of his relations with Lufa
and her books; how he had got the better of his conscience, persuading
himself that he thought that which he did not think, and that a book was
largely worthy, where at best it was worthy but in a low degree; how he
had suffered and been punished; how he had loved her, and how his love
came to a miserable and contemptible end. That it had indeed come to an
end, Molly drew from the quiet way in which he spoke of it; and his
account of the letter he had written to Lufa, confirmed her conclusion.
How delighted she was to be so thoroughly trusted by him!
“I’m so glad, Walter!” she said.
“What are you glad of, Molly?”
“That you know one sort of girl, and are not so likely to take the next
upon trust.”
“We must take some things on trust, Molly, else we should never have
anything!”
“That is true, Walter; but we needn’t without a question empty our
pockets to the first beggar that comes! When you were at home last, I
wondered whether the girl could be worthy of your love.”
“What girl?” asked Walter, surprised.
“Why, that girl, of course!”
“But I never said anything!”
“Twenty times a day!”
“What then made you doubt her worth?”
“That you cared less for your father.”
“I am a brute, Molly! Did he feel it very much?”
“He always spoke to God about it, not to me. He never finds it easy to
talk to his fellow-man; but I always know when he is talking to God! May
I tell your father what you have just told me Walter? But of course not!
You will tell him yourself!”
“No, Molly! I would rather you should tell him. I want him to know, and
would tell him myself, if you were not handy. Then, if he chooses, we
can have a talk about it! But now, Molly, what am I to do?”
“You still feel as if you had a call to literature, Walter?”
“I have no pleasure in any other kind of work.”
“Might not that be because you have not tried anything else?”
“I don’t know. I am drawn to nothing else.”
“Well, it seems to me that a man who would like to make a saddle, must
first have some pig-skin to make it of! Have you any pig-skin, Walter?”
“I see well enough what you mean!”
“A man must want long leisure for thought before he can have any
material for his literary faculty to work with.
“You could write a history, but could you write one _now_? Even for a
biography, you would have to read and study for months--perhaps years.
As to the social questions you have been treating, men generally change
their opinions about such things when they know a little more; and who
would utter his opinions, knowing he most by and by wish he had not
uttered them!”
“No one; but unhappily every one is cock-sure of his opinion till he
changes it--and then he is as sure as before till he changes it again!”
“Opinion is not sight, your father says,” answered Molly; and again a
little pause followed.
“Well, but, Molly,” resumed Walter, “how is that precious thing, leisure
for thought, to be come by? Write reviews I will not! Write a history, I
can not. Write a poem I might, but they wouldn’t buy copies enough of it
to pay for the paper and printing. Write a novel I might, if I had time;
but how to live, not to say how to think, while I was writing it?
Perhaps I ought to be a tutor, or a school-master!”
“Do you feel drawn to that, Walter?”
“I do not.”
“And you do feel drawn to write?”
“I dare not say I have thoughts which demand expression; and yet somehow
I want to write.”
“And you say that some begin by writing what is of no value, but come to
write things that are precious?”
“It is true.”
“Then perhaps you have served your apprenticeship in worthless things,
and the inclination to write comes now of precious things on their way,
which you do not yet see or suspect, not to say know!”
“But many men and women have the impulse to write, who never write
anything of much worth!”
Molly thought awhile.
“What if they yielded to the impulse before they ought? What if their
eagerness to write when they ought to have been doing something else,
destroyed the call in them? That is perhaps the reason why there are so
many dull preachers--that they begin to speak before they have anything
to say!”
“Teaching would be favorable to learning!”
“It would tire your brain, and give you too much to do with books! You
would learn chiefly from thoughts, and I stand up for things first. And
where would be your leisure?”
“You have something in your mind, Molly! I will do whatever you would
have me!”
“No, Walter,” exclaimed Molly, with a flash, “I will take no such
promise! You will, I know, do what I or any one else may propose, if it
appears to you right! But don’t you think that, for the best work, a man
ought to be independent of the work?”
“You would have your poet a rich man!”
“Just the contrary, Walter! A rich man is the most dependent of all--at
least most rich men are. Take his riches, and what could himself do for
himself? He depends on his money. No; I would have the poet earn his
bread by the sweat of his brow--with his hands feed his body, and with
his heart and brain the hearts of his brothers and sisters. We have
talked much about this, your father and I. That a man is not a gentleman
who works with his hands, is the meanest, silliest article in the social
creed of our country. He who would be a better gentleman than the
Carpenter of Nazareth, is not worthy of Him. He gave up His working only
to do better work for His brothers and sisters, and then He let the men
and women, but mostly, I suspect, the women, that loved Him, support
him! Thousands upon thousands of young men think it more gentlemanly to
be clerks than to be carpenters, but, if I were a man, I would rather
_make_ anything, than add up figures and copy stupid letters all day
long! If I had brothers, I would ten times rather see them masons, or
carpenters, or book-binders, or shoe-makers, than have them doing what
ought to be left for the weaker and more delicate!”
“Which do you want me to be, Molly--a carpenter or a shoe-maker?”
“Neither, Walter--but a farmer: you don’t want to be a finer gentleman
than your father! Stay at home and help him, and grow strong. Plow and
cart, and do the work of a laboring man. Nature will be your mate in her
own work-shop!”
Molly was right. If Burns had but kept to his plow and his fields, to
the birds and the beasts, to the storms and the sunshine! He was a free
man while he lived by his labor among his own people! Ambition makes of
gentlemen time-servers and paltry politicians; of the plowman-poet it
made an exciseman!
“What will then become of the leisure you want me to have, Molly?”
“Your father will see that you have it! In winter, which you say is the
season for poetry, there will be plenty of time, and in summer there
will be some. Not a stroke of your pen will have to go for a dinner or a
pair of shoes! Thoughts born of the heaven and the earth and the
fountains of water, will spring up in your soul, and have time to ripen.
If you find you are not wanted for an author, you will thank God you are
not an author. What songs you would write then, Walter!”
He sat motionless most of the time. Now and then he would lift his head
as if to speak, but he did not speak; and when Molly was silent, he rose
and again went to his room. What passed there, I need not say. Walter
was a true man in that he was ready to become truer: what better thing
could be said of any unfinished man!