BROWN
My neighbor came in again this evening, not for anything in
particular, but unconsciously proving that men are gregarious
animals. I like this neighbor. His name is Brown. I like the name
Brown, too. It is easy to pronounce. By a gentle crescendo you go
to the summit and then coast to the bottom. The name Brown, when
pronounced, is a circumflex accent. Now, if his name had happened to
be Moriarity I never could be quite sure when I came to the end in
pronouncing it. I'm glad his name is not Moriarity--not because it
is Irish, for I like the Irish; so does Brown, for he is married to
one of them. Any one who has been in Cork and heard the fine old
Irishman say in his musical and inimitable voice, "Tis a lovely dye,"
such a one will ever after have a snug place in his affections for
the Irish, whether he has kissed the "Blarney stone" or not. If he
has heard this same driver of a jaunting-car rhapsodize about
"Shandon Bells" and the author, Father Prout, his admiration for
things and people Irish will become well-nigh a passion. He will not
need to add to his mental picture, for the sake of emphasis or color,
the cherry-cheeked maids who lead their mites of donkeys along leafy
roads, the carts heaped high with cabbages. Even without this
addition he will become expansive when he speaks of Ireland and the
Irish.
But, as I was saying, Brown came in this evening just to barter small
talk, as we often do. Now, in physical build Brown is somewhere
between Falstaff and Cassius, while in mental qualities he is an
admixture of Plato, Solomon, and Bill Nye.
When he drops in we do not discuss matters, nor even converse; we
talk. Our talk just oozes out and flows whither it wills, or little
wisps of talk drift into the silences, and now and then a dash of
homely philosophy splashes into the talking. Brown is a real
comfort. He is never cryptic, nor enigmatic, at least consciously
so, nor does he ever try to be impressive. If he were a teacher he
would attract his pupils by his good sense, his sincerity, his
simplicity, and his freedom from pose. I cannot think of him as ever
becoming teachery, with a high-pitched voice and a hysteric manner.
He has too much poise for that. He would never discuss things with
children. He would talk with them. Brown cannot walk on stilts, nor
has the air-ship the least fascination for him.
One of my teachers for a time was Doctor T. C. Mendenhall, and he was
a great teacher. He could sound the very depths of his subject and
simply talk it. He led us to think, and thinking is not a noisy
process. Truth to tell, his talks often caused my poor head to ache
from overwork. But I have been in classes where the oases of thought
were far apart and one could doze and dream on the journey from one
to the other. Doctor Mendenhall's teaching was all white meat, sweet
to the taste, and altogether nourishing. He is the man who made the
first correct copy of Shakespeare's epitaph there in the church at
Stratford-on-Avon. I sent a copy of Doctor Mendenhall's version to
Mr. Brassinger, the librarian in the Memorial Building, and have
often wondered what his comment was. He never told me. There are
those "who, having eyes, see not." There had been thousands of
people who had looked at that epitaph with the printed copy in hand,
and yet had never noticed the discrepancy, and it remained for an
American to point out the mistake. But that is Doctor Mendenhall's
way. He is nothing if not thorough, and that proves his scientific
mind.
Well, Brown fell to talking about the Isle of Pines, in the course of
our verbal exchanges, and I drew him out a bit, receiving a liberal
education on the subjects of grapefruit, pineapples, and bananas.
From my school-days I have carried over the notion that the Caribbean
Sea is one of the many geographical myths with which the
school-teacher is wont to intimidate boys who would far rather be
scaring rabbits out from under a brush heap. But here sits a man who
has travelled upon the Caribbean Sea, and therefore there must be
such a place. Our youthful fancies do get severe jolts! From my own
experience I infer that much of our teaching in the schools doesn't
take hold, that the boys and girls tolerate it but do not believe. I
cannot recall just when I first began to believe in Mt. Vesuvius, but
I am quite certain that it was not in my school-days. It may have
been in my teaching-days, but I'm not quite certain. I have often
wondered whether we teachers really believe all we try to teach. I
feel a pity for poor Sisyphus, poor fellow, rolling that stone to the
top of the hill, and then having to do the work all over when the
stone rolled to the bottom. But that is not much worse than trying
to teach Caribbean Sea and Mt. Vesuvius, if we can't really believe
in them. But here is Brown, metamorphosed into a psychologist who
begins with the known, yea, delightfully known grapefruit which I had
at breakfast, and takes me on a fascinating excursion till I arrive,
by alluring stages, at the related unknown, the Caribbean Sea. Too
bad that Brown isn't a teacher.
Brown has the gift of holding on to a thing till his craving for
knowledge is satisfied. Somewhere he had come upon some question
touching a campanile or, possibly, _the_ Campanile, as it seemed to
him. Nor would he rest content until I had extracted what the books
have to say on the subject. He had in mind the Campanile at Venice,
not knowing that the one beside the Duomo at Florence is higher than
the one at Venice, and that the Leaning Tower at Pisa is a campanile,
or bell-tower, also. When I told him that one of my friends saw the
Campanile at Venice crumble to a heap of ruins on that Sunday morning
back in 1907, and that another friend had been of the last party to
go to the top of it the evening before, he became quite excited, and
then I knew that I had succeeded in investing the subject with human
interest, and I felt quite the schoolmaster. Nothing of this did I
mention to Brown, for there is no need to exploit the mental
machinery if only you get results.
Many people who travel abroad buy postcards by the score, and seem to
feel that they are the original discoverers of the places which these
cards portray, and yet these very places were the background of much
of their history and geography in the schools. Can it be that their
teachers failed to invest these places with human interest, that they
were but words in a book and not real to them at all? Must I travel
all the way to Yellowstone Park to know a geyser? Alas! in that
case, many of us poor school-teachers must go through life
geyserless. Wondrous tales and oft heard I in my school-days of
glacier, iceberg, canyon, snow-covered mountain, grotto, causeway,
and volcano, but not till I came to Grindelwald did I really know
what a glacier is. There's many a Doubting Thomas in the schools.