The books a man likes best are those with somebody in them like him. I
don't say it isn't a pleasure to read about others, but if he too is
there it's still better. And when he is the hero--ah! It's like living a
whole extra life.
[Illustration: Ah! when _I_ am the hero!]
But there is no drawing back, once you put yourself into some
character--you must do all that he does, no matter how you hate his
mistakes. I remember once identifying myself with a dissolute Pole, in a
novel, who led me a dance that I haven't forgotten yet. I ought never to
have let myself fancy that I was that fellow. He was moody, excitable,
he drank more brandy than I was prepared to; he talked most
bombastically. He made the most pitiful jokes. But what took my eye in
him was this: he was sincere with himself. He was only twenty-five years
of age, but though young, he was honest. When he was in love with two
women he never dodged facing it squarely. He deceived the two women, I
grant you, but most heroes deceive themselves, too. They tell themselves
some pretty story in dilemmas like that. This Pole always saw through
_his_ stories. He questioned his heart, and listened with reasonable
honesty to its responses.
[Illustration: He deceived the two women]
Our capacity for analyzing and criticizing our natures is wonderful.
When a man is without self-awareness, I feel toward him as
I do toward animals.
I admire the animals. I am glad I am not one myself--life in the wilds
must be awful--but animals are healthy and sound; and some are good, and
intelligent. Men who can't analyze themselves may be good and
intelligent also. But they are not advanced beings.
[Illustration: I'd hate to be a wild animal]
The test of a civilized person is first self-awareness, and then depth
after depth of sincerity in self-confrontation. "Unhealthy?" Why,
certainly! "Risky?" Yes; like all exploring. But unless you are capable
of this kind of thinking, what are you? No matter how able or great, you
are still with the animals.
Here and there is a person who achieves this in ways of his own. Not
through brain-work alone, or most surely, can insight be won. A few have
by nature a true yet instinctive self-knowledge. But that takes a pure
soul. The tricks of self-deceiving are too many and ingenious for most
of us....
Speaking of pure souls reminds me of the editor of the Outlook, good old
Lyman Abbott, although his is unfortunately the kind that is tastelessly
pure. He's as wholesome and good as oatmeal is, but the salt was left
out. An excellent person but wingless; not stupid, but dull.
Yet--there's something about him--he has an attractive integrity. He
puts on no airs. He is simple, unpretentious, and he's so
straightforward he makes me respect him.
Many people respect Lyman Abbott. Yet I was surprised to. Well, I had
the Rollo books given to me, as a child; I had to read them on Sundays;
and the author of those awful volumes was Lyman Abbott's father. He
wrote books for the young. People who write books for the young are a
tribe by themselves, and little did I suppose I should ever live to
respect one.
Rollo was a Sunday-school boy. Lyman Abbott's a Sunday-school man. He
combines in himself the excellencies and the colorlessness of the
Sunday-school atmosphere. When it comes time to group us as sheep or as
goats, I know this, there won't be any question that he is a regular
sheep. No capers for him, except the most innocent capers. No tossing of
that excellent head, no kicking up of his heels. There isn't the
faintest suspicion of goatiness in him.
Yet it's strange he's so hopeless: he likes certain forms of adventure.
He was a bill-collector once. And when Kansas was being settled so
bloodily, in our slavery days, he felt wishful to go there. He once did
some detective work too, and he greatly enjoyed it. But his tastes are
all heavily flavored with moral intentions.
"My recreations," he says in his book, "I took rather seriously. I
neither danced nor played cards, and after I joined the church very
rarely went to the theater." He liked music, liked playing the organ. He
implies that he played it however to add to his income. He was a lawyer
when he first felt a call in his heart to the ministry. "Had my wife
objected to the change I should have remained in the law." He has taken
ale or porter at times, "under doctor's counsel," but in general he has
been an "abstainer." ("From both fermented and distilled liquors," he
adds.) He never has shaved, never smoked. On the other hand, he says,
"I had no inclination to be a monk"; when not at work in the evening, "I
was likely to be out, perhaps at a concert or a religious or political
meeting, perhaps on a social call." His father kept a boarding school
for girls, and that was where Lyman made most of his social calls, as a
youth.
He never overdoes anything. "It is a wise hygienic rule to spend less
strength than one can accumulate." (That seems like the perfect recipe
for not being a genius.) A professional hypnotist once told him he was
not a good subject. "I never have been," he writes: "I have passed
through some exciting experiences ... but I have never been swept off my
feet. I have never lost my consciousness of self or my self-mastery. I
wonder why it is. I am not conscious of being either especially
strong-willed or especially self-possessed."
He reads with assiduity, he says, but without avidity. He seems to live
that way, too.
His sermons, his book tells us, have had merit, but have always lacked
magnetism. (You can't sweep other people off their feet, if you can't be
swept off your own.) He likes preaching, however. It comes easily to
him.
We are all of us so busy with the small bits of life we can envisage,
that we don't often think of how much we all fail to take in. Lyman
Abbott has been kept busy being a purifying influence. Certain other
phases of life, accordingly, simply do not exist for him. If romance
tried approaching the Reverend Lyman Abbott, at night, it would stand no
more chance than a rose would against disinfectants.
Suppose that a Board of Eugenics were in charge of this nation, what
would they do with the species this man represents? They would see his
good qualities--industry, poise, generosity. It would be too bad to
exterminate Dr. Abbott; it is plain we need some of him. "But," they
would reflect, "this species is apt to wax numerous. We must remember
Australia and the rabbits. This type might overrun the whole country. We
might even have to put up barbed-wire, or shoot the excess, for us to
stay human."
My own recommendation is to cross a few specimens with Poles.
[Illustration]
Lyman Abbott, calm and dry,
With your conscientious eye,
Can it possibly be true
He who made the Poles made you?
In the forest, on the beach,
You have pondered what to preach.
Magic nights of piercing beauty,
You have lectured us on duty.
In your admirable heart
Lives a Yearning to Impart;
In your veins an earnest flood
Of listerine instead of blood.
Lyman, Lyman, do you think
If you gambled, took to drink,
Loved a Countess, lost your soul,
You could _ever_ be a Pole?