We enter a respectable house in a shady angle adjoining Portman Square. We go out to dinner in solemn procession. We admire the preternatural solidity of the furniture and the plate. The hostess is a fine woman, "with neck and nostrils like a rocking-horse, hard features and majestic headdress." Her husband, large and pompous, with little light-colored wings "more like hairbrushes than hair" on the sides of his otherwise bald head, begins to discourse on the British Constitution. We now know as much of Mr. Podsnap as we shall know at the end of the book. But it is a real knowledge conveyed by the method that gives dinner-parties their educational value. We forgive Dickens his superfluous discourse on Podsnappery in general. For his remarks are precisely of the kind which we make when the party is over, and we sit by the fire generalizing and allegorizing the people we have met.

That Mr. Thomas Gradgrind was unduly addicted to hard facts might have been delicately insinuated in the course of two hundred pages. We might have felt a mild pleasure in the discovery which we had made, and then have gone our way forgetting what manner of man he was. What is Gradgrind to us or we to Gradgrind? Dickens introduces him to us in all his uncompromising squareness—"square coat, square legs, square shoulders, nay, his very neckcloth is trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp." We are made at once to see "the square wall of a forehead which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in the two dark caves overshadowed by the wall." Having taken all this in at a glance, there is nothing more to be done in the development of the character of Mr. Gradgrind. He takes his place among the obvious facts of existence. But in so much as we were bound to find him out sometime, shall we quarrel with Dickens because we were enabled to do so in the first chapter?

Nor do the obvious exaggerations of Dickens arising from the exuberance of his fancy interfere with the sense of reality. A truth is not less true because it is in large print. We recognize creatures who are prodigiously like ourselves, and we laugh at the difference in scale. Did not all Lilliput laugh over the discovery of Gulliver? How they rambled over the vast expanse of countenance, recognizing each feature—lips, cheek, nose, chin, brow. "How very odd," they would say to themselves, "and how very like!"

It is to the wholesome obviousness of Dickens that we owe the atmosphere of good cheer that surrounds his characters. No writer has pictured more scenes of squalid misery, and yet we are not depressed. There is bad weather enough, but we are not "under the weather." There are characters created to be hated. It is a pleasure to hate them. As to the others, whenever their trials and tribulations abate for an instant, they relapse into a state of unabashed contentment.

This is unusual in literature, for most literary men are saddest when they write. The fact is that happiness is much more easy to experience than to describe, as any one may learn in trying to describe a good time he has had. One good time is very much like another good time. Moreover, we are shy, and dislike to express our enthusiasm. We wouldn't for the world have any one know what simple creatures we are and how little it takes to make us happy. So we talk critically about a great many things we do not care very much about, and complain of the absence of many things which we do not really miss. We feel badly about not being invited to a party which we don't want to go to.

We are like a horse that has been trained to be a "high-stepper." By prancing over imaginary difficulties and shying at imaginary dangers he gives an impression of mettlesomeness which is foreign to his native disposition.

The story-teller is on the lookout for these eager attitudes. He cannot afford to let his characters be too happy. There is a literary value in misery that he cannot afford to lose.

That "the course of true love never did run smooth" is an assertion of story-tellers rather than of ordinary lovers. The fact is that nothing is so easy as falling in love and staying there. It is a very common experience, so common that it attracts little attention. The course of true love usually runs so smoothly that there is nothing that causes remark. It is not an occasion of gossip. Two good-tempered and healthy persons are obviously made for each other. They know it, and everybody else knows it, and they keep on knowing it, and act, as Joe Gargery would say, "similar, according."

The trouble is that the literary man finds that this does not afford exciting material for a best seller. So he must invent hazards to make the game interesting to the spectators. In a story the course of true love must not run smooth or no one would read it. The old-time romancer brought his young people through all sorts of misadventures. When all the troubles he could think of were over, he left them abruptly at the church door, murmuring feebly to the gentle reader, "they were happy ever after."

The present-day novelist is offended at this ending. "How absurd!" he says. "They are still in the early twenties. The world is all before them, and they have time to fall into all sorts of troubles which the romanticist has not thought of. Middle age is just as dangerous a period as youth, and matrimony has its pitfalls. Let me take up the story and tell you how they didn't live happily ever afterwards, but, on the contrary, had a cat-and-dog life of it."

Now I would pardon the novelist if he were perfectly honest and were to say, "Ladies and gentlemen, I am trying to interest you. I have not the skill to make a story of placid happiness interesting. So I will do the next best thing. I will tell you a story of a different kind. It is the picture of a kind of life that is easier to make readable."

In making such a confession he would be in good company. Even Shakespeare, with all his dramatic genius, confessed that he could not avoid monotony in his praise of true love. Its ways were ways of pleasantness, but did not afford much incentive to originality.

"Since all alike my songs and praises be To one, of one, still such, and ever so. Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind, Still constant in a wondrous excellence; Therefore my verse to constancy confined, One thing expressing, leaves out difference. 'Fair, kind, and true' is all my argument, 'Fair, kind, and true' varying to other words; And in this change is my invention spent."

But the novelist, when he takes himself too seriously as the man who is to show us "life as it is," is not content to acknowledge his limitations. When he pictures a situation in which there is nothing but a succession of problems and misunderstandings, he asks us to admire his austere faithfulness. Faithful he may be to his Art, as he understands it, but he is not faithful to reality, unless he is able to make us see ordinary people in the act of enjoying themselves.

The most obvious thing in life is that people are seldom as unhappy as their circumstances would lead us to expect. Nobody is happy all the time, and if he were, nobody is enough of a genius to make his undeviating felicity interesting. But a great many people are happy most of the time, and almost everybody has been happy at some time or other. It may have been only a momentary experience, but it was very real, and he likes to think about it. He is excessively grateful to any one who recalls the feeling. The point is that the aggregate of these good times makes a considerable amount of cheerfulness.

Dickens does not attempt the impossible literary feat of showing us one person who is happy all the time, but he does what is more obvious, he makes us see a great many people who have snatches of good cheer in the midst of their humdrum lives. He lets us see another obvious fact, that happiness is more a matter of temperament than of circumstance. It is not given as a reward of merit or as a mark of distinguished consideration. There is one perennial fountain of pleasure. Any one can have a good time who can enjoy himself. Dickens was not above celebrating the kind of happiness which comes to the natural man and the natural boy through what we call the "creature comforts." He could sympathize with the unadulterated self-satisfaction of little Jack Horner when

"He put in his thumb And pulled out a plum, And said, 'What a great boy am I!'"

The finding of the plum was not a matter of world-wide importance, but it was a great pleasure for Jack Horner, and he did not care who knew it.

What joy Mr. Micawber gets out of his own eloquence! We cannot begrudge him this unearned increment. We sympathize, as, "much affected, but still intensely enjoying himself, Mr. Micawber folded up his letter and handed it with a bow to my aunt as something she might like to keep."

And R. Wilfer, despite his meagre salary, and despite Mrs. Wilfer, enjoys himself whenever he gets a chance. When he goes to Greenwich with Bella he finds everything as it should be. "Everything was delightful. The Park was delightful; the punch was delightful, the dishes of fish were delightful; the wine was delightful." If that was not happiness, what was it?

Said R. Wilfer: "Supposing a man to go through life, we won't say with a companion, but we will say with a tune. Very good. Supposing the tune allotted to him was the 'Dead March' in 'Saul.' Well. It would be a very suitable tune for particular occasions—none more so—but it would be difficult to keep time with it in the ordinary run of domestic transactions."

It is a matter of common observation that those who have allotted to them the most solemn music do not always keep time with it. In the "ordinary run of domestic transactions" they find many little alleviations. In the aggregate these amount to a considerable blessing. The world may be rough, and many of its ways may be cruel, but for all that it is a joyful sensation to be alive, and the more alive we are, the better we like it. All of which is very obvious, and it is what we want somebody to point out for us again and again.



THE SPOILED CHILDREN OF CIVILIZATION

To spoil a child is no easy task, for Nature is all the time working in behalf of the childish virtues and veracities, and is gently correcting the abnormalities of education. Still it can be done. The secret of it is never to let the child alone, and to insist on doing for him all that he would otherwise do for himself—and more.

In that "more" lies the spoiling power. The child must be early made acquainted with the feeling of satiety. There must be too much of everything. If he were left to himself to any extent, this would be an unknown experience. For he is a hungry little creature, with a growing appetite, and naturally is busy ministering to his own needs. He is always doing something for himself, and enjoys the exercise. The little egoist, even when he has "no language but a cry," uses that language to make known to the world that he wants something and wants it very much. As his wants increase, his exertions increase also. Arms and legs, fingers and toes, muscles and nerves and busy brain are all at work to get something which he desires. He is a mechanic fashioning his little world to his own uses. He is a despot who insists on his divine right to rule the subservient creatures around him. He is an inventor devising ways and means to secure all the ends which he has the wit to see. That these great works on which he has set his heart end in self is obvious enough, but we forgive him. Altruism will come in its own time.

In natural play a boy will be a horse or a driver. Either occupation gives him plenty to do. But the role of an elderly passenger, given a softly cushioned seat and deposited respectfully at the journey's end, he rejects with violent expressions of scorn. It is ignominious. He will be a policeman or robber or judge or executioner, just as the exigencies of the game demand. These are honorable positions worthy of one who belongs to the party of action. But do not impose upon him by asking him to act the part of the respectable citizen who is robbed and who does nothing but telephone for the police. He is not fastidious and will take up almost anything that is suggested, if it gives him the opportunity of exerting himself. The demand for exertion is the irreducible minimum.

Now to spoil all this fine enthusiasm you must arrange everything in such a manner that the eager little worker shall find everything done before he has time to put his hand to it. There must be no alluring possibilities in his tiny universe. The days of creation, when "the sons of God shouted for joy," must be passed before he is ushered in. He must be presented only with accomplished facts. There must be nothing left for him to make or discover. He must be told everything. All his designs must be anticipated, by nurses and parents and teachers. They must give him whatever good things they can think of before he has time to desire them. From the time when elaborate mechanical toys are put into his reluctant hands, it is understood that he is to be amused, and need not amuse himself His education is arranged for him. His companions are chosen for him. There is nothing for him to do, and if there were, there is no incentive for him to do it. In the game of life he is never allowed to be the horse. It is his fate to be the passenger.

A child is spoiled when he accepts the position into which fond, foolish parents thrust him. Being a passenger on what was presumably intended to be a pleasure excursion, he begins to find fault as soon as the journey becomes a little wearisome. He must find fault, because that is the only thing left for him to find. Having no opportunity to exercise his creative faculties, he becomes a petulant critic of a world he can neither enjoy nor understand. Taking for granted that everything should be done for him, he is angry because it is not done better. His ready-made world does not please him—why should it? It never occurs to him that if he does not like it he should try and make it better.

Unfortunately, the characteristics of the spoiled child do not vanish with childhood or even with adolescence. A university training does not necessarily transform petulance into ripe wisdom. Literary ability may only give fluent expression to a peevish spirit.

Among the innumerable children of an advanced civilization there are those who have been spoiled by the petting to which they have been subjected. Life has been made so easy for them that when they come upon hard places which demand sturdy endurance they break forth into angry complaints. They have been given the results of the complicated activities of mankind, without having done their share in the common tasks. They have not through personal endeavor learned how much everything costs. They are not able, therefore, to pay cheerfully for any future good. If it is not given to them at once they feel that they have a grievance. For friendly cooeperation they are not prepared. They must have their own way or they will not play the game. Their fretful complaints are like those of the children in the old-time market-places: "We have piped unto you and you have not danced, we have mourned unto you and you have not lamented."

There is a fashionable attitude of mind among many who pride themselves on their acute intellectualism. It manifests itself in a supercilious compassion for the efforts and ambitions of the man of action. He, poor fellow, is well-meaning, but unilluminated. He is eager and energetic because he imagines that he is accomplishing something. If he were a serious thinker he would see that all effort is futile. We are here in an unintelligible world, a world of mighty forces, moving we know not whither. We are subject to passions and impulses which we cannot resist. We are never so helpless as when we are in the midst of human affairs. We have great words which we utter proudly. We talk of Civilization, Christianity, Democracy, and the like. What miserable failures they all are. Civilization has failed to produce contentment. It has failed to secure perfect justice between man and man, or to satisfy the hungry with bread. Christianity after all these centuries of preaching leaves mankind as we see it to-day—an armed camp, nation fighting nation, class warring against class. The democratic movement about which we hear so much is equally unsuccessful. After its brilliant promises it leaves us helpless against the passion and stupidity of the mob. Popular education adds to the tribulations of society. It rapidly increases the number of the discontented. The half-educated are led astray by quacks and demagogues who flourish mightily. The higher technical education increases that intellectual proletariat which Bismarck saw to be a peril. Science, which once was hailed as a deliverer, is now perceived to bring only the disillusioning knowledge of our limitations. The bankruptcy of Science follows closely upon the bankruptcy of Faith. Mechanical inventions, instead of decreasing the friction of life, enormously increase it. We are destined to be dragged along by our own machines which are to go faster and faster. Philanthropy increases the number of the unfit. The advances of medicine are only apparent, while statistics show that tuberculosis, a disease of early life, decreases, cancer and diseases of later life increase.

As for the general interest in social amelioration, that is the worst sign of all. "Coming events cast their shadows before," and we may see the shadow of the coming Revolution. Is there any symptom of decadence more sure than when the moral temperature suddenly rises above normal? Watch the clinical charts of Empire. In the period of national vigor the blood is cool. But the time arrives when the period of growth has passed. Then a boding sense comes on. The huge frame of the patient is feverish. The social conscience is sensitive. All sorts of soft-hearted proposals for helping the masses are proposed. The world rulers become too tenderhearted for their business. Then comes the end.

Read again the history of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. How admirable were the efforts of the "good emperors," and how futile! Consider again the oft-repeated story of the way the humanitarianism of Rousseau ushered in the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.

With such gloomy forebodings do the over-civilized thinkers and writers try to discourage the half-civilized and half-educated workers, who are trying to make things better. How shall we answer the prophets of ill?

Not by denying the existence of the evils they see, or the possibility of the calamities which they fear. What we object to is the mental attitude toward the facts that are discovered. The spoiled child, when it discovers something not to its liking, exaggerates the evil, and indulges its ill-temper.

The well-trained man faces the evil, studies it, measures it, and then sets to work. He is well aware that nothing human is perfect, and that to accomplish one thing is only to reveal another thing which needs to be done. There must be perpetual readjustment, and reconsideration. What was done yesterday must be done over again to-day in a somewhat different way. But all this does not prove the futility of effort. It only proves that the effort must be unceasing, and that it must be more and more wisely directed.

He compares, for example, Christianity as an ideal with Christianity as an actual achievement. He places in parallel columns the maxims of Jesus, and the policies of Christian nations and the actual state of Christian churches. The discrepancy is obvious enough. But it does not prove that Christianity is a failure; it only proves that its work is unfinished.

A political party may adopt a platform filled with excellent proposals which if thoroughly carried out would bring in the millennium. But it is too much to expect that it would all be accomplished in four years. At the end of that period we should not be surprised if the reformers should ask for a further extension of time.

The spoiled children of civilization eliminate from their problem the one element which is constant and significant—human effort. They forget that from the beginning human life has been a tremendous struggle against great odds. Nothing has come without labor, no advance has been without daring leadership. New fortunes have always had their hazards.

Forgetting all this, and accepting whatever comforts may have come to them as their right, they are depressed and discouraged by their vision of the future with its dangers and its difficulties. They habitually talk of the civilized world as on the brink of some great catastrophe which it is impossible to avoid. This gloomy foreboding is looked upon as an indication of wisdom.

It should be dismissed, I think, as an indication of childish unreason, unworthy of any one who faces realities. It is still true that "the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

The notion that coming events cast shadows before is a superstition. How can they? A shadow must be the shadow of something. The only events that can cast a shadow are those which have already taken place. Behind them is the light of experience, shining upon actualities which intercept its rays.

The shadows which affright us are of our own making. They are projections into the future of our own experiences. They are sharply denned silhouettes, rather than vague omens. When we look at them closely we can recognize familiar features. We are dealing with cause and effect. What is done foreshadows what remains to be done. Every act implies some further acts as its results. When a principle is recognized its practical applications must follow. When men begin to reason from new premises they are bound to come to new conclusions.

It is evident that in the last half-century enough discoveries have been made to keep us busy for a long time. Every scientific advance upsets some custom and interferes with some vested interest. You cannot discover the truth about tuberculosis without causing a great deal of trouble to the owners of unsanitary dwellings. Some of them are widows whose little all is invested in this kind of property. The health inspectors make life more difficult for them.

Scholarly research among ancient manuscripts is the cause of destructive criticism. The scholar with the most peaceable intentions in the world disturbs some one's faith. His discovery perhaps involves the reconstruction of a whole system of philosophy.

A law is passed. The people are pleased with it, and then forget all about it. But by and by a conscientious executive comes into office who thinks it his duty to enforce the law. Such accidents are liable to happen in the most good-humored democracy. When he tries to enforce it there is a burst of angry surprise. He is treated as a revolutionist who is attacking the established order. And yet to the moderately philosophic observer the making of the law and its enforcement belong to the same process. The difficulty is that though united logically they are often widely separated chronologically.

The adjustment to a new theory involves changes in practice. But the practical man who has usually little interest in new theories is surprised and angry when the changes come. He looks upon them as arbitrary interferences with his rights.

Even when it is admitted that when considered in a large way the change is for the better, the question arises, Who is to pay for it? The discussion on this point is bound to be acrimonious, as we are not saints and nobody wants to pay more than his share of the costs of progress. Even the price of liberty is something which we grumble over.

You have noticed how it is when a new boulevard is laid in any part of the city. There is always a dispute between the municipality and the abutters. Should the abutters be assessed for betterments or should they sue for damages? Usually both actions are instituted. The cost of such litigation should be included in the price which the community pays for the improvement.

If people always knew what was good for them and acted accordingly, this would be a very different world, though not nearly so interesting. But we do not know what is good for us till we try; and human life is spent in a series of experiments. The experiments are costly, but there is no other way of getting results. All that we can say to a person who refuses to interest himself in these experiments, or who looks upon all experiments as futile which do not turn out as he wished, is that his attitude is childish. The great commandment to the worker or thinker is,—Thou shalt not sulk.

* * * * *

Sulking is no more admirable in those of great reputation than it is in the nursery. Thackeray declared that, in his opinion, "love is a higher intellectual exercise than hate." And looked at as an exercise of mental power courage must always be greater than the most highly intellectualized form of fear or despair.

I cannot take with perfect seriousness Matthew Arnold's oft-quoted lines:—

"Achilles ponders in his tent, The kings of modern thought are dumb. Silent they are, though not content, And wait to see the future come. They have the grief men had of yore, But they contend and cry no more."

If that is ever the attitude of the best minds, it is only a momentary one of which they are quickly ashamed. Achilles sulked in his tent when he was pondering not a big problem, but a small grievance. The kings of modern thought who are described seem like kings out of a job. We are inclined to turn from them to the intellectual monarchs de facto. They are the ones who take up the hard job which the representatives of the old regime give up as hopeless. For when the king has abdicated and contends no more—Long live the King!

The real thinkers of any age do not remain long in a blue funk. They always find something important to think about. They always point out something worth doing. They cannot passively wait to see the future come. They are too busy making it.

Matthew Arnold struck a truer note in Rugby Chapel. The true leaders of mankind can never be mere intellectualists. There must be a union of intellectual and moral energy like that which he recognized in his father. To the fainting, dispirited race,—

"Ye like angels appear, Radiant with ardour divine, Beacons of hope, ye appear! Languor is not in your heart, Weakness is not in your word, Weariness not on your brow; Ye alight in our van: at your voice Panic, despair, flee away."

When those whom we have looked upon as our intellectual leaders grow disheartened, we must remember that a lost leader does not necessarily mean a lost cause. When those whom we had called the kings of modern thought are dumb, we can find new leadership. "Change kings with us," replied an Irish officer after the panic of the Boyne; "change kings with us, and we will fight you again."



ON REALISM AS AN INVESTMENT

From a Real-Estate Dealer to a Realistic Novelist

Dear Sir:—

I have been for some time interested in your projects for the improvement of literature. When I saw your name in the newspapers, I looked you up in "Who's Who," and found that your rating is excellent What pleased me was the bold way you attacked the old firms which have been living on their reputations. The way you showed up Dickens, Thackeray & Co. showed that you know a thing or two. As for W. Scott and the other speculators who have been preying on the credulity of the public, you gave them something to think about. You showed conclusively that instead of dealing in hard facts, they have been handing out fiction under the guise of novels.

Our minds run in the same channel: you deal in reality and I deal in realty, but the principle is the same. I inclose some of the literature which I am sending out. You see, I warn people against investing in stocks and bonds. These are mere paper securities, which take to themselves wings and fly away. But if you can get hold of a few acres of dirt, there you are. When a panic comes along, and Wall Street goes to smash, you can sit on your front porch in South Canaan without a care. You have your little all in something real.

You followed the same line of argumentation. You showed that there was nothing imaginative about your work. You could give a warranty deed for every fact which you put on the market. I was so pleased with your method that I bought a job lot of your books, so that I could see for myself how you conducted your business. Will you allow me, as one in the same line, to indulge in a little criticism? I am afraid that you are making the same mistake I made when I first went into real estate. I was so possessed with the idea of the value of land that I became "land poor." It strikes me that a novelist may become reality poor in the same way; that is, by investing in a great many realities that are not worth what he pays for them.

You see, there is a fact which we do not mention in our circulars. There is a great deal of land lying out of doors. Some land is in great demand, and the real trick is to find out what that land is. You can't go out on the plains of Wyoming and give an acre of land the same value which an acre has in the Wall Street district. I speak from experience, having tried to convince the public that if the acres are real, the values I suggested must be real also. People wouldn't believe me, and I lost money.

And the same thing is true about improvements. They must be related to the market value of the land on which they are placed. A forty-story building at Goshenville Corners would be a mistake. There is no call for it.

This is the mistake which I fear you have been making. Your novel is a carefully prepared structure, and must have cost a great deal, but it is built on ground which is not worth enough to justify the investment. It has not what we call "site value." You yourself declare that you have no particular interest in the characters you describe at such length. All that you have to say for them is that they are real. It is as if I were to put up an expensive apartment-house on a vacant lot I have at North Ovid. North Ovid is real, and so would be the apartment-house; but what of it?

There are ninety millions of people in this country, all with characters which might be carefully studied, if we had time. But we haven't the time. So we have to choose our intimates. We prefer to know those who seem to us most worth knowing. You should remember that the novelist has no monopoly on realism. The newspapers are full of all sorts of realities. The historian is a keen competitor.

Do you know that when I went to the bookstore to get your works I fell in with a book on Garibaldi by a man named Trevelyan. When I got home I sat down with it and couldn't let it go. Garibaldi was all the time doing things, which you never allow your characters to do because you think they would not be real. He was acting in the most romantic and heroic manner possible. And his Thousand trooped after him as gayly as if they were in a melodrama. And yet I understand that Garibaldi was a real person, and that his exploits can be authenticated.

The competition in your line of business is fierce. You try to hold the reader's attention to the states of mind of a few futile persons who never did anything in particular that would make people want to know them exhaustively. And then along comes the historian who tells all about some one who does things they are interested in.

You can't wonder at the result. People who ought to be interested in fiction are carried away by biography, and the chances are that some of them will never come back. When they once get a taste for highly spiced intellectual victuals, you can't get them to relish the breakfast food you set before them. It seems to them insipid.

I know what you will say about Garibaldi. He was not your kind. You wouldn't touch such a character if it was offered to you at a bargain. After looking over that expedition to Sicily you would say that there was nothing in it for you. The motives weren't complicated enough. It was just plain heroics. You don't care so much for passions as for problems. You want something to analyze.

Well, what do you say to Cavour? When I was deep in Garibaldi I found I couldn't understand what he was driving at without knowing something about Cavour who was always mixed up with what was going on in that section of the world.

So I took up a Life of Cavour by a man named Thayer. It's the way I have; one thing suggests another. Once I went up to Duluth and invested in some corner lots on Superior Street. That suggested Superior City, just across the river. The two towns were running each other down at a great rate just then, so I stopped at West Superior to see what it had to say for itself. The upshot of the matter was that I sized up the situation about like this. A big city has got to grow up at the head of Lake Superior. If Duluth grows as much as it thinks it will, it's bound to take in Superior. And if Superior grows as much as it thinks it will, it can't help taking in Duluth. So I concluded that the best thing for me was to take a flier in both.

When I saw what a big proposition the Unification of Italy was, I knew that there was room for the development of some mighty interesting characters before they got through with the business. So I plunged into the Life of Cavour, and I've never regretted it.

Talk about problems! That hero of yours in your last book—I know you don't believe in heroes,—at any rate, the leading man—was an innocent child walking with his nurse along Easy Street, when compared with Cavour. Cavour had fifty problems at the same time, and all of them were insoluble to every one except himself.

His project, as I have just told you, was the unification of Italy. But he hadn't any regulated monopoly in the business. A whole bunch of unifiers were ahead of him; each one of them was trying to unify Italy in his own way. They were all working at cross-purposes.

Now Cavour didn't try, as you might have expected, to reconcile these people. He saw that it couldn't be done. He didn't mind their hating one another; when they got too peaceable he would make an occasion for them to hate him. He kept them all irreconcilably at work, till, in spite of themselves, they got to working together. And when they began to do that, Cavour would encourage them in it. As long as they were all working for Italy he didn't care what they thought of each other or of him. He had his eye on the main chance—for Italy.

I notice that in your novel, when your man got into trouble he threw up the sponge. That rather turned me against him and I wished I hadn't wasted so much time on his affairs. That wasn't the way with Thayer's hero. One of the largest deals Cavour ever made was with Napoleon III, who at that time had the reputation of being the biggest promoter of free institutions in Europe. He was a regular wizard in diplomacy. Whatever he said went. You see they hadn't realized then that he was doing business on borrowed capital.

Well, Napoleon agreed to underwrite, for Cavour, the whole project of Italian Unity. Everybody thought it was going through all right, when suddenly Napoleon, from a place called Villafranca, wired that the deal was off.

That floored Cavour. He was down and out. He couldn't realize ten cents on the dollar on his securities. If he had been like your man, Thayer would have had to bring his book to an end with that chapter. He would have left the reader plunged in gloom.

Cavour was mad for awhile and went up to Switzerland to cool off. Thayer describes the way he went up to a friend's house, near Lake Geneva, with his coat on his arm. "Unannounced, he strode into the drawing-room, threw himself into an easy-chair, and asked for a glass of iced water."

Then he poured out his wrath over the Villafranca incident, but he didn't waste much time over that. In a few moments he was enthusiastically telling of the new projects he had formed. "We must not look back, but forward," he told his friends. "We have followed one road. It is blocked. Very well, we will follow another."

That's the kind of man Cavour was. You forgot that he was a European statesman. When you saw him with his coat off, drinking ice-water and talking about the future, you felt toward him just as you would toward a first-rate American who was of Presidential size.

Now, I'm not saying that there's any more realism to the square inch in a Life of Cavour than in a Life of Napoleon III. It would take as much labor on the part of a biographer to tell what Napoleon III really was as to tell what Cavour really was—perhaps more. But you come up against the law of supply and demand. You can't get around that. There isn't much inquiry for Napoleon, now that his boom is over.

The way Thayer figured it was, I suppose, something like this. It would take eight or ten years to assemble the materials for a first-rate biography such as he wished to make. If he chose Napoleon there would be steady deterioration in the property, and when the improvements were put on there would be no demand. If he put the same work on Cavour, he would get the unearned increment. I think he showed his sense.

Of course the biographer has the advantage of you in one important particular. He knows how his story is coming out In a way, he's betting on a certainty. Now you, as I judge, don't know how your story is coming out, and if it doesn't come out, all you have to do is to say that is the way you meant it to be. You cut off so many square feet of reality, and let it go at that. Now that is very convenient for you, but from the reader's point of view, it's unsatisfactory. It mixes him up, and he feels a grudge against you whenever he thinks how much better he might have spent his time than in following a plot that came to nothing. You see you are running up against that same law of supply and demand. There are so many failures in the world that the market is overstocked with them. There is a demand for successes.

When I was in an old house which I took on the foreclosure of a mortgage the other day, I came upon a little old novel, of a hundred years ago. It was the sentimental kind that you despise. It was called "Alonzo and Melissa," which was enough to condemn it in your eyes. But the preface seemed to me to have some sense.

The author says: "It is believed that this story contains no indecorous stimulants, nor is it filled with inexplicated incidents imperceptible to the understanding. When anxieties have been excited by involved and doubtful events, they are afterwards elucidated by their consequences. In this the writer believes that he has generally copied Nature."

I have a feeling that those inexplicated incidents in your novel might have been elucidated by their consequences if you had chosen a person whose actions were of the kind to have some important consequences. In tying up to an inconsequential person you lost that chance.

I don't mean to discourage you, because I believe you have it in you to make a novel that would be as interesting as half the biographies that are written. But you must learn a trick from the successful biographers, and not invest in second-rate realities. The best is none too good. You have to exercise judgment in your initial investment.

Now, if I were going to build a realistic novel, and had as much skill in detail as you have, and as much intellectual capital to invest, I would go right down to the business centre, so to speak, and invest in a really valuable piece of reality; and then I would develop it. The first investment might seem pretty steep, but it would pay in the end. If you could get a big man, enthusiastic over a big cause, in conflict with big forces, and bring in a lot of worth-while people to back him up, and then bring the whole thing to some big conclusion, you would have a novel that would be as real as the biographies I have been reading, and as interesting. I think it would be worth trying.

Respectfully yours,

R.S. LANDMANN.

P.S. If you don't feel that you can afford to make such a heavy investment as I have suggested, why don't you put your material into a short story?



TO A CITIZEN OF THE OLD SCHOOL

Our talk last night set me to thinking. It was the first time during all the years of our acquaintance that I had ever heard you speak in a discouraged tone. You have always been healthy to a fault, and your good-humor has been contagious. Especially has it been pleasant to hear you talk about the country and its Manifest Destiny.

I remember, some years ago, how merrily you used to laugh about the "calamity-howler," whose habitat at that time was Kansas. The farmers of Kansas were not then as prosperous as they are now. When several bad years came together they didn't like it, and began to make complaints. Their raucous cries you found very amusing.

The calamity-howler, being ignorant of the laws of political economy and of the conditions of progress, did not take his calamities in the spirit in which they were offered to him by the rest of the country. He did not find satisfaction in the thought that other people were prosperous though he was not. Instead of acting reasonably and voting the straight ticket from motives of party loyalty, he raised all sorts of irrelevant issues. He treated Prosperity as if it were a local issue, instead of a plank in the National Platform.

Now, all this was opposed to your good-natured philosophy of progress. You were eminently practical, and it was a part of your creed never to "go behind the returns." As to Prosperity, it was "first come, first served." In this land of opportunity the person who first sees an opportunity should take it, asking no questions as to why he came by it. It is his by right of discovery.

You were always a great believer in the good old American doctrine of Manifest Destiny. This was a big country and destined to grow bigger. To you bigness was its own excuse for being. Optimism was as natural as breathing. It was manifest destiny that cities and corporations and locomotives and armies and navies and national debts and daily newspapers, with their Sunday supplements, and bank clearances and tariffs and insurance companies and the price of living should go up. It was all according to a beautiful natural law, "as fire ascending seeks the sun." Besides these things, it was manifest destiny that other things not so good should grow bigger also,—graft and slums and foolish luxury. They were all involved in the increasing bigness of things.

Sometimes you would grumble about them, but in a good-natured way, as one who recognized their inevitability. Just as you said, boys will be boys, so you said, politicians will be politicians, and business is business. If one is living in a growing country he must not begrudge the cost of the incidentals.

In your talk there was a cheerful cynicism which amazed the slower-witted foreigner. You talked of the pickings and stealings of your elected officers as you would of the pranks of a precocious youngster. It was all a part of the day's growth. Yet you were really public-spirited. You would have sprung to arms in a moment if you had thought that your country was in danger or that its institutions were being undermined.

Your good-natured tolerance was a part of your philosophy of life. It was bound up in your triumphant Americanism. You were a hero-worshipper, and you delighted in "big men." The big men who gained the prizes were efficient and unscrupulous and unassuming; that is, they never assumed to be better than their neighbors. They looked ahead, they saw how things were going, and went with them. And on the whole, things, you believed, were going well. Though they were not scrupulously just, these big men were generous, and were willing to give away what they had acquired. Though grasping, they were not avaricious. They grasped things with the strong prehensile grasp of the infant, rather than with the clutch of the miser. They took them because they were there, and not because they had any well-defined idea as to whether they belonged to them or not.

These big men were very likable. They were engrossed in big projects, and they were doing necessary work in the development of the country. They naturally took the easiest and most direct methods to get at results. They would not go out of the way to corrupt a legislature any more than they would go out of the way to find a range of mountains. But if the mountain stood in the way of the railroad, they would go through it regardless of expense. If the legislature was in their way, they would deal with it as best they could. They were willing to pay what it cost to accomplish a purpose which they believed was good.

Their attitude toward the Public was one which you did not criticize, for it seemed to you to be reasonable. The Public was an abstraction, like Nature. We are all under the laws of Nature. But Nature doesn't mind whether we consciously obey or not. She goes her way, and we go ours. We get all she will let us have. So with the Public. The Public was not regarded as a person or as an aggregate of persons, it was the potentiality of wealth. They never thought of the Public as being starved or stunted, or even as being seriously inconvenienced because of what they took from it, any more than they thought of Nature being the poorer because of the electricity which they induced to run along their wires. A public franchise was a plum growing on a convenient tree. A wise man would wait till it was ripe and then, when no one was looking, would pick it for himself The whole transaction was a trial of wits between rival pickers. A special privilege, according to this view, involved no special obligations; it was a reward for special abilities. Once given, it was property to be enjoyed in perpetuity.

This was the code of ethics which you, in common with multitudes of American citizens, accepted. You have yourself prospered. Indeed, things had gone so well with you in this best of all countries that any fundamental change seemed unthinkable.

But that a change has come seems evident from your conversation last night. All that fine optimism which your friends have admired seemed to have deserted you. There was a querulous note which was strangely out of keeping with your usual disposition. It was what you have been accustomed to stigmatize as un-American. When you discussed the present state of the country, you talked—you will pardon me for saying it—for all the world like a calamity-howler.

The country, you said, is in a bad way, and it must be awakened from its lethargy. After a period of unexampled prosperity and marvelous development, something has happened. Just what it is you don't really know, but it's very alarming. Instead of working together for Prosperity, the people are listening to demagogues, and trying all sorts of experiments, half of which you are sure are unconstitutional. The captains of industry who have made this the biggest country in the world are thwarted in their plans for further expansion.

There are people who are criticizing the courts, and there are courts which are criticizing business enterprises that they don't understand. There are so-called experts—mere college professors—who are tinkering the tariff. There are over-zealous executives who are currying favor with the crowd by enforcing laws which are well enough on the statute books, but which were never meant to go further. As if matters were not bad enough already, there are demagogues who are stirring up class feeling by proposing new laws. Party loyalty is being undermined, and the new generation doesn't half understand the great issues which have been settled for all time. It is rashly interested in new issues. For the life of you, you say, you can't understand what these issues are.

New and divisive questions which lead only to faction are propounded so that the voters are confused. The great principle of Representative Government, on which the Republic was founded, is being attacked. Instead of choosing experienced men to direct public policy, there is an appeal to the passions of the mob. The result of all this agitation is an unsettlement that paralyzes business. The United States is in danger of losing the race for commercial supremacy. Germany will forge ahead of us. Japan will catch us. Socialism and the Yellow Peril will be upon us. The Man on Horseback will appear, and what shall we do then?

I did not understand whether you looked for these perils to come together, or whether they were to appear in orderly succession. But I came to the conclusion that either the country is in a bad way, or you are. You will pardon me if I choose the latter alternative, for I too am an optimistic American, and I like to choose the lesser of two evils. If there is an attack of "hysteria," I should like to think of it as somewhat localized, rather than having suddenly attacked the whole country.

Now, my opinion is that the American people were never minding their own business more good-humoredly and imperturbably than at the present moment. They have been slowly and silently making up their minds, and now they are beginning to express a deliberate judgment. What you take to be the noise of demagogues, I consider to be the sober sense of a great people which is just finding adequate expression.

You seem to be afraid of an impending revolution, and picture it as a sort of French Revolution, a destructive overturn of all existing institutions. But may not the revolution which we are passing through be something different,—a great American revolution, which is being carried through in the characteristic American fashion?

Walt Whitman expresses the great characteristic of American history: "Here is what moves in magnificent masses careless of particulars."

It is this mass movement, slow at first, but swift and irresistible when the mass has come to consciousness of its own tendency, which has always confounded astute persons who have been interested only in particulars. It is a movement like that of the Mississippi at flood-time. The great river flows within its banks as long as it can. But the time comes when the barriers are too frail to hold back the mighty waters. Then the river makes, very quickly, a channel for itself. You cannot understand what has happened till you take into account the magnitude of the river itself.

Now, the successful man of affairs, who has been intent on the incidents of the passing day, is often strangely oblivious of the mass movements. You, for example, are disturbed by the unrest which is manifest, and you look for some one whom you can blame for the disturbance. But perhaps no one is to blame.

I think that what is happening may be traced to a sufficient cause. We are approaching the end of one great era in American history and we are preparing, as best we may, for a new era. The consciousness of the magnitude of the change has come to us rather suddenly. One big job which has absorbed the energies and stimulated the ambition of Americans for three hundred years is practically finished. Some work still remains to be done on it, but it no longer demands the highest ability. The end is in sight.

This work has been the settlement of a vast territory, lying between the Atlantic and Pacific, with a population of white men. It was a task so big in itself that it fired the imagination and developed that peculiar type of character which we call American. In its outlines the task was so broad and simple that it could be comprehended by the most ordinary intelligence. It was so inevitable that it impressed upon all those engaged in it the belief in Manifest Destiny.

What has been treated by incompetent critics as mere boastfulness has in reality been practical sagacity and foresight. Sam Slick was only expressing a truth when he said, "The Yankees see further than most folks." This was not because of any innate cleverness but because of their advantage in position. Americans have had a more unobstructed view of the future than had the people of the overcrowded Old World. The settlers on the shores of the Atlantic had behind them a region which belonged to them and their children. They soon became aware of the riches of this hinterland and of its meaning for the future. This vast region must be settled. Roads must be built over the mountains, the forests must be felled, mines must be opened up, farms must be brought under the plow, great cities must be built by the rivers and lakes, there must be schools and churches and markets established where now the tribes of Indians roam. The surplus millions of Europe must be transported to this wilderness.

It was a big task and yet a simple one. The movement was as obvious as that of Niagara—Niagara is wonderful but inevitable. A great deal of water flowing over a great deal of rock, that is all there is of it. The destiny of America was equally obvious from the beginning. Here was a great deal of land which was destined to be inhabited by a great many people. It didn't matter very much what kind of people they were so that they were healthy and industrious. The greatness of the country was assured if only there were enough of them.

From the very first the future greatness of the land was seen by open-eyed explorers. They all were able to appreciate it. Captain John Smith does not compare Virginia with Great Britain; he compares it to the whole of Europe. After mentioning the natural resources of each country, he declares that the new land had all these and more, and needed only men to develop them. And Captain John Smith's forecast has proved to be correct.

In the first half of the last century, a party of twenty young men from Cambridge, Massachusetts, started on what at that time was a great adventure, the overland journey to Oregon. The preface to Wyeth's "Oregon Expedition" throws light on the ideas of those who were not statesmen or captains of industry, but only plain American citizens sharing the vision which was common.

"The spot where our adventurer was born and grew up had many peculiar and desirable advantages over most others in the County of Middlesex. Besides rich pasturage, numerous dairies, and profitable orchards, it possessed the luxuries of well-cultivated gardens of all sorts of culinary vegetables, and all within three miles of Boston Market House, and two miles of the largest live-cattle market in New England." Besides these blessings there is enumerated "a body of water commonly called Fresh Pond."

"But Mr. Wyeth said, 'All this availeth me nothing, so long as I read books in which I find that by going only about four thousand miles overland, from the shore of our Atlantic to the shore of the Pacific, after we have there entrapped and killed the beavers and otters, we shall be able, after building vessels for the purpose, to carry our most valuable peltry to China and Cochin China, our sealskins to Japan, and our superfluous grain to various Asiatic ports, and lumber to the Spanish settlements on the Pacific; and to become rich by underworking and underselling the people of Hindustan; and, to crown all, to extend far and wide the traffic in oil, by killing tame whales on the spot, instead of sailing around the stormy region of Cape Horn.'

"All these advantages and more were suggested to divers discontented and impatient young men. Talk to them of the great labor, toil, risk, and they would turn a deaf ear to you; argue with them and you might as well reason with a snowstorm."

If you would understand the driving power of America, you must understand "the divers discontented and impatient young men" who in each generation have found in the American wilderness an outlet for their energies. In the rough contacts with untamed Nature they learned to be resourceful. Emerson declared that the country went on most satisfactorily, not when it was in the hands of the respectable Whigs, but when in the hands of "these rough riders—legislators in shirt-sleeves—Hoosier, Sucker, Wolverine, Badger—or whatever hard-head Arkansas, Oregon, or Utah sends, half-orator, half-assassin, to represent its wrath and cupidity at Washington."

The men who made America had an "excess of virility." "Men of this surcharge of arterial blood cannot live on nuts, herb-tea, and elegies; cannot read novels and play whist; cannot satisfy all their wants at the Thursday Lecture and the Boston Athenaeum. They pine for adventure and must go to Pike's Peak; had rather die by the hatchet of the Pawnee than sit all day and every day at the counting-room desk. They are made for war, for the sea, for mining, hunting, and clearing, and the joy of eventful living."

In Emerson's day there was ample scope for all these varied energies on the frontier. "There are Oregons, Californias, and Exploring Expeditions enough appertaining to America to find them in files to gnaw and crocodiles to eat."

But it must have occurred to some one to ask, "What will happen when the Oregons and Californias are filled up?" Well, the answer is, "See what is happening now." Instead of settling down to herb-tea and elegies, Young America, having finished one big job, is looking for another. The noises which disturb you are not the cries of an angry proletariat, but are the shouts of eager young fellows who are finding new opportunities. They have the same desire to do big things, the same joy in eventful living, that you had thirty years ago. Only the tasks that challenge them have taken a different form.

When you hear the words "Conservation," "Social Service," "Social Justice," and the like, you are apt to dismiss them as mere fads. You think of the catchwords of ineffective reformers whom you have known from your youth. But the fact is that they represent to-day the enthusiasms of a new generation. They are big things, with big men behind them. They represent the Oregons and Californias toward which sturdy pioneers are moving, undeterred by obstacles.

The live questions to-day concern not the material so much as the moral development of the nation. For it is seen that the future welfare of the people depends on the creation of a finer type of civic life. Is this still to be a land of opportunity? Ninety millions of people are already here. What shall be done with the next ninety millions? That wealth is to increase goes without saying. But how is it to be distributed? Are we tending to a Plutocracy, or can a real Democracy hold its own? Powerful machinery has been invented. How can this machinery be controlled and used for truly human ends? We have learned the economies that result from organization. Who is to get the benefit of these economies?

So long as such questions were merely academic, practical persons like yourself paid little attention to them. Now they are being asked by persons as practical as yourself who are intent on 'getting results.' And what is more, they employ the instruments of precision furnished by modern science.

You have been pleased over the millions of dollars which have been lavished on education. The fruits of this are now being seen. Hosts of able young men have been studying Government and Sociology and Economics and History. These have been the most popular courses in all our colleges. And they have been studied in a new way. The old formulas and the old methods have been fearlessly criticized. New standards of efficiency have been presented. The scientific method has been extended to the sphere of moral relations. It has been demonstrated to these young men that the resources of the country may be indefinitely increased by the continuous application of trained intelligence to definite ends. The old Malthusian doctrine has given way before applied science. The population may be doubled and the standard of living increased at the same time, if we plan intelligently. The expert can serve the public as efficiently as he has served private interests, if only the public can be educated to appreciate him, and persuaded to employ him.

This is what the "social unrest" means in America. It is not the unrest of the weak and the unsuccessful. It is the unrest of the strong and ambitious. You cannot still it by talking about prosperity: of course we are prosperous, after a fashion, but it is a fashion that no longer pleases us. We want something better and we propose to get it. What disturbs you is the appearance in force of a generation that has turned its attention to a new set of problems, and is attempting to solve them by scientific methods. It is believed that there is a Science of Government as well as an Art of Politics. The new generation has a respect, born of experience, for the expert. It seeks the man who knows rather than the clever manager. It demands of public servants not simply that they be honest, but that they be efficient.

Its attitude to the political boss is decidedly less respectful than that to which you were accustomed. You looked upon him as a remarkably astute character, and you attributed to him an uncanny ability to forecast the future. These young men have discovered that his ability is only a vulgar error. Remove the conditions created by public indifference and ignorance, and he vanishes. In restoring power to the people, they find that a hundred useful things can be done which the political wiseacres declared to be impossible.

When I consider the new and vigorous forces in American life I cannot agree with your apprehensions; but there is one thing which you said with which I heartily agree. You said that you wished we might settle down to sound and constructive work, and get rid of the "muck-raker."

I agree with you that the muck-raker stands in the way of large plans for betterment. But it might be well to refresh our minds in regard to what is really meant by the man with the muck-rake. He is not the man who draws our attention to abuses which can be abolished by determined effort. He is the man who apologizes for abuses that are profitable to himself. He prefers his petty interests to any ideal good. His character was most admirably drawn by Bunyan:—

"The Interpreter takes them apart again, and has them first into a room where was a man that could look no way but downwards, with a muck-rake in his hand. There stood also one over his head with a celestial crown in His hand, and proffered him that crown for his muck-rake, but the man did neither look up nor regard, but raked to himself the straws, the small sticks, and the dust of the floor.

"'Then,' said Christiana, 'I persuade myself that I know somewhat the meaning of this; for this is the figure of a man of this world, is it not, good sir?'

"'Thou hast said right,' said he....

"'Then,' said Christiana, 'O deliver me from this muck-rake.'

"'That prayer,' said the Interpreter, 'has lain by till it is almost rusty. "Give me not riches," is scarce the prayer of one in ten thousand.'"

The man with the muck-rake, then, is one who can look no way but downward, and is so intent on collecting riches for himself that he does not see or regard any higher interests. I agree with you that if we are to have any constructive work in American society the first thing is to get rid of the man with the muck-rake, and to put in his place the Man with a Vision.

THE END



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THE END