pronunciation of certain words which the cultivated citizens of
both countries pronounce quite differently--I refer to words like
_schedule_, _clerk_, _capitalist_, _trait_, _fracas_, _lieutenant_ and
the last letter in the alphabet which Shakespeare calls by a bad name.
It is sheer affectation to imitate the British in such special matters,
as it is an affectation to imitate what is called the Oxford accent,
where the word smoke is pronounced as if it were spelled smilk--see
Julian Street’s delightful book _In Need of Change_. Yesterday
afternoon I heard an English actress on the New York stage pronounce No
as if it were spelled NAAO. But after all, England is the home of the
English speech; and I wish that it were possible for the United States,
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Capetown and other places to follow
in general the best English spelling and pronunciation. For example,
it is certainly better for Americans to pronounce the word been like
the sacred vegetable of Boston than like the first syllable of the
Christian name of Franklin.
In America the most shamefully treated of our five vowels is U, and
the combination of letters EW, which should resemble U in accuracy, as
it now so often does in sin. There should be a distinct difference
between the sound of U and the double O, actually observable to the
naked ear in such words as Duke, Duty, Tutor, Constitution, Enthusiasm,
Tuesday, News.
The way to make this distinction is to remember that the English
language is the only one where the true sound of U is YU; whereas the
Russians, Italians and Germans pronounce U like OO, and the French
differently from any one of these. Just as the Russians pronounce E as
if it were YE, so Americans, when they practice in secret words like
evolution, should visualize a Y in front of the U; it will help them.
The most popular letter in our alphabet, E, is abominably treated in
such words as cellar, yellow, Philadelphia, where it is so offensively
given the sound of U in “skull”; this is even more common and still
more unpleasant in two useful words, Very and American.
Cultivated English and Americans laugh at the Cockney for leaving the
H silent where it should be heard; but they themselves are equally and
more unpardonably guilty in omitting the H in the combination Wh. There
should be a difference in the pronunciation of _Whine_ and _Wine_; yet
most cultivated people in both countries talk about games of Wist, and
say Wen, Wich and Wy. Let them heal themselves before laughing at the
Cockney.
The dogletter, R, has a curious fate in American mouths; it is either
unduly accented in such words as Here and Dinner (Middle West) or it
is (East) hitched on to the end of words like idea, and saw, where it
is as awkward as a sailor on horseback. Listen to the average Yankee
when he says “I have no idea of it” and you will see that he speaks the
truth.
XXX
OUR SOUTH AS CURE FOR FLU
The chief reason for my present sojourn at Augusta is the flu, which
attacked me in Connecticut some weeks ago. The American use of the
words “flu” and “grip” is both modern and interesting. Epidemics
of influenza, which seem to cross the ocean from Europe to America
without suffering any sea-change, have been more or less common since
the pilgrims landed at Plymouth. Richard Hildreth, in his admirable
_History of the United States_, describes these attacks in the
Massachusetts Colony in the seventeenth century; and it appears from
his realistic accounts that they differed in no respect from recent
nation-wide flu epidemics.
If I remember rightly, the word “grip” was not used currently in
America until the epidemic of 1889–1890, which was both severe and
general; it was the subject of constant discussion in the newspapers,
and it was generally believed to be a French importation, where it was
known as _la grippe_. This in American became the “grip,” except in
certain isolated districts, where it was called “the la grippe.” But
the word, either in its French or English form, was not commonly used
in America until the season of 1889–1890, when France made a Christmas
present of it to the United States.
The word “flu” had been British slang for some time before it
penetrated America; it was one of the numerous unprofitable things that
our country acquired during the war. In a conversation I had with the
novelist, William De Morgan, in London, in 1911, he casually used the
word “flu,” and for a moment I did not guess its meaning. Then I saw
it was an abbreviation. When the disease crossed the ocean in 1918, it
brought with it its British pet name, which, universally current in
America today, was, I believe, not known here till the last year of the
war.
The exact difference between flu and grip I leave to the physician to
determine; both differ from a cold in being invariably accompanied by
fever, and in both the patient feels the worst after he gets well.
But the speed with which the germs travel through the air remains a
mystery. I remember one flu epidemic that hit New York in the morning
and was prevalent in remote country districts in Michigan the following
afternoon. Manifestly, therefore, the accursed thing does not depend
on the comparatively slow method of transmission from one person to
another.
If one can possibly afford the time and money, the best way to rid
oneself of the after effects of the flu is to leave the icy North in
winter time and travel South. There are many coughs in every carload,
but soon after they arrive here they cease.
In fact, if one can afford it, it is a good thing to come South in
winter whether one is sick or well. “See America First” applies
especially to the winter season. Europe should be visited only in the
summer, because no Americans are comfortable in Europe at any other
time. George Ade once tried to spend a winter in Venice and he nearly
froze. He declared that the next winter he would spend in Duluth, where
they have steam heat and he could keep warm.
The intolerable thing about most “winter resorts” in Europe is that
they are so much warmer outdoors than in. The American takes a pleasant
walk in the mild sunshine, and, his body in an agreeable glow, he
enters his hotel room which has the chill of the grave. I know one man
who, whenever he entered his room, put on overcoat, fur hat, gloves,
arctic overshoes and then sat down to be as comfortable as he could.
One impecunious student who spent the winter at a Continental
university in a room where apparently no means of heating had ever
been employed told me that he kept warm the entire winter on only one
stick of wood. In response to my question, he said that his room was on
the fifth story; he would study for ten minutes, then fling the stick
out of the window. He ran down five flights of stairs, picked up the
stick, ran up the stairs and found that this violent exercise kept him
warm for exactly ten minutes, when again he flung the stick out of the
window. That was an original method, but it is practicable only for
those who are young and vigorous. It would be almost useless for an old
lady with angina pectoris.
In the winter season our Southern States, or Arizona, or California are
what I especially prescribe. For those who wish eternal summer with all
its pleasant heat and the delights of sea-bathing, Southern Florida is
the best; for those who are middle-aged and elderly, who wish to play
golf and tennis, in crisp autumn-like weather, Georgia is incomparable.
Here in Augusta the weather is frequently summer-hued; on this blessed
January day, for example, the temperature is 78. But in general, the
January and February weather here is like mild October in New England,
with gentle days and keen nights, good for sleep.
When I was young very few Northerners went South in winter; all who
could afford it went in the summer to the mountains or the sea. But
today, when there are many ways of keeping cool in the cities, and when
the country club is accessible every afternoon and evening, an immense
number of business men stay “on the job” in the summer and take their
vacation in the winter.
A perfect climate in the winter lies only twenty-four hours from New
York. Furthermore, it is an education for Northern men and women who
live in the South for a winter season to become acquainted with our
Southern people, “whom to know is to love.” To me, a down-East Yankee,
it is a delight to meet these charming, gracious men and women of the
South; and it is an especial delight to hear the Southern accent,
especially on the lips of lovely women.
I wish I might live one hundred years from now. Then, thanks to the
men of science, every year there will come a day in November when a
general notice will be given in our New England universities for every
member of the faculty and students to be indoors at a certain hour. At
the prescribed moment, all the dormitories, lecture halls, offices and
laboratories will rise majestically in the air, carrying their human
freight. They will sail calmly South, and in a few hours float gently
down on a meadow in Georgia or Florida, there to remain until the
middle of April.
XXXI
GOING TO CHURCH IN PARIS
There are not many Protestant churches in Paris, because there are
not many Protestants; and of the vast throng of Americans who visit
Paris every summer, I suppose, comparatively speaking, only a few go
to church. The average tourist does not visit Paris with the idea of
entering churches except as a sight-seer. Yet the American Church
of Paris with the Rev. Dr. Joseph Wilson Cochran as pastor, is a
flourishing institution. The auditorium is filled every Sunday morning,
and the whole work of the church in its Sunday school, Boy Scouts,
classes for students, charitable enterprises, etc., is so active and
successful that a new edifice has been found necessary. They are
erecting a fine church in a splendid location on the Quai D’Orsay; the
steel frame is already in place and by another year the building should
be complete. Then there is also the American Cathedral church of the
Holy Trinity, St. Luke’s Chapel, the Catholic church of St. Joseph, the
Methodist Memorial church, the Baptist tabernacle, the First Church of
Christ Scientist, and the Second Church of Christ Scientist.
Now I go to church not reluctantly, because I think I ought to, or from
any sense of duty, still less from the Pharasaical attempt to set an
example to my less godly neighbours. I go to church because I enjoy
going, because I really want to go, because the Christian church is my
spiritual home.
Last Sunday I attended the French Protestant church of the Oratoire, in
the rue St. Honoré. The attitude of the clergy and laity in this church
is very similar to that of the Rev. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick and his
congregation in New York. Last Sunday the big church was well filled,
and the services, with the single difference that everything was in the
French language, were similar to those of any evangelical Protestant
church in America. There was no ritual. The prayers were extempore,
and among the hymns sung was the familiar one with the familiar tune,
“Lord, I Hear of Showers of Blessing,” which was just as good in French
as in English.
I felt that I was among my own people, the kind with which I grew up,
although there were very few Americans present. The French audience
seemed to be composed of the same sort that one sees in any Methodist
or Baptist church in America. The pastor preached on the parable of
the sower, and explained to the audience the significance of the
evangelical Protestant church, as distinguished from the more formal
and ritualistic Catholic institution. The Catholics provide beautiful
music, a dignified ritual, which is very impressive, he said; “but we
appeal not to the eye and the ear, but to the mind and the heart.” I do
not think he meant to be antagonistic to the Catholics; he was trying
to make his congregation see that there was a good reason for attending
church, even though the service might have little or no appeal to the
senses.
It was peculiarly interesting for me to hear this aspect of religious
worship emphasised, for on the preceding Sunday in London I attended
service in an Anglo-Catholic church, where the preacher was the Rev.
T. P. Fry, the husband of the famous novelist, Sheila Kaye-Smith. His
sermon emphasised only one thing, the Blessed Sacrament. He dwelt on
its supreme importance, on its immense significance, of what it should
mean to every one who partakes of it. The service was beautiful, with
an elaborate ritual, and it was clear that the preacher thought of only
one thing--the Mass.
The English novelist, Compton Mackenzie, has recently written a trilogy
of novels dealing at great length and with much detail with the life
and career of a young English priest. Mr. Mackenzie, like G. K.
Chesterton and Maurice Baring, has entered the Catholic church, and
while these three novels, _The Altar Steps_, _The Parson’s Progress_
and _The Heavenly Ladder_, are frankly Catholic propaganda, I found
them interesting and valuable, because I was brought up in the extreme
Protestant point of view, and it is important for me to hear and if
possible to understand something quite different. Mr. Mackenzie’s young
parson says that he does not care if he never succeeds in preaching a
good sermon. His only interest is to give the congregation the Blessed
Sacrament.
An excellent Catholic lady once said to me, “You do not understand our
religion,” I answered, “You must not say _religion_; your religion is
my religion. We have exactly the same religion. What I do not fully
understand is your form of worship, the significance of the various
parts of your ritual.”
It is a matter of great rejoicing that the old antagonism between
Catholics and Protestants has so largely disappeared. It is unfortunate
that any irritation or misunderstanding should remain. In a world
so full of vice, so full of scepticism, and above all so full of
indifference to religion, there should be not the slightest shade of
hostility between adherents of Christianity. We should not be divided
in the presence of implacable foes.
A magnificent example of the true Christian spirit was given at the
beginning of this century by one of the greatest men of modern times,
Pope Leo XIII. He publicly offered prayer for the restoration to
health of Queen Victoria of England. When one thinks of the historic
antagonism, that was a noble and truly religious act.
Once in the cathedral at Cologne, during Mass, I sat between a devout
German Catholic and an American tourist. The German bowed, knelt,
crossed himself; the American used a pair of opera glasses, as if
he were at a spectacular play. I should like to have given to my
countryman a little pamphlet written by a Catholic priest, called _What
Are They Doing at the Altar?_ so that he might have understood what was
going on, and at least have shown some reverence.
There is one important thing that we Protestants ought to learn from
our Catholic friends. Many Protestants go to church just to hear a
sermon, and if the preacher is in bad form that morning, they feel
disappointed, almost aggrieved, as if they had gone to the movies and
the pictures happened to be poor.
Going to church ought not to be merely passive; to go and see if the
minister can entertain us. It should be a community service, where the
audience participates and where spiritual refreshment and stimulation
may be obtained. If we go to church merely to hear a popular preacher,
then we might as well stay at home and read a popular book. The
feeling of actual participation is the supreme need of the Protestant
church today; not more clever preachers, but a genuine hunger in the
congregation for spiritual nourishment.
XXXII
OPTIMISM AND PESSIMISM
I am often called an optimist, and so I am; but perhaps not in the
popular meaning of the word. When a worldly wise man calls a person
an optimist, he usually regards him with intellectual contempt, just
as the elaborate courtesy toward women in the age of chivalry thinly
disguised a cynically sensual attitude. Optimism is associated in many
minds either with ignorance of life or mental inferiority; and when
certain persons call others optimists, look out for them!
Thus recent definitions of the optimist illustrate the superior
attitude of the pessimist: “An optimist is a fool unfamiliar with the
facts.” “An optimist is one who falls out of a fourth-story window,
and as he goes by the third story, he says, ‘So far, so good.’” “An
optimist is one who at night makes lemonade out of the lemons that have
been handed to him all day.” “A pessimist is one who lives with an
optimist.”
Now the familiarly unpleasant back-slapping cheerio person, with a
genius for the inopportune, is not necessarily an optimist. He is a
nuisance. He was well known and dreaded like a pestilence among the
ancient Jews. See the Book of Proverbs, 27:14, “He that blesseth his
friend with a loud voice, rising early in the morning, it shall be
counted a curse to him,” and 25:29, “As he that taketh away a garment
in cold weather and as vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singeth songs
to an heavy heart.”
* * * * *
A man who attempts to console another by making light of his troubles
or by pretending that things are otherwise than what they obviously
are will not get very far. One might as well pretend in January that
it is June. You cannot get rid of obstacles by ignoring them any more
than you can solve problems by forgetting them. Nor can you console
sufferers by reminding them of the woes of others or by inopportunely
emphasising other things.
If a man slips on an orange peel that some moron has left on the
pavement and breaks his leg, you will not help him by saying,
“Yesterday a man fell here and broke his _neck_.” If a manifold father
loses one of his sons by a motor accident, you can’t help him by
saying, “Cheer up! You’ve got three sons left.”
“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” These terrible words
were spoken not by a peevish invalid or by a bankrupt, but by the
Light of the World. He always and everywhere recognised the forces of
evil and never pretended that life was all sunshine. Religion does not
pretend that everything is easy and comfortable, for religion is not
meant to fill our minds with illusions but rather with fortitude. Our
Lord came into the world to show us how to bear the burden of life
cheerfully and bravely; life is not easy, but His yoke is.
A true optimist is one who recognises the sorrows, worries, drawbacks,
misfortunes of life, its injustice and inequalities. But while seeing
these things, the optimist believes that no matter how strong error may
be, truth in the long run will triumph, even though it may not be our
truth.
The optimist believes that in the long run virtue has superior staying
power as compared with vice; that goodness will eventually defeat evil;
that life means something; that character counts; that men and women
are of more consequence than sparrows; in short, that this is God’s
world and that the moral law is as unshakable as the law of gravitation.
What, then, is a pessimist? A pessimist is one who believes that
the evolutionary process is the tragedy of the universe or, as Mark
Twain put it, that life is the worst practical joke ever played on
man by destiny. That from one primordial cell should have developed
all complex forms of life through the vegetable kingdom, through the
lower forms of animal existence up to man, is generally regarded as an
advance. The true pessimist regards it as an irremediable disaster, as
the worst of all possible mistakes. According to him, it would have
been better had the evolutionary march stopped with the lower forms of
animal life and never reached self-consciousness.
The fish, for example, is better off than men and women. The fish
functions perfectly. He does exactly what he was meant to do, he has
not the torture of self-conscious thought, no fear of death, and dies
at the appointed time. But man has thoughts and dreams and longings
that seem to belong to eternal life and eternal development, whereas in
reality he dies like the fish; only with all his dreams and longings
unsatisfied and with the constant fear and horror of annihilation in a
universe where, no matter how sublime or far-reaching his thoughts, he
is, in reality, of no more importance than a fish and must in the end
share the same fate.
Taking this stiff definition, are there then any genuine pessimists?
Certainly there are. Thomas Hardy was exactly such a pessimist. He
affirmed in his last volume of poems that man would have been happier
if he could have remained at the stage of lower animal development,
with no power of thought. Alfred Housman, the great lyrical poet, says
we could all be happy, if only we did not think. It is when we think
that we are overwhelmed with gloom.
The custom of congratulating others on their birthdays is really an
acquiescence in optimism. We instinctively (and I believe rightly)
regard life as an asset. But Swift believed that the worst thing that
had ever happened to him was being born. He therefore, like the honest
man he was, kept his birthdays as days of fasting and mourning. He wore
black and refused to eat.
For my part I find daily life not always joyous, but always
interesting. I have some sad days and nights, but none that are dull.
As I advance deeper into the vale of years, I live with constantly
increasing gusto and excitement. I am sure it all means something; in
the last analysis, I am an optimist because I believe in God. Those who
have no faith are quite naturally pessimists and I do not blame them.
XXXIII
TRANSLATIONS
Of course it is best to read every book in the language in which it was
originally written; but no man has ever been able to do that. Elihu
Burritt, “the learned blacksmith,” could, so I have heard, write an
intelligible sentence in fifty languages, but there were many more than
fifty of which he was ignorant. The vast majority of even intelligent
Americans know no language but their own, and that they do not know
any too well. It becomes necessary, therefore, unless one is to cut
oneself off from foreign thought and literature, to have recourse to
translations; a reader of a newspaper does that every day, though he is
not always aware of the fact.
Inasmuch as the greatest works of literature have been translated many
times into English, it is rather important to know which is the best
translation; no one driving a car would take a bad road if a better one
were available.
Great translators are rarer than great creative authors. In order to
achieve the best possible translation, one must in the first place
have an absolute command of two languages, an accomplishment that is
not nearly so common as is often supposed. Indeed, this is too often
supposed erroneously by the translator himself.
* * * * *
In the history of the literature of the world, there are four supremely
great poets; no one can name a fifth who is in their class. Those four,
in chronological order, are Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe. Every
reader, every lover of good books, should know something of the work of
these four mighty ones, for there is a perceptible difference between
the best and the second best. Goethe’s masterpiece is _Faust_, and it
so happens that we have an English translation of _Faust_ that is so
much better than all other English translations that no comparison is
possible. This is by the American, Bayard Taylor.
It was the major work of his life; he spent many years of sedulous,
conscientious toil perfecting it. It has three admirable features--the
English style is beautiful; it is as literal as is consistent with
elegance, in this work amazingly literal; it preserves in every
instance the original metres which change so often in the German. If
you wish to know how superior Taylor is to all other translators of
_Faust_, just read aloud the four stanzas of the Dedication in any
other English version and then try the same experiment with Taylor’s.
Those who cannot read German and yet wish to come in contact with
“the most spacious mind since Aristotle” have the satisfaction of
knowing they are very close to the original--both in thought and in
expression--in reading Taylor.