MY PRIVATE MAHATMA
Before leaving home I had a conference with my own private Mahatma.
"What is the greatest need of the world to-day?" I asked.
"Sunshine."
"You mean--?"
"Sunshine. Just the ordinary, everyday sunshine that you can get at this
blessed minute on the south side of the straw-stack. Not moral or
spiritual or intellectual sunshine, but the kind that is making the hens
cackle--just listen to them--the kind that the red cow over there is
soaking into her skin. Just let the brand of sunshine that is spilling
over the world to-day work its way into your system and you will forget
all your troubles. Get into the sunshine and keep there."
That was an unusually long speech for my Mahatma--proof that he was
very much in earnest. To the ordinary, unilluminated eye he was simply a
farmer--"a goodly, portly man i' faith, and a corpulent." It was just
for these qualities that I chose him as my Mahatma. At the present time
everybody who can afford a ouija-board--or is worth fleecing by a
medium--is trying to get in touch with the next world. All sorts of
fakirs with unhealthy complexions are reaping a harvest from the
credulous. But the passion of my life is to get in touch with this
world--with the dreary, wonderful, tragic, exhilarating, proxy, poetical
world that we have been born into. And I find it just as hard to get in
touch with this world as the seekers find it to get in touch with the
next. That is why I chose a good, fat, material Mahatma who is quite
obviously in touch with such gross things as food, shelter, clothing,
the sunshine, the fresh air, and the good brown earth. While others are
trying to establish communications with outlying planets, I am trying to
get into communication with the planet on which I live. Instead of
trying to lease a private wire to the Invisible, I want, as far as
possible, to learn a little about the visible and tangible and audible,
and smellable, and tasteable world in which I am obliged to sojourn. In
this humble quest my Mahatma is a great help. He does not say cryptic
things or babble trivialities in the name of the mighty Dead--the mighty
Damned or the mighty Blest. He tells me the right way to plant potatoes
and prune apple-trees, and our communion is blest with eupeptic content.
So when he pointedly directed my attention to sunshine as the greatest
need of the world, I felt it was my duty to listen.
Though the business of life drives me to the city from time to time, my
soul has been smitten by a claustrophobia that makes it impossible for
me to become a slave of the streets. Though I seem to leave the sunshine
behind when I leave the country, I can always find refreshment in the
parks. Because of this, though I have travelled across the continent,
visited great cities and met many men, my happiest and most vivid
memories are of the parks. In Stanley Park, Vancouver, I sat under the
giant firs and cedars and wondered if the world would ever again know
the leisured centuries needed to bring such trees to their royal
perfection. In Lethbridge, Regina, Saskatoon, and other cities of the
plains I sat under transplanted trees that are struggling for beauty in
spite of inclement winters. I have enjoyed the sunshine and shade on
Boston Common and in Madison Square Garden, and all have left me
memories of the tonic and healing powers of sunshine.
My most vivid recollection is of a park in Regina, and that is because
of a glimpse I caught of far-away sunshine. A letter from France had
caught up with me at Regina and I read it in the park. It was from a boy
in the trenches, and among other gossip of the battle-line he told me
how he and a chum were sunning themselves by a muddy dugout one morning
when the German drive was at its fiercest. Things were looking gloomy
for the Allies and the boy had been going over the bad news.
"Oh, well," said his chum as he puffed at his pipe, "in spite of all
that the sun is shining and the leaves are coming out."
So when my Mahatma spoke of the need of sunshine I remembered what it
had meant to two boys facing death in Flanders, and his advice seemed
good. But I wanted to sound him out on other matters.
"What you say may be true, but the great demand of the present time is
for laughter. Everybody wants to be amused."
"Are you sure of that?"
"Well, editors want amusing articles and stories, publishers want
amusing books, theatrical promoters want amusing plays and
scenarios--lecture bureaus want amusing lectures--and so it goes all the
way along the line."
"That only goes to prove that amusing people has become a business
without any more spontaneity in it than the manufacture of breakfast
foods. And the people who want to be amused are the people who have easy
money to spend. Have you noticed that mothers who have lost sons want to
be amused, or that any of the millions who have been touched by the
cruelty of the war are eager to laugh?"
"The prevailing opinion seems to be that we should forget the war."
"Certainly. Let those who made profits out of the war laugh and forget
that they were enriched by the world's agony--that they piled up wealth
while brave young men were being mangled, smothered, drowned, shattered
in the war. If they remembered such things they could not enjoy their
profits. By all means make them laugh and take your wages for your
hireling mirth. Make the laborers shut their eyes and open their mouths
with laughter so that they cannot see the disasters towards which they
are hurrying. Make the young laugh so that they will not realize the
heritage that is being passed to them by the older generation whose
pride, greed, and folly have come near to ruining the world."
"The press dispatches say that all the capitals are mad with revelry. It
is even said that tourists have been dancing on the battlefields."
"Quite so. And do you know what it all looks like to me? It reminds me
of the wakes that used to be held around the coffins of the newly dead.
Humanity is now holding a hideous wake over a dead civilization."
"So bad as that?"
"Oh, it may not prove to be so very bad a thing. The sun is still
shining. The forces that have produced all the good there ever has been
in the world are still at work. It is just possible that in the new
world at least the unrest and turmoil that have been troubling us are
but the first movements of a change for which we have been preparing
with words if not with actions."
"I do not understand."
"We have been calling the new world a crucible in which all nationalists
have been thrown to produce the true American or the true Canadian. Have
you ever watched a crucible and noticed what takes place in it?"
"I once saw a copper crucible in British Columbia and a silver crucible
in Massachusetts and iron crucibles here and there, but I never studied
them carefully."
"Well, the only crucible I ever saw was the little one, made by the
blacksmith, that I used for running bullets when a boy. I used to get
big wads of tea lead from the grocer and melt it in the little crucible.
When the heat got to the lead it would sink down to a pool at the
bottom. The top would be covered with gray scum and blazing scraps of
paper. Then I would pour the bright, clean metal into the bullet moulds.
When it was all poured there would be left behind the gray scum from the
top and some slag at the bottom. And I am thinking that when the good
metal of nationality is ready to be poured we will leave behind the
scum of parasites at the top and the slag of agitators at the bottom."
"That sounds good, but when will it happen?"
"It may happen this year and it may not happen for a hundred years but
of one thing I am sure, and that is that there is plenty of good metal
in our crucible."
Whereupon my private Mahatma knocked the ashes from his pipe and walked
home across the fields through the glowing sunshine that he loved.