even then there was a mysterious, tender quality of pain in my love,
independent of all the considerations and cares concerning present and
future - like a gentle, never wholly dying echo of the great world
sorrow. And through this I knew that our love-life was one with the
great love-life of Christ. By the tang of pain in our cup of life I
recognized the water from the world-stream.
I had worked out no definitely elaborated plan for my campaign in the
new land, amongst the new people. I had a few thousand guilders that
belonged to me and a few hundred from Elsje. We had selected the
cheapest travelling accommodations and would live very simply. I hoped
to have enough for us to live on until I should have found a means of
subsistence and a field for my labors. I had plenty of acquaintances in
the most distinguished circles, but I knew how little I could count on
them. Yet I had to try to find among them the few that were susceptive
to original thoughts and had the ability to turn them into deeds.
I argued thus: that all individuals live in an invincible group-union
of morals, customs, traditions and institutions, which originated
wholly beyond their reasonable will and which are mostly in conflict
with their own deeper convictions. That they live thus is the result of
their nature and character as group-creatures. They cannot do otherwise
and may not do otherwise. No individual can live apart, he must have a
group or grouplet, no matter how small, whose ideas, customs and morals
he shares. It is absolutely vain and useless to wish to draw him from
this union by logical, sensible arguments. Though logically he can find
nothing to say against such arguments, though the system in which he
lives conflicts wholly with his original disposition, he must continue
in it, because otherwise he would run wild, and he will sooner twist
and falsify his ideas and feelings completely than be disobedient to
the voice of the herd in which be finds his conditions of life.
But these group-ideas and these group-formations are continually
changing. Not through the influence of the mass, the herd, which may
not judge independently, because otherwise no union would be possible.
The strength of the group depends on the obedience of the members to
the voice of the herd. Did the members think and act independently,
they could not subsist as a group.
But the group-formation is changed through the influence of some few
individuals, original enough to understand humanity's own voice, the
voice of Christ, and powerful enough to make themselves followed by the
herd. And the influence of these few shall be the stronger, the closer
their original ideas stand to the ideas of the group. All the members
of the group feel something of the Original element, of the Genius of
humanity, they are all still bound to our Genitive Spirit, though not
nearly as closely and as fervently as the few originals. If now the
original individual is all too original, the herd does not follow, but
hates and destroys him. That is the martyr the man who is "in advance
of his age."
But if the originality of the single individual is felt by the herd,
then it follows and respects and reveres him, and later it erects
statues in his honor and eulogizes him. And all the more if the seceder
possesses a personally suggestive power, and impresses people by the
display of some one amazing talent - organizing, dramatic or musical.
Meanwhile this leader and example has done nothing more than bring the
outer organization more in unison with the inner life of humanity,
Christ's own being.
This consideration led me to seek for a man sufficiently intelligent
and independent to absorb my thoughts, and yet in his inclinations and
feelings standing so much nearer than I to the herd, that he could
exert an influence. Moreover, some one with the prestige lent by some
extraordinary quality or other - as learnedness, or still better,
organizing talent - and with the ability, the aplomb, the ruling power
which the herd tolerates and demands. Thus a mediator between me, the
all too original and practically unqualified, for whom an attempt to
make himself prevail would signify a useless martyrdom, and the herd,
that in its unoriginality is yet so greatly in need of the stirring
ferment of my ideas.
Before we neared the American shores I had made my choice from the
persons that had come to my mind as qualified for my purpose. I shall
call the man Judge Elkinson, concealing his real name, as he is still
in the public eye. He had been governor of his state and at my arrival
was a member of the Supreme Court, the highest tribunal in the United
States, sovereign in its judgments and only admitting to membership the
most trusted and esteemed men of this mighty realm.
- - -
It was a clear, cold, bright day when we steamed up the Hudson and saw
the white building masses of the giant city rising from the centre of
the wide, grayish-yellow stream. A strong icy wind was blowing from the
blue sky, and the valiant little tug-boats rocking on the turbulent
waters and amid shrill whistles running quickly in and out among the
great ships, like sea-monsters hunting for prey, were covered with a
solid coating of ice from the splashing water.
Upon the elongated island protruding into the wide mouth of the river
stretched the mighty city, a densely packed conglomeration of houses
piled up toward the sea, block upon block, so that the tall masses of
masonry at the point of the island appeared to be heaped up one upon
the other like pack-ice. There where the blocks were the highest and
stood facing each other like giant building-blocks set on end, there
was Wall Street, the centre of activity, where the stony growth seemed
as though spurred on by the restless stir, the yet unregulated and
uncomprehended instinct of accumulation.
As we drew nearer we saw the delicate, fresh colors, the soft reds and
creamy whites of the buildings in the clear, smokeless atmosphere, the
white exhausts of the beating systems, standing out like little white
flags against the light blue sky, and the myriad dark, twinkling eyes
of the houses, row upon row, severe, square, strong, firm and light
with a myriad grave, fixed questioning glances reviewing the new
arrivals from across the sea, who streamed from all the quarters of the
globe to this land of future promise and expectation.
Then followed the confusing and confounding impressions of the landing,
where the great nation, compelled by experience, seems to guard itself
against the instreaming invasion of undesired elements, and
investigates and selects with humiliating, apparently heartless
strictness, as though we were animals to be examined.
Elsje's smile and cheerful endurance alleviated for me the bitterness
of standing in the long line for examination, ordered about by the
gruff officials - I, the proud aristocrat, who had never come here
otherwise than surrounded by luxury, and treated with distinction as an
honored guest.
When we were finally released and found ourselves in the noise and
tumult of that tremendous life, where the selfish seeking of the few is
by a secret and uncomprehended power forced together into a mysterious
and curious order, - as out of the seemingly aimless and orderless
agitation of ants or bees one sees a well-planned structure arise, -
amid the rattling of the trucks, the shuffling of thousands of feet
upon the worn and ill-kept pavement, the ceaseless thunder of the
elevated trains running between the graceless buildings and signs,
designed solely for doing business or attracting attention, in this so
preeminently incomplete, imperfect, half-barbarous and half-polished
world, I saw my dear, delicate wife, overwhelmed and confounded, cling
to me as though she sought everything that still attracted her to the
world with me, powerless to find it in this tumult of life.
I did not remain in the city a day, knowing everything that here preys
upon the inexperienced arrival, but went directly to one of those
vaguely scattered villages in the immediate vicinity of the town, where
spots of nature, still wild or again run wild, can be found in the
midst of the remote, neglected precincts of a quickly and carelessly
growing human colony. There in the woody, rocky territory little,
dingy, wooden houses are to be found, built of unsightly boards,
outwardly no better than sheds or barns, as though put up temporarily
by people who would probably move on further soon - houses that one may
occupy for comparatively little money.
It did not look inviting for a woman accustomed to the choice solidity
of a Dutch house, and the well-sustained intimacy of a Dutch landscape,
where man and nature through long-continued symbiosis have grown
together in a harmonious union.
Everywhere all through the woods were tumbledown houses, heaps of
rubbish, crockery, old iron and dirt, trees chopped down and left to
rot, burnt underbrush, annoying signs of the proximity of a heedless,
careless, prodigal human world. And close by, between long rows of
signboards, monstrously drawn and painted in glaring colors, rushed the
trains, besmirching everything with their smoke.
But after all it was a home, and with all the energy that the long
years of suffering had left in her, Elsje joyously began to turn the
dear illusion of these years of pining and waiting into reality.
And when the humble dwelling had been made somewhat habitable, when
there was a pantry stocked with provisions, an extremely fresh and
spotlessly-kept bedroom, a table with a cover upon which the kerosene
lamp threw its circle of light at night, so that I could sit and read
the paper while Elsje sewed and mended busily, her head full of
tenderly solicitous domestic thoughts, and when to the great
satisfaction of the housewife a young negro girl had been found who
came daily to help a few hours, thereby giving to the household,
according to Dutch ideas, a necessary air of completeness - then I saw
upon Elsje's wan countenance and in her clear, dark-ringed eyes a light
that shone out above all gloomy memories or sad forebodings.
Only then I saw her faithful, loving nature in its perfect radiant
glory, but also, alas! with the distressing realization of its
frailness.