and mythical to the natural and true. The tales and legends of the
ancient past were not of common men and common scenes. These could not
impress the undeveloped intellect of long ago. A man of letters could
not deify a serf, or tell the simple story of the poor. He must write to
maintain the status of the world, and please the prince that gave him
food; so he told of kings and queens, of knights and ladies, of strife
and conquest; and the coloring he used was human blood.
The world has grown accustomed to those ancient tales, to scenes of
blood and war, and novels that would thrill the soul and cause the hair
to stand on end. It has read these tales so long that the true seems
commonplace, and unfit to fill the pages of a book. But all the time we
forget the fact that the story could not charm unless we half believed
it true. The men and women in the tale we learn to love and hate; we
take an interest in their lives; we hope they may succeed or fail; we
must not be told at every page that the people of the book are men of
straw, that no such beings ever lived upon the earth. We could take no
interest in men and women that are myths conjured up to play their
parts, and remind us in every word they speak that, regardless of the
happiness or anguish the author makes them feel, they are but myths and
can know neither joy nor pain.
It may be that the realistic tale is commonplace, but so is life, and
the realistic tale is true. Among the countless millions of the earth it
is only here and there, and now and then, that some soul is born from
out the mighty deep that does not soon return to the great sea and leave
no ripple on the waves.
In the play of life each actor seems important to himself; the world he
knows revolves around him as the central figure of the scene; his
friends rejoice in all the fortune he attains and weep with him in all
his grief. To him the world is bounded by the faces that he knows, and
the scenes in which he lives. He forgets the great surging world
outside, and cannot think how small a space he fills in that infinity
which bounds his life. He dies, and a few sorrowing friends mourn him
for a day, and the world does not know he ever lived or ever died. In
the ordinary life nearly all events are commonplace; but a few important
days are thinly sprinkled in amongst all of those that intervene between
the cradle and the grave. We eat and drink, we work and sleep, and here
and there a great joy or sorrow creeps in upon our lives, and leaves a
day that stands out against the monotony of all the rest, like the
pyramids upon the level plains; but these events are very few and are
important only to ourselves, and for the rest we walk with steady pace
and slow along the short and narrow path of life, and rely upon the
common things alone to occupy our minds and hide from view the marble
stone that here and there gleams through the over-hanging trees just
where the road leaves off.
The old novel which we used to read and to which the world so fondly
clings, had no idea of relation or perspective. It had a hero and a
heroine, and sometimes more than one. The revolutions of the planets
were less important than their love. War, shipwreck, and conflagration,
all conspired to produce the climax of the scene, and the whole world
stood still until the lovers’ hearts and hands were joined. Wide oceans,
burning deserts, arctic seas, impassable jungles, irate fathers, and
even designing mothers, were helpless against the decree that fate had
made, and when all the barriers were passed and love had triumphed over
impossibilities, the tale was done; through the rest of life nothing of
interest could occur. Sometimes in the progress of the story, if the
complications were too great, a thunderbolt or an earthquake was
introduced to destroy the villain and help on the match. Earthquakes
sometimes happen, and the realistic novelist might write a tale of a
scene like this, but then the love affair would be an incident of the
earthquake, and not the earthquake an incident of the love affair.
In real life the affections have played an important part and sometimes
great things have been done and suffered in the name of love, but most
of the affairs of the human heart have been as natural as the other
events of life.
The true love story is generally a simple thing. “Beside a country road,
on a sloping hill, lives a farmer, in the house his father owned before.
He has a daughter, who skims the milk, and makes the beds, and goes to
singing school at night. There are other members of the household, but
our tale is no concern of theirs. In the meadow back of the house a
woodchuck has dug its hole, and reared a family in its humble home.
Across the valley only a mile away, another farmer lives. He has a son,
who plows the fields and does the chores and goes to singing school at
night. He cannot sing, but attends the school as regularly as if he
could. Of course he does not let the girl go home alone, and in the
spring, when singing school is out, he visits her on Sunday eve without
excuse. If the girl had not lived so near, the boy would have fancied
another girl about the same age, who also went to singing school. Back
of the second farmer’s house is another woodchuck hole and woodchuck
home. After a year or two of courtship the boy and girl are married as
their parents were before, and they choose a pretty spot beside the
road, and build another house near by, and settle down to common life:
and so the world moves on. And a woodchuck on one farm meets a woodchuck
on the other, and they choose a quiet place beside a stump, in no one’s
way, where they think they have a right to be, and dig another hole and
make another home.” For after all, men and animals are much alike, and
nature loves them both and loves them all, and sends them forth to drive
the loneliness from off the earth, and then takes them back into her
loving breast to sleep.
It may be that there are few great incidents in the realistic take, but
each event appeals to life and cannot fail to wake our memories and make
us live the past again. The great authors of the natural school—Tolstoi,
Hardy, Howells, Daudet, Ibsen, Flaubert, Zola and their kind, have made
us think and live. Their words have burnished up our minds and revealed
a thousand pictures that hang upon the walls of memory, covered with the
dust of years, and hidden from our sight. Sometimes of course we cry
with pain at the picture that is thrown before our view, but life
consists of emotions, and we cannot truly live unless the depths are
stirred. These great masters, it is true, may sometimes shock the
over-sensitive with the tales they tell of life, but if the tale is
true, why hide it from our sight?
There is nothing more common than the protest against the wicked stories
of the realistic school, filled with tales of passion and of sin; but he
that denies passion denies all the life that exists upon the earth, and
cries out against the mother that gave him birth. And he that ignores
this truth passes with contempt the greatest fact that nature has
impressed upon the world. Those who condemn as sensual the tales of
Tolstoi and Daudet still defend the love stories of which our literature
is full. Those weak and silly tales that make women fit only to be the
playthings of the world, and deny to them a single thought or right
except to serve their master, man. These objectors do not contend that
tales dealing with the feelings and affections shall not be told, they
approve these tales; they simply insist that they shall be false instead
of true. The old novel filled the mind of the school girl with a
thousand thoughts that had no place in life—with ten thousand pictures
she could never see. It taught that some time she should meet a prince
in disguise to whom she would freely give her hand and heart. So she
went out upon the road to find this prince, and the more disguised he
was, the more certain did she feel that he was the prince for whom she
sought. The realist paints the passions and affections as they are. Both
man and woman can see their beauty and their terror, their true
position, and the relation that they bear to all the rest of life. He
would not beguile the girl into the belief that her identity should be
destroyed and merged for the sake of this feeling, which not once in ten
thousand times could realize the promises the novel made; but he would
leave her as an individual to make the most she can, and all she can, of
life, with all the hope and chance of conquest, which men have taken for
themselves. Neither would the realist cry out blindly against these deep
passions, which have moved men and women in the past, and which must
continue fierce and strong as long as life exists. He is taught by the
scientist that the fiercest heat may be transformed to light, and is
taught by life that from the strongest passions are sometimes born the
sweetest and the purest souls.
In these days of creeds and theories, of preachers in the pulpit and of
preachers out, we are told that all novels should have a moral and be
written to serve some end. So we have novels on religion, war, marriage,
divorce, socialism, theosophy, woman’s rights, and other topics without
end. It is not enough that the preachers and lecturers shall tell us how
to think and act; the novelist must try his hand at preaching too. He
starts out with a theory, and every scene and incident must be bent to
make it plain that the author believes certain things. The doings of the
men and women in the book are secondary to the views the author holds.
The theories may be true, but the poor characters that must adjust their
lives to these ideal states are sadly warped and twisted out of shape.
The realist would teach a lesson, too, but he would not violate a single
fact for all the theories in the world—for a theory could not be true if
it did violence to life. He paints his picture so true and perfect that
all men who look upon it know it is a likeness of the world that they
have seen; they know that these are men and women and little children
that they meet upon the streets; they see the conditions of their lives,
and the moral of the picture sinks deep into their minds.
There are so-called scientists that make a theory and then gather facts
to prove their theory true; the real scientist patiently and impartially
gathers facts, and then forms a theory to explain and harmonize these
facts. All life bears a moral, and the true artist must teach a lesson
with his every fact. Some contend that the moral teacher must not tell
the truth; the realist holds that there can be no moral teaching like
the truth. The world has grown tired of preachers and sermons; to-day it
asks for facts. It has grown tired of fairies and angels, and asks for
flesh and blood. It looks on life as it exists, both its beauty and its
horror, its joy and its sorrow; it wishes to see it all; not the prince
and the millionaire alone, but the laborer and the beggar, the master
and the slave. We see the beautiful and the ugly, and with it know what
the world is and what it ought to be; and the true picture, which the
author saw and painted, stirs the heart to holier feelings and to
grander thoughts.
It is from the realities of life that the highest idealities are born.
The philosopher may reason with unerring logic, and show us where the
world is wrong. The economist may tell us of the progress and poverty
that go hand in hand; but these are theories, and the abstract cannot
suffer pain. Dickens went out into the streets of the great city and
found poor little Jo sweeping the crossing with his broom. All around
was the luxury and the elegance, which the rich have ever appropriated
to themselves; great mansions, fine carriages, beautiful dresses, but in
all the great city of houses and homes, poor little Jo could find no
place to lay his head. His home was in the street, and every time he
halted for a moment in the throng, the policeman touched him with his
club and bade him “move on.” At last, ragged, wretched, almost dead with
“moving on,” he sank down upon the cold stone steps of a magnificent
building erected for “The Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.”
As we think of wretched, ragged Jo in the midst of all this luxury and
wealth, we see the tens of thousands of other waifs in the great cities
of the world, and we condemn the so-called civilization of the earth
that builds the mansions of the rich and great upon the rags and
miseries of the poor.
The true realist cannot worship at the shrine of power, nor prostitute
his gifts for gold. With an artist’s eye he sees the world exactly as it
is, and tells the story faithful unto life. He feels for every heart
that beats, else he could not paint them as he does. It takes the soul
to warm a statue into life and make living flesh and coursing blood, and
each true picture that he paints or draws makes the world a better place
in which to live.
The artists of the realistic school have a sense so fine that they
cannot help but catch the inspiration that is filling all the world’s
best minds with the hope of greater justice and more equal social life.
With the vision of the seer they feel the coming dawn when true equality
shall reign upon the earth; the time when democracy shall no more be
confined to constitutions and to laws, but will be a part of human life.
The greatest artists of the world to-day are telling facts and painting
scenes that cause humanity to stop, and think, and ask why one should be
a master and another be a serf; why a portion of the world should toil
and spin, should wear away its strength and life, that the rest should
live in idleness and ease.
The old-time artists thought they served humanity by painting saints and
madonnas and angels from the myths they conjured in their brains. They
painted war with long lines of soldiers dressed in uniforms, and looking
plump and gay; and a battle scene was always drawn from the side of the
victorious camp, with the ensign proudly planting his bright colors on
the rampart of the foe. One or two were dying, but always in their
comrades’ arms, and listening to shouts of victory that filled the air,
and thinking of the righteous cause for which they fought and died. In
the last moments they dreamed of pleasant burial yards at home, and of
graves kept green by loving, grateful friends; and a smile of joy shone
on their wasted faces that was so sweet, that it seemed a hardship not
to die in war. They painted peace as a white winged dove settling down
upon a cold and fading earth. Between the two it was plain which choice
a boy would make, and thus art served the state and king.
But Verestchagin painted war; he painted war so true to life that as we
look upon the scene, we long for peace. He painted war as war has ever
been, and as war will ever be—a horrible and ghastly scene, where men,
drunk with blind frenzy which rulers say is patriotic pride, and made
mad by drums and fifes and smoke and shot and shell and flowing blood,
seek to maim and wound and kill, because a ruler gives the word. He
paints a battle field, a field of life and death; a field of carnage and
of blood; and who are these that fight like fiends and devils driven to
despair? What cause is this that makes these men forget that they are
men, and vie with beasts to show their cruel thirst for blood? They
shout of home and native land, but they have no homes, and the owners of
their native land exist upon their toil and blood. The nobles and
princes, for whom this fight is waged, are far away upon a hill, beyond
the reach of shot and shell, and from this spot they watch their slaves
pour out their blood to satisfy their rulers’ pride and lust of power.
What is the enemy they fight? Men like themselves; who blindly go to
death at another king’s command, slaves, who have no land, who freely
give their toil or blood, whichever one their rulers may demand. These
fighting soldiers have no cause for strife, but their rulers live by
kindling in their hearts a love of native land, a love that makes them
hate their brother laborers of other lands, and dumbly march to death to
satisfy a king’s caprice. But let us look once more after the battle has
been fought. Here we see the wreck and ruin of the strife; the field is
silent now, given to the dead, the beast of prey and night. A young
soldier lies upon the ground; the snow is falling fast around his form;
the lonely mountain peaks rise up on every side; the wreck of war is all
about. His uniform is soiled and stained, a spot of red is seen upon his
breast. It is not the color that his country wove upon his coat to catch
his eye and bait him to his death; it is hard and jagged and cold. It is
his life’s blood, which leaked out through a hole that followed the
point of a sabre to his heart. His form is stiff and cold, for he is
dead. The cruel wound and icy air have done their work. The government
that took his life taught this poor boy to love his native land; as a
child he dreamed of scenes of glory and of power, and the great wide
world just waiting to fall captive to his magic strength. He dreamed of
war and strife, of victory and fame; if he should die, kind hands would
smooth his brow, and loving friends would keep his grave and memory
green, because he died in war. But no human eye is there at last, as the
mist of night and mist of death shut out the lonely mountains from his
sight. The snow is all around, and the air above is grey with falling
flakes, which soon will hide him from the world; and when the summer
time shall come again, no one can tell his bleaching bones from all the
rest. The only life upon the scene is the buzzard slowly circling in the
air above his head, waiting to make sure that death has come. The bird
looks down upon the boy, into the eyes through which he first looked out
upon the great, wide world, and which his mother fondly kissed; upon
these eyes the buzzard will commence his meal.
Not all the world is beautiful, and not all of life is good. The true
artist has no right to choose the lovely spots alone and make us think
that this is life. He must bring the world before our eyes and make us
read and learn. As he loves the true and noble, he must show the false
and bad. As he yearns for true equality, he must paint the master and
the slave. He must tell the truth, and tell it all, must tell it o’er
and o’er again, till the deafest ear will listen and the dullest mind
will think. He must not swerve to please the world by painting only
pleasant sights and telling only lovely tales. He must think, and paint,
and write, and work, until the world shall learn so much and grow so
good, that the true will all be beautiful and all the real be ideal.
[Illustration]
THE · SKELETON
IN · THE · CLOSET
[Illustration]
THE SKELETON IN THE CLOSET
The closet has so long been allotted to the skeleton that we have come
to regard this room as its fit and natural home; it has been given over
to this guest because it is the darkest, the closest and least
conspicuous in the house. The door can be securely fastened and only now
and then can the grating bones be heard by the world outside. Still,
however secluded and unused this guest chamber seems to be, and however
carefully we bolt the door and darken every chink and crevice in the
walls, we are ever conscious that the occupant is there, and will remain
until the house is closed, and the last tenant has departed, never to
return. The very fact that we try so hard to keep the skeleton in its
proper room, makes it the more impossible to forget that it is there.
Now and then we awake with a start at the thought of what might happen
should it break the door and wander through the house, and then stray
out into the wide world, and tell all the peaceful, trusting neighbors
from what house it stole away; and yet we are somehow conscious that the
rumor of its dread presence has already traveled as far as we are known.
Man is a wonderfully adaptable animal; he fits himself easily into the
environment where he is placed. He passes from infancy to childhood and
from childhood to boyhood as smoothly as the placid river flows to the
waiting sea. Every circumstance and surrounding of his life seems to
have been made for him. Suddenly a new desire takes possession of his
soul; he turns his back on the home of his childhood days and goes out
alone. In a little time a new family is reared about him, and he forgets
the group that clustered round his father’s hearth. He may lose a leg or
a fortune, and he soon conforms to his changed condition and life goes
on as naturally and as easily as before. A child is born beneath his
roof; it takes a place within his heart and home, and in a little while
he can scarcely think of the day it was not there. Death comes, and a
member of his little band is carried out, but time drops its healing
balm upon the wounds and life goes on almost unconscious that the dead
has ever lived. But while we adjust ourselves naturally to all things
living and to ever varying scenes, the skeleton in the closet is always
an intruder, no matter how long it may have dwelt beneath the roof. Even
though we may forget its actual presence for a little time, still no
scene is so perfect and no enjoyment so great but we feel a cloud
casting its shadow across our happiness or the weight of some burden on
our soul; and when we stop to ask the cause, the grinning skeleton
reminds us that it is with us even here.
This specter stands quite apart from the other sorrows of our life; age
seems powerless to forget, and time will not bring its ever-fresh,
recurring scenes to erase the memory of the past. This is not because
the skeleton is really such a dreadful guest. The kind and loving ivy
creeps tenderly around each yawning scar and crumbling stone, until the
whole ruin is covered with a lovely green. The decaying pile stands free
and open to the sun and rain and air. It does not hide its head or
apologize for the blemishes and seams that mark its face, and a kind,
forgiving nature takes the ruin, scars and all, and blends these with
her softening years and lovely face into a beautiful harmonious whole;
but unlike the ruin, the skeleton in the closet is a neglected, outcast
child. With every breath we insist that there is nothing in the room. We
refuse to take it to our hearts and homes and acknowledge it as our own.
We seek to strangle it to death, and each fresh attempt not only shows
our murderous design, but proves that the skeleton is not a pulseless
thing but is endowed with immortal life. The brighter the fire-light
that glows around our hearth, the more desolate and drear sounds the
wail of the wind outside, for through its cold blasts wanders the
outcast, whose rightful place is in the brightest corner of the room.
Our constant annoyance and sorrow at this dread presence is not caused
by the way the skeleton behaves to us, but from the way we treat our
guest. If we looked it squarely in its grinning skull, it might not seem
so very loathsome to the sight. It has the right to grin. It may be but
a grim smile over the consciousness that it has sounded the last sorrow
and that henceforth no greater evils are in store; it may be a mocking,
sardonic grin at the thought of our discomfiture over its unwelcome
presence and the knowledge that we cannot drive it out.