E-text prepared by Al Haines
MUSHROOMS ON THE MOOR
by
F. W. BOREHAM
Author of
'Mountains in the Mist,'
'The Other Side of the Hill,'
'The Golden Milestone,'
'The Silver Shadow,'
'The Luggage of Life,'
'Faces in the Fire,' etc., etc.
The Abingdon Press
New York ------ Cincinnati
First American Edition Printed May, 1919
Reprinted August, 1919; May, 1920; July 1921
CONTENTS
PART I
CHAP.
I. A SLICE OF INFINITY
II. READY-MADE CLOTHES
III. THE HIDDEN GOLD
IV. 'SUCH A LOVELY BITE!'
V. LANDLORD AND TENANT
VI. THE CORNER CUPBOARD
VII. WITH THE WOLVES IN THE WILD
VIII. DICK SUNSHINE
IX. FORTY!
X. A WOMAN'S REASON
PART II
I. THE HANDICAP
II. GOG AND MAGOG
III. MY WARDROBE
IV. 'PITY MY SIMPLICITY!'
V. TUNING FROM THE BASS
VI. A FRUITLESS DEPUTATION
VII. TRAMP! TRAMP! TRAMP!
VIII. THE FIRST MATE
PART III
CHAP.
I. WHEN THE COWS COME HOME
II. MUSHROOMS ON THE MOOR
III. ONIONS
IV. ON GETTING OVER THINGS
V. NAMING THE BABY
VI. THE MISTRESS OF THE MARGIN
VII. LILY
BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION
I have allowed the Mushrooms on the Moor to throw the glamour of their
name over the entire volume because, in some respects, they are the
most typical and representative things in it. They express so little
but suggest so much! What fun we had, in the days of auld lang syne,
when we scoured the dewy fields in search of them! And yet how small a
proportion of our enjoyment the mushrooms themselves represented! Our
flushed cheeks, our prodigious appetites, and our boisterous merriment
told of gains immensely greater than any that our baskets could have
held. What a contrast, for example, between mushrooms from the moor on
the one hand and mushrooms from the market on the other! What memories
of the soft summer mornings; the fresh and fragrant air; the diffused
and misty sunshine; the sparkle of the dew on the tall wisps of
speargrass; the beaded and shining cobwebs; the scamper, barefooted,
across the glittering green! It was part of childhood's wild romance.
And, in the sterner days that have followed those tremendous frolics,
we have learned that life is full of just such suggestive things. As I
glance back upon the years that lie behind me, I find that they have
been almost equally divided between two hemispheres. But I have
discovered that, under any stars,
There's part o' the sun in an apple;
There's part o' the moon in a rose;
There's part o' the flaming Pleiades
In every leaf that grows.
And I shall reckon this book no failure if some of the ideas that I
have tried to suggest are found to point at all steadily to that
conclusion.
FRANK W. BOREHAM.
HOBART, TASMANIA,
JUNE, 1915.
PART I
I
A SLICE OF INFINITY
I
Really, as I sit here in this quiet study, and glance round at the
books upon the shelves, I can scarcely refrain from laughing at the fun
we have had together. And to think of the way in which they came into
my possession! It seems like a fairy story or a chapter from romance.
If a man wants to spend an hour or so as delightfully as it is possible
to spend it, let him invite to his fireside some old and valued friend,
the companion of many a frolic and the sharer of many a sorrow; let him
seat his old comrade there in the place of honour on the opposite side
of the hearth, and then let them talk. 'Do you remember, Tom, the way
we met for the first time?' 'My word, I do! Shall I ever forget it?'
And Tom slaps his knee at the memory of it, and they enjoy a long and
hearty laugh together. It is not that the circumstances under which
they met were so ludicrous or dramatic; it is that they were so
commonplace. It seems, on looking back, the oddest chance in the world
that first brought them together, the merest whim of chance, the
veriest freak of circumstance; and yet how all life has taken its
colour and drawn its enrichment from that casual meeting! They
happened to enter the same compartment of a railway train; or they sat
next each other on the tramcar; or they walked home together from a
political meeting; or they caught each other admiring the same rose at
a flower show. Neither sought the other; neither felt the slightest
desire for the other; neither knew, until that moment, of the existence
of the other; and yet there it is! They met; and out of that
apparently accidental meeting there has sprung up a friendship that
many changes cannot change, and a love that many waters cannot quench.
Either would cross all the continents and oceans of the world to-day to
find the other; but as they remember how they met for the first time it
seems too queer to be credible. And they lie back in their easy chairs
and laugh again.
II
That is why I laugh at my books. Some day I intend to draw up a list
of them and divide them into classes. In one class I shall put the
books that I bought, once upon a time, because I was given to
understand that they were the right sort of books to have. Everybody
else had them; and my shelves would therefore be scarcely decent
without them. I purchased them, accordingly, and they have stood on
the shelves there ever since. As far as I know they have done nobody
the slightest harm in all their long untroubled lives. Indeed, they
have imparted such an air of gravity, and such an odour of sanctity, to
the establishment as must have had a steadying effect on their less
sombre companions. But it is not at these formidable volumes that I am
laughing. I would not dare. I glance at them with reverential awe,
and am more than half afraid of them. Then, again, there are other
books that I bought because I felt that I needed them. And so I did,
more than perhaps I guessed when I bore them proudly home. Glorious
times I have had with them. I look up at them gratefully and lovingly.
It is not at these that I am laughing. But there are others, old and
trusted friends, that came into my life in the oddest possible way. I
do not mean that I stole them. I mean rather that they stole me. They
seemed to pounce out at me, and before I knew what had happened I
belonged to them: I certainly did not seek them. In some cases I never
heard of their existence until after they became my own. They have
since proved invaluable to me, and I can scarcely review our long
companionship without emotion. Yet when I glance up at them, and
remember the whimsical way in which we met for the first time, I can
scarce restrain my laughter.
III
It was like this. Years ago I went to an auction sale. A library was
being submitted to the hammer. The books were all tied up in lots.
The work had evidently been done by somebody who knew as much about
books as a Hottentot knows about icebergs. John Bunyan was tied
tightly to Nat Gould, and Thomas Carlyle was firmly fastened to Charles
Garvice. I looked round; took a note of the numbers of those lots that
contained books that I wanted, and waited for the auctioneer to get to
business. In due time I became the purchaser of half a dozen lots. I
had bought six books that I wanted, and thirty that I didn't. Now the
question arose: What shall I do with these thirty waifs and strays? I
glanced over them and took pity on them. Many of them dealt with
matters in which I had never taken the slightest interest. But were
they to blame for that? or was I? I saw at once that the fault was
entirely mine, and that these unoffending volumes had absolutely
nothing to be ashamed of. I vowed that I would read the lot, and I
did. From one or two of them I derived as far as I know, no profit at
all. But these were the exceptions. Some of these volumes have been
the delight of my life during all the days of my pilgrimage. And as I
look tenderly up at them, as they stand in their very familiar places
before me, I salute them as the two old comrades saluted each other
across the hearthstone. But I cannot help laughing at the odd manner
of our first acquaintance. It was thus that I learned one of the most
valuable lessons that experience ever taught me. It is sometimes a
fine thing to sample infinity.
IV
When I was a small boy I dreaded the policeman; when I grew older I
feared the bookseller. And as the years go by I find that my dread of
the policeman has quite evaporated, but my fear of the bookseller grows
upon me. I had an idea as a boy that one day a policeman, mistaking my
identity, would snatch me up and hurl me into some horrid little
dungeon, where I might languish for many a long day. But since I have
grown up I have discovered that it is only the bookseller who does that
sort of thing. And in his case he does it deliberately and of malice
aforethought. It is no case of mistaken identity; he knows who you
are, and he knows you are innocent. But he has his dungeon ready. The
bookseller is a very dangerous person, and every member of the
community should guard against his blandishments. It is not that he
will sell you too many books. He will probably not sell you half as
many as are good for you. But he will sell you the wrong books. He
will sell you the books you least need, and keep on his own shelves the
intellectual pabulum for which your soul is starving. And all with a
view to getting you at last into his wretched little dungeon. See how
he goes about it. A friend of yours goes to the West Indies. You
suddenly wake up to the fact that you know very little about that
wonderful region. You go to your bookseller and ask for the latest
reliable work on the West Indies. You buy it, and he, the rascal,
takes a mental note of the fact. Next time you walk into the shop he
is at you like a flash.
'Good afternoon, sir. You are specially interested, I know, in the
West Indies. We have a very fine thing coming out now in monthly parts
. . .'
And so on. His attribution to you of special interest in the West
Indies is no empty flattery. The book you bought on your first visit
has charmed you, and you are most deeply and sincerely interested in
those fascinating islands. You order the monthly parts and the
interest deepens. The bookseller does the thing so slyly that you do
not notice that he is boxing you up in the West Indies. He is doing in
sober fact what the policeman did in childish imagination. He is
driving us into a blind alley, and, unless we are very careful, he will
have us cribb'd, cabin'd, and confined before we know where we are.
V
It was my experience in the auction-room that saved me. When I had
read all these books which I should never have bought if I could have
helped it, I discovered the folly of buying books that interest you.
If a book appeals to me at first sight it is probably because I know a
good deal about the subject with which it deals. But, as against that,
see how many subjects there are of which I know nothing at all! And
just look at all these books that have no attraction for me! And tell
me this: Why do they not appeal to me? Only one answer is possible.
They do not appeal to me because I am so grossly, wofully, culpably
ignorant of the subjects whereof they treat. If, therefore, my
bookseller approaches me, with a nice new book under his arm, and
observes coaxingly that he knows I am interested in history, I always
ask him to be good enough to show me the latest work on psychology. If
he reminds me of my fondness for astronomy, I ask him for a handbook of
botany. If he refers to my predilection for agriculture, I inquire if
there is anything new in the way of poetry; and if he politely refers
to my weakness for the West Indies, I ask him to bring me something
dealing with Lapland. The bookseller must be circumvented, defeated,
and crushed at any cost. He is too clever at trapping us in his narrow
little cell. If a man wants to feel that the world is wide, and a good
place to live in, he must be for ever and for ever sampling infinity.
He must shun the books that he dearly wants to buy, and buy the books
he would do anything to shun.
VI
Yes, I bought thirty-six books that day in the auction-room; six that I
wanted and thirty that I didn't. And some of those thirty volumes have
been the charmers of my solitude and the classics of my soul ever
since. I do not advise any man to rush off to the nearest auction mart
and repeat my experiment. We must not gamble with life. Infinity must
be sampled intelligently. But, if a man is to keep himself alive in a
world like this, infinity must be sampled. Like a dog on a country
road I must poke into as many holes as I can. If I am naturally fond
of music, I had better study mining. If I love painting, I shall be
wise to go in for gardening. If I glory in the seaside, I must make a
point of climbing mountains and scouring the bush. If I am attached to
the things just under my nose, I must be careful to read books dealing
with distant lands. If I am deeply interested in contemporary affairs,
I must at once read the records of the days of long ago and explore the
annals of the splendid past. I must be faithful to old friends, but I
must get to know new people and to know them well. If I hold to one
opinion, I must studiously cultivate the acquaintance of men who hold
the opposite view, and investigate the hidden recesses of their minds
with scientific and painstaking diligence. Above all must I be
constantly sampling infinity in matters of faith. If I find that the
Epistles are gaining a commanding influence upon my mind, I must at
once set out to explore the prophets. If I find some special phase of
truth powerfully attracting me, I must, without shunning it, pay
increasing attention to all other aspects. 'The Lord has yet more
truth to break from out His Word!' said John Robinson; and I must try
to find it. Mr. Goodman is a splendid fellow; but he fell in love with
one lonely little truth one day, and now he never thinks or reads or
preaches of any other. It would be his salvation, and the salvation of
his people, if he would set out to climb the peaks that have no
attraction for him. He would find, when he stood on their sunlit
summits, that they too are part of God's great world. He would have
the time of his life if he would only commence to sample infinity. His
people are accustomed to seeing him every now and again in a new suit
of clothes. If he begins to-day to sample infinity, they will next
week experience a fresh sensation. They will see the same suit of
clothes with a new man inside it.
II
READY-MADE CLOTHES
Carlyle, as everybody knows, once wrote a Philosophy of Clothes, and
called it _Sartor Resartus_. He did his work so thoroughly and so
exhaustively and so well that, from that day to this, nobody else has
cared to tackle the theme. It is high time, however, that it was
pointed out that with one important aspect of his tremendous subject he
does not attempt to deal. Surely there ought to have been a chapter on
Ready-made Clothes!
I am surprised that Henry Drummond never drew attention to the glaring
omission, for, if Drummond hated one thing more than another, he
loathed and detested ready-made clothes. They were his pet aversion.
Ready-made clothes, he used to say, were things that were made to fit
everybody, and they fitted nobody. Men are not made by machinery and
in sizes; and it follows as a natural consequence that clothes that are
so made will not fit men. The man who is an exact duplicate of the
tailor's model has not yet been born. How Carlyle's omission escaped
the censure of Drummond I cannot imagine. It is true that Drummond was
not particularly attracted by Carlyle; he preferred Emerson. I am
certain that if Drummond had read _Sartor Resartus_ at all carefully he
would have exposed the discrepancy, and Carlyle is therefore to be
congratulated on a very narrow escape.
Drummond's hatred of ready-made clothes is the essential thing about
him. I happened to be lecturing on Drummond the other evening, and I
felt it my duty to point out that Drummond would take his place in
history, not as a scientist nor as an evangelist, nor as a traveller,
nor as an author, but as the uncompromising and relentless assailant of
ready-made clothes. Unless you grasp this, you will never understand
him. He scorned all affectations and imitations. He would adopt no
style of dress simply because it was usual under certain conditions.
'He was,' as an eye-witness of his ordination remarks, 'the last man
whom you could place by the woman's canon of dress. And yet his dress
was a marvel of adaptation to the part he happened to be playing. On
his ordination day, when most men assume a garb severely clerical, he
was dressed like a country squire, thus proclaiming to fathers and
brethren, and to all the world, that he was not going to allow
ordination to play havoc with his chosen career. Now this was typical,
and it is its typical quality that is important. It applied not to
dress alone. It applied to speech. Drummond would affect no style of
address simply on the ground that it was usual upon certain platforms
or in certain rostrums. Did it fit him? Was it simple, natural, easy,
effective? If not, he would not use it. Nor would he adopt a course
of procedure simply because it was customary and was considered
correct. If, to him, it seemed like wearing ready-made clothes, he
would have none of it. Here you have the key to his whole life.
Everything had to fit him like a glove, or he would have nothing to do
with it. His scientific lectures, his evangelistic addresses, his
personal interviews with students, even his public prayers, were
modelled on no regulation standard, on no established precedent; they
were couched in the language, and expressed in the style, that most
perfectly suited his own charming and magnetic individuality.
Professor James, of Harvard, said of Henri Bergson, the Parisian
philosopher, that his utterance fitted his thought like that elastic
silk underclothing which follows every movement of the skin. Drummond
would have considered that the ideal. Generally speaking, he was
impervious to criticism; but if you had told him that a single phrase
rang hollow, or that some expression had savoured of artificiality, or
that even a gesture appeared like affectation, you would have stabbed
him to the quick. It was a great question in his day as to whether he
was orthodox or heterodox. Drummond regarded all standards of
orthodoxy and of heterodoxy as so many tailors' models. Orthodoxy and
heterodoxy stand related to truth just as those wonderful wickerwork
stands and plaster busts that adorn every dressmaker's establishment
stand related to the grace and beauty of the female form. If you had
asked Drummond to what school of thought he belonged, he would have
told you that he never wore ready-made clothes.
I tremble lest, one of these days, these notions of mine on the subject
of ready-made clothes should assume the proportions of a sermon, and
demand pulpit utterance. There will at any rate be no difficulty in
providing them with a text. The classical instance of the contemptuous
rejection of ready-made clothing was, of course, David's refusal to
wear Saul's armour. There is a world of significance in that old-world
story. Saul's armour is a very fine thing--_for Saul_! But if David
feels that he can do better work with a sling, then, in the name of all
that is reasonable, give him a sling! If he has to fight Goliath, why
hamper him with ready-made clothes? I began by saying that Carlyle
omitted to deal, in _Sartor Resartus_, with this profound branch of his
subject. But he saw the importance of it for all that. In his
_Frederick the Great_, he tells us how the young prince's iron-handed
father employed a learned university professor to teach the boy
theology. The doctor dosed his youthful pupil with creeds and
catechisms until his brain whirled with meaningless tags and phrases.
And in recording the story Carlyle bursts out upon the dry-as-dust
professor. 'In heaven's name,' he cries, 'teach the boy nothing at
all, or else teach him something that he will know, as long as he
lives, to be eternally and indisputably true!'
Now what is this fine outburst of thunderous wrath but an emphatic
protest against the use of ready-made clothes? A man's faith should
fit him like the clothes for which he has been most carefully measured,
if not like the elastic silk to which the Harvard professor refers. A
man might as well try to wear his father's clothes as try to wear his
father's faith. It will never really fit him. There is a great
expression near the end of the brief Epistle of Jude that always seems
to me very striking. 'But ye, beloved,' says the writer, 'building up
yourselves on your most holy faith.' That is the only satisfactory way
of building--to build on your own site. If I build my house on another
man's piece of ground, it is sure to cause trouble sooner or later.
Build your own character on your own faith, says the apostle; and there
is sound sense in the injunction. It is better for me to build a very
modest little house of my own on a little bit of land that really
belongs to me than to build a palace on somebody else's soil. It is
better for me to build up my character, very unpretentiously, perhaps,
on my own faith, than to erect a much more imposing structure on
another man's creed. That is the philosophy of ready-made clothes,
disguised under a slight change of metaphor.
I have heard that some people spend their time in church inspecting
other people's clothes. If that is so, they must be profoundly
impressed by the amazing proportion of misfits. The souls of thousands
are quite obviously clad in ready-made garments. Here is the spirit of
a bright young girl decked out in all the contents of her grandmother's
spiritual wardrobe. The clothes fitted the grandmother perfectly; the
old lady looked charming in them; but the grand-daughter looks
ridiculous. I was once at a testimony meeting. The thing that most
impressed me was the continual repetition of certain phrases. Speaker
after speaker rang the changes on the same stereotyped expressions. I
saw at once that I had fallen among a people who went in for ready-made
clothes.
The thing takes even more objectionable forms. Those who are half as
fond as I am of Mark Rutherford will have already recalled Frank Palmer
in _Clara Hopgood_. 'He accepted willingly,' we are told, 'the
household conclusions on religion and politics, but they were not
properly his, for he accepted them merely as conclusions and without
the premisses, and it was often even a little annoying to hear him
express some free opinion on religious questions in a way which showed
that it was not a growth, but something picked up.' Everybody who has
read the story remembers the moral tragedy that followed. What else
could you expect? There is always trouble if a man builds his house on
another man's site. The souls of men were never meant to be attired in
ready-made clothes. Somebody has finely said that Truth must be born
again in the secret silence of each individual life.
For the matter of that, the philosophy of ready-made clothes applies as
much to unbelief as to faith. Now and then one meets a mind distracted
by genuine doubt, and it is refreshing and stimulating to grapple with
its problems. One respects the doubter because the doubt fits him like
the elastic silk; it seems a part and parcel of his personality. But
at other times one can see at a glance that the doubter is all togged
out in ready-made clothes, and, like a bird in borrowed plumes, is
inordinately proud of them. Here are the same old questions, put in
the same old way, and with a certain effrontery that knows nothing of
inner anguish or even deep sincerity. One feels that his visitor has
seen this gaudy mental outfit cheaply displayed at the street corner,
and has snapped it up at once in order to impress you with the gorgeous
spectacle. How often, too, one is made to feel that the blatancy of
the infidel lecturer, or the flippancy of the sceptical debater, is
simply a matter of ready-made clothes. The awful grandeur of the
subjects of which they treat has evidently never appealed to them.
They are merely echoing quibbles that are as old as the hills; they are
wearing clothes that may have fitted Hobbes, Paine, or Voltaire, but
that certainly were not made to fit their more meagre stature. Doubt
is a very human and a very sacred thing, but the doubt that is merely
assumed is, of all affectations, the most repellent.
If some suspicious reader thinks that I am overestimating the danger of
wearing ready-made clothes, I need only remind him that even such
gigantic humans as James Chalmers, of New Guinea, and Robert Louis
Stevenson feared that ready-made clothes might yet stand between the
Church and her conquest of the world. Some of the missionaries
insisted in clothing the natives of New Guinea in the garb of Old
England, but Chalmers protested, and protested vigorously. 'I am
opposed to it,' he exclaimed. 'My experience is that clothing natives
is nearly as bad as introducing spirits among them. Wherever clothing
has been introduced, the natives are disappearing before various
diseases, especially consumption, and I am fully convinced that the
same will happen in New Guinea. Our civilization, whatever it is, is
unfitted for them in their present state, and no attempt should be made
to force it upon them.'
With this, Robert Louis Stevenson most cordially concurred. Nobody who
knows him will suspect Stevenson of any lack of gallantry, but he
always eyed the arrival of the missionary's wife with a certain amount
of apprehension. 'The married missionary,' says Stevenson, 'may offer
to the native what he is much in want of--a higher picture of domestic
life; but the woman at the missionary's elbow tends to keep him in
touch with Europe, and out of touch with Polynesia, and threatens to
perpetuate, and even to ingrain, parochial decencies far best
forgotten. The mind of the lady missionary tends to be continually
busied about dress. She can be taught with extreme difficulty to think
any costume decent but that to which she grew accustomed on Clapham
Common; and to gratify her prejudice, the native is put to useless
expense, his mind is tainted with the morbidities of Europe, and his
health is set in danger.' We remember the pride with which poor John
Williams, the martyr missionary of Erromanga, viewed the introduction
of bonnets among the women of Raratonga; but it was not the greatest of
his triumphs after all. The bonnets have vanished long ago, but the
fragrant influence of John Williams abides perpetually. We sometimes
forget that our immaculate tweed trousers and our dainty skirts and
blouses are no essential part of the Christian gospel. As a matter of
fact, that gospel was first revealed to a people who knew nothing of
such trappings. We do not necessarily hasten the millennium by
introducing among untutored races a carnival of ready-made clothes.
And it is just as certain that you do not bring the soul nearer to its
highest goal by forcing on it a fashion for which it is totally
unsuited. And here I come back to Drummond. During his last illness
at Tunbridge Wells, he remarked that, at the age of twelve, he made a
conscientious study of Bonar's _God's Way of Peace_. 'I fear,' he
said, 'that the book did me more harm than good. I tried to force my
inner experience into the mould represented by that book, and it was
impossible.' In one of Moody's after-meetings in London, Drummond was
dealing with a young girl who was earnestly seeking the Saviour. At
last he startled her by exclaiming, 'You must give up reading James's
_Anxious Enquirer_.' She wondered how he had guessed that she had been
reading it; but he had detected from her conversation that she was
making his own earlier mistake. She was trying to think as John Angell
James thought, to weep as he wept, and to find her way to faith
precisely as he found his. Drummond told her to read nothing but the
New Testament, and, he said later on, 'A fortnight of that put her
right!'
There lies the whole secret. Our souls no more resemble each other
than our bodies; they are not made in a mould and turned out by the
million. No two are exactly alike. Ready-made clothes will never
exactly fit. Bonar and James, Bunyan and Law, Doddridge and Wesley,
Müller and Spurgeon, may help me amazingly. They may help me by
showing me how they--each for himself--found their way into the
presence of the Eternal and, like Christian at the Palace Beautiful,
were robed and armed for pilgrimage. But if they lead me to suppose
that I must experience their sensations, enjoy their elations, pass
through their depressions, struggle and laugh and weep and sing just as
they did, they have done me serious damage. They have led me away from
those secret chambers in which the King adorns the soul in beautiful
and comely garments, and they have left me a mere wearer of ready-made
clothes.
III
THE HIDDEN GOLD
I was enjoying the very modest but very satisfying pleasures of a ride
in a tramcar when the following adventure befell me. It was a bright,
sunny winter's day; the scenery on either hand was extremely
delightful; and I was cogitating upon the circumstance that so much
felicity could be obtained in return for so small an expenditure. But
my admiration of mountain and river and bush was suddenly and rudely
interrupted. A lady fellow passenger reported that, since entering the
car, three sovereigns had been extracted from her purse. That she had
them when she stepped into the car she knew for certain, for she
remembered seeing them when she opened the purse to pay her fare. She
had taken out the two pennies, inserted the ticket in their place, and
returned the purse to her handbag, which had been lying on the seat
beside her. The inspector had now boarded the car; she had opened her
purse to take out the ticket, and, lo, the gold had gone! It was a
most embarrassing situation. I was ruefully speculating as to how I
should again face my congregation after being shadowed by such a dark
suspicion. When, as abruptly as it had arisen, the mystery happily
cleared. With the most profuse apologies, the lady explained that it
was her birthday; her daughter had that morning presented her with a
new purse; the compartments of this receptacle were more elaborate and
ingenious than she had noticed; and she had found the sovereigns
reposing in a division of the purse which had eluded her previous
observation. There was no more to be said. We wished the poor
beflustered soul many happy returns of the day; she left the car at the
next corner; and I once more abandoned myself to the charms of the
landscape.
Now, this sort of thing is very common. We are continually fancying
that we have been robbed of the precious things we still possess. The
old lady who searches everywhere for the spectacles that adorn her
temples; the clerk who ransacks the office for the pen behind his ear;
and the boy who charges his brother with the theft of the pen-knife
that lurks in the mysterious depths of his own fearful and wonderful
pocket--these are each of them typical of much.
I happened the other evening to saunter into a room in which a certain
debating society was holding its weekly meeting. The paper out of
which the discussion arose had been read before my arrival. But I
gathered from the remarks of the speakers that it had dealt with a
scientific subject, and that questions of antiquity, geology, and
evolution were involved. After the fashion of debating societies, the
entire universe was promptly subjected to a complete overhaul. If the
truth must be told, I am afraid that I must confess to having forgotten
the eloquent contentions of the different speakers; but out of the
hurly-burly of that wordy conflict one utterance comes back to me. It
appealed to me at the time as being very curious, very pathetic, and
very striking. It made upon my mind an indelible impression. A tall
young fellow rose, and, in the shortest speech of the debate, imparted
to the discussion the only touch of real feeling by which it was
illumined. I do not know what it was that had struck so deep a chord
in his soul and set it all vibrating. It is wonderful how some stray
sound or sight or scent will sometimes summon to the mind a rush of
sacred memories. After a preliminary platitude or two, this speaker
suddenly referred to the connexion between science and faith. His eyes
flashed with manifest feeling; his whole being took on the tone of a
man in deadly earnest; his voice quivered with emotion. In one vivid
sentence he graphically described his aged grandfather as the old man
donned his spectacles and devoutly read--his faith unclouded by any
shadow of doubt--his morning chapter from the well-worn, large-type
Bible. And then, with a ring of such genuine passion that it sounded
to me like the cry of a creature in pain, he exclaimed, 'And,
gentlemen, I would give both my hands, and give them cheerfully, if I
could believe as my old grandfather believed!' He immediately sat
down. One or two members coughed. I could see from the faces of the
others that they all felt that the debate was getting out of bounds.
The world was wide, and the solar system fairly extensive; but this
speaker had wandered beyond the remotest frontiers of the universe.
And yet to me the utterance to which they had just listened was the
speech of the evening, the one speech to be remembered: '_Gentlemen, I
would give both my hands, and give them cheerfully, if I could believe
as my grandfather believed!_'
Now this was very pathetic, this pair of eager eyes suddenly turned
inward; this discovery of an empty soul; this comparison with his
grandfather's golden hoard; and this pitiful confession of abject
poverty. I felt sorry for him, just as I felt sorry for the lady in
the tramcar. The lady in the tramcar looked into a purse that she
thought to be empty, and suffered all the agony of a great loss. The
young fellow in the debating society looked into the recesses of his
own spirit, and cried out that there was nothing there. And it was all
a mistake--in both cases. The sovereigns were in the purse after all.
And faith was in the apparently empty soul after all. But neither of
the victims knew that they possessed what they lamented. They were
both exactly like the old lady with the spectacles on her temples, like
the clerk with his pen behind his ear, like the boy with the penknife
in his pocket. In the case of the lady in the car the similitude is
clear enough. I aspire to show that the analogy applies just as surely
to the young fellow and his faith. And to that end let me raise a
cloud of questions as a dog might start a covey of birds.
Why does this young man sigh for his grandfather's faith? Was his
grandfather's a true faith or a false faith? If his grandfather's
faith was a false faith, why does he himself so passionately covet it?
Does not the very fact that he so earnestly desires his grandfather's
faith as his own faith prove that he is certain that his grandfather's
faith was true? And if, in the very soul of him, he feels that his
grandfather's faith was true, does it not follow that he has already
set his seal to the faith of his grandfather? Is he not proving most
conclusively by his flashing eyes, his fervent manner, and his
quivering voice that he believes most firmly in his grandfather's
faith? And, if that is so, is it not a case of the lady in the tramcar
over again? Is he not crying out that his soul is empty, whilst, in a
secret and unexplored recess of that same soul, there reposes the very
faith for which he cries?
When I was a very small boy I believed in the Man in the Moon; I
believed in Santa Claus; I believed in old Mother Hubbard; I believed
in the Fairy Godmother; I believed in ghosts and brownies and witches
and trolls. It was a wonderful creed, that creed of my infancy. It
has gone now, and it has gone unwept and unsung. I never catch myself
saying that I would give my two hands, and give them cheerfully, if I
could believe in those things all over again. That puerile faith was a
false faith; and because I now know it to have been fictitious I smile
at it to-day, and never dream of wishing that I still believed in the
Man in the Moon. And, when, on the contrary, I catch a man saying with
wet eyes that he would give both his hands, and give them cheerfully,
if he could believe as his grandfather did, I see before me indubitable
evidence of the fact that, all unconsciously, grandsire and grandson
have both subscribed with fervour to the selfsame stately faith.
But, to save us from the sin of prosiness, let us indulge in a little
romance. Harry and Edith are lovers; but last evening, in the course
of a stroll by the side of the sea, a dark cloud swept over the golden
tranquillity of their enchantment. They parted at length--not as they
usually do. When poor ruffled little Edith reached her dainty room,
she flung herself in a tempest of tears upon the snowy counterpane, and
sobbed again and again and again, 'I would give anything if I could
love him as I loved him yesterday!' And all the while Harry, with
white and tearless face, and his soul in a tumult of agitation, is
lying back in his chair before the fire, his hands in his pockets,
saying to himself over and over again, 'I would give anything if I
could love her as I loved her yesterday!' Now here are a pair of
fascinating specimens for psychological analysis! Why is Edith so
anxious to love Harry as she loved him yesterday? Why is Harry so
eager to love Edith as he loved her yesterday? You do not passionately
desire to love a person whom you do not love. The secret is out!
Edith sobs to herself, 'I would give anything to love Harry as I loved
him yesterday!' because, being the silly little goose that she is, she
does not recognize that she does love Harry as she loved him yesterday.
And Harry, logical in everything but in love, does not see, as he sits
there muttering, that his very anxiety to love Edith just as he loved
her yesterday is the best proof that he could possibly have that his
love for Edith has undergone no change. Each is peering into a purse
that appears to be empty; each is crying for the gold that seems to
have gone; and each is ignorant of the fact that their wealth is still
with them, but is for a moment eluding their agitated scrutiny.
The philosophy that the new purse revealed to me is capable of an
infinity of applications. The fact is that faith is always the unknown
dimension. A man may know how many children he has, and how much money
he has; but no man knows how much faith he has. Everybody who has read
Carlyle's _History of Frederick the Great_ remembers the petty
squabbles of Voltaire, Maupertius, and the other thinkers who moved
about the person of that famous prince. They seemed to have been for
ever twitting each other with getting ill, and, notwithstanding their
philosophy, sending for a priest to minister beside their supposed
deathbeds. I have heard sceptics and infidels charged with hypocrisy
on the ground that, in the face of sudden terror, they had been known
to call upon that God whose very existence they denied. I am bound to
say that I do not think the evidence sufficient to substantiate the
charge. There was no hypocrisy, but the sudden discovery of
unsuspected faith. In the tumult of emotion induced by sudden fear, a
secret compartment of the soul was opened, and the faith that was
regarded as lost was found to be tranquilly reposing there.
Perhaps it was just as well that the lady in the tramcar had this
embarrassing experience. It was good for her to have felt the anguish
of imaginary loss, for it led her to discover that her purse was a more
complicated thing than she had supposed. It will do my friend of the
debating society a world of good to make the same discovery. The soul
is not so simple as it seems. You cannot press a spring at a given
moment, and take in all its contents at one glance. And it was
certainly good for my lady fellow traveller to find that the gold was
still there. She needed it, or its loss would not have thrown her into
such a fever. That is the thing that strikes me about my friend the
debater. He evidently needed the faith for which he cried so
passionately. Faith, like gold, is for use and not for ornament. Yes,
he needed the faith that he could not find; needed it, perhaps, more
sorely than he knew. And now that I have proved to him that, in some
secret recess, the treasure still lurks, I am hopeful that, like the
lady in the car, he will smile at his former anguish, and live like a
lord on the wealth that he has found.
IV
'SUCH A LOVELY BITE!'
It is a keen, clear, frosty winter's night, and I am sitting here in a
cheerfully lighted dining-room only a few feet from a roaring fire. An
immense chasm sometimes yawns between afternoon and evening, and it
seems scarcely credible that, only an hour or two ago, I was out on the
river in an open boat, fishing. It was a glorious sunny afternoon when
we pushed off; the great hills around were at their greenest; and the
only reminder vouchsafed to us that to-morrow is midwinter's day was
the glitter of snow away on the top of the mountain. The water around
us, reflecting the cloudless sky above, was a sea of sapphire, out of
which our oars seemed to beat up pearls and silver. Arrived at our
favourite fishing grounds, we lay quietly at anchor, and for a while
the sport was excellent. But, later on, things quietened down. The
fish forsook us, or became too dainty for our blandishments. The sun
went down over the massive ridges. A hint of evening brooded over us.
The blue died out of the water, and the greenness vanished from the
hills. Everything was grey and cold. As though to match the gloom
around us, we ourselves grew silent. Conversation languished, and
laughter was dead. We turned up the collars of our coats, and grimly
bent over our lines. But the cod and the perch were proof against all
our cajolery, and would not be enticed. At length my hands grew so
cold and numb that I could scarcely feel the line. My enthusiasm sank
with the temperature, and I suggested, not without trepidation, that we
should give it up. My companions assented to the abstract proposition;
but, with that wistful half-expectancy so characteristic of anglers,
did not at once commence to wind up their lines. I was, therefore,
just on the point of setting them an example when one of them exclaimed
excitedly, 'Wait a second; I had _such a lovely bite_!' That was all;
but it gave us a fresh lease of life. For half an hour we forgot the
hardening cold and the deepening gloom, and chatted again as merrily as
when we baited our hooks for the first time. It was a bite; that was
all. But, oh, the thrill of a bite when patience is flagging and
endurance ebbing out!
It is because of a certain cynical tendency to deride the value of a
bite that I have decided to spend the evening with my pen. 'A bite!'
says somebody, with a fine guffaw. 'And what on earth is the good of a
bite, I should like to know? A bite is neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor
good red herring! A bite is of no use for breakfast, dinner, tea, or
supper! Bites can neither be fried nor boiled, measured nor weighed.
A bite, indeed!'--and once more the cynic loses himself in laughter.
That is all he knows about it, and it merely supplies us with another
evidence of the superficiality of cynicism. The critic is sometimes
right, but the cynic is never right; and the roar of laughter that I
hear from the cynic's chair, as he talks about bites, is, therefore,
rightly translated and interpreted, a kind of thunderous applause.
Why, in some respects, a bite is better than a fish. Only very
occasionally does a fish look as well on the bank or in the boat as it
appeared to the excited imagination of the angler when he first felt
the flutter on the line. I have caught thousands of fish in my time;
but most of them I have dismissed from memory as soon as they went
flapping into the basket. But some of the bites that I have had! I
catch myself wondering now what beauteous monsters they can have been.
'Well, and how many did you catch?' I am regularly asked on my return.
'Oh, a couple of dozen or so; but, oh, I had such a bite! . . .'
And so on. It is the bite that lingers fondly in the memory, that
haunts the fancy for days afterwards, and that rushes back upon the
angler in his dreams.
'Oh, I've lost him!' one of my companions called out from the other end
of the boat this afternoon. 'He got off the line just after I started
to draw him in; such a lovely bite; I'm sure it was the biggest fish
we've had round here this afternoon!'
Of course it was! The bite is always the biggest fish. There is
something very charming--something of which the cynic knows nothing at
all--about this propensity of ours to attribute superlative qualities
to the unrealized. It is a species of philosophic chivalry. It is a
courtesy that we extend to the unknown. We do not know whether the
joys that never visited us were really great or small, so we gallantly
allow them the benefit of the doubt. The geese that came waddling over
the hill are geese, all of them, and as geese we write them down; but
the geese that never came over the hill are swans every one, and no
swans that we have fed beside the lake glided hither and thither half
as gracefully.
A young girl comes to my study. She is tall and comely, and her face
reveals a quiet beauty. But she is dressed in black, and the marks of
a great sorrow are stamped upon her pale, drawn countenance. My heart
goes out to her as she tells her story. It was so entirely unexpected,
so totally unthought of, this sudden loss of her lover. Just as she
was dreaming of orange-blossoms for her own hair, her fingers were
employed upon a wreath of lilies for his bier. As she sat in the
church on that dark and dreadful day, the organ that she fancied
greeting her with a wedding march set all the aisles shuddering to a
dirge. And her unfinished bridal array had all been laid aside that
she might garb her graceful form in gloom. As I looked into her sad
eyes, swollen with weeping, I fancied that I could see into her very
soul, and scan the secret pictures she had painted there. The happy
wedding, with all its nonsense and solemnity, its laughter and its
tears; the pretty little home, with his chair of honour, like a throne,
facing hers; his homecoming evening by evening, and the welcome she
would give him; the children, too--the sons so handsome and the girls
so fair! What art gallery contains paintings so perfect? I saw them
all--these lovely visions hung with crape! And as I saw them, I
reverenced our sweet human habit of attributing impossible glories to
the unrealized.
And what about the parents of the baby I buried yesterday? Are there
no pictures in these stricken souls worth viewing? As you pass through
these chambers of imagery, and view one of these exquisitely painted
pictures after another, you have the whole splendid career mapped out
before you. Such triumphs, such honours, such laurels for his brow!
The glory of the life that would have been is spread out before their
fancy, sketched in the fairest colours! Thus tenderly do we set a halo
on the forehead of the unrealized! Thus charitably do we let the fancy
play about the fish we never caught! Let the cynic hush his
sacrilegious laughter! There is something about all this that is very
human, and very beautiful.
And just because it is so beautiful, it is worth analysing, this thrill
of joy that I feel when the fish tugs at my line. I shall try to take
the sensation to pieces, in order that I may find out exactly of what
it consists. I suppose that, really, the secret is: I am pleased to
feel that my bait has some attraction for the fish that I now know to
be there. It is horrid to keep on fishing whilst your mind is haunted
by the suspicion that your hooks are bare, or that they are baited in
such a way that they make no appeal to the fish that may be swarming
around you. The sudden bite settles all that, and you feel every
faculty start up to vigorous life once more.
Now, as a matter of fact, there are few things more pathetic than the
feeling that sometimes steals over the best of men, that there is
nothing in them to attract the affection, the friendship, and the
confidence of others. The classical instance is the case of Mark
Rutherford. How his lonely soul ached for comradeship! 'I wanted a
friend,' he says. 'How the dream haunted me! It made me restless and
anxious at the sight of every new face, wondering whether at last I had
found that for which I searched as if for the kingdom of heaven. God
knows that I would have stood against a wall and have been shot for any
man whom I loved as cheerfully as I would have gone to bed, but nobody
seemed to wish for such a love or to know what to do with it!' Here is
the poor fisherman, who feels that he has no bait that the fish want.
It was not as though he caught the perch whilst the cod fought shy of
him. 'I was avoided,' he says elsewhere, 'both by the commonplace and
by those who had talent. Commonplace persons avoided me because I did
not chatter, and persons of talent because I stood for nothing--_there
was nothing in me_!' But, just as he was giving up, Mark Rutherford
felt the line tremble, and knew the ecstasy of a bite! He was suddenly
befriended. 'Oh, the transport of it!' he exclaims. 'It was as if
water had been poured on a burnt hand, or some miraculous Messiah had
soothed the delirium of a fever-stricken sufferer, and replaced his
visions of torment with dreams of Paradise.' The world holds more of
this sort of thing than we think. A writer who cannot get readers, a
preacher who cannot get hearers, a tradesman who cannot get
customers--it is the same old trouble. Fishing, fishing, fishing,
until the whole head is sick and the whole heart faint. Fishing,
fishing, fishing, until the whole world seems to be pouring its
contempt upon the unhappy fisherman. Fishing, fishing, fishing, until
a man feels that there is nothing in him, nothing in him, _nothing in
him_; and the contempt of his fellows leads to the anguish and hollow
laughter of self-derision. Oh, what a bite means at such an hour!
'Blessed are they,' exclaims poor Mark Rutherford, 'who heal us of our
self-despisings! Of all services which can be done to man, I know of
none more precious.'
But even a bite may do a man a great deal of harm unless he thinks it
out very carefully. It is certainly very annoying, after waiting so
long, to feel that the fish has come--and gone again! A fisherman must
guard against being soured and embittered just at that point. It was
the tragedy of Miss Havisham. Everybody who has read _Great
Expectations_ remembers Miss Havisham. In some respects she is
Dickens' most striking and dramatic character. Poor Miss Havisham had
been disappointed on her wedding-day; and, in revenge, she remained for
the rest of her life dressed just as she was dressed when the blow
staggered her. When Pip came upon her, years afterwards, she was still
wearing her faded wedding-dress. She still had the withered flowers in
her hair, although her hair was whiter than the dress itself. For the
dress was yellow with age, and everything she wore had long since lost
its lustre. 'I saw, too,' says Pip, 'that the bride within the
bridal-dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had
no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that
the dress had been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman, and
that the figure, upon which it now hung loose, had shrunk to skin and
bone. Once I had been taken to see some ghastly waxwork at the Fair,
representing I know not what impossible personage lying in state. Once
I had been taken to one of our old marsh churches to see a skeleton in
the ashes of a rich dress that had been dug out of a vault under the
church pavement. Now, waxwork and skeleton seemed to have dark eyes
that moved and looked at me.' Poor Pip! And poor Miss Havisham! Miss
Havisham had lost her fish just as she was in the very act of landing
him. And she had let it sour and spoil her, and Pip was frightened at
the havoc it had wrought.
The peril touches life at every point. It especially affects those of
us who are called to be fishers of men. It is a great art, this human
angling, and needs infinite tact, and infinite subtilty, and infinite
patience. And, above all, it needs a resolute determination never on
any account whatever to be soured by disappointment. When I am tempted
to wind up my line, and give the whole thing up in despair, I revive my
flagging enthusiasm by recalling the rapture of my earlier catches.
What angler ever forgets the wild transport of landing his first
salmon? What minister ever forgets the spot on which he knelt with his
first convert? In the long and tedious hours when the waiting is
weary, and the nibblings vexatious, and the bites disappointing, let
him live on these wealthy memories as the bees live in the winter on
the honey that they gathered in the summer-time. Yes, let him think
about those unforgettable triumphs, and let him talk about them. They
make great talking. And as he recalls and recites the thrilling story,
the leaden moments will simply fly, the old glow will steal back into
his fainting soul, and, long before he has finished his tale, he will
find his fingers busy with another glorious prize.
V
LANDLORD AND TENANT
I heard a capital story the other evening under the most astonishing
circumstances. It was at a public meeting connected with a religious
conference. A certain minister rose to address us. We knew from past
experience that we should have a most suggestive and stimulating
address. But, somehow, it did not occur to us that we should be
favoured with a story. And when this grave and sedate member of our
assembly suddenly launched out into the intricacies of his tale, it was
as great a surprise as though the haildrops turned out to be diamonds,
or Vesuvius had begun to pour forth gold. Before we knew what had
happened, we were electrified by the story of a man who dwelt in a very
comfortable house, with a large, light, airy cellar. The river ran
near by. One day the river overflowed, the cellar was flooded, and all
the hens that he kept in it were drowned. The next day he bounced off
to see the landlord.
'I have come,' he said, 'to give you notice. I wish to leave the
house.'
'How is that?' asked the astonished landlord. 'I thought you liked it
so much. It is a very comfortable, well-built house, and cheap.'
'Oh, yes,' the tenant replied, 'but the river has overflowed into my
cellar, and all my hens are drowned.'
'Oh, don't let that make you give up the house,' the landlord reasoned;
'try ducks!'
I entirely forget--I most fervently hope that my friend will never see
this lamentable confession of mine!--I entirely forget what he made of
this delightful story. But, looking back on it now, I can see quite
clearly that half the philosophy of life is wrapped up in its delicious
folds. It raises the question at the very outset as to how far I am
under any obligation to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune. The river has flooded my cellar and drowned all my hens.
Very well. Now two courses are open to me. Shall I grin and bear it?
or shall I make a change? I must remember that it is very nice living
on the banks of the river. There is the boat-house at the foot of the
garden. What delightful hours we have spent gliding up and down the
bends and reaches of the tranquil stream, watching the reflections in
the water, and picnicking under the willows on its grassy banks! How
the children love to come down here and feed the swans as the graceful
creatures glide proudly hither and thither, seeming to be conscious
that their beauty richly deserves all the homage that is paid to it!
The fishing, too! The whirr of the line, and the bend of the rod, and
the splash of the trout; why, there was more concentrated excitement in
some of those tremendous moments than in all the politics and battles
since the world began! And the bathing! On those hot summer days when
the very air seemed to scorch the skin, how exquisite those swirling
waters seemed! Am I to give up all this enjoyment because, once in
five years perhaps, the swollen stream floods my cellar and drowns my
hens? That is the question, and it is a live question too.
Now the trouble is a little deeper than appears on the surface. For if
I persuade myself that it is my duty to bounce off down to the owner of
the house and give him notice to quit, I shall soon find myself
spending a considerable proportion of my time in waiting upon my
landlords. In the next house to which I go I shall not only miss the
boating and fishing and bathing, but I shall within six months discover
other disadvantages quite as grave as the occasional flooding of my
riverside cellar. And then I shall have to move again. And moving
will become a habit with me. And, on the whole, it is a bad habit. It
may be good for the hens; but there are other things to be considered
besides hens. The solar system is not kept in operation solely for the
benefit of the hens in the cellar. There are the children, and, with
all respect for the fowl-yard, children are as much worthy of
consideration as chickens. It is not good for children to be
everlastingly moving. It is good for them to have sacred and beautiful
memories of the home of their childhood. It is good for them to feed
the swans, and play under the willows, year in and year out, and to
retain the swans and the willows as part of the background with which
memory will always paint the picture of their infancy. It is good for
children to feel a certain fixity and stability about home and school
and friends.
George Gissing pathetically tells how the spirit of dereliction stole
into the life of Godwin Peak. It was all owing to the family
gipsyings. 'As a result of the family's removal first from London to
the farm, and then into Twybridge, Godwin had no friends of old
standing. A boy reaps advantage from the half-parental kindness of men
and women who have watched his growth from infancy; in general it
affects him as a steadying influence, keeping before his mind the
social bonds to which his behaviour owes allegiance. Godwin had no
ties which bound him strongly to any district.' He was like a ship
that belongs to no port in particular, and that drifts hither and
thither about the world as fugitive commissions may arise.
The finest of all the fine arts is the art of putting up with nasty
things. It is not very nice to have all your hens drowned. You get
fond of hens. And apart from the financial loss involved, there is a
sense of bereavement in seeing all your choice Dorkings, your favourite
Leghorns, your lovely Orpingtons, or your beautiful Silver Wyandottes
all lying dead and bedraggled in the muddy cellar. Few things are more
disconcerting. And yet I am writing this article for no other purpose
than to assert that the best thing to do, if you must have hens, is to
bury these as quickly as possible and send down to the market for a
fresh supply. It is certainly gratifying to one's pride as a tenant to
feel that one has a grievance and can now show his glorious
independence of the landlord. There is always a pleasurable piquancy
in being able to resign, or dismiss somebody, or give notice. But my
interest is every bit as well worth considering as my dignity. And
whilst my dignity clamours to get even with the landlord, my interest
reminds me of the swans and the willows, the boating and the fishing.
My dignity shouts angrily about my dead fens; but my interest whispers
significantly about my living children. So that, all things
considered, it is better to bury the hens and the hatchet at the same
time. I may quit my riverside residence and have a waterproof fowl-run
in another street; but when I see somebody else taking his children out
in my old boat, I shall only bite my lip and wish that I had quietly
restocked my chicken-run. It may be a most iniquitous proceeding on
the part of the landlord to allow the river to flood my cellar but,
thinking it over calmly, I am convinced that it is my duty as a
Christian to forgive him. And it always pays a man to do his duty.
I had thought of devoting a paragraph to ministers and deacons. But
perhaps I had better not. These matters are very intricate and very
delicate, and need a tenderer touch than mine. Things will sometimes
go wrong. The river will rise. The cellar gets flooded, and the hens
get drowned. But, really, I am certain that, nine times out of ten,
perhaps ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it is better to bury the
poor birds quietly and say no more about it. I don't know quite how to
apply this parable. I was afraid I should get out of my depth if I
ventured into such matters. But suppose that the minister finds some
morning that his cellar is flooded and his pet birds drowned. Of
course, it is pleasant to send in your resignation and say that you
will not stand it. And yet, and yet--rivers will rise; it is a way
that rivers have; and the Church Secretary, when he receives the
resignation, feels as helpless as the landlord. And has the minister
any guarantee that the next river on the banks of which he builds his
nest will never rise? And, even if he is certain of perfection in the
fields to which he flies, is he quite justified in avenging his dead
hens by imperilling his living children and his living church?
Or perhaps I have misinterpreted the story. I am really very nervous
about it, and feel that I have plunged into things too high for me.
Perhaps the minister is the landlord. It is through his wickedness
that the river has risen and drowned some of the Church's best hens, or
at least ruffled the fine feathers of some of the Church's best birds.
It is the easiest thing in the world to give him notice to quit. And
it accords magnificently with the dignity of the situation. But are we
quite sure that the poor minister made the river rise? That is the
question the tenant ought to consider. Was it the landlord's fault? I
repeat that rivers will rise at times, generally at storm times. The
Nile and the Tigris used to rise in prehistoric times. It is a way
rivers have. I really think that it will be as well to say no more
about it. Try to smooth down the ruffled feathers and forget. It may
not have been his fault; and, anyhow, we shall be saying good-bye to a
good many delightful experiences if we part company.
And, really, when you think it over quietly, there seems to be a great
deal in the landlord's suggestion: 'Try ducks!' Of course, ducks are
the very thing for a riverside dwelling. Every change, however small,
should be dictated by reason and not by caprice. This was the
essential difference between the stupid tenant and the wise landlord.
The tenant said, 'I will make a _fundamental_ change, and I will make
it _capriciously_--I will leave the house!' The landlord said, 'Why
not make an _incidental_ change, and make it _reasonably_? Try ducks!'
I have in my time seen great numbers of people, among all kinds and
conditions of men, throw up their riverside dwellings in high dudgeon
because their hens were drowned in the cellar. But among my saddest
letters I find some from those who tell me how they miss the swans and
the boat-house, the trout and the willows, and how sincerely they wish
now that they had tried ducks. But it is too late; the flashing stream
is the paradise of other tenants; and the children's most romantic
memory of childhood twines itself about the fun of getting the piano
and the dining-room table in and out of the different doors. We may
easily form a stupid habit of giving the landlord notice whenever the
river happens to rise; and we forget that it is from just such
movements--such goings and such stayings--that life as a whole takes
its tint and colour. Destiny is made of trifles. Our weal and our woe
are determined by comparatively insignificant issues. Somebody has
finely said that we make our decisions, and then our decisions turn
round and make us.
Now let nobody suppose that I am deprecating a change. On the
contrary, I am advocating a change. It will never do to let the fowls
drown, and to take no steps to prevent a recurrence of any such
disaster. I hold no brief for stagnation. I am merely insisting that
the change must commend itself to heart and conscience and reason. It
must be a forward move. Look at this, for example. It is from
Stanley's _Life of Arnold_: 'We are all in the midst of confusion,'
Arnold writes from Laleham, 'the books all packed and half the
furniture; and on Tuesday, if God will, we shall leave this dear place,
this nine-years' home of such exceeding happiness. But it boots not to
look backwards. Forward, forward, _forward_, should be one's motto.'
And thus Arnold moved to Rugby, and made history! There are times when
the landlord's gate is the high-road to glory.
The whole matter is capable of the widest application, and must be
scientifically treated. Man is always finding his fowls drowned in the
cellar and going the wrong way to put things right. Generally
speaking, it must be confessed that he is too fond of rushing off to
the landlord. In his _Travels in Russia_, Theophile Gautier has a
striking word concerning this perilous proclivity. 'Whatever is of
real use to man,' he says, 'was invented from the beginning of the
world, and all the people who have come along since have worn their
brains out to find something new, but have made no improvements.
_Change is far from being progress_; it is not yet proved that steamers
are better than sailing-vessels, or railways than horse traffic. For
my part, I believe that men will end in returning to the old methods,
which are always the best.' I do not agree with the first part of
Gautier's statement. It is not likely. But when he says that we are
getting back to our starting-point, his contention is indisputable. In
the beginning, man was alone with his earth; and all that he did, he
did in the sweat of his brow. Then came the craze for machinery, and
the world became a network of wires and a wilderness of whirling
wheels. But we are beginning to recognize that it has been a
ridiculous mistake. The thing is too clumsy and too complicated. Mr.
Marconi has already taught us to feel half ashamed of the wires. And
Mr. H. G. Wells predicts that in forty years' time all the activities
of a larger and busier world will be driven by invisible currents of
power, and the whole of our industrial machinery will have gone to the
scrap-heap. Man will find himself once more alone with his world, but
it will be a world that has taken him into its confidence and revealed
to him its wonderful secrets. He will look back with a smile on the
age of screaming syrens and snorting engines, of racing pistons and
whirling wheels. He will be amazed at his own earlier readiness to
resort to such a cumbrous and complicated system when a smaller
transition would have ushered him into his kingdom.
The whole drift of our modern scientific development is away from our
clinking mechanical complexities and back towards the great primal
simplicities. We have been too fond of the drastic and dramatic
course, too fond of bouncing off to the landlord. We are too apt to
involve ourselves in a big move when we might have gained our point by
simply trying ducks. We love the things that are burdensome, the ways
that are involved, the paths that lead to headache and heartache. It
is a very ancient and very human tendency. Paul wrote the Epistle to
the Galatians to reprove in them the same sad blunder. 'O foolish
Galatians, who hath bewitched you?' They had abandoned the
simplicities under the lure of the complexities. The Church that was
urged by her Lord to return to her first love had made the same
mistake. We are too prone to scorn the simple and the obvious. We
forsake the fountain of living water, and hew out to ourselves clumsy
cisterns. We neglect the majestic simplicities of the gospel, and
involve our tired brains and hungry hearts in tortuous systems that
lead us a long, long way from home. The landlord is right. The
simplest course is almost always the safest.
VI
THE CORNER CUPBOARD