His eyes were bloodshot and he stared forward into vacancy.
"We were married," he said, "shortly after I was graduated from law
school. For just five years we were happy. We were in love. I was making
good in my profession. Helen took delight in her household duties and
her baby. Then one day--the exact date is still engraved in letters of
fire on my memory--I received a letter. It was from the Society for the
Propagation of Ethical Statistics. It said that a study was being made
of the churchgoing habits of college graduates, and there was a printed
list of questions which I was requested to answer. I cannot recall the
entire list, but these were some of the items:
"Do you go to church willingly or to please your wife?
"Do you stay all through the sermon?
"What is the average amount you deposit in the contribution plate (a) in
summer; (b) in winter?
"Is your choice of a particular church determined by (a) creed; (b) the
quality of the preaching; (c) ventilation?
"Are you ever overtaken by sleep during the sermon, and if so, at what
point in the sermon do you most readily yield to the influence? (Note:
In answering this question a state of recurrent drowsiness is to be
considered as sleep.)
"Do you go to sleep most easily under (a) an Episcopalian; (b)
Presbyterian; (c) Methodist; (d) Rabbi; (e) Ethical Culturist? (Note:
Strike out all but one of the above names.)
"Is your awakening attended by a sensation of remorse or merely one of
profound astonishment?
"What do you consider to be the ideal length for a sermon, leaving
climatic conditions out of account?
"I tossed the letter across the breakfast table to Helen and intimated
that I couldn't spare the time for an answer. But Helen insisted it was
my duty as a college graduate. If the science of sociology couldn't look
to us men of culture for its data, whom could it go to? So I telephoned
down to the office that I would be late and sat down to draft my reply.
It was much more difficult than I imagined. I was amazed to find how
little I knew of my own habits and processes of thoughts. It took the
greater part of the morning, and when I finally did get down to the
office I learned that my most important client, an aged gentleman of
uncertain temper, had gone off in a rage saying he would never come
back. He kept his word.
"That letter was the beginning. I had no leisure to worry over this loss
of a very considerable part of my income, because the next morning's
mail brought a letter from the Association for the Encouragement of the
City Beautiful. It contained a very long questionnaire which I was
requested to fill out and forward by return mail. I was asked to state
whether the character of the telegraph poles in our neighbourhood was
such as to reflect credit on the civic spirit of the community, in
respect to material (a) wood, (b) ornamental iron; and secondly, as to
paint, (a) yellow, (b) red, (c) green, (d) no paint at all. I was also
to say whether conditions in our neighbours' back yards were conducive
to the propagation of the typhoid-bearing or common house-fly and to
give my estimate of the number of flies so propagated in the course of a
week, in hundreds of thousands. Finally, was the presence of the
house-fly in our community due to the negligence of individual citizens,
or was it the direct result of inefficient municipal government? And if
the latter, was our municipal administration Republican or Democratic,
and what were the popular majorities for mayor since the
Spanish-American war?
"With Helen's assistance I managed to send off my reply within two
days. But when I came down to my place of business I found that I had
missed an important long-distance call from Chicago which the office-boy
had promised to transmit to me, but failed to do so because he did not
understand it in the first place."
He sighed and stared at the floor. His emaciated fingers beat a rapid
tattoo on my desk. He droned on in dull, impersonal tones, as if this
story of the wreck of a man's happiness had no special concern for him.
"Well," he said, "you can foresee the end for yourself. Within less than
two months my law business disappeared, because I simply could not
devote the necessary time to it. I resorted to desperate measures. I
wrote to our alumni secretary, asking him to remove my name from the
college catalogue; but it was too late. My name was by this time the
common property of all the sociological laboratories and research
stations in the country. At home, want began to stare us in the face.
Worry over my financial condition, added to the long hours of labour
involved in filling out questionnaires, undermined my health. I grew
morose, ill-tempered, curt in my behaviour to Helen and the child. We
still loved each other, but the glow and tenderness of our former
relations had disappeared.
"Fortunately Helen did not feel my neglect as she might. For by this
time she, too, was getting letters from sociological experiment
stations. Helen was graduated from a New England college. Her letters,
at first, dealt with problems of domestic economy. She had to write out
model dietaries, statements of weekly expenses, the relative merits of
white and coloured help. Later she was led into the field of child
psychology. Our little Laura was hardly able to go out into the open
air, because her mother had to keep her under observation during so many
hours of the day. The child grew pale and nervous. Helen grew thin. In
her case, poor girl, it was actual lack of food. There was no money in
the house. One night as we sat down at table there was just a glass of
milk and a slice of bread and butter at Laura's plate; for us there was
nothing. At first I failed to understand. Then I looked at Helen and she
was trying to smile through her tears."
He sobbed and I turned and stared out of the window.
"That night," he said, "I went out and pawned my watch; my
great-grandfather had worn it. People rally quickly under trouble, and
the next morning we were fairly cheerful. I set to work on a list of
questions from the Bureau of Comparative Eugenics. Helen was busy with a
questionnaire on Reaction Time in Children Under Six, from the
Psychological Department at Harvard. I was resigned. I looked up and saw
Laura playing with her alphabet blocks. I thought: Well, our lives may
be spoiled, but there is the child. Life had cast no shadow on the
current of her young days. At that moment the hall-boy brought in a
letter. It was addressed to Miss Laura Smith--our baby. It was from the
Wisconsin Laboratory of Juvenile Æsthetics. It contained a list of
questions for the child to answer. How many hours a day did she play?
Did she prefer to play in the house or on the street? Did she look into
shop windows when she was out walking or at moving-picture posters? Was
she afraid of dogs? I was crushed. There was a mist before my eyes. I
fell forward on the table and wept."
His lip trembled, but the manhood was not gone from him. He faced me
with a show of firmness.
"Mind you," he said, "I am not complaining. The individual must suffer
if the world is to move forward. We have suffered, but in a good cause."
I agreed. I recalled the tabulated results of a particularly elaborate
questionnaire printed in the morning's news. Questions had been sent to
a thousand college graduates. Of that number it appeared that 480 lived
in the country, 230 preferred the drama to fiction, 198 were
vegetarians, and 576 voted for Mr. Wilson at the last Presidential
election. Those who voted the Democratic ticket were less proficient in
spelling than those who voted for Colonel Roosevelt. Could anything be
more useful?