LONGEVITY
I'm quite in the notion of playing a practical joke on Atropos, and,
perhaps, on Methuselah, while I'm about it. I'm not partial to
Atropos at the best. She's such a reckless, uppish, heedless sort of
tyrant. She rushes into huts, palaces, and even into the grand
stand, and lays about her with her scissors, snipping off threads
with the utmost abandon. She wields her shears without any sort of
apology or by your leave. Not even a check-book can stay her
ravages. Her devastation knows neither ruth nor gentleness. I don't
like her, and have no compunction about playing a joke at her
expense. I don't imagine it will daunt her, in the least, but I can
have my fun, at any rate.
It is now just seven o'clock in the evening, and I shall not retire
before ten o'clock at the earliest. So here are three good hours for
me to dispose of; and I am the sole arbiter in the matter of
disposing of them. My neighbor John has a cow, and he is applying
the efficiency test to her. He charges her with every pound of corn,
bran, fodder, and hay that she eats, and doctor's bills, too, I
suppose, if there are any. Then he credits her with all the milk she
furnishes. There is quite a book-account in her name, and John has a
good time figuring out whether, judged by net results, she is a
consumer or a producer. If I can resurrect sufficient mathematical
lore, I think I shall try to apply this efficiency test to my three
hours just to see if I can prove that hours are as important as cows.
I ought to be able, somehow, to determine whether these hours are
consumers or producers.
I read a book the other evening whose title is "Stories of Thrift for
Young Americans," and it made me feel that I ought to apply the
efficiency test to myself, and repeat the process every waking hour
of the day. But, in order to do this, I must apply the test to these
three hours. In my dreamy moods, I like to personify an Hour and
spell it with a capital. I like to think of an hour as the singular
of Houri which the Mohammedans call nymphs of paradise, because they
were, or are, beautiful-eyed. My Hour then becomes a goddess walking
through my life, and, as the poet says, _et vera incessu patuit dea_.
If I show her that I appreciate her she comes again just after the
clock strikes, in form even more winsome than before, and smiles upon
me as only a goddess can. Once, in a sullen mood, I looked upon her
as if she were a hag. When she returned she was a hag; and not till
after I had done full penance did she become my beautiful goddess
again.
A young man who had been spending the evening in the home of a
neighbor complained that they did not play any games, and did nothing
but talk. I could not ask what games he meant, fearing that I might
smile in his face if he should say crokinole, tiddledy-winks, or
button-button. Later on I learned that much of the talking was done
that evening by a very cultivated man who has travelled widely and
intelligently, and has a most engaging manner in his fluent
discussions of art, literature, archaeology, architecture, places,
and peoples. I was sorry to miss such an evening, and think I could
forego tiddledywinks with a fair degree of amiability if, instead, I
could hear such a man talk. I have seen people yawn in an art
gallery. I fear to play tiddledywinks lest my hour may resume the
guise of a hag. But that makes me think of Atropos again, and the
joke I am planning to play on her. Still, I see that I shall not
soon get around to that joke if I persist in these dim generalities,
as a schoolmaster is so apt to do.
Well, as I was saying, these three hours are at my disposal, and I
must decide what to do with them here and now. In deciding
concerning hours I must sit in the judgment-seat whether I like it or
not. Tomorrow evening I shall have other three hours to dispose of
the same as these, and the next evening three others, and my decision
to-night may be far-reaching. In six days I shall have eighteen such
hours, and in fifty weeks nine hundred. I suppose that a generous
estimate of a college year would be ten hours a day for one hundred
and eighty days, or eighteen hundred hours in all. I am quite aware
that some college boys will feel inclined to apply a liberal discount
to this estimate, but I am not considering those fellows who try to
do a month's work in the week of examination, and spend their
fathers' money for coaching. Now, if eighteen hundred hours
constitute a college year then my nine hundred hours are one-half a
college year, and it makes a deal of difference what I do with these
three hours.
If I had only started this joke on Atropos earlier and had applied
these nine hundred hours on my college work, I could have graduated
in three years instead of four, and that surely would have been in
the line of efficiency. But in those days I was devoting more time
and attention to Clotho than to Atropos. I would fain have ignored
Lachesis altogether, but she made me painfully conscious of her
presence, especially during the finals when, it seemed to me, she was
unnecessarily diligent in her vocation. I could have dispensed with
much of her torsion with great equanimity. I suppose that now I am
trying to square accounts with her by playing this joke on her sister.
So I have decided that I shall read a play of Shakespeare to-night,
another one to-morrow evening, and continue this until I have read
all that he wrote. In the fifty weeks of the year I can easily do
this and then reread some of them many times. I ought to be able to
commit to memory several of the plays, too, and that would be good
fun. If those chaps back yonder could recite the Koran word for word
I shall certainly be able to learn equally well some of these plays.
It would be worth while to recite "King Lear," "Macbeth," "Othello,"
"Hamlet," "The Tempest," and "As You Like It," the last week of the
year just before I take my vacation of two weeks. If I can recite
even these six plays in those six evenings I shall feel that I did
well in deciding for Shakespeare instead of tiddledywinks.
Next year I shall read history, and that will be rare fun, too. In
the nine hundred hours I shall certainly be able to read all of
Fiske, Mommsen, Rhodes, Bancroft, McMaster, Channing, Bryce, Hart,
Motley, Gibbon, and von Holst not to mention American statesmen.
About the Ides of December I shall hold a levee and sit in state as
the characters of history file by. I shall be able to call them all
by name, to tell of the things they did and why they did them, and to
connect their deeds with the world as it now is. I can't conceive of
any picture-show equal to that, and all through my year with
Shakespeare I shall be looking forward eagerly to my year with the
historians. I plainly see that the neighbors will not need to bring
in any playthings to amuse and entertain me, though, of course, I
shall be grateful to them for their kindly interest. Then, the next
year I shall devote to music, and if, by practising for nine hundred
hours, I cannot acquire a good degree of facility in manipulating a
piano or a violin, I must be too dull to ever aspire to the favor of
Terpsichore. If I but measure up to my hopes during this year I
shall be saved the expense of buying my music ready-made. The next
year I shall devote to art, and by spending one entire evening with a
single artist I shall thus become acquainted with three hundred of
them. If I become intimate with this number I shall not be lonesome,
even if I do not know the others. I think I shall give an art party
at the holiday time of that year, and have three hundred people
impersonate these artists. This will afford me a good review of my
studies in art. It may diminish the gate receipts of the
picture-show for a few evenings, but I suspect the world will be able
to wag along.
Then the next year I shall study poetry, the next astronomy, and the
next botany. Thus I shall come to know the plants of earth, the
stars of heaven, and the emotions of men. That ought to ward off
ennui and afford entertainment without the aid of the saloon. In the
succeeding twelve years I shall want to acquire as many languages,
for I am eager to excel Elihu Burritt in linguistic attainments even
if I must yield to him as a disciple of Vulcan. If I can learn a
language and read the literature of that language each year, possibly
some college may be willing to grant me a degree for work _in
absentia_. If not, I shall poke along the best I can and try to
drown my grief in more copious drafts of work.
And I shall have quite enough to do, for mathematics, the sciences,
and the arts and crafts all lie ahead of me in my programme. I
plainly see that I have played my last game of tiddledywinks and
solitaire. But I'll have fun anyhow. If I gain a half-year in each
twelve-month as I have my programme mapped out, in seventy years I
shall have a net gain of thirty-five years. Then, when Atropos comes
along with her scissors to snip the thread, thinking I have reached
my threescore and ten, I shall laugh in her face and let her know,
between laughs, that I am really one hundred and five, and have
played a thirty-five-year joke on her. Then I shall quote Bacon at
her to clinch the joke: "A man may be young in years but old in hours
if he have lost no time."