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Readings for College Composft/on
KENNETH L. KNICKERBOCKER
Pio/cssot of English Utitiftsttv of Tennessee
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY New York
Copyright
by Henry Holt and Company, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America
This book is respectfully dedicated to
those with whom I have been associ-
ated, closely or remotely, for the past
twenty years the teachers of composi-
tion and communication in the colleges
and universities of America.
To the Instructor
The idea is the thing! A student paper undisturbed by an idea
is a clod and, no matter how precise the grammar, need not have been
written. College freshmen are neither too young nor too inexperi-
enced to have ideas. Through their minds, one may be sure, pass
thoughts on many subjects, bright thoughts and dull, but all in need of
winnowing and organizing before they can be acceptably communi-
cated. Both winnowing and organizing, however, involve choice
the selection of the relevant and the rejection of the irrelevant. Choice
requires the kind of mental effort from which everyone, including
students, shrinks. When, therefore, the English instructor asks the
student to show a sample of his mental wares, the reply is too often:
"Indeed, I haven't any." It does not help matters th.u the student
feels unabashed by his blankncss. Nor does it seem to be the height
of justice though it may be the height of something for the student
with a shrug to shift the blame to his instructor!
The chief aim of this book is to remove the student's feeling that
he has nothing to say. If the selections and the editorial matter suc-
ceed in carrying out this single purpose, then the end result of a
composition course the student paper should be a more thoughtful
and, therefore, a more satisfactory performance.
Some of the selections present controversial material. No reader
will be able to agree with all the opinions set forth in this book
for the simple reason that opposing ideas have been represented when-
ever possible. I have deliberately included statements of points of
view with which I am personally in partial or total disagreement.
These statements are the devil's advocates, so to speak, and it will
be my duty and pleasure! to confound them in the classroom.
The excerpt from Marx and Engcls, for example, presents a theory
which can be refuted on strictly logical grounds. Students, I am
viii TO THE INSTRUCTOR
confident, can pick out the flaws in the communist argument; they
can see, for one thing, that a class struggle requires sharply defined
classes and that a capitalistic society tends to keep fluid the imagined
boundaries between classes. Teachers and students together can find
much more that is wrong with the Marxian doctrine. They can
combine further to examine the atheistic argument in Professor
Stace's "Man against Darkness." I have referred frequently to this
article because it represents a strong statement of an extreme point
of view. That I disagree with it that others will surely and perhaps
violently disagree with it is the best reason for including it. From
class discussions of controversial issues will come some wisdom; out
of the wisdom will come better writing.
There are, of course, numerous books of readings for college fresh-
men. They arc organized in a variety of ways : by types (short stories,
essays, drama, poetry), by forms (exposition, narration, description,
argumentation), by broad topics (Conflicts in Social Thought,
Modern Problems, The World of the Future, and the like). Some
texts provide two or more tables of contents to show how the same
materials can be fitted into different patterns. Each kind of organiza-
tion has certain advantages and, perhaps, certain disadvantages.
The organization of this text is based upon ideas. Each selection
contributes to the chapter idea so that, in effect, every chapter is a
tiny anthology of material on a restricted topic. This arrangement
offers several advantages: (i) it enables the reader to look at the
idea from two or more points of view; (2) through repetition with
a difference, it tends to make clear what may be obscure in a single
statement; (3) it demonstrates that exposition in its broad sense
includes all the types and forms of writing, even poetry.
A word of explanation is necessary about the inclusion of poetry.
Many anthologies for freshmen provide a section devoted entirely
to poems. When the time comes for studying that section, the aver-
age student groans. He may not care greatly for other types of
writing, but he is sure that poetry is difficult and that he does not like
it. If, however, poems are used with prose selections as part of the
exposition of an idea, some of the prejudice may be removed. A
TO THE INSTRUCTOR ix
colleague has described this procedure as slipping up on the students'
blind side. All is fair in love, war, and the teaching of poetry!
All selections, prose and poetry, were chosen for their clear state-
ment of an idea. The quality of the writing ranges from good to
excellent. On the average the selections are relatively short, with
the longest running to about six thousand words. Since student
papers are normally brief, it has seemed useful to provide examples
of brevity in the treatment of a topic.
Chapter length, too, has been a consideration. The reading time
for each chapter is approximately the same. Furthermore, each
chapter has been restricted to a length suitable for a single assign-
ment. Although it is not necessary to assign the whole chapter at
once, there is an obvious advantage in reading, whether in one as-
signment or more, all the materials which make up the chapter.
Editorial aids are of three kinds: (i) a brief introduction to each
chapter; (2) study aids at the end of each selection; (3) suggestions
for papers at the end of each chapter. The chapter introductions
brief the reader on the chapter idea. They provide, in the first para-
graph, a preliminary view of the idea as a whole and attempt to
start and direct the reader's thinking on the chapter theme. Alter
this orientation paragraph come explanatory comments on each
selection. For the most part these comments vary in length accord-
ing to the difficulty of the selection. It is the intention ol the intro-
ductions to encourage thoughtf ulnc&s by offering the kind of help
that the average college freshman may reasonably be expected to need.
The study aids at the end of each selection are intended to serve
three purposes: (i) to test the care with which the selection has been
read; (2) to call attention to relationships of facts and ideas within
the selection; (3) to remind the reader of facts and ideas in previous
selections which bear upon the selection being read. In addition, the
reader is frequently asked to explain or to discuss a point in the light
of his own experience. If the student answers all the questions and
follows all the directions at the end of each selection, he should be
adequately prepared to cope with the writing assignments at the
end of each chapter.
x TO THE INSTRUCTOR
The suggestions for papers at the end of each chapter are pre-
ceded by a short paragraph which reviews the chapter idea and indi-
cates in general terms what any paper on this idea will be like.
Following this are two lists of suggestions for specific papers. The
first is made up of fairly detailed questions and directions which
demand a thoughtful approach to the chapter theme. After the
student has jotted down the answers to the questions and has fol-
lowed the directions, he will have the materials for a paper. In
some instances, the organization of the paper is suggested, but for
the most part the student must do his own organizing and must
provide the title for his paper. The second list consists of titles for
papers. Each title is intended to suggest a definite approach to the
chapter theme. Although there arc approximately thirty suggestions
for papers at the end of each chapter and more than eight hundred
such suggestions in the whole book, instructors and students will
doubtless find still other suitable approaches to the chapter ideas.
The best way to use this book will be determined, of course, by
the instructor acting on his own initiative or by the instructor acting
in accordance with a departmental plan. I would, however, ofTer
this suggestion. If the class meets three times a week on the normal
Monday, Wednesday and Friday or Tuesday, Thursday and Satur-
day pattern, and if there is to be a paper each week, the I olio wing
scheme is effective: (i) at the first class meeting of the week discuss
the chapter which was assigned at the previous class meeting and
assign a paper to be written in accordance with the suggestions at
the end of the chapter or with the instructor's directions; (2) at the
second class meeting of the week, receive the papers; (3) at the third
class meeting, return the papers and assign another chapter.
In assigning a chapter, the instructor may wish to emphasize that
the chapter introduction, the questions and directions at the end of
each selection, and the suggestions for papers are an integral part
of the assignment. He probably will add his own briefing on what
the students should look for while reading the selections. A prac-
tical pattern for class discussion of the assigned chapter is provided
by the questions on the selections. All parts of the discussion should
be focused on the writing assignment. If this focus is maintained,
TO THE INSTRUCTOR xi
the question of what to write about will be at least partially solved
by the time the class discussion ends.
At this point one must assume that the student, during the time
which he has set aside for the purpose, will review the material which
bears on his topic. If he is well advised, he will write his first draft
no later than the night of the day on which the class discussion took
place. This practice will not allow his idea to cool but will allow the
first draft to do so. The paper may be put into final shape the fol-
lowing night.
At the third class period of the week, the instructor has the op-
portunity to prepare the way for the next paper by comments on
the best and worst feattires of the papers being returned. With the
assignment of the next chapter, the process begins all over again.
There is enough material in this text for a lull year's course in
composition. Fourteen chapters are available ior each semester or
nine for each quarter and one over.
Newman once observed that there are "few, indeed . . . who
can dispense with the stimulus and support ot instructors, or will
do anything at all, if leit to themselves." This text makes no pre-
tense of substituting for the instructor, but it oilers him some practi-
cal help toward stimulating a disciplined flow ot thought from his
students.
I have the pleasure now of thanking others for their considerable
help. The book itself was first suggested to me by my colleague and
very good friend, Professor John C. Hodges. His interest in the
project has been constant and his advice very use! ul. All my col-
leagues have helped directly or indirectly in iorwarding the comple-
tion of the job. I am particularly gratelul to Professoi Robert
Daniel and to Dr. Charles K. Noyes ior their painstaking reading of
the galleys. For suggesting some of the selections and ior reading
a considerable portion of the typescript, 1 am indebted to Proiessor
Bain T. Stewart. For similar services, I owe much to Professors
F. DeWolfe Miller, John Hansen, and C. P. Lee. Professor Albert
Rapp of the Classics Department and Professor Paul Soper, Head
of the Speech and Dramatics StaiT, listened with stoic patience to
xii TO THE INSTRUCTOR
much of my talk about the book and certainly earned my thanks
for that. Mrs. Mildred George and Miss Elizabeth Roberts amiably
deciphered my crabbed script and put much of it into type, a feat
gratefully acknowledged. Because she put up with much more
than crabbed script, I owe most of all to Dorothy Knickerbocker.
Knoxville, Tennessee K.L.K.
February i, 1951
Contents
I The Desire to Know i
Thomas Fuller Four Types of Students 3
Paul Gallico The Feel . ... 4
Samuel H. Scudder In the Laboratory with Agassiz . . 15
Walter Prichard Eaton The Daily Theme E\c ... 20
Robert Browning A Grammarian's Funeral ... 24
Suggestions for Papers .... 29
2. Of Myself 32
Jean Jacques Rousseau The Principle of Autobiography 33
Cornelia Otis Skinner One Day . . . 35
Mark Twain A Cub Pilot's Experience . - 37
William Wordsworth "Fair Seed-time Had My Soul" . . 44
Peter De Vries Through a Glass Darkly . . 46
Suggestions for Papers . . ... 50
3. Mischief 5^
O. Henry The Ransom of Red Ch cf 54
Richard H. Rovere Wallace 65
Suggestions for Papers 75
4. On Being Found Out 77
William Makepeace Thackeray On Being Found Out 78
Vanity Fair Contest The Most Disgraceful Thing I Ever Did 85
Aldous Huxley i. The Scandal of the Anthology 85
F. Scott Fitzgerald 2. The Invasion of the Sanctuary . . 86
Heywood Broun 3. The Episode of the Bean-Shooter . 87
Stephen Leacock 4. Larceny among Lecturers . . 89
xiv CONTENTS
G. K. Chesterton 5. The Priggish Prize Poem ... 90
Joseph Hergesheimer 6. Infamy and Deception in Venice 91
George Jean Nathan 7. It Never Can Be Told . . 92
Thomas Hardy In Church 93
Thomas Hardy At the Draper's 93
Suggestions for Papers 94
5. Perfectionists .... 97
Stefan Zweig Toscamni 98
John Galsworthy Quality 107
Alfred, Lord Tennyson St. Simeon Stylites ... 114
Robert C. Ruark Artist with Carpenter's Hands 121
I. A. Williams The Importance of Doing Things Badly 123
Suggestions for Papers 128
6. The Problem of College Athletics . . 131
Robert K. Root Sport Versus Athletics ... 132
Robert M. Hutchins Gate Receipts and Glory . . . 141
A. E. Housman To an Athlete Dying Young . . 154
Suggestions for Papers . . 155
7. Advertising and Mass Media 158
Herman Wouk Talks on Advertising: An After-dinner Ora-
tion by the Artist . .159
The Editors of The New Yorker Self-hypnotist . . 163
Paul A. Porter Radio Must Grow Up . 166
R. W. Emerson, secundus Television's Peril to Culture 176
Suggestions for Papers 180
8. War 183
Karl von Clausewitz What Is War? . .... 184
William James The Moral Equivalent of War .... 192
Suggestions for Papers . .... 206
CONTENTS xv
9. Youth and Old Age . . 209
Robert Herrick To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time 210
Matthew Arnold Growing Old . 21 1
Ralph Barton Perry Plea for an Age Movement . 213
Martin Gumpert The Rights of the Aged to Life, Liherty, and
Happiness 2u>
Robert Browning Rabbi Ben E/.ra . .22^
Suggestions for Papers . . 2^1
10. Jobs . 23*
Richard Cabot The Call of the Job . . . 234
Robert Frost Two Tramps in Mud Time . . 251
Suggestions for Papers . . . 254
//. Race Prejudice 25-
Aubrey Burns Segregation and the Church 25^
St. Clair McKelway The Touchm' Case of Mr. and Mrs. Massa 27}
William Blake The Little Black Boy 270
Suggestions for Papers . . . 278
12. Some Essentials of the Poetic Experience 2Si
Thomas De Quincey Literature ol Knowledge and Literature
of Power . .... 282
Max Eastman Poetic People . 2S7
E. B. White Obscurity in Poetry . 2S(>
Wright Thomas and S. G. Brown On Reading Poems 2<)2
Suggestions for Papers . 301
13. Melancholy Moods and Ironies . 305
Jeremy Taylor The Vanity and Shortness of Man's Life 307
Andrew Marvell To His Coy Mistress 311
William Byrd Love's Immortality 313
George Meredith Tragic Memory 314
xvi CONTENTS
Percy Bysshe Shelley Ozymandias 315
Robert Browning Earth's Immortalities 316
Carl Sandburg Cool Tombs 317
Robert Browning -Love among the Ruins 318
Matthew Arnold Dover Beach 321
John Keats Ode to a Nightingale 323
Suggestions for Papers 326
14. Freedom for A/I 329
Socrates "The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living" . . 330
John Milton Freedom to Choose 334
John Stuart Mill On Liberty ... . . 336
Arthur Hugh Clough Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth 342
Suggestions for Papers 343
15. Freedom for Teachers 346
Sidney Hook Should Communists Be Permitted to Teach? 347
Alexander Meiklejohn Should Communists Be Allowed to
Teach? . 357
H. L. Mencken In Tennessee . . 366
Suggestions for Papers .... .... 370
16. Democracy ??3
Carl L. Becker The Ideal Democracy 374
Edwin Markham The Man with the Hoe 389
Carl Sandburg The People Will Live On 391
Suggestions for Papers ... 394
17. Theory of Communism 397
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels The Class Struggle . 398
Bertrand Russell Marx and Socialist Doctrine .... 409
Suggestions for Papers 415
CONTENTS xvii
18. The Practice of Totalitarianism 418
Arthur Koestler The Arrest of Arlova and The End of Bogrov
from Darkness at Noon 420
George S. Counts and Nucia Lodge Politics and Music in the
USSR . 430
George Orwell Memory Holes 435
Suggestions for Papers . ... 446
19. God and Man 449
W. T. Stace Man against Darkness . 450
A. Cressy Morrison Seven Reasons Why a Scientist Believes in
God . . . . 465
Lon Call The Biography Cure . . 470
Alfred, Lord Tennyson Prologue, In Memoriam, A. H. H. 478
Suggestions for Papers ... . 480
20. Science Attains 4 8 3
Thomas Henry Huxley The Scientific Method . 485
The Editors of Time Steep Curve to Level Four 493
The Editors of Life The Atom: A Layman's Primer of
What the World Is Made Of 500
Suggestions for Papers .... . . . 508
2L Science Threatens .... .511
John Stuart Mill The Association of Ideas . 513
J. D. Ratcliff Learn While You Sleep 514
Aldous Huxley A Stable Society 520
James Thurber An Outline of Scientists 530
Suggestions for Papers 534
22. The Unquenchable Spark 53 8
Robert Louis Stevenson Pulvis ct Umbra 539
Bret Harte The Luck of Roaring Camp 546
xviii CONTENTS
Albert Einstein The Real Problem Is in the Hearts of Men . 557
Robert Browning Apparent Failure . . . 564
Suggestions for Papers 567
23. Best of Possible Worlds? . . . 569
Christopher Morley Exhibit Home . . . 570
Robert Browning "The Year's at the Spring" .... 571
Harry Emerson Fosdick Why Is God Silent While Evil
Rages? 572
Oliver Goldsmith Asem, an Eastern Tale 581
Bernard Mandeville An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral
Virtue . 588
Suggestions for Papers 596
24. Loue and Marriage ... .... 599
Robert Louis Stevenson On Marriage . . . 600
A. E. Housman "When I Was One-and-Twenty" . 610
Raoul de Roussy de Sales Love in America ... 611
Robert Browning A Woman's Last Word .... 623
Suggestions for Papers ... 625
25. Women 627
Arthur Schopenhauer On Women . . .... 628
John Donne "Go and Catch a Falling Star" 640
Helena Kuo American Women Are Different . . 642
James Thurber The Case against Women 647
Robert Ruark Woman the Weaker Sex? . . . .651
Suggestions for Papers . 654
26. Trailing Clouds of Glory . ... 657
J. D. Ratcliff Birth . . . ... 658
Mark Twain The Babies 66S
Henry Vaughan The Retreat . . . 672
William Wordsworth Ode: Intimations of Immortality 673
Suggestions for Papers . .... 681
CONTENTS xix
27. Education Progresses 684
Thomas Henry Huxley A Liberal Education Defined . . 685
Carleton Washburne What about Progressive Education? 689
William Bennett Munro Quack-doctoring the Colleges 698
Suggestions for Papers 707
28. What is Correct English? 710
Norman Lewis How Correct Must Correct English Be? . 712
Russell Thomas The Reason Is Because ... ... 723
John Davenport Slurvian Self-taught 726
Suggestions for Papers ... 729
Index to Authors and Titles 733
To the Student
The theory of this book is that, in spite of protests to the contrary,
you, the college student, have something to say. You may not like
to write themes, but you certainly like to air your ideas. College
is a place for doing this and for testing the worth of one's ideas. You
will be given numerous opportunities to say what you want to say
and to have what you say read with sympathetic, expert care. If
you write each paper with sincerity, you will have at the end of the
course a record of your best thinking on a variety of challenging
subjects.
As a college student, you cannot afford to be afraid of a challeng-
ing idea. Physical cowardice is bad enough, but mental cowardice is
worse. No doubt you are well stocked with favorite ideas and
beliefs. If you really think well of your favorites, you will be glad to
back them against any hostile ideas. You will expect to win much
of the time but not always. If you leave college with all your ideas
unchanged, you may feel that yours was a dubious investment in
higher education.
This book does not try to avoid controversial matters, such as
communism, race prejudice, religion, the place of women, the mean-
ing of freedom, the threat of science. You already have opinions
on most of these subjects, and your point of view will doubtless be
supported by some of the selections. Doubtless, too, some of your
most cherished beliefs will be challenged by other selections. For
example, you may be sensitive to the very word Communism. Many
people are. You will not be afraid, however, to find out what com-
munism is and to pit democratic ideas against the best it has to offer.
Another touchy subject is religion. Again, you have reasons for
believing as you do. If something you read runs counter to your
xxii TO THE STUDENT
beliefs, you will examine the new idea with the same fairness which
you would wish extended to your ideas.
If you have something to say, you will find a way to say it. Even
the mechanics of your writing spelling, the placing of commas, the
arrangement of your sentences will be improved by the desire to say
something. The selections in this book will give focus to things you
already know. The questions at the end of the selections will serve
as guides to a review of your reading. If you answer the questions,
you will have plenty of raw material from which a paper may be
fashioned. Then, at the end of each chapter, are numerous specific
suggestions for writing. These will help you to hold your idea to a
single channel. Choose and write!
Ideas for Writing
T,
he Desire to Knoiu
A
IT THE beginning of a college career, it is
no waste of time to weigh one's basic aptitude for doing college work.
The desire to know intellectual curiosity is an essential without
which a student is sure to feel a constant sense of frustration, of not
belonging to a community of seekers. College provides the broadest
opportunity for first stimulating and then providing the means for
satisfying one's urge to know.
The first selection in this chapter, written about three hundred
years ago, presents a shrewd analysis of four easily recognized types of
students, as easily recognized today as they were in the seventeenth
century. Your instructors, sooner or later, may be tempted to drop
you into one of these categories. Which, do you think, it should be ?
The other four selections are an invitation to you to assess the rela-
tive sharpness of your curiosity by measuring it against this quality
as described by a sports writer, a scientist, an author, and a scholar.
By placing the selections on curiosity first in this book, I am delib-
erately suggesting that an intellectual curiosity is the first require-
1
2 THE DESIRE TO KNOW
ment for success in your English course and, for that matter, in all
your college work.
Paul Gallico examines his responses to the numerous sensations
which are experienced by athletes. In his autobiographical essay,
which he calls "The Feel," he justifies the curiosity a specialized
sort of curiosity which drove him to participate in almost every
recognized sport. His object was to improve the quality and truth
of his work as a sports writer.
"In the Laboratory with Agassiz" is a report on curiosity directed
toward the sharpening of the power of observation. Again, as in
"The Feel," observation was a means to an end, a scientific method,
for "facts are stupid things . . . until brought into connection with
some general law."
Walter Prichard Eaton suggests that the power of observation
"comes by the grace of Heaven" and is not to be acquired. His curi-
osity, like that of Gallico and Scudder, has a practical application:
the gaining of A's at Harvard and the making of a living as a profes-
sional writer.
The journalist, the scientist, and the author make it clear that good
journalism, good science, and good writing are hardly possible with-
out the stimulus of the desire to know. Finally, Browning, the poet,
examines curiosity as a driving force in the life of a Renaissance
scholar. Browning's scholar differs from the others in that he pro-
poses no usefulness to what he is doing. He has taken all knowl-
edge as his province a goal impossible of attainment and, therefore,
in this life useless. Whereas the journalist speeds through experi-
ments in sports because "there wasn't time" to become expert, the
grammarian toils away at obscure points in Greek grammar because,
as he says, "man has forever."
The reader will note that curiosity, in its favorable sense, connotes
the presence of energy. Indeed, an apathetic curiosity would be a
contradiction in terms. Why? What, then, is meant by the phrase
"'idle curiosity"?
Four Types of Students*
Thomas Fuller
[i] ... Experienced schoolmasters may quickly make a grammar
of boys' natures, and reduce them all, saving some few exceptions,
to these general rules :
[2] (a) Those that are ingenious and industrious. The conjunc-
tion of two such planets in a youth presage much good unto him.
To such a lad a frown may be a whipping, and a whipping a death;
yea, where their master whips them once, shame whips them all the
week after. Such natures he useth with all gentleness.
[3] (b) Those that arc ingenious and idle. These think, with the
hare in the fable, that, running with snails (so they count the rest of
their schoolfellows), they shall come soon enough to the post, though
sleeping a good while before their starting. Oh, a good rod would
finely take them napping!
[4] (c) Those that are dull and diligent. Wines, the stronger they
be, the more lees they, have when they arc new. Many boys are
muddy-headed till they be clarified with age, and such afterwards
prove the best. Bristol diamonds are both bright, and squared and
pointed by nature, and yet are soft and worthless; whereas orient
ones in India are rough and rugged naturally. Hard, rugged, and
dull natures of youth acquit themselves afterwards the jewels of the
country, and therefore their dullness at first is to be borne with, if they
be diligent. That schoolmaster deserves to be beaten himself, who
beats nature in a boy for a fault. And I question whether all the
whipping in the world can make their parts, which are naturally
sluggish, rise one minute before the hour nature hath appointed.
[5] (d) Those that are invincibly dull and negligent also. Cor-
rection may reform the latter, not amend the former. All the whet-
ting in the world can never set a razor's edge on that which hath no
steel in it. Such boys he consigneth over to other professions. Ship-
wrights and boatmakers will choose those crooked pieces of timber
which other carpenters refuse. Those may make excellent merchants
and mechanics who will not serve for scholars.
* From "The Good Schoolmaster," The Holy and the Profane State, first published
in 1642.
4 THE DESIRE TO KNOW
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. In what sense does Fuller use the word grammar?
2. Define ingenious; ingenuous.
3. "The conjunction of . . . planets" refers to what "science"?
4. To what story does "the hare in the fable" refer?
5. What are lees?
6. What use does the author make of the figure of speech about
Bristol and Indian diamonds ?
7. In the last paragraph, what does steel represent?
8. What do "crooked pieces of timber" represent ?
9. How many of the four types of student will benefit from whip-
pings?
The Feel*
Paul Galileo
[i] A child wandering through a department store with its mother
is admonished over and over again not to touch things. Mother is
convinced that the child only does it to annoy or because it is a child,
and usually hasn't the vaguest inkling of the fact that Junior is "touch-
ing" because he is a little blotter soaking up information and knowl-
edge, and "feel" is an important adjunct to seeing. Adults are ex-
actly the same, in a measure, as you may ascertain when some new
gadget or article is produced for inspection. The average person says :
"Here, let me see that," and holds out his hand. He doesn't mean
"see," because he is already seeing it. What he means is that he
wants to get it into his hands and feel it so as to become better
acquainted.
[2] I do not insist that a curiosity and capacity for feeling sports is
necessary to be a successful writer, but it is fairly obvious that a man
* Reprinted from Fare well to Sport by Paul Galhco, by permission of Alfred A.
Knopf, Inc. Copyright 1938 by Paul Gallico.
PAUL GALLICO 5
who has been tapped on the chin with five fingers wrapped up in a
leather boxing glove and propelled by the arm of an expert knows
more about that particular sensation than one who has not, always
provided he has the gift of expressing himself. I once inquired of a
heavyweight prizefighter by the name of King Levinsky, in a radio
interview, what it felt like to be hit on the chin by Joe Louis, the
Xing having just acquired that experience with rather disastrous
results. Levinsky considered the matter for a moment and then re-
ported: "It don't feel like nuttin'," but added that for a long while
afterwards he felt as though he were "in a transom."
[3] I was always a child who touched things and I have always
had a tremendous curiosity with regard to sensation. If I knew what
playing a game felt like, particularly against or in the company of
experts, I was better equipped to write about the playing of it and
the problems of the men and women who took part in it. And so,
at one time or another, I have tried them all, football, baseball, boxing,
riding, shooting, swimming, squash, handball, fencing, driving, Hy-
ing, both land and sea planes, rowing, canoeing, skiing, riding a
bicycle, ice-skating, roller-skating, tennis, golf, archery, basketball,
running, both the hundred-yard dash and the mile, the high jump and
shot-put, badminton, angling, deep-sea, stream-, and surf-casting,
billiards and bowling, motorboating and wrestling, besides riding as
a passenger with the fastest men on land and water and in the air,
to see what it felt like. Most of them I dabbled in as a youngster
going through school and college, and others, like piloting a plane,
squash, fencing, and skiing, I took up after I was old enough to know
better, purely to get the feeling of what they were like.
[4] None of these things can I do well, but I never cared about
becoming an expert, and besides, there wasn't time. But there is
only one way to find out accurately human sensations in a ship two
or three thousand feet up when the motor quits, and that is actually
to experience that gone feeling at the pit of the stomach and the
sharp tingling of the skin from head to foot, followed by a sudden
amazing sharpness of vision, clear-sightedness, and coolness that you
never knew you possessed as you find the question of life or death
completely in your own hands. It is not the "you" that you know,,
6 THE DESIRE TO KNOW
but somebody else, a stranger, who noses the ship down, circles,
fastens upon the one best spot to sit down, pushes or pulls buttons to
try to get her started again, and finally drops her in, safe and sound.
And it is only by such experience that you learn likewise of the sud-
den weakness that hits you right at the back of the knees after you
have climbed out and started to walk around her and that comes
close to knocking you flat as for the first time since the engine quit its
soothing drone you think of destruction and sudden death.
[5] Often my courage has failed me and I have funked completely,
such as the time I went up to the top of the thirty-foot Olympic
diving-tower at Jones Beach, Long Island, during the competitions,
to see what it was like to dive from that height, and wound up crawl-
ing away from the edge on hands and knees, dizzy, scared, and a
little sick, but with a wholesome respect for the boys and girls who
hurled themselves through the air and down through the tough skin
of the water from that awful height. At other times sheer ignorance
of what I was getting into has led me into tight spots such as the time
I came down the Olympic ski run from the top of the Kreuzcck, six
thousand feet above Garmisch-Partenkirchen, after having been on
skis but once before in snow and for the rest had no more than a dozen
lessons on an indoor artificial slide in a New York department store.
At one point my legs, untrained, got so tired that I couldn't stem
(brake) any more, and I lost control and went full tilt and all out,
down a three-foot twisting path cut out of the side of the mountain,
with a two-thousand-foot abyss on the left and the mountain itself
on the right. That was probably the most scared I have ever been,
and I scare fast and often. I remember giving myself up for lost
and wondering how long it would take them to retrieve my body and
whether I should be still alive. In the meantime the speed of the
descent was increasing. Somehow I was keeping my feet and ne-
gotiating turns, how I will never know, until suddenly the narrow
patch opened out into a wide, steep stretch of slope with a rise at the
other end, and that part of the journey was over.
[6] By some miracle I got to the bottom of the run uninjured,
having made most of the trip down the icy, perpendicular slopes on
the flat of my back. It was the thrill and scare of a lifetime, and to
PAUL GALLICO 7
date no one has been able to persuade me to try a jump. I know when
to stop. After all, I am entitled to rely upon my imagination for
something. But when it was all over and I found myself still whole,
it was also distinctly worth while to have learned what is required of a
ski runner in the breakneck Abjahrt or downhill race, or the difficult
slalom. Five days later, when I climbed laboriously (still on skis)
halfway up that Alp and watched the Olympic downhill racers
hurtling down the perilous, ice-covered, and nearly perpendicular
Steilhang, 1 knew that I was looking at a great group ot athletes who,
for one thing, did not know the meaning of the word "fear." The
slope was studded with small pine trees and rocks, but half of the
field gained precious seconds by hitting that slope all out, with com-
plete contempt for disaster rushing up at them at a speed better than
sixty miles an hour. And when an unfortunate Czech skidded off
the course at the bottom of the slope and into a pile of rope and got
himself snarled up as helpless as a fly in a spider's web, it was a story
that I could write from the heart. I had spent ten minutes getting
.myself untangled after a fall without any rope to add to the diffi-
culties. It seems that I couldn't find where my left leg ended and
one more ski than I had originally donned seemed to be involved
somehow. Only a person who has been on those fiendish runners
knows the sensation.
[7] It all began back in 1922 when I was a cub sports-writer and
consumed with more curiosity than was good for my health. I had
seen my first professional prizefights and wondered at the curious
behavior of men under the stress of blows, the sudden checking and
the beginning of a little fall forward after a hard punch, the glazing
of the eyes and the loss of locomotor control, the strange actions of
men on the canvas after a knockdown as they struggled to regain
their senses and arise on legs that seemed to have turned into rubber.
I had never been in any bad fist fights as a youngster, though I had
taken a little physical punishment in football, but it was not enough
to complete the picture. Could one think under those conditions?
[8] I had been assigned to my first training-camp coverage, Demp-
sey's at Saratoga Springs, where he was preparing for his famous
fight with Luis Firpo. For days I watched him sag a spar boy with
8 THE DESIRE TO KNOW
what seemed to be no more than a light cuff on the neck, or pat
his face with what looked like no more than a caressing stroke of
his arm, and the fellow would come all apart at the seams and col-
lapse in a useless heap, grinning vacuously or twitching strangely.
My burning curiosity got the better of prudence and a certain re-
luctance to expose myself to physical pain. I asked Dempsey to permit
me to box a round with him. I had never boxed before, but I was
in good physical shape, having just completed a four-year stretch as
a galley slave in the Columbia eight-oared shell.
[9] When it was over and I escaped through the ropes, shaking,
bleeding a little from the mouth, with rosin dust on my pants and
a vicious throbbing in my head, I knew all that there was to know
about being hit in the prize ring. It seems that I had gone to an
expert for tuition. I knew the sensation of being stalked and pur-
sued by a relentless, truculent professional destroyer whose trade and
business it was to injure men. I saw the quick flash of the brown
forearm that precedes the stunning shock as a bony, leather-bound
fist lands on cheek or mouth. I learned more (partly from photo-
graphs of the lesson, viewed afterwards, one of which shows me
ducked under a vicious left hook, an act of which I never had the
slightest recollection) about instinctive ducking and blocking than
I could have in ten years of looking at prizefights, and I learned, too,
that as the soldier never hears the bullet that kills him, so does the
fighter rarely, if ever, see the punch that tumbles blackness over him
like a mantle, with a tearing rip as though the roof of his skull were
exploding, and robs him of his senses.
[10] There was just that a ripping in my head and then sudden
blackness, and the next thing I knew, I was sitting on the canvas
covering of the ring floor with my legs collapsed under me, grinning
idiotically. How often since have I seen that same silly, goofy look
on the faces of dropped fighters and understood it. I held onto
the floor with both hands, because the ring and the audience outside
were making a complete clockwise revolution, came to a stop, and
then went back again counter-clockwise. When I struggled to my
feet, Jack Kearns, Dempsey's manager, was counting over me, but
I neither saw nor heard him and was only conscious that I was in
PAUL GALLICO 9
a ridiculous position and that the thing to do was to get up and try
to fight hack. The floor swayed and rocked beneath me like a fish-
ing dory in an off-shore swell, and it was a welcome respite when
Dempsey rushed into a clinch, held me up, and whispered into my
ear: "Wrestle around a bit, son, until your head clears." And then
it was that I learned what those little love-taps to the back of the neck
and the short digs to the ribs can mean to the groggy pugilist more
than half knocked out. It is a murderous game, and the fighter who
can escape after having been felled by a lethal blow has my admiration.
And there, too, I learned that there can be no sweeter sound than the
bell that calls a halt to hostilities.
I ii ] From that afternoon on, also, dated my antipathy for the spec-
tator at prizefights who yells: "Come on, you bum, get up and fight!
Oh, you big quitter! Yah yellow, yah yellow!'* Yellow, eh? It is all
a man can do to get up after being stunned by a blow, much less fight
back. But they do it. And how a man is able to muster any further
interest in a combat after being floored with a blow to the pit of the
stomach will always remain to me a miracle of what the human
animal is capable of under stress.
[12] Further experiments were less painful, but equally illuminat-
ing. A couple of sets of tennis with Vinnie Richards taught me
more about what is required of a top-flight tournament tennis-player
than I could have got out of a dozen books or years of reporting
tennis matches. It is one thing to sit in a press box and write caus-
tically that Brown played uninspired tennis, or Black's court cover-
ing was faulty and that his frequent errors cost him the set. It is
quite another to stand across the net at the back of a service court
and try to get your racket on a service that is so fast that the ear
hardly detects the interval between the sound of the server's bat
hitting the ball and the ball striking the court. Tournament tennis
is a different game from week-end tennis. For one thing, in average
tennis, after the first hard service has gone into the net or out, you
breathe a sigh of relief, move up closer and wait for the cripple to
come floating over. In big-time tennis second service is practically
as hard as the first, with an additional twist on the ball.
[13] It is impossible to judge or know anything about the speed
10 THE DESIRE TO KNOW
of a fore-hand drive hit by a champion until you have had one fired
at you, or, rather, away from you, and you have made an attempt to
return it. It is then that you first realize that tennis is played more
with the head than with the arms and the legs. The fastest player
in the world cannot get to a drive to return it if he hasn't thought
correctly, guessed its direction, and anticipated it by a fraction of a
second.
[14] There was golf with Bob Jones and Gene Sarazen and Tommy
Armour, little Cruickshank and Johnny Farrcll, and Diegel and
other professionals; and experiments at trying to keep up in the water
with Johnny Weissmuller, Helen Madison, and Eleanor Holm, at-
tempts to catch football passes thrown by Benny Friedman. Nobody
actually plays golf until he has acquired the technical perfection to
be able to hit the ball accurately, high, low, hooked or faded and
placed. And nobody knows what real golf is like until he has played
around with a professional and seen him play, not the ball, but the
course, the roll of the land, the hazards, the wind, and the texture
of the greens and the fairways. It looks like showmanship when a
topflight golfer plucks a handful of grass and lets it flutter in the air,
or abandons his drive to march two hundred yards down to the green
and look over the situation. It isn't. It's golf. The average player
never knows or cares whether he is putting with or across the gram
of a green. The professional always knows. The same average
player standing on the tee is concentrated on getting the ball some-
where on the fairway, two hundred yards out. The professional
when preparing to drive is actually to all intents and purposes play-
ing his second shot. He means to place his drive so as to open up
the green for his approach. But you don't find that out until you
have played around with them when they are relaxed and not com-
peting, and listen to them talk and plan attacks on holes.
[15] Major-league baseball is one of the most difficult and precise
of all games, but you would never know it unless you went down on
the field and got close to it and tried it yourself. For instance, the
distance between pitcher and catcher is a matter of twenty paces, but
it doesn't seem like enough when you don a catcher's mitt and try to
hold a pitcher with the speed of Dizzy Dean or Dazzy Vance. Not
PAUL GALLICO 11
even the sponge that catchers wear in the palm of the hand when
working with fast-ball pitchers, and the bulky mitt are sufficient to
rob the ball of shock and sting that lames your hand unless you
know how to ride with the throw and kill some of its speed. The
pitcher, standing on his little elevated mound, looms up enormously
over you at that short distance, and when he ties himself into a coiled
spring preparatory to letting fly, it requires all your self-control not
to break and run for safety. And as for the things they can do with
a baseball, those major-league pitchers . . . ! One way of finding
out is to wander down on the field an hour or so before game-time
when there is no pressure on them, pull on the catcher's glove, and
try to hold them.
[16] I still remember my complete surprise the first time I tried
catching for a real curve-ball pitcher. He was a slim, spidery left-
hander of the New York Yankees, many years ago, by the name of
Herb Pennock. He called that he was going to throw a fast break-
ing curve and warned me to expect the ball at least two feet outside
the plate. Then he wound up and let it go, and that ball came
whistling right down the groove for the center of the plate. A novice,
I chose to believe what I saw and not what I heard, and prepared to
catch it where it was headed for, a spot which of course it never
reached, because just in front of the rubber it swerved sharply to the
right and passed nearly a yard from my glove. I never had a chance
to catch it. That way, you learn about the mysterious drop, the ball
that sails down the alley chest high but which you must be prepared
to catch around your ankles because of the sudden dip it takes at
the end of its passage as though someone were pulling it down with
a string. Also you find out about the queer fade-away, the slow
curve, the fast in- and out-shoots that seem to be timed almost as del-
icately as shrapnel, to burst, or rather break, just when they will do
the most harm namely, at the moment when the batter is swinging.
[17] Facing a big-league pitcher with a bat on your shoulder and
trying to hit his delivery is another vital experience in gaining an
understanding of the game about which you are trying to write
vividly. It is one thing to sit in the stands and scream at a batsman:
"Oh, you bum!" for striking out in a pinch, and another to stand
12 THE DESIRE TO KNOW
twenty yards from that big pitcher and try to make up your mind in a
hundredth of a second whether to hit at the offering or not, where
to swing and when, not to mention worrying about protecting your-
self from the consequences of being struck by the ball that seems to
be heading straight for your skull at an appalling rate of speed.
Because, if you are a big-league player, you cannot very well afford
to be gun-shy and duck away in panic from a ball that swerves in the
last moment and breaks perfectly over the plate, while the umpire
calls: "Strike !" and the fans jeer. Nor can you afford to take a crack
on the temple from the ball. Men have died from that. It calls for
undreamed-of niceties of nerve and judgment, but you don't find
that out until you have stepped to the plate cold a few times during
batting practice or in training quarters, with nothing at stake but
the acquisition of experience, and see what a fine case of the jumping
jitters you get. Later on, when you are writing your story, your
imagination, backed by the experience, will be able to supply a picture
of what the batter is going through as he stands at the plate in the
closing innings of an important game, with two or three men on base,
two out, and his team behind in the scoring, and fifty thousand people
screaming at him.
[18] The catching and holding of a forward pass for a winning
touchdown on a cold, wet day always makes a good yarn, but you
might get an even better one out of it if you happen to know from
experience about the elusive qualities of a hard, soggy, mud-slimed
football rifled through the air, as well as something about the ex-
quisite timing, speed, and courage it takes to catch it on a dead run,
with two or three iQo-pound men reaching for it at the same time
or waiting to crash you as soon as your fingers touch it.
[19] Any football coach during a light practice will let you go down
the field and try to catch punts, the long, fifty-yard spirals and the
tricky, tumbling end-over-enders. Unless you have had some pre-
vious experience, you won't hang on to one out of ten, besides knock-
ing your fingers out of joint. But if you have any imagination,
thereafter you will know that it calls for more than negligible nerve
to judge and hold that ball and even plan to run with it, when there
are two husky ends bearing down at full speed, preparing for a
head-on tackle.
PAUL GALLICO 13
[20] In 1932 I covered my first set of National Air Races, in Cleve-
land, and immediately decided that I had to learn how to fly to find
out what that felt like. Riding as a passenger isn't flying. Being
up there all alone at the controls of a ship is. And at the same time
began a series of investigations into the "feel" of the mechanized
sports to see what they were all about and the qualities of mentality,
nerve, and physique they called for from their participants. These
included a ride with Gar Wood in his latest and fastest speedboat,
Miss Amcnca X, in which for the first time he pulled the throttle
wide open on the Detroit River straightaway; a trip with the Indian-
apolis Speedway driver Cliff Bcrgere, around the famous brick race-
way; and a flip with Lieutenant Al Williams, one time U. S.
Schneider Cup race pilot.
[21] I was scared with Wood, who drove me at 127 miles an hour,
jounced, shaken, vibrated, choked with fumes from the exhausts, be-
hind which I sat hanging on desperately to the throttle bar, which
after a while got too hot to hold. I was on a plank between Wood
and his mechanic, Johnson, and thought that my last moment had
come. I was still more scared when ClifT Bergere hit 126 on the
Indianapolis straightaway in the tiny racing car in which I was
hopelessly wedged, and after the first couple of rounds quite resigned
to die and convinced that 1 should. But I think the most scared I
have ever been while moving fast was during a ride I took in the cab
of a locomotive on the straight, level stretch between Fort Wayne,
Indiana, and Chicago, where for a time we hit 90 miles per hour,
which of course is no speed at all. But nobody who rides in the com-
fortable Pullman coaches has any idea of the didos cut up by a loco-
motive in a hurry, or the thrill of pelting through a small town, all out
and wide open, including the crossing of some thirty or forty frogs
and switches, all of which must be set right. But that wasn't sport.
That was just plain excitement.
[22] I have never regretted these researches. Now that they are
over, there isn't enough money to make me do them again. But they
paid me dividends, I figured. During the Great Thompson Speed
Trophy race for land planes at Cleveland in 1935, Captain Roscoe
Turner was some eight or nine miles in the lead in his big golden,
low-wing, speed monoplane. Suddenly, coming into the straight-
14 THE DESIRE TO KNOW
away in front of the grandstands, buzzing along at 280 miles an hour
like an angry hornet, a streamer of thick, black smoke burst from
the engine cowling and trailed back behind the ship. Turner pulled
up immediately, using his forward speed to gain all the altitude pos-
sible, turned and got back to the edge of the field, still pouring out
that evil black smoke. Then he cut his switch, dipped her nose down,
landed with a bounce and a bump, and rolled up to the line in a
perfect stop. The crowd gave him a cheer of sympathy because he
had lost the race after having been so far in the lead that had he con-
tinued he could not possibly have been overtaken.
[23] There was that story, but there was a better one too. Only
the pilots on the field, all of them white around the lips and wiping
from their faces a sweat not due to the oppressive summer heat, knew
that they were looking at a man who from that time on, to use their
own expression, was living on borrowed time. It isn't often when
a Thompson Trophy racer with a landing speed of around eighty to
ninety miles an hour goes haywire in the air, that the pilot is able to
climb out of the cockpit and walk away from his machine. From
the time of that first burst of smoke until the wheels touched the
ground and stayed there, he was a hund red-to-one shot to live. To
the initiated, those dreadful moments were laden with suspense and
horror. Inside that contraption was a human being who any moment
might be burned to a horrible, twisted cinder, or smashed into the
ground beyond all .recognition, a human being who was cool, gallant,
and fighting desperately. Every man and woman on the field who
had ever been in trouble in the air was living those awful seconds with
him in terror and suspense. I, too, was able to experience it. That
is what makes getting the "feel" of things distinctly worth while.
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. Why is this article called "The Feel"?
2. Who is called "a little blotter" ? Why ?
3. What is "a transom"? What did Levinsky mean to say?
4. From the list of sports in paragraph 3 has Gallico omitted any
activity which may be classed as a sport?
SAMUEL H. SCUDDER 15
5. Why didn't the author care about being an expert at sports?
What expertness did he want?
6. Was Gallico a fearless man?
7. What was the author's first attempt to gain "the feel" of a sport?
8. Did Gallico want to repeat his experience once he had "the feel" ?
9. What type of student, according to the classification in "Four
Types of Student" (see previous selection), would you say Gallico
was ?
10. Was there a focus to Gallico's curiosity or was it undirected?
In the Laboratory tuith Agassfz*
Samuel H. Scudder
fi] It was more than fifteen years ago |from 1874] that I entered
the laboratory of Professor Agassi z, and told him I had enrolled my
name in the Scientific School as a student of natural history. He
asked me a few questions about my object in coming, my antecedents
generally, the mode in which I afterwards proposed to use the knowl-
edge I might acquire, and, finally, whether I wished to study any
special branch. To the latter I replied that, while I wished to be
well grounded in all departments of zoology, I purposed to devote
myself specially to insects.
[2] "When do you wish to begin ?" he asked.
[3] "Now," I replied.
[4 | This seemed to please him, and with an energetic "Very well!"
he reached from a shelf a huge jar of specimens in yellow alcohol.
[5] "Take this fish," said he, "and look at it; we call it a hacmulon;
by and by I will ask what you have seen."
[6] With that he left me, but in a moment returned with explicit
instructions as to the care of the object entrusted to me.
[7] "No man is fit to be a naturalist," said he, "who does not know
how to take care of specimens."
* From Every Sat nt day, XVI (April 4, 1874), 369-370.
16 THE DESIRE TO KNOW
[8] I was to keep the fish before me in a tin tray, and occasionally
moisten the surface with alcohol from the jar, always taking care to
replace the stopper tightly. Those were not the days of ground-glass
stoppers and elegantly shaped exhibition jars; all the old students will
recall the huge neckless glass bottles with their leaky, wax-besmeared
corks, half eaten by insects, and begrimed with cellar dust. Ento-
mology was a cleaner science than ichthyology, but the example of
the Professor, who had unhesitatingly plunged to the bottom of the
jar to produce the fish, was infectious; and though this alcohol had
a "very ancient and fishlike smell, 1 ' I really dared not show any aver-
sion within these sacred precincts, and treated the alcohol as though
it were pure water. Still I was conscious of a passing feeling of dis-
appointment, for gazing at a fish did not commend itself to an ardent
entomologist. My friends at home, too, were annoyed when they
discovered that no amount of eau-de-Cologne would drown the per-
fume which haunted me like a shadow.
[9] In ten minutes I had seen all that could be seen in that fish, and
started in search of the Professor who had, however, left the Mu-
seum; and when I returned, after lingering over some of the odd
animals stored in the upper apartment, my specimen was dry all over.
I dashed the fluid over the fish as if to resuscitate the beast from a
fainting-fit, and looked with anxiety for a return of the normal sloppy
appearance. This little excitement over, nothing was to be done
but to return to a steadfast gaze at my mute companion. Half an
hour passed an hour another hour; the fish began to look loath-
some. I turned it over and around; looked it in the face ghastly;
from behind, beneath, above, sideways, at a three-quarters' view
just as ghastly. I was in despair; at an early hour I concluded that
lunch was necessary; so, with infinite relief, the fish was carefully re-
placed in the jar, and for an hour I was free.
[10] On my return, I learned that Professor Agassiz had been at
the Museum, but had gone, and would not return for several hours.
My fellow-students were too busy to be disturbed by continued con-
versation. Slowly I drew forth that hideous fish, and with a feeling
of desperation again looked at it. I might not use a magnify ing-
glass; instruments of all kinds were interdicted. My two hands, my
SAMUEL H. SCUDDER 17
two eyes, and the fish: it seemed a most limited field. I pushed my
finger down its throat to feel how sharp the teeth were. I began to
count the scales in the different rows, until I was convinced that that
was nonsense. At last a happy thought struck me I would draw
the fish; and now with surprise I began to discover new features in
the creature. Just then the Professor returned,
[n] "That is right," said he; "a pencil is one of the best of eyes.
I am glad to notice, too, that you keep your specimen wet, and your
bottle corked."
[12] With these encouraging words, he added :
[13] "Well, what is it like?"
[14] He listened attentively to my brief rehearsal of the structure
of parts whose names were still unknown to me: the fringed gill-
arches and movable operculum; the pores of the head, fleshy lips and
hdless eyes; the lateral line, the spmous fins and forked tail; the com-
pressed and arched body. When 1 had finished, he waited as if ex-
pecting more, and then, with an air of disappointment:
[15] "You have not looked very carefully; why," he continued more
earnestly, "you haven't even seen one of the most conspicuous features
of the animal, which is as plainly before your eyes as the fish itself;
look again, look again!" and he left me to my misery.
[i6| I was piqued; I was mortified. Still more of that wretched
fish! But now I set myself to my task with a will, and discovered
one new thing after another, until I saw how just the Professor's
criticism had been. The afternoon passed quickly; and when, toward
its close, the Professor inquired:
[17] "Do you see it yet?"
[18] "No," I replied, "I am certain I do not, but I see how little I
saw before."
[19] "That is next best," said he, earnestly, "but I won't hear you
now; put away your fish and go home; perhaps you will be ready
with a better answer in the morning. I will examine you before
you look at the fish."
[20] This was disconcerting. Not only must I think of my fish
all night, studying, without the object before me, what this unknown
but most visible feature might be; but also, without reviewing my
18 THE DESIRE TO KNOW
discoveries, I must give an exact account of them the next day. I
had a bad memory; so I walked home by Charles River in a dis-
tracted state, with my two perplexities.
[21] The cordial greeting from the Professor the next morning was
reassuring; here was a man who seemed to be quite as anxious as I
that I should see for myself what he saw.
[22] "Do you perhaps mean," I asked, "that the fish has sym-
metrical sides with paired organs?"
[23] His thoroughly pleased "Of course! of course!" repaid the
wakeful hours of the previous night. After he had discoursed most
happily and enthusiastically as he always did upon the impor-
tance of this point, I ventured to ask what I should do next.
[24] "Oh, look at your fish!" he said, and left me again to my own
devices. In a little more than an hour he returned, and heard my
new catalogue.
[25] "That is good, that is good!" he repeated; "but that is not all;
go on"; and so for three long days he placed that fish before my eyes,
forbidding me to look at anything else, or to use any artificial aid.
"Look, look, look," was his repeated injunction.
[26] This was the best entomological lesson I ever had a lesson
whose influence has extended to the details of every subsequent study;
a legacy the Professor has left to me, as he has left it to many others,
of inestimable value, which we could not buy, with which we cannot
part.
[27] A year afterward, some of us were amusing ourselves with
chalking outlandish beasts on the Museum blackboard. We drew
prancing starfishes; frogs in mortal combat; hydra-headed worms;
stately crawfishes, standing on their tails, bearing aloft umbrellas;
and grotesque fishes with gaping mouths and staring eyes. The
Professor came in shortly after, and was as amused as any at our
experiments. He looked at the fishes.
[28] "Haemulons, every one of them," he said; "Mr. drew
them."
[29] True; and to this day, if I attempt a fish, I can draw nothing
but haemulons.
[30] The fourth day, a second fish of the same group was placed
SAMUEL H. SCUDDER 19
beside the first, and I was bidden to point out the resemblances and
differences between the two; another and another followed, until the
entire family lay before me, and a whole legion of jars covered the
table and surrounding shelves; the odor had become a pleasant per-
fume; and even now, the sight of an old, six-inch, worm-eaten cork
brings fragrant memories.
[31] The whole group of haemulons was thus brought in review;
and, whether engaged upon the dissection of the internal organs, the
preparation and examination of the bony framework, or the descrip-
tion of the various parts, Agassiz's training in the method of observ-
ing facts and their orderly arrangement was ever accompanied by
the urgent exhortation not to be content with them.
[32] "Facts are stupid things," he would say, "until brought into
connection with some general law."
[33] At the end of eight months, it was almost with reluctance
that I left these friends and turned to insects; but what I had gained
by this outside experience has been of greater value than years of
later investigation in my favorite groups.
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. Darwin's Origin of Species was published in 1859. Could Scud-
dcr have read this before he entered "the Scientific School"?
2. What was Agassiz's first generalization about naturalists?
3. How long did Scuclder on the first occasion spend looking at the
fish? How long did he spend all told looking at the first fish?
4. Why didn't he use a microscope?
5. What helped "open" his eyes to new features of fish ?
6. Was Agassiz chiefly concerned with amassing facts?
7. What process followed the examining of the first fish?
8. Have you ever been submitted to a discipline similar to the one
described in this article?
9. Which type of student (see "Four Types of Students") would
you say Scudder probably was ?
10. What do Scudder and Gallico (see "The Feel") have in common?
11. Was Scudder's curiosity more sharply focused than Gallico's?
20 THE DESIRE TO KNOW
The Daily Theme Eye*
Walter Prichard Eaton
fi] When I was an undergraduate at Harvard our instructors in
English composition endeavored to cultivate in us a something they
termed "The Daily Theme Eye.' 1 This peculiar variety of optic, I
fear, always remained a mystery to a majority of the toilers after
clearness, force, and elegance. Clearness, force, and even a certain
degree of elegance, may he acquired; hut the daily theme eye, like the
eye for the sights of a rifle, may he discovered, developed, trained
but not acquired. It comes by the grace of Heaven, not of the Har-
vard or any other English department, and its possession is often one
of the marks of the man whose destiny compels him to write. The
Harvard English department has but given it a name; it has no local
habitation. It is found in Henry James and the police reporter of
the New York Sun; it illuminates the pages of The Harvard Monthly
(sometimes) and ot George Moore. It winks at you in Heine and
peers solemnly in Mrs. Humphry Ward. And it flashes and beams
in a little lady 1 know who has written nothing save sprightly letters
all the days of her life and never opened Hill's Rhetoric under the
shade of the Washington Elm.
[2] The fairy who stood over my cradle, though he forgot the
gold spoon and much else besides, at least bestowed the gift of this
wonderful optic. It brought me my college degree; for when other
courses failed which means when I failed in other courses there
was always English; it has brought me a living since; but more than
all else it has brought me enjoyment, it has clothed the daily walk with
interest, the teeming, noisy town with color and beauty, u the society
of my contemporaries," to use Emerson's big phrase for my little pur-
pose, with stimulating excitement. ^It has turned the panorama of
existence into a play, or rather a thousand plays, and brought after
sorrow or pain the great comfort of composition.
* From The Atlantic Monthly, XCIX (March 1907), 427-429. Reprinted by per-
mission of The Atlantic Monthly.
WALTER PRICHARD EATON 21
[3] Daily themes in my day had to he short, not over a page of
handwriting. They had to be deposited in a box at the professor's
door not later than ten five in the morning. A classmate of mine,
when an epigram was called for, once wrote, "An epigram is a lazy
man's theme written at ten-three A.M." And because of this brevity,
and the necessity of writing one every day whether the mood was
on you or not, it was not always easy to be quite modest to make
these themes literature, which, we were told by our instructors, is
the transmission through the written word, from writer to reader,
of a mood, an emotion, a picture, an idea. I hate to think how few,
in fact, of all the thousands that were poured into that yawning box
were literature, how seldom the poor instructors could dip their pens
into their pots of red ink and write the magic "A" on the back. Their
sarcastic comments were surely excusable. I have even forgiven the
young man with hair like yellow corn-tassels, who scrawled on verses
of mine, required to be written in imitation of some poet, "This may
be O'Shaughnessy, it isn't poetry." Did he think thus to kill two
song birds with one stone? Well, the effort of those of us who were
sincere and comprehending in our pursuit of the elusive power to
write was to make our themes literature as often as possible, and to
do this the first essential was the choice of a subject. Not everything
one sees or does or thinks can take shape on a page of paper and
reproduce itself for the reader. Selection was the first require-
ment.
[4] It became needful, then, to watch for and treasure incidents
that were sharply dramatic or poignant, moods that were clear and
definite, pictures that created a single clean impression. The tower
of Memorial seen across the quiet marshes against the cool pink sky
of evening; the sweep of a shell under the bridge and the rush of the
spectators to the other rail to watch the needle-bow emerge, and the
bent, brown backs of the crew; the chorus girls, still rubbing the paint
from their cheeks with a tiny handkerchief wrapped over the fore-
finger, coming out of a stage entrance into the snow; the first sharp
impression of a book just read or a play just seen, these were the
things we cherished, for these we could put on a page of paper with
a beginning, a middle, and an end, and with some show of vividness.
22 THE DESIRE TO KNOW
What we came to do, then, was to keep a note-book of our impres-
sions, and when in June our themes were returned to us we had a
precious record for the year. By training the daily theme eye, we
watched for and found in the surroundings of our life, as it passed, a
heightened picturesqueness, a constant wonder, an added significance.
That hardened cynic, the professional writer, will smile and say, "You
saw copy." Yes, we saw copy, but to sec copy is to sec the significant,
to clarify what the ear aud heart and eye receive, to add light and
shadow to the monochrome of life.
[5] My college roommate, a blessed boy full of good humor and
serious purpose, was as incapable of acquiring the daily theme eye as
a cat of obeying the eighth commandment. His idea of a daily theme
was a task, not a pleasure. If there was no chance to write a political
editorial, he supplied an anecdote of his summer vacation. Once he
described a clifl he had seen in Newfoundland, and, determined to be
pictorial, he added, "tumbling waterfalls" and "sighing pines." Un-
fortunately, the instructor who read it had also been in Newfound-
land, and he pointed out that his investigations of the cliff in question
had failed to disclose either "tumbling waterfalls" or "sighing pines."
My roommate treated the matter as a joke; he could not see that he
had been guilty of any fault. And yet he is a much more moral man
than I, with a far more troublesome conscience. Truth to his prin-
ciples he would die for. But truth to the picture his mind retained
and his hand tried to portray in the medium of literature, to him so
trivial and unimportant, he could not grasp. What did it matter?
So it would never occur to him to record in his themes the fleeting
impressions of his daily life, to sit up half the night trying to pack
into the clumsy frame of words the recollection of a strangely inno-
cent face seen suddenly in the flash of an opened door down a dark,
evil alley where the gusts of winter swirled. He went to bed and
never knew a headache or a jumpy nerve. Yet I could not help
thinking then that there was something in life he was missing besides
the ultimate mark in our composition course. And I cannot help
thinking that there is something in life he misses still.
[6] But perhaps that is only my fancy. George Moore says that
WALTER PRICHARD EATON 23
happiness is no more than a faculty for being surprised; and it is the
sudden vista, the beauty of a city square seen through falling snow,
a street-car drama, the face of a passing woman, the dialogue of
friends, which make the surprises for the man with the eye for copy.
George Moore himself has a daily theme eye of preternatural keen-
ness, and he may be speaking only for a class. Happiness for my
roommate lies, I suspect, rather in his faculty for not being surprised.
A sudden accession of emotion at the sight of an unexpected view,
for instance, would probably be immensely disconcerting. And if
he should go into an art museum, as I did the other day, and see a
little marble boy with a slightly parted mouth wet his lips with his
tongue, I truly believe he would rush off to the doctor's at once, very
unhappy, instead of rushing joyfully home to try to put the illusion
into a sonnet! Well, every class has its Pharisaism, which in reality
isn't a form of priggishness, at all, but merely a recognition of differ-
ence. He thinks I am unpractical, a bit odd, not quite a grown man.
I think he is a charming fellow. We are about quits on that!
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. When does the author first define "the daily theme eye"?
2. Does he think this "optic" can be acquired?
3. What is meant by "seeing copy"?
4. What is the eighth commandment (King James' Version) ?
5. Was the author's roommate a dishonest person?
6. "A faculty for being surprised" defines what?
7. What made the author think he had seen "a little marble boy . . .
wet his lips" ?
8. Are you akin to the author or to the author's roommate?
9. Do Eaton, Gallico ("The Feel"), and Scudder ("In the Labora-
tory with Agassiz") have anything in common? Explain. How
do they differ?
10. Which type of student (see "Four Types of Students") would
you say Eaton probably was?
24 THE DESIRE TO KNOW
A Grammarian's Funeral*
SHORTLY AFTER THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING IN EUROPE
Robert Browning
| The poem which follows is called a dramatic monologue that is,
the lines are spoken by one person to another person or persons whose
words, if any, are not recorded. The speaker m this poem is leading
a funeral procession, made up of the Grammarian's disciples, from a
valley to the highest of many peaks which surround the valley. On
the way, he comments on the life the Grammarian has lived and what
meaning may be found in that way of life.
Read the poem through rapidly the first time; do not puzzle over
unfamiliar words or obscure lines. Read for idea: what does the
poem say? Even when reading rapidly, observe the punctuation.
Reread much more slowly, and this time use your dictionary for such
words as croft, thorp, censer, queasy, Calculus, tussis, soul-hydropttc,
purlieus.]
Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
Singing together.
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes
Each in its tether
Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain, 5
Cared-for till cock-crow:
Look out if yonder be not day again
Rimming the rock-row!
That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought
Rarer, intenser, 10
Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought,
Chafes in the censer.
Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop;
Seek we sepulture
On a tall mountain, citied to the top, 15
Crowded with culture!
* From Men and Women (1855).
ROBERT BROWNING 25
All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels;
Clouds overcome it;
No! yonder sparkle is the citadel's
Circling its summit. *>
Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights:
Wait ye the warning?
Our low life was the level's and the night's;
He's for the morning.
Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head, 25
'Ware the beholders 1
This is our master, famous calm and dead,
Borne on our shoulders.
Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft,
Safe from the weather! &
He, whom we convoy to his grave aloft,
Singing together,
He was a man born with thy face and throat,
Lyric Apollo!
Long he lived nameless: how should spring take note 35
Winter would follow ?
Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone!
Cramped and diminished,
Moaned he, "New measures, other feet anon!
"My dance is finished ? " 40
No, that's the world's way: (keep the mountain-side,
Make for the city!)
He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride
Over men's pity;
Left play for work, and grappled with the world 45
Bent on escaping :
"What's in the scroll," quoth he, "thou keepest furled?
"Show me their shaping,
"Theirs who most studied man, the bard and sage,
Give!" So, he gowned him, 50
26 THE DESIRE TO KNOW
Straight got by heart that book to its last page:
Learned, we found him.
Yea, but we found him bald too, eyes like lead,
Accents uncertain:
"Time to taste life," another would have said, ss
"Up with the curtain!"
This man said rather, "Actual life comes next?
"Patience a moment!
"Grant I have mastered learning's crabbed text,
"Still there's the comment. 60
"Let me know all! Prate not of most or least,
"Painful or easy!
"Even to the crumbs I'd fain cat up the feast,
"Ay, nor feel queasy."
Oh, such a life as he resolved to live, 6s
When he had learned it,
When he had gathered all books had to give!
Sooner, he spurned it.
Image the whole, then execute the parts-
Fancy the fabric 7<>
Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz,
Ere mortar dab brick !
(Here's the town-gate reached : there's the market-place
Gaping before us.)
Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace ?*,
(Hearten our chorus!)
That before living he'd learn how to live
No end to learning :
Earn the means first God surely will contrive
Use for our earning. &
Others mistrust and say, "But time escapes:
"Live now or never!"
He said, "What's time? leave Now for dogs and apes!
"Man has Forever."
ROBERT BROWNING 27
Back to his book then : deeper drooped his head : 85
Calculus racked him :
Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead :
T us sis attacked him.
"Now, master, take a little rest!" not he!
(Caution redoubled, 90
Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly ! )
Not a whit troubled
Back to his studies, fresher than at first,
Fierce as a dragon
He (soul-hydroptic with a sacred thirst) 95
Sucked at the flagon.
Oh, if we draw a circle premature,
Heedless of far gain,
Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure
Bad is our bargain! u
Was it not great? did not he throw on God,
(He loves the burthen)
God's task to make the heavenly period
Perfect the earthen?
Did not he magnify the mind, show clear 105
Just what it all meant?
He would not discount life, as fools do here,
Paid by instalment!
He ventured neck or nothing heaven's success
Found, or earth's failure : i >
"Wilt thou trust death or not?" He answered "Yes:
"Hence with life's pale lure!"
That low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and docs it:
This high man, with a great thing to pursue, 115
Dies ere he knows it.
That low man goes on adding one to one,
His hundred's soon hit:
This high man, aiming at a million,
Misses an unit. '-'<>
28 THE DESIRE TO KNOW
That, has the world here should he need the next,
Let the world mind him!
This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed
Seeking shall find him.
So, with the throttling hands of death at strife, 125
Ground he at grammar;
Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife:
While he could stammer
He settled Hoti's business let it be!
Properly based Gun u<
Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De,
Dead from the waist down.
Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place:
Hail to your purlieus,
All yc highfliers of the feathered race, M-,
Swallows and curlews!
Here's the top-peak ; the multitude below
Live, for they can, there:
This man decided not to Live but Know
Bury this man there? M<>
Here here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,
Lightnings are loosened,
Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm,
Peace let the dew send!
Lofty designs must close in like effects: M5
Loftily lying,
Leave him still loftier than the world suspects,
Living and dying.
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. How is the word grammarian used in the title of this poem?
Is it related to the word grammar as used in sentence one of "Four
Types of Students"?
2. Where is the Grammarian to be buried? Why?
3. How is the word unlettered used in line 3?
SUGGESTIONS FOR PAPERS 29
4. There are several quotable passages in this poem. Underscore
them.
5. What contrasts does the speaker in this poem emphasize?
6. Was the Grammarian spurred on by something besides an in-
satiable curiosity ?
7. Explain the advice: "Leave Now for dogs and apes"? Why is
Now begun with a capital ?
8. What kind of person is the leader of the funeral procession?
9. Which type of student (see "Four Types of Students") do you
suppose the Grammarian was?
10. Compare the Grammarian and Gallico; and Scudder; and Eaton.
Suggestions for Papers
You have been asked, perhaps many times, "What do you want
to he?" You may never have been asked, "How strong is your
desire to l^now?" This second question is what you are now being
asked. Your first paper will be an answer to that question. Some
suggestions on how to get at your answer are offered herewith.
Whatever suggestion you may decide to follow, you should be able
to make effective and specific reference to the various selections in
this chapter.
1. What are the present limits of your curiosity ? You may have
a sharply defined curiosity. What first made you aware of the par-
ticular direction of your desire to know? How far have you gone
toward satisfying this desire? How will you go on ? To what
eventual goal?
2. Your desire to know may be without focus at the present. Do
you ignite easily? Do you take to a succession of new enthusiasms
which die out quickly? Tell your reader about the rise and fall of
your desire to know.
30 THE DESIRE TO KNOW
3. Newspapers attempt to satisfy almost every sort of interest.
How much of a newspaper do you read? Can you measure your
curiosity by what you read? Do you read, for example, all the
comics? The sports page? Advice to the lovelorn? The foreign
news? The local news? The financial page? The weather map?
Do you regularly "keep up with" any specific feature of the news-
paper ? Why ?
4. A university or college has hcen accurately described as "a book-
ish place." You may already have your textbooks for your courses.
Can you tell how you feel toward these books ? Pick up one of these
books. Read the title. Look at the table of contents. So far as
your paper is concerned, it docs not matter whether you feel eager
to study the book or not. What does matter is an honest telling of
how you do feel.
5. Fit yourself into one of Fuller's categories in "Four Types of
Students." What modifications are necessary to make the fit more
exact? Is the estimate you have of yourself the same, so far as you
know, as your high-school teachers had of you ? Discuss reasons for
any differences.
6. Scudder sat for hours examining a hacmulon. You can write
a valuable and entertaining paper if you will report the results of
applying Agassiz's method of observation to almost any conceivable
object: a blotter, a pencil, a flower, a fly. Try it on the book you are
now reading. What is the color of the book? What is the size?
How much does it weigh? How is it put together? What arc the
parts of the book? What is the purpose of each part? Report the
processes of your mind while you are observing the facts.
7. Would you say that Paul Gallico put himself through a self-
imposed, postgraduate course in sports journalism? Can you com-
pare what he did with what Scudder did in the laboratory? How
are the methods alike? How do they differ? Which procedure
appeals to yon more ? Why ?
8. Compare and contrast Eaton and Scudder. Did Eaton examine
minutely or painstakingly or did he depend upon quick impressions?
Do you think that he would have submitted himself to Agassiz's
SUGGESTIONS FOR PAPERS
31
discipline? On the other hand, do you suppose that Scudder had a
"daily theme eye"? After you have drawn up a series of comparisons
and contrasts, take sides that is, give reasons why you feel sym-
pathetic with Eaton's or Scuclcler's kind of curiosity.
9. The Grammarian of Browning's poem was motivated entirely
by the desire to know to know everything. Is he more like Gallico
or like Scudder or like Eaton in his method? How does he differ
from all three? Was he a specialist? Did he think he had a chance
to reach his goal ? How did he comfort himself ? Attack or defend
his attitude toward life.
SOME TITLES FOR PAPERS
1. Types of Students I Have
Known
2. Fuller's Figures of Speech
Analysed
3. Definitions of Curiosity
4. Things I Don't Want to
Know
5. The Scope of My Curiosity
6. My Curiosity: A History
7. Will College Satisfy My De-
sire to Know?
8. Curiosity Killed a Cat
9. How to Develop Curiosity
10. The Questioning Spirit
n. Love of Knowledge Rules the
World
12. "Leave Now to Dogs and
Apes"
13. "The Feel": My Version
14. I Tried Agassiz's Method
15. Don't Ask Embarrassing
Questions
16. Importance of the Question
Mark
17. My Roommate's Curiosity
1 8. A Weekly Theme Eye
19. Ignorance Is Bliss
20. 'Tis Folly to Be Wise
21. A Grammar of Curiosity
22. A World of Grammarians
23. True Curiosity Demands
Energy
0,
Myself
0,
NE form of curiosity is directed within
ourselves. "Know thyself" is as much a ceaseless quest as "Know
thy environment." One's chief task is to combine these two ad-
monitions. "Know thyself in relation to environment." Environ-
ment may be defined as the sum of all the forces which affect you.
It is a valuable exercise to write out an experience that will help you
to explain "you."
Complete honesty in self-analysis is not easy to attain. Rousseau
tells of this difficulty in part of the preface to his very frank auto-
biography. He also announces his intention to expose ruthlessly
everything he knows about himself. His work, therefore, became a
public confession, as intimate as that which one might, were he a
Roman Catholic, whisper to a priest.
While most people shy away from such public exposure of "odious"
faults, all of us have some inclination toward autobiography. Our
trouble arises from not knowing how to talk about ourselves. The
selections in this chapter represent four different, though related,
ways of communicating personal experiences to others.
Cornelia Otis Skinner, in recalling one of her most miserable child-
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU 33
hood days, touches the subject with humor. She, like Mark Twain,
succeeds in gaining a full measure of the reader's sympathy by frankly
assuming the role of the underdog. She resists the temptation to
invent a heroic reply to her torturer, Elise.
Mark Twain's account of his first experience in learning to pilot
on the Mississippi is the amiable type of self-revelation. It is written
with excellent good humor and warm sympathy. Although it is the
story of a really notable triumph, one is impressed by its essential
modesty. To appreciate Mark Twain's accomplishment, one has but
to imagine how a humorless egotist might have treated this experi-
ence, under the title "1 Conquered the Treacherous Mississippi!"
Wordsworth tells of robbing traps which others had set and of
stealing eggs from the nests of birds. His is a humorless account,
for he, like Rousseau, was concerned with revealing the innermost
secrets of his heart, of recalling exactly the emotions of guilt which he-
felt after committing his "crime."
I heard among the solitary hills
Low breathings coming after me.
Unlike Mark Twain and Miss Skinner, the poet attempts to show how
"terrors, pains, and early miseries" were essential to his development.
Peter De Vries in "Through a Glass Darkly" writes about an ami-
able weakness of his: his inability to resist demonstrators.
The Principle of Autobiography *
Jean Jacques Rousseau
[i] No one can write a man's life but himself. The character of
his inner being, his real life, is known only to himself; but, in writing
it, he disguises it; under the name of his life, he makes an apology;
he shows himself as he wishes to be seen, but not at all as he is. The
sincerest persons are truthful at most in what they say, but they lie
*From a rough draft of the introduction to Rousseau's Confessions, as quoted by
Samte-Beuvc in his essay "Rousseau," first published in 1851.
34 OF MYSELF
by their reticences, and that of which they say nothing so changes
that which they pretend to confess, that in uttering only a part of the
truth they say nothing. I put Montaigne at the head of these falsely-
sincere persons who wish to deceive in telling the truth. He shows
himself with his faults, but he gives himself none but amiable ones;
there is no man who has not odious ones. Montaigne paints his like-
ness, but it is a profile. Who knows whether some scar on the cheek,
or an eye put out, on the side which he conceals from us, would not
have totally changed the physiognomy? . . .
[2] If I wish to produce a work written with care, like the others,
I shall not paint, I shall rouge myself. It is with my portrait that I
am here concerned, and not with a book. I am going to work, so to
speak, in the dark room; there is no other art necessary than to follow
exactly the traits which I see marked. I form my resolution then
about the style as about the things. 1 shall not try at all to render it
uniform; I shall write always that which comes to me, I shall change
it, without scruple, according to my humour; I shall speak of every-
thing as I feel it, as I see it, without care, without constraint, without
being embarrassed by the medley. In yielding myself at once to
the memory of the impression received and to the present sentiment,
I shall doubly paint the state of my soul, namely, at the moment
when the event happened to me and the moment when I describe
it; my style, unequal and natural, sometimes rapid and sometimes
diffuse, sometimes wise and sometimes foolish, sometimes grave and
sometimes gay, will itself make a part of my history. Finally, what-
ever may be the way in which this book may be written, it will be
always, by its object, a book precious for philosophers; it is, I repeat,
an illustrative piece for the study of the human heart, and it is the
only one that exists.
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. Why does Rousseau call Montaigne a "falsely-sincere" person?
2. What does Rousseau mean to convey by the words "rouge myself?
3. Interpret: "I shall doubly paint the state of my soul."
4. Rousseau thought his Confessions would always be valuable to
philosophers. Why ?
35
One Day *
Cornelia Otis Skinner
[i] One day, which still remains in my memory as "the calico-
dress and express-wagon day," was the most miserable of that none
too carefree year. Mother had made me a dress which, as I recall
it, must have been one of unusual charm and imagination. She had
come across the material in the country store near Conshohocken,
an ancient, dingy emporium whose shelves were laden with bolts of
fascinating dress goods, of almost ante-bellum vintage. For this
particular garment, she chose a pretty calico, darkish blue, with an
enchanting pattern of tiny stars and crescent moons. For model,
she copied a frock from a Kate Greenaway illustration, with puffed
sleeves and an Empire-like high waist. It was trimmed at the bot-
tom with two rows of white nckrack. In taste and originality it
probably put to shame Elise's modish sailor suits made, as she told
everybody, by her mother's Chestnut Street tailor. Mother took great
pains with it, I thought it was just lovely, and the first time I put it
on, the admiring Crawfords said I was a "picture." Pleased and
happy, I went off to school. The picture the Crawfords had in mind
may have been one of pristine charm and quamtness, but the one I
presented to my Comanche schoolmates was something, apparently,
to be equaled in humor only by something out of the funny papers.
They nudged one another, they pointed at me, they tittered and
Elisc passed an ultimate verdict on my frock by calling it "poor-
folksy!" The morning passed for me in complete misery and I
counted the minutes until Johnnie the coachman would call for me
in the runabout and take me away from the hateful place. Eventu-
ally the final bell sounded, and I was called for, not by Johnnie in
the runabout, but by Alan in the express wagon. The express wagon
was a battered vehicle used for transporting pigeon crates to and
from the station, and Alan was a farmhand equally battered. Today
he looked worse than usual, his ragged blue jeans were spotted with
* From Family Circle, by Cornelia Otis Skinner; published by Houghton Mifflm
Company, 1948, and reprinted by their permission.
36 OF MYSELF
birdlime, and his chin was furry with a three days' growth of beard.
Ordinarily I welcomed a chance to ride in the express wagon. One
could sit beside Alan on the driver's seat and feel vastly important
or one could sit back amid the pigeon crates, on one's own seat, and
feel vastly uncomfortable but adventuresome. Alan was a taciturn
son of the soil, a generous coating of which he bore on his person,
and he smelled to high heaven, but I thought him rather wonderful.
I had not heard of class consciousness and Alan and the express
wagon seemed to me as felicitous a means of transportation as any.
But today, as I looked out of the window, drawn up beside my rustic
equipage was Ehse's glistening dogcart with its smart little cob and
the groom impressive in the Murphy livery, and my heart, which
was already pretty low, sank to new depths of wretchedness. I hoped
with my soul that 1 might be able to slink away without being seen,
but, quick as a ferret, Elise spotted the wagon and guessed from my
expression that it was there for me.
[2] "Look!" she squealed with delight, "Cinderella's coach has
called for her! See what Chameleon's family send her to school in!"
Then her black, malicious eye fell upon Alan and with mock polite-
ness she said: "Is that your father driving it?"
[3] It I hadn't been the small fool of the world, I would have fought
back and even now the memory fills me with a desire to take a tram
to the town where Elise now leads a reformed and exemplary life and
ama/.e her with a long-delayed uppercut to the jaw. However, all I
did at the time was to grab my corduroy school bag (Elise's was of
the finest leather) and run out of the building, blinded with tears of
fury and hurt.
[4] With a child's instinctive shyness at sharing private grievances
with parents, I told Mother nothing of what had happened. But she
knew something was tearing at my confused emotions when, at
supper, I burst into uncontrollable tears. Wisely she let me cry it
all out then gently asked me what the trouble was. All I told her
was that I never again wanted to wear that "poor child's dress."
From observations I had made she figured out the situation and,
after reassuring me, quietly put away the little frock over which she
had taken such tender pains.
MARK TWAIN 37
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. What does ante-bellum mean' 3 vintage? Is vintage normally used
to apply to dress goods? Justify the use here.
2. Does this episode illustrate "class consciousness"? How?
3. Why didn't the author fight back?
4. What kind of person does the mother in this episode appear to be?
Be specific.
A Cub Pilot's Experience*
Mark Twain
[i] . . . The l\ud Jones was now bound for St. Louis. I planned
a siege against my pilot, and at the end of three hard days he sur-
rendered. He agreed to teach me the Mississippi River from New
Orleans to St. Louis for five hundred dollars, payable out of the first
wages I should receive after graduating. 1 entered upon the small
enterprise of "learning" twelve or thirteen hundred miles of the great
Mississippi River with the easy confidence of my time of life. If I
had really known what I was about to require of my faculties, I
should not have had the courage to begin. I supposed that all a pilot
had to do was to keep his boat in the river, and I did not consider that
that could be much of a trick, since it was so wide.
[2] The boat backed otit from New Orleans at four in the after-
noon, and it was "our watch"" until eight. Mr. Hixby, my chief,
"straightened her up," ploughed her along past the sterns of the other
boats that lay at the Levee, and then said, "Here, take her; shave
those steamships as close as you'd peel an apple." I took the wheel,
and my heart-beat fluttered up into the hundreds; for it seemed to
me that we were about to scrape the side off every ship in the line,
we were so close. I held my breath and began to claw the boat away
from the danger; and I had my own opinion of the pilot who had
* From Life on the Mississippi, Harper & Brothers (1883).
38 OF MYSELF
known no better than to get us into such peril, but I was too wise to
express it. In half a minute I had a wide margin of safety intervening
between the Paul Jones and the ships; and within ten seconds more I
I was set aside in disgrace, and Mr. Bixby was going into danger
again and flaying me alive with abuse of my cowardice. I was stung,
but I was obliged to admire the easy confidence with which my chief
loafed from side to side of his wheel, and trimmed the ships so closely
that disaster seemed ceaselessly imminent. When he had cooled a
little he told me that the easy water was close ashore and the current
outside, and therefore we must hug the bank, up-stream, to get the
benefit of the former, and stay well out, clown-stream, to take advan-
tage of the latter. In my own mind I resolved to be a clown-stream
pilot and leave the up-streaming to people dead to prudence.
[3] Now and then Mr. Bixby called my attention to certain things.
Said he, "This is Six-Mile Point." I assented. It was pleasant enough
information, but I could not see the bearing of it. I was not con-
scious that it was a matter of any interest to me. Another time he
said, "This is Nine-Mile Point." Later he said, "This is Twelve-Mile
Point." They were all about level with the water's edge; they all
looked about alike to me; they were monotonously unpicturesque.
I hoped Mr. Bixby would change the subject. But no; he would
crowd up around a point, hugging the shore with affection, and then
say: 'The slack water ends here, abreast this bunch of China-trees;
now we cross over." So he crossed over. He gave me the wheel
once or twice, but I had no luck. I either came near chipping ofT
the edge of a sugar plantation, or I yawed too far from shore, and so
dropped back into disgrace again and got abused.
[4] The watch was ended at last, and we took supper and went to
bed. At midnight the glare of a lantern shone in my eyes, and the
night watchman said: "Come, turn out!"
[5] And then he left. I could not understand this extraordinary
procedure; so I presently gave up trying to, and dozed off to sleep.
Pretty soon the watchman was back again, and this time he was
gruff. I was annoyed. I said:
[6] "What do you want to come bothering around here in the
MARK TWAIN 39
middle of the night for? Now, as like as not, I'll not get to sleep
again to-night."
[7] The watchman said:
[8] "Well, if this ain't good, I'm blessed."
[9] The "off-watch" was just turning in, and I heard some brutal
laughter from them, and such remarks as "Hello, watchman! ain't the
new cub turned out yet? He's delicate, likely. Give him some
sugar in a rag, and send for the chambermaid to sing 'Rock-a-by
Baby,' to him."
[10] About this time Mr. Bixby appeared on the scene. Some-
thing like a minute later I was climbing the pilothouse steps with
some of my clothes on and the rest in my arms. Mr. Bixby was
close behind, commenting. Here was something fresh this thing of
getting up in the middle of the night to go to work. It was a detail
in piloting that had never occurred to me at all. I knew that boats
ran all night, but somehow I had never happened to reflect that some-
body had to get up out of a warm bed to run them. I began to fear
that piloting was not quite so romantic as I had imagined it was;
there was something very real and worklike about this new phase
of it.
[n] It was a rather dingy night, although a fair number of stars
were out. The big mate was at the wheel, and he had the old tub
pointed at a star and was holding her straight up the middle of the
river. The shores on either hand were not much more than half a
mile apart, but they seemed wonderfully far away and ever so vague
and indistinct. The mate said:
[12] "We've got to land at Jones's plantation, sir."
[13] The vengeful spirit in me exulted. I said to myself, "I wish
you joy of your job, Mr. Bixby; you'll have a good time finding Mr.
Jones's plantation such a night as this; and I hope you never will find
it as long as you live."
[14] Mr. Bixby said to the mate:
[15] "Upper end of the plantation, or the lower?"
[16] "Upper."
[17] "I can't do it. The stumps there are out of water at this stage.
40 OF MYSELF
It's no great distance to the lower, and you'll have to get along with
that/'
[18] "All right, sir. If Jones don't like it, he'll have to lump it, I
reckon."
[19] And then the mate left. My exultation began to cool and my
wonder to come up. Here was a man who not only proposed to find
this plantation on such a night, but to find either end of it you pre-
ferred. I dreadfully wanted to ask a question, but I was carrying
about as many short answers as my cargo-room would admit of, so I
held my peace. All I desired to ask Mr. Bixby was the simple ques-
tion whether he was ass enough to really imagine he was going to find
that plantation on a night when all plantations were exactly alike and
all of the same color. But I held in. 1 used to have fine inspirations
of prudence in those days.
[20] Mr. Bixby made for the shore and soon was scraping it, just
the same as if it had been daylight. And not only that, but singing:
[21] "Father in heaven, the day is declining," etc. It seemed to me
that I had put my life in the keeping of a peculiarly reckless outcast.
Presently he turned on me and said :
[22] "What's the name of the first point above New Orleans?"
[23] I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I
said I didn't know.
[24] "Don't faow?"
[25] This manner jolted me. I was down at the foot again, in a
moment. But I had to say just what I had said before.
[26] "Well, you're a smart one!" said Mr. Bixby. "What's the
name of the next point?"
[27] Once more I didn't know.
[28] "Well, this beats any thing. Tell me the name of any point
or place I told you."
[29] I studied a while and decided that I couldn't.
[30] "Look here! What do you start out from, above Twelve-
Mile Point, to cross over?"
[ 3I ] "I Idon't know."
[32] "You you don't know?" mimicking my drawling manner
of speech. "What do you know?"
MARK TWAIN 41
[33] "I I nothing, for certain."
[34] "% the great Caesar's ghost, I helieve you! You're the stupid-
est dunderhead I ever saw or ever heard of, so help me Moses! The
idea of you being a pilot you! Why, you don't know enough to
pilot a cow down a lane."
[35] Oh, but his wrath was up! He was a nervous man, and he
shuffled from one side of his wheel to the other as if the floor was hot.
He would boil a while to himself, and then overflow and scald me
again.
[36] "Look here! What do you suppose I told you the names of
those points for?"
[37] I tremblingly considered a moment, and then the devil of
temptation provoked me to say :
[38] "Well to to be entertaining, I thought."
[39] This was a red rag to the bull. He raged and stormed so
(he was crossing the river at the time) that I judged it made him
blind, because he ran over the steering-oar of a trading-scow. Of
course the traders sent up a volley of red-hot profanity. Never was
a man so grateful as Mr. Bixby was; because he was brimful, and
here were subjects who could tal\ bac\. He threw open a window,
thrust his head out, and such an irruption followed as I never had
heard before. The fainter and farther away the scowmen's curses
drifted, the higher Mr. Bixby lifted his voice and the weightier his
adjectives grew. When he closed the window he was empty. You
could have drawn a seine through his system and not caught curses
enough to disturb your mother with. Presently he said to me in
the gentlest way :
[40] "My boy, you must get a little memorandum-book; and every
time I tell you a thing, put it down right away. There's only one
way to be a pilot, and that is to get this entire river by heart. You
have to know it just like A B C."
[41] That was a dismal revelation to me; for my memory was
never loaded with anything but blank cartridges. However, I did
not feel discouraged long. I judged that it was best to make some
allowances, for doubtless Mr. Bixby was "stretching." Presently he
pulled a rope and struck a few strokes on the big bell. The stars
42 OF MYSELF
were all gone now, and the night was as black as ink. I could hear
the wheels churn along the bank, but I was not entirely certain that
I could see the shore. The voice of the invisible watchman called
up from the hurricane-deck :
[42] "What's this, sir?"
[43] "J ones ' s plantation."
[44] I said to myself, "I wish I might venture to offer a small bet
that it isn't." But I did not chirp. I only waited to see. Mr. Hixby
handled the engine-bells, and in due time the boat's nose came to
the land, a torch glowed from the forecastle, a man skipped ashore,
a darky's voice on the bank said, "Gimme cle k'yarpetbag, Mass'
Jones," and the next moment we were standing up the river again,
all serene. I reflected deeply a while and then said but not aloud
"Well, the finding of that plantation was the luckiest accident that
ever happened; but it couldn't happen again in a hundred years."
And I fully believed it was an accident, too.
[45] By the time we had gone seven or eight hundred miles up the
river, I had learned to be a tolerably plucky upstream steersman, in
daylight, and before we reached St. Louis I had made a trifle of
progress in night-work, but only a trifle. 1 had a note-book that
fairly bristled with the names of towns, "points," bars, islands, bends,
reaches, etc.; but the information was to be found only in the note-
book none of it was in my head. It made my heart ache to think
I had only got half the river set down; for as our watch was four
hours off and four hours on, day and night, there was a long four-
hour gap in my book for every time I had slept since the voyage
began.
[46] My chief was presently hired to go on a big New Orleans boat,
and I packed my satchel and went with him. She was a grand
affair. When I stood in her pilot-house I was so far above the water
that I seemed perched on a mountain; and her decks stretched so far
away, fore and aft, below me, that I wondered how I could ever have
considered the little Paul Jones a large craft. There were other
differences, too. The Paul Jones's pilot-house was a cheap, dingy,
battered rattletrap, cramped for room; but here was a sumptuous
glass temple; room enough to have a dance in; showy red and gold
window curtains; an imposing sofa; leather cushions and a back
MARK TWAIN 43
to the high bench where visiting pilots sit, to spin yarns and "look at
the river"; bright, fanciful "cuspadores," instead of a broad wooden
box filled with sawdust; nice new oilcloth on the floor; a hospitable
big stove for winter; a wheel as high as my head, costly with inlaid
work; a wire tiller-rope; bright brass knobs for the bells; and a tidy,
white-aproned black "texas-tender," to bring up tarts and ices and
cotfee during mid-watch, day and night. Now this was "something
like"; and so I began to take heart once more to believe that piloting
was a romantic sort of occupation after all. The moment we were
under way I began to prowl about the great steamer and fill myself
with joy. She was as clean and as dainty as a drawing-room; when
I looked down her long, gilded saloon, it was like gazing through a
splendid tunnel; she had an oil-picture, by some gifted sign-painter,
on every stateroom door; she glittered with no end of prism-fringed
chandeliers; the clerk's office was elegant, the bar was marvellous,
and the barkeeper had been barbered and upholstered at incredible
cost. The boiler-deck (/. e., the second story of the boat, so to speak)
was as spacious as a church, it seemed to me; so with the forecastle;
and there was no pitiful handful of deck-hands, firemen, and roust-
abouts down there, but a whole battalion of men. The fires were
fiercely glaring from a long row of furnaces, and over them were
eight huge boilers! This was unutterable pomp. The mighty en-
gines but enough of this. I had never felt so fine before. And
when I found that the regiment of natty servants respectfully "sir'd"
me, my satisfaction was complete.
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. What was Mr. Bixby 's first order to his pupil ?
2. Why did the cub pilot hope "Mr. Bixby would change the subject"
(paragraph 3) ?
3. "Mr. Bixby was close behind, commenting" (paragraph 10). How
do you know that this is an understatement ?
4. What incident turned Mr. Bixby's wrath away from Mark Twain?
5. Comment on : "My memory was never loaded with anything but
blank cartridges." Prove that this is an exaggeration.
44 OF MYSELF
"Fair Seed-time Had My Soul'"
William Wordsworth
Fair seed-time had my soul, and I grew up
Fostered alike by beauty and by fear:
Much favoured in my birth-place, and no less
In that beloved Vale to which erelong
We were transplanted; there were we let loose 5
For sports of wider range. Ere I had told
Ten birth-days, when among the mountain slopes
Frost, and the breath of frosty wind, had snapped
The last autumnal crocus, 't was my )oy
With store of springes o'er my shoulder hung 10
To range the open heights where woodcocks run
Along the smooth green turf. Through half the night,
Scudding away from snare to snare, I plied
That anxious visitation; moon and stars
Were shining o'er my head. I was alone, 15
And seemed to be a trouble to the peace
That dwelt among them. Sometimes it befell
In these night wanderings, that a strong desire
Overpowered my better reason, and the bird
Which was the captive of another's toil 20
Became my prey; and when the deed was done
I heard among the solitary hills
Low breathings coming after me, and sounds
Of undistinguishable motion, steps
Almost as silent as the turf they trod. 25
Nor less, when spring had warmed the cultured Vale,
Moved we as plunderers where the mother-bird
Had in high places built her lodge; though mean
* Written between 1799 and 1805; published posthumously in The Prelude,
1:301-356 (1850).
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 45
Our object and inglorious, yet the end
Was not ignoble. Oh! when I have hung 30
Above the raven's nest, by knots of grass
And half-inch fissures in the slippery rock
But ill sustained, and almost (so it seemed)
Suspended by the blast that blew amain,
Shouldering the naked crag, oh, at that time 35
While on the perilous ridge I hung alone,
With what strange utterance did the loud dry wind
Blow through my ear! the sky seemed not a sky
Of earth and with what motion moved the clouds!
Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows 40
Like harmony in music; there is a dark
Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles
Discordant elements, makes them cling together
In one society. How strange, that all
The terrors, pains, and early miseries, 45
Regrets, vexations, lassitudes interfused
Within my mind, should e'er have borne a part,
And that a needful part, in making up
The calm existence that is mine when I
Am worthy of myself! Praise to the end! 50
Thanks to the means which Nature deigned to employ;
Whether her fearless visitings, or those
That came with soft alarm, like hurtless light
Opening the peaceful clouds; or she would use
Severer interventions, ministry ss
More palpable, as best might suit her aim.
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. How old was the poet when he began trapping woodcocks?
2. What actions disturbed the boy's conscience? How did Nature
participate in arousing his sense of guilt?
3. Explain: ". . . the end/Was not ignoble" (lines 29-30).
46 OFMYSELF
4. What credit does the poet give to Nature for his mature "calm
existence"?
5. What does the word fearless (line 52) mean? hitrtless (line 53)?
6. Does Wordsworth look at his childhood in a way that Rousseau
("Principles of Autobiography") would approve? Explain.
Through a Glass Darkly*
Peter De Vries
[i] I have a mackintosh that is the apple of my eye, two topcoats,
and a smoked melton, yet when a plugger in a clothing store recently
detained me with a quick-change skit in which he whipped off a
raglan, turned it inside out, and whipped it on again, with a hanky-
panky on its behalf as a garment suitable for wet days, I bought it.
Why? Because I am unable to rescue myself from demonstrators.
Once my attention has been speared by a pitchman paring a potato
with a trick knife, I stand mesmerized by the lengthening peel,
powerless to move on till the operation is over and I have plunked
down my quarter. I have thought of hiring an analyst to clean my
coils, but the matter isn't really complicated enough for that. Til
give a few more examples of my trouble and then say what 1 think
is at the bottom of it.
[2] Not long ago, I was sauntering up Seventh Avenue in the
Forties when a rap on the window of a store I was passing brought
my head around in a reflex. Behind the glass, a man in a barber's
tunic buttered his palms with a pomade called Lustrine and ground
it into the noodle of a Latin youth seated before him on a three-legged
stool. The stooge had dark, liquid eyes, which sought mine with
a look of mute patience, as though for me alone was he taking this
drubbing. When it was over and his locks were being combed into
glossy undulations, I stepped inside for my trial size.
[3] Later that week, a man in a tan duster banged a wand im-
* Reprinted by permisMon of the author. Copyright 1949 The New Yorker Maga-
zine, Inc.
PETER DE VRIES 47
periously on a store pane in the East Thirties, alerting me and a
middle-aged couple. He directed our attention to the skeleton of a
human foot and then pointed to a printed sign alleging that the bones
had been mangled by unscientific shoes. The couple moseyed along,
but I was inside in a trice. A man in quasi-surgical garb shucked off
my brogans and led me in stocking feet to a fluoroscope, which laid
bare the dismal secrets of my own metatarsals. Ten minutes later I
hobbled out scientifically shod, carrying my former footgear under
my arm.
[4] It was a few months later that another unguarded moment
one in the basement of a downtown emporium brought me sud-
denly face to face with a bull-necked man on a dais who, having taken
a spraddled stance, pulled the legs of a pair of denim pants in oppo-
site directions till I thought he would pop, then gave up with a
good-natured laugh, thus acknowledging himself hopelessly bested
by the workmanship in the crotch. Some other shoppers who had
paused went on, leaving me stranded. The man strained at the
dungarees a second time and a third, his eyes reproaching me for my
apparent immunity to reasonable proof. Something had to give, and
it was me four ninety-eight.
[5] So it goes. 1 have the feeling these birds can spot me, or can
spot the gelatinous type. I once read that suckers have their affliction
written clearly in their features, so I decided to try the experiment of
concealing as much of mine as possible one recent Saturday afternoon.
I donned the reversible raglan, turning the collar up around my ears,
drew on a soft hat, pulling it well down over one eye, and swaddled
myself up to and including the chin in a heavy woollen muffler,
leaving little visible of my face but my nose and a single eye. Even
my gait was altered, for my scientifically constructed shoes had sub-
stantially deranged one foot.
[6] Thus dressed, I strolled up Sixth Avenue clenching an un-
lighted cigar and humming an air from u Die Flcdermaus." Just
short of Central Park, I heard the familiar clatter of a stick on glass.
It was in a drugstore window on my immediate right. 1 stopped but
didn't turn. Deliberately, I struck a match on my thumbnail, set
fire to the cigar, and puffed till 1 stood in a dense cloud of smoke.
48 OF MYSELF
The rap came again, this time more insistently. I inhaled a deep
lungful and let it out leisurely, snapping the match into the gut-
ter. A third summons sounded, prolonged and peremptory. I
swung to.
[7] A man in a laboratory jacket stood in the window. He drew
my attention crisply to a chart down which digestive organs mean-
dered in color. Having, by deftly flipping the pages of a folio on
an easel, enumerated the ills that lay in wait for me if they had not
already begun secretly to waste me, he picked up a bottle filled with
purple liquid and shook it to a bright froth, holding up three fingers
to indicate that I was to take this three times a day. I nodded and
went inside.
[8] These instances will suffice to illustrate the compulsion. As for
elucidating it, I will have to relate an incident in my past in which it
is most likely rooted. This involves an interval when I was myself,
very briefly, a demonstrating salesman. I graduated from college in
1931, the year that marked the depth of the depression. You took
anything you could get, those days. I took a job selling pressure
cookers, which were then being promoted on a wide scale for the first
time. The company I worked for emphasized group demonstra-
tions. You cooked a meal in the kitchen of a woman who had called
in her friends or neighbors for the occasion, they ate it, and you
signed up as many of the women as you could. I was given a short
course in operating the pressure cooker and sent into the field. This
was in Chicago in the summer.
[9] My first prospect was a widow named Mrs. Tannenbaum, whom
I knew slightly. She agreed to gather a group of housewives for a
bridge supper, which I was to fix. I arrived about four-thirty on the
day of the demonstration, lugging the pressure cooker, in its leather
case, and a pot roast under one arm. We were to have potatoes with
the pot roast, of course, and I had told Mrs. Tannenbaum I thought
carrots would be nice. We had used carrots in class. Mrs. Tannen-
baum supplied the vegetables.
[10] The ladies clustered in the kitchen while I ran through the
fine points of the cooker for them, got the roast on, and set the valve.
PETER DE VRIES 49
Then I shooed them to their bridge tables and peeled my potatoes
and scraped my carrots. Mrs. Tannenbaum shut the kitchen door,
leaving me alone. I got my vegetables on, and strayed out to the
back porch and sat down on a glider with a magazine, to wait for
the meal to be done. A little later, as I was thumbing through the
magazine, an acrid odor reached my nostrils. I hurried in to the
stove. I have since been at pains to forget the incident to the point
of no longer clearly knowing what a pressure cooker looks like, but
as I recall it, instead of closing the valve I had left it open, thus dis-
sipating the steam, boiling all the water away, and burning every-
thing, including the roast, to a crisp.
[n | I stood, stricken, in the middle of the kitchen, debating what
to do. A shred of laughter floated in above the hubbub at the front
of the house. I lifted the smoking pot off the stove, tiptoed out the
back door, down the stairs, along the walk beside the garage, to the
alley, and dropped the whole works, cooker and all, into the garbage
can. I set the lid back on the can and stole up the alley to the street,
where I broke into a trot.
[12] The recollection of that occurrence has haunted me ever since.
I never showed up at the pressure-cooker office again and I never saw
Mrs. Tannenbaum again except that I still see her in my mind's
eye, standing flabbergasted in the empty kitchen, her hungry and
baffled guests around her. I don't know whether that or the vision
of myself creeping away behind the garages is the more oppressive.
Like Lord Jim, I carry down the years the adhesive memory of
cowardice, but mine, unlike his, is a cowardice without scope.
[13] Thus, at the bottom of my constant purchases of paring knives
and trial sizes is a quest for absolution. I have an expiatory urge
that makes me secretly want situations in which I become a customer,
an at times almost voluptuous desire for the buyer-seller relation, so
that 1 can punish myself by being symbolically identified with my
victims of that afternoon, especially Mrs. Tannenbaum. In fact, I
try to outdo Mrs. Tannenbaum as a victim, because she didn't actually
buy, while I do, in a sacrificial gesture that must be repeated, over
and over again.
50 OF MYSELF
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. Explain the following words and phrases : hanky-panfy; pitchman;
clean my coils; noodle; stooge; moseyed along.
2. What does the title mean?
3. At what point is the theme of this selection announced?
4. Would you classify the author's trouble as "an amiable weakness"?
5. The organization of this selection is simple and effective: I What
my trouble is; II Examples of my trouble; III How my trouble
started. What are the subheads for II and III?
Suggestions /or Papers
Your paper is -to be about yourself or about the selections in this
chapter. If it is about yourself, it will take the form of either a
straight narrative without a moral or a narrative with a moral. You
may not have had an experience so venturous as Mark Twain's, but
certainly you have had dozens of experiences as commonplace as
those described by Wordsworth or Miss Skinner. You may have
some peculiar weakness (a strength would do as well) which may
be illustrated by a series of related occurrences. (See "Through a
Glass Darkly.") Whatever you choose to write about, resolve to be
specific. Do not simply glance at the episode; loo^ at it; stare at it
until the essential details are fixed in your mind. (If you feel a
restraint in writing I, use the third person. Write about yourself
as though you were someone else. This impersonal approach may
enable you to see the episode or episodes more clearly.)
i. Have you had a romantic notion about something that you
wanted to do? Have you tried learning to do it, only to find much
of the romance turn to hard work? Select your subject; then devote
the first part of your paper to your dream of what the job would be
like and the second part to a specific statement of what it was really
like. (Some possible subjects: Cowpunching; Sodajerking; a News-
SUGGESTIONS FOR PAPERS 51
paper Route; Gardening; In a Grocery Store; Delivery Boy; Hostess;
Team Manager.)
2. Have you been told that you were a sensitive child? If so,
how did you get this reputation? Tell in intimate detail one or two
episodes that would justify describing you as sensitive. (You may
feel that you gained something from acting a part; if so, add details
to point this out.)
3. Do people think that you are tough fibered, perhaps a little
heartless? If so, do you know upon what this impression is based?
Tell in intimate detail one or two episodes which would justify you
as insensitive. (It you have been misjudged, explain how.)
4. Rousseau says that everyone is guilty at one time or another
of "odious" conduct. Wordsworth confesses to two petty crimes and
then recalls his terror and sense of guilt. Can you recall a childhood
"crime" and how yon ielt about it? If so, make your reader follow
your mental processes before and after the deed.
5. Reread the little story told by Miss Skinner, "One Day." Put
yourself in the position of the little snob, Elise, and retell the story
from her point of view. Could she justify her conduct? What ex-
perience in your own life makes you confident that you understand
Ehse?
6. Wordsworth gives credit to Nature for gently preparing him
for a later life. He says: "Thanks to the means which Nature
designed to employ." Reread his poem; then write your paper on the
"means" which the poet had in mind. Finally, and most important,
test your relations with Nature. Do you feel that Nature has taught
you anything?
7. From whence came Peter de Vrics's title, "Through a Glass
Darkly"? After you have looked up the title (see Bartlett's Familiar
Quotations), go to the original work and read the quotation in con-
text. Now, write a paper on how applicable the title is to De Vries's
article.
8. It is possible that everyone has some special weakness, some
peculiar susceptibility. What is yours? If you have such a weak-
ness, describe it carefully; then give a series of specific examples to
show what you mean.
52 OFMYSELF
9. What is your chief strength that is, what can you always re-
sist doing or saying? If you have some resolve to which you stick no
matter what, tell about it and ot the times you have been tempted to
violate your rule. (Examples: "I never gossip"; "I never listen to
gossip"; "I am never late"; "I am never profane"; "I am never
cowardly"; "1 am never unpleasant." You will not, of course, take
these topics too seriously!)
10. Analyze any one of the selections in this chapter for method.
How does the author gain the sympathy of the reader ? How might
he have lost that sympathy? Rewrite a part of the selection to show
how conceit might have alienated the reader.
11. Which selection in this chapter is most appealing? Write a
paper in which you make a series of comparisons to justify your choice
of a particular selection as best.
SOME TITLES FOR PAPERS
1. A Disillusioning Experience 8. The Hide of a Rhinoceros
2. It Looked Wonderful Hut ... 9. Just as I Am
3. Confessions of a Bully 10. Honest Confession Is Good
4. Miserable Thin Skin n. "I Shall Rouge Myself"
5. A Childhood Crime 12. Can Anyone Tell the Truth?
6. My First Feeling of Guilt i 3. I Can't Say No
7. A Sucker Is Born Every 14. My Most Vulnerable Point
Minute Is ...
(See also, under Suggestions for Papers, titles under i and 9.)
M
ischief
L VERYO
ONE is amused by mischief which is
directed at someone else. One may even he entertained by mischief
directed at himself if sufficient time has elapsed to give perspective.
The selections in this chapter illustrate the amusement inherent in
mischief and will remind the reader of the mischief-makers whom
he has known and among whom he may count, possibly, himself.
The reader will note significant differences in the stories presented
here. The O. Henry story is carefully organized around a narrative
formula called "the biter bitten." This formula requires that the
persons who plot the discomfiture of others are themselves discom-
fited. O. Henry's "Ransom of Red Chief" is a perfect example of
tables completely turned. "Wallace," on the other hand, is simply
a series of anecdotes which are held together by the title character.
One will note, too, that Red Chief and Wallace differ markedly.
Red Chief's mischief grows out of an excess of physical vitality;
Wallace's out of an excess of intellectual vitality. Red Chiefs, some-
what modified in vigor, are everywhere; Wallaces are, perhaps for-
tunately, comparatively rare.
53
54 MISCHIEF
The Ransom of Red Chief*
O. Henry
[i] It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were
down South, in Alabama Bill Dnscoll and myself when this kid-
napping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, "dur-
ing a moment of temporary mental apparition"; but we didn't find
that out till later.
[2] There was a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and
called Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as unclelcteri-
ous and self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around a
Maypole.
[3] Bill and me had a joint capital of about six hundred dollars,
and we needed just two thousand dollars more to pull off a fraudulent
townlot scheme in Western Illinois with. We talked it over on the
front steps of the hotel. Philoprogenitivencss, says we, is strong in
semi-rural communities; therefore, and for other reasons, a kidnap-
ping project ought to do better there than in the radius of news-
papers that send reporters out in plain clothes to stir up talk about
such things. We knew that Summit couldn't get after us with any-
thing stronger than constables and, maybe, some lackadaisical blood-
hounds and a diatribe or two in the Weekly Farmers' Budget. So,
it looked good.
[4] We selected for our victim the only child of a prominent citizen
named Ebcnczer Dorset. The father was respectable and tight, a
mortgage fancier and a stern, upright collection-plate passer and fore-
closer. The kid was a boy of ten, with bas-relief freckles, and hair
the color of the cover of the magazine you buy at the news-stand
when you want to catch a train. Bill and me figured that Ebenezer
would melt down for a ransom of two thousand dollars to a cent.
But wait till I tell you.
[5] About two miles from Summit was a little mountain, covered
with a dense cedar brake. On the rear elevation of this mountain
was a cave. There we stored provisions.
* From Whirligigs by O. Henry. Copyright 1907 by Doublcday & Company, Inc.
O. HENRY 55
[6] One evening after sundown, we drove in a buggy past old
Dorset's house. The kid was in the street, throwing rocks at a kitten
on the opposite fence.
[7] "Hey, little boy!" says Bill, "would you like to have a bag of
candy and a nice ride' 5 "
[8] The boy catches Bill neatly in the eye with a piece of brick.
[9] "That will cost the old man an extra five hundred dollars," says
Bill, climbing over the wheel.
[10] That boy put up a light like a welter-weight cinnamon bear;
but, at last, we got him down in the bottom of the buggy and drove
away. We took him up to the cave, and I hitched the horse in the
cedar brake. After dark I drove the buggy to the little village, three
miles away, where we had hired it, and walked back to the mountain.
[n] Bill was pasting court-plaster over the scratches and bruises
on his features. There was a fire burning behind the big rock at
the entrance of the cave, and the boy was watching a pot of boiling
coffee, with two bu///ard tail-feathers stuck in his red hair. He
points a stick at me when I come up, and says:
[12] "Ha! cursed paleface, do you dare to enter the camp of Red
Chief, the terror of the plains?"
[13] "He's all right now," says Bill, rolling up his trousers and ex-
amining some bruises on his shins. "We're playing Indian. We're
making Buffalo Bill's show look like magic-lantern views of Palestine
in the town hall. I'm Old Hank, the Trapper, Red Chief's captive,
and I'm to be scalped at daybreak. By Gerommo! that kid can kick
hard."
[14] Yes sir, that boy seemed to be having the time of his life.
The fun of camping out in a cave had made him forget that he was
a captive himself. He immediately christened me Snake-eye, the
Spy, and announced that, when his braves returned from the war-
path, I was to be broiled at the stake at the rising of the sun.
[15] Then we had supper; and he filled his mouth full of bacon
and bread and gravy, and began to talk. He made a during-dinner
speech something like this:
[16] "I like this fine. I never camped out before; but I had a pet
'possum once, and I was nine last birthday. I hate to go to school.
56 MISCHIEF
Rats ate up sixteen of Jimmy Talbot's aunt's speckled hen's eggs.
Are there any real Indians in these woods? I want some more gravy.
Does the trees moving make the wind blow? We had five puppies.
What makes your nose so red, Hank? My father has lots of money.
Are the stars hot? I whipped Ed Walker twice, Saturday. I don't
like girls. You dassent catch toads unless with a string. Do oxen
make any noise ? Why are oranges round ? Have you got beds to
sleep on in this cave? Amos Murray has got six toes. A parrot can
talk, but a monkey or a fish can't. How many does it take to make
twelve?"
[17] Every few minutes he would remember that he was a pesky
redskin, and pick up his stick rifle and tiptoe to the mouth of the
cave to rubber for the scouts of the hated paleface. Now and then
he would let out a war-whoop that made Old Hank the Trapper
shiver. That boy had Bill terrorized from the start.
fi8] "Red Chief," says I to the kid, "would you like to go home' 3 "
[19] "Aw, what for?" says he. "I don't have any fun at home. I
hate to go to school. I like to camp out. You won't take me back
home again, Snake-eye, will you?"
[20] "Not right away," says I. "We'll stay here in the cave awhile."
[21] "All right!" says he. "That'll be fine. I never had such fun
in all my life."
[22] We went to bed about eleven o'clock. We spread down some
wide blankets and quilts and put Red Chief between us. We weren't
afraid he'd run away. He kept us awake for three hours, jumping
up and reaching for his rifle and screeching: "Hist! pard," in mine
and Bill's ears, as the fancied crackle of a twig or the rustle of a leaf
revealed to his young imagination the stealthy approach of the outlaw
band. At last, I fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamed that I had
been kidnapped and chained to a tree by a ferocious pirate with red
hair.
[23] Just at daybreak, I was awakened by a series of awful screams
from Bill. They weren't yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or
yawps, such as you'd expect from a manly set of vocal organs they
were simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such as women
emit when they see ghosts or caterpillars. It's an awful thing to hear
O. HENRY 57
a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave at day-
break.
[24] I jumped up to see what the matter was. Red Chief was
sitting on Bill's chest, with one hand twined in Bill's hair. In the
other he had the sharp caseknife we used for slicing bacon; and he
was industriously and realistically trying to take Bill's scalp, according
to the sentence that had been pronounced upon him the evening
before.
[25] I got the knife away from the kid and made him lie down
again. But, from that moment, Bill's spirit was broken. He laid
down on his side of the bed, but he never closed an eye again in sleep
as long as that boy was with us. I dozed off for a while, but along
toward sun-up I remembered that Red had said I was to be burned
at the stake at the rising of the sun. I wasn't nervous or afraid; but
I sat up and lit my pipe and leaned against a rock.
[26] "What you getting up so soon for, Sam?" asked Bill.
[27] "Me?" says I. "Oh, I got a kind of pain in my shoulder. I
thought sitting up would rest it."
[28] "You're a liar!" says Bill. "You're afraid. You was to be
burned at sunrise, and you was afraid he'd do it. And he would,
too, if he could find a match. Ain't it awful, Sam? Do you think
anybody will pay out money to get a little imp like that back home ? "
[29] "Sure," said I. "A rowdy kid like that is just the kind that
parents dote on. Now, you and the Chief get up and cook breakfast,
while I go up on the top of the mountain and reconnoitre."
[30] I went up on the peak of the little mountain and ran my eye
over the contiguous vicinity. Over towards Summit I expected to
see the sturdy yeomanry of the village armed with scythes and pitch-
forks beating the countryside for the dastardly kidnappers. But what
I saw was a peaceful landscape dotted with one man ploughing with
a dun mule. Nobody was dragging the creek; no couriers dashed
hither and yon, bringing tidings of no news to the distracted parents.
There was a sylvan attitude of somnolent sleepiness pervading that
section of the external outward surface of Alabama that lay exposed
to my view. "Perhaps," says I to myself, "it has not yet been dis-
covered that the wolves have borne away the tender lambkin from
58 MISCHIEF
the fold. Heaven help the wolves!" says I, and I went down the
mountain to breakfast.
[31] When I got to the cave I found Bill hacked up against the side
of it, breathing hard, and the boy threatening to smash him with a
rock half as big as a cocoanut.
[32] "He put a red-hot boiled potato down my back," explained
Bill, "and then mashed it with his foot; and I boxed his ears. Have
you got a gun about you, Sam ? "
[33] I took the rock away from the boy and kind of patched up
the argument. "I'll fix you," says the kid to Bill. "No man ever
yet struck the Red Chief but he got paid for it. You better beware!"
[34] After breakfast the kid takes a piece of leather with strings
wrapped around it out of his pocket and goes outside the cave un-
winding it.
[35] "What's he up to now?" says Bill, anxiously. "You don't
think he'll run away, do you, Sam?"
[36] "No fear of it," says I. "He don't seem to be much of a home
body. But we've got to fix up some plan about the ransom. There
don't seem to be much excitement around Summit on account of his
disappearance; but maybe they haven't realized yet that he's gone.
His folks may think he's spending the night with Aunt Jane or one
of the neighbors. Anyhow, he'll be missed to-day. To-night we
must get a message to his father demanding the two thousand dollars
for his return."
[37] Just then we heard a kind of war-whoop, such as David might
have emitted when he knocked out the champion Goliath. It was a
sling that Red Chief had pulled out of his pocket, and he was whirl-
ing it around his head.
[38] I dodged, and heard a heavy thud and a kind of a sigh from
Bill, like a horse gives out when you take his saddle off. A nigger-
head rock the size of an egg had caught Bill just behind his left
ear. He loosened himself all over and fell in the fire across the frying
pan of hot water for washing the dishes. I dragged him out and
poured cold water on his head for half an hour.
[39] By and by, Bill sits up and feels behind his ear and says: "Sam,
do you know who my favorite Biblical character is?"
O. HENRY 59
[40] "Take it easy," says I. "You'll come to your senses presently."
[41] "King Herod," says he. "You won't go away and leave me
here alone, will you, Sam?"
[42] I went out and caught that boy and shook him until his freckles
rattled.
[43] "If y u don't behave," says I, "I'll take you straight home.
Now, are you going to be good, or not?"
[44] "I was only funning," says he, sullenly. "I didn't mean to
hurt Old Hank. But what did he hit me for? I'll behave, Snake-
eye, if you won't send me home, and if you'll let me play the Black
Scout to-day."
[45] "I don't know the game," says I. "That's for you and Mr. Bill
to decide. He's your playmate for the day. I'm going away for a
while on business. Now, you come in and make friends with him
and say you are sorry for hurting him, or home you go, at once."
[46] I made him and Bill shake hands, and then I took Bill aside
and told him I was going to Poplar Grove, a little village three miles
from the cave, and find out what I could about how the kidnapping
had been regarded in Summit. Also, I thought it best to send a
peremptory letter to old man Dorset that clay, demanding the ransom
and dictating how it should be paid.
[47] "You know, Sam," says Bill, "I've stood by you without bat-
ting an eye in earthquakes, fire and flood in poker games, dynamite
outrages, police raids, train robberies, and cyclones. I never lost my
nerve yet till we kidnapped that two-legged skyrocket of a kid. He's
got me going. You won't leave me long with him, will you, Sam?"
[48] "I'll be back some time this afternoon," says I. "You must
keep the boy amused and cjuict till I return. And now we'll write
the letter to old Dorset."
[49] Bill and I got paper and pencil and worked on the letter while
Red Chief, with a blanket wrapped around him, strutted up and
down, guarding the mouth of the cave. Bill begged me tearfully to
make the ransom fifteen hundred dollars instead of two thousand.
"I ain't attempting," says he, "to decry the celebrated moral aspect of
parental affection, but we're dealing with humans, and it ain't human
for anybody to give up two thousand dollars for that forty-pound
60 MISCHIEF
chunk of freckled wildcat. I'm willing to take a chance at fifteen
hundred dollars. You can charge the difference up to me."
[50] So, to relieve Bill, I acceded, and we collaborated a letter that
ran this way:
EBENEKER DORSET, ESQ.:
We have your boy concealed in a place far from Summit. It is use-
less for you or the most skillful detectives to attempt to find him.
Absolutely, the only terms on which you can have him restored to you
arc these: We demand fifteen hundred dollars in large bills for his
return; the money to be left at midnight to-night at the same spot and
in the same box as your reply as hereinafter described. If you agree
to these terms, send your answer in writing by a solitary messenger
to-night at half-past eight o'clock. After crossing Owl Creek on the
road to Poplar Grove, there are three large trees about a hundred
yards apart, close to the fence of the wheat field on the right-hand
side. At the bottom of the fence-post, opposite the third tree, will be
found a small pasteboard box.
The messenger will place the answer in this box and return imme-
diately to Summit.
If you attempt any treachery or fail to comply with our demand as
stated, you will never see your boy again.
If you pay the money as demanded, he will be returned to you safe
and well within three hours. These terms are final, and if you do
not accede to them no further communication will be attempted.
TWO DESPERATE MEN.
[51] I addressed this letter to Dorset, and put it in my pocket. As
I was about to start, the kid comes up to me and says:
[52] "Aw, Snake-eye, you said I could play the Black Scout while
you was gone."
[53] "P'ay it, of course," says I. "Mr. Bill will play with you.
What kind of a game is it?"
[54] "I'm the Black Scout," says Red Chief, "and I have to ride
to the stockade to warn the settlers that the Indians are coming. I'm
tired of playing Indian myself. I want to be the Black Scout."
[55] "All right," says I. "It sounds harmless to me. 1 guess Mr.
Bill will help you foil the pesky savages."
O. HENRY 61
[56] "What am I to do?" asks Bill, looking at the kid suspiciously.
[57] "You are the hoss," says Black Scout. "Get down on your
hands and knees. How can I ride to the stockade without a hoss?"
[58] "You'd better keep him interested," said I, "till we get the
scheme going. Loosen up."
[59] Bill gets down on his all fours, and a look comes in his eye like
a rabbit's when you catch it in a trap.
[60] "How far is it to the stockade, kid?" he asks, in a husky man-
ner of voice.
[61] "Ninety miles," says the Black Scout. "And you have to
hump yourself to get there on time. Whoa, now!"
[62] The Black Scout jumps on Bill's back and digs his heels in
his sides.
[63] "For Heaven's sake," says Bill, "hurry back, Sam, as soon as
you can. I wish we hadn't made the ransom more than a thousand.
Say, you quit kicking me or I'll get up and warm you good."
[64] I walked over to Poplar Grove and sat around the post-office
and store, talking with the chaw-bacons that come in to trade. One
whiskerando says that he hears Summit is all upset on account of
Elder Ebenezer Dorset's boy having been lost or stolen. That was
all I wanted to know. I bought some smoking tobacco, referred
casually to the price of black-eyed peas, posted my letter surrepti-
tiously, and came away. The postmaster said the mail-carrier would
come by in an hour to take the mail to Summit.
[65] When I got back to the cave Bill and the boy were not to be
found. I explored the vicinity of the cave, and risked a yodel or two,
but there was no response.
[66] So I lighted my pipe and sat down on a mossy bank to await
developments.
[67] In about half an hour I heard the bushes rustic, and Bill
wabbled out into the little glade in front of the cave. Behind him
was the kid, stepping softly like a scout, with a broad grin on his face.
Bill stopped, took off his hat, and wiped his face with a red handker-
chief. The kid stopped about eight feet behind him.
[68] "Sam," says Bill, "I suppose you'll think I'm a renegade, but I
couldn't help it. I'm a grown person with masculine proclivities and
62 MISCHIEF
habits of self-defense, but there is a time when all systems of egotism
and predominance fail. The boy is gone. I sent him home. All is
off. There was martyrs in old times," goes on Bill, "that suffered
death rather than give up the particular graft they enjoyed. None
of 'cm ever was subjugated to such supernatural tortures as I have
been. I tried to be faithful to our articles of depredation; but there
came a limit."
[69] "What's the trouble, Bill ?" I asked him.
[70] "I was rode," says Bill, "the ninety miles to the stockade, not
barring an inch. Then, when the settlers was rescued, I was given
oats. Sand ain't a palatable substitute. And then, for an hour I
had to try to explain to him why there was nothin' in holes, how a
road can run both ways, and what makes the grass green. I tell
you, Sam, a human can only stand so much. I takes him by the neck
of his clothes and drags him down the mountain. On the way he
kicks my legs black and blue from the knees down; and I've got to
have two or three bites on my thumb and hand cauterized.
[71] "But he's gone" continues Bill "gone home. I showed him
the road to Summit and kicked him about eight feet nearer there
at one kick. I'm sorry we lose the ransom; but it was cither that
or Bill Driscoll to the madhouse."
[72] Bill is puffing and blowing, but there is a look of ineffable
peace and growing content on his rose-pink features.
[73] "Bill," says I, "there isn't any heart disease in your family, is
there?"
[74] "No," says Bill, "nothing chronic except malaria and accidents.
Why?"
[75] "Then you might turn around," says I, "and have a look be-
hind you."
[76] Bill turns and sees the boy, and loses his complexion and sits
down plump on the ground and begins to pluck aimlessly at grass
and little sticks. For an hour I was afraid of his mind. And then
I told him that my scheme was to put the whole job through imme-
diately and that we would get the ransom and be off with it by mid-
night if old Dorset fell in with our proposition. So Bill braced up
enough to give the kid a weak sort of a smile and a promise to play
O. HENRY 63
the Russian in a Japanese war with him as soon as he felt a little
better.
[77] I had a scheme for collecting that ransom without clanger of
being caught by counterplots that ought to commend itself to pro-
fessional kidnappers. The tree under which the answer was to be
left and the money later on was close to the road fence with big,
bare fields on all sides. If a gang of constables should be watching
for any one to come for the note, they could sec him a long way off
crossing the fields or in the road. But no, sirrcc! At half-past eight
I was up in that tree as well hidden as a tree toad, waiting for the
messenger to arrive.
[78] Exactly on time, a half-grown boy rides up the road on a
bicycle, locates the pasteboard box at the foot of the ience-post, slips
a folded piece of paper into it, and pedals away again back toward
Summit.
[79 I 1 waited an hour and then concluded the thing was square.
I slid down the tree, got the note, slipped along the fence till I struck
the woods, and was back at the cave in another half an hour. I
opened the note, got near the lantern, and read it to Bill. It was
written with a pen in a crabbed hand, and the sum and substance
of it was this:
TWO DESPERATE MEN.
Gentlemen: I received your letter to-day by post, in regard to the
ransom you ask for the return of my son. I think you are a little
high in your demands, and 1 hereby make you a counter-proposition,
which I am inclined to believe you will accept. You bring Johnny
home and pay me two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and I agree
to take him off your hands. You had better come at night, for the
neighbors believe he is lost, and I couldn't be responsible for what
they would do to anybody they saw bringing him back. Very re-
spectfully,
EBENE'/ER DORSET.
[80] "Great pirates of Penzance," says I; "of all the impudent "
[81] But I glanced at Bill, and hesitated. He had the most appeal-
ing look in his eyes I ever saw on the face of a dumb or a talking
brute.
64 MISCHIEF
[82] "Sam," says he, "what's two hundred and fifty dollars, after
all ? We've got the money. One more night of this kid will send me
to a bed in Bedlam. Besides being a thorough gentleman, I think
Mr. Dorset is a spendthrift for making us such a liberal offer. You
ain't going to let the chance go, are you ?"
[83] "Tell you the truth, Bill," says I, "this little he ewe lamb has
somewhat got on my nerves too. We'll take him home, pay the
ransom, and make our getaway."
[84] We took him home that night. We got him to go by telling
him that his father had bought a silver-mounted rifle and a pair of
moccasins for him, and we were to hunt bears the next clay.
[85] It was just twelve o'clock when we knocked at Ebenezer's
front door. Just at the moment when 1 should have been abstracting
the fifteen hundred dollars from the box under the tree, according to
the original proposition, Bill was counting out two hundred and
fifty dollars into Dorset's hand.
[86] When the kid found out we were going to leave him at home
he started up a howl like a calliope and fastened himself as tight as a
leech to Bill's leg. His father peeled him away gradually, like a
porous plaster.
[87] "How long can you hold him?'' asks Bill.
[88] "I'm not as strong as I used to be," says old Dorset, "but I think
I can promise you ten minutes."
[89] "Enough," says Bill. "In ten minutes I shall cross the Central,
Southern, and Middle Western States, and be legging it trippingly
for the Canadian border."
[90] And, as dark as it was, and as fat as Bill was, and as good a
runner as I am, he was a good mile and a half out of Summit before
1 could catch up with him.
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. What did Bill mean by "temporary mental apparition"? How
does this set the tone of the story?
2. Why was King Herod Bill's favorite Biblical character?
3. For what purpose did the kidnapers want $2,000?
O. HENRY 65
4. What does philoprogenitiveness mean? What effect is gained by
the use of this learned word?
5. Were you prepared for Ebenezer Dorset's reply to the Two Des-
perate Men ?
6. How does the author manage to elicit the reader's sympathy for
each of the characters ?
7. Which of the kidnapers is the better educated? Does this differ-
ence in education give the author an advantage in telling his
story ? How ?
Wallace*
Richard H. Rovere
[i] As a schoolboy, my relations with teachers were almost always
tense and hostile. I disliked my studies and did very badly in them.
There are, I have heard, inept students who bring out the best in
teachers, who challenge their skill and move them to sympathy and
affection. I seemed to bring out the worst in them. I think my per-
sonality had more to do with this than my poor classroom work.
Anyway, something about me was deeply offensive to the pedagogic
temperament.
[2] Often, it took a teacher no more than a few minutes to con-
ceive a raging dislike for me. I recall an instructor in elementary
French who shied a textbook at my head the very first day I attended
his class. We had never laid eyes on each other until fifteen or
twenty minutes before he assaulted me. I no longer remember what,
if anything, provoked him to violence. It is possible that I said
something that was either insolent or intolerably stupid. I guess I
often did. It is also possible that I said nothing at all. Even my
silence, my humility, my acquiescence, could annoy my teachers. The
* Reprinted by permission of the author. Copyright 1950 The New Yorker Maga-
zine, Inc.
66 MISCHIEF
very sight of me, the mere awareness of my existence on earth, could
be unenclurably irritating to them.
[3] This was the case with my fourth-grade teacher, Miss Purdy.
In order to make the acquaintance of her new students on the opening
day of school, she had each one rise and give his name and address
as she called the roll. Her voice was soft and gentle, her manner
sympathetic, until she came to me. Indeed, up to then I had been
dreamily entertaining the hope that I was at last about to enjoy a
happy association with a teacher. When Miss Purdy's eye fell on
me, however, her face suddenly twisted and darkened with revul-
sion. She hesitated for a few moments while she looked me up and
down and thought of a suitable comment on what she saw. "Aha!"
she finally said, addressing not me but my new classmates, in a voice
that was now coarse and cruel. "I don't have to ask his name.
There, boys and girls, is Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, lounging back in
his mahogany-lined office." She held each syllable of the financier's
name on her lips as long as she was able to, so that my fellow-students
could savor the full irony of it. I imagine my posture was a bit
relaxed for the occasion, but I know well that she would not have
resented anyone else's sprawl as much as she did mine. I can even
hear her making some friendly, schoolmarmish quip about too much
summer vacation to any other pupil. Friendly quips were never for
me. In some unfortunate and mysterious fashion, my entire being
rubbed Miss Purdy and all her breed the wrong way. Throughout
the fourth grade, she persisted in tormenting me with her idiotic
Morgan joke. "And perhaps Mr. J. P. Revere can tell us all about
Vasco da Gama this morning," she would say, throwing in a little
added insult by mispronouncing my surname.
[4] The aversion I inspired in teachers might under certain cir-
cumstances have been turned to good account. It might have stim-
ulated me to industry; it might have made me get high marks, just
so I could prove to the world that my persecutors were motivated by
prejudice and perhaps by a touch of envy; or it might have bred a
monumental rebelliousness in me, a contempt for all authority, that
could have become the foundation of a career as the leader of some
great movement against all tyranny and oppression.
RICHARD H. ROVERE 67
[5] It did none of these things. Instead, I became, so far as my
school life was concerned, a thoroughly browbeaten boy, and I ac-
cepted the hostility of my teachers as an inescapable condition of
life. In fact, I took the absolutely disastrous view that my teachers
were unquestionably right in their estimate of me as a dense and
altogether noxious creature who deserved, if anything, worse than
he got. These teachers were, after all, men and women who had
mastered the parts of speech, the multiplication tables, and a simply
staggering number of countries. They could add up columns of
figures the very sight of which made me cliz/y and sick to the stom-
ach. They could read "As You Like It" with pleasure so they said,
anyway, and I believed everything they said. I felt that if such knowl-
edgeable people told me that I was stupid, they certainly must know
what they were talking about. In consequence, my grades sank
lower and lower, my face became more noticeably blank, my manner
more mulish, and my presence in the classroom more aggravating to
whoever presided over it. To be sure, I hated my teachers for their
hatred of me, and I missed no chance to abuse them behind their
backs, but fundamentally I shared with them the view that I was
a worthless and despicable boy, as undeserving of an education as I
was incapable of absorbing one. Often, on school days, I wished that
I were dead.
[6] This was my attitude, at least, until my second year in prepara-
tory school, when, at fourteen, I fell under the exhilarating, regenera-
tive influence of my friend Wallace Duckworth. Wallace changed
my whole outlook on life. It was he who freed me from my terrible
awe of teachers; it was he who showed me that they could be brought
to book and made fools of as easily as I could be; it was he who showed
me that the gap between their knowledge and mine was not un-
bridgeable. Sometimes I think that I should like to become a famous
man, a United States senator or something of that sort, just to be
able to repay my debt to Wallace. I should like to be so important
that people would inquire into the early influences on my life and I
would be able to tell them about Wallace.
[7] I was freshly reminded of my debt to Wallace not long ago
when my mother happened to come across a packet of letters I had
68 MISCHIEF
written to her and my father during my first two years in a boarding
school on Long Island. In one of these, I reported that "There's a
new kid in school who's supposed to be a scientifical genius." Wal-
lace was this genius. In a series of intelligence and aptitude tests we
all took in the opening week, he achieved some incredible score, a
mark that, according to the people who made up the tests, certified
him as a genius and absolutely guaranteed that in later life he would
join the company of Einstein, Stemmet/, and Edison. Naturally,
his teachers were thrilled but not for long.
[8] Within a matter of weeks, it became clear that although Wal-
lace was unquestionably a genius, or at least an exceptionally bright
boy, he was disposed to use his considerable gifts not to equip him-
self for a career in the service of mankind but for purely anti-social
undertakings. Far from making the distinguished scholastic record
everyone expected of him, he made an altogether deplorable one.
He never did a lick of schoolwork. He had picked up his scientific
knowledge somewhere but evidently not from teachers. 1 am not
sure about this, but I think Wallace's record, as long as he was in
school, was even worse than mine. In my mind's eye there is a
picture of the sheet of monthly averages thumbtacked to the bulletin
board across the hall from the school post office; my name is one from
the bottom, the bottom name being Wallace's.
[9] As a matter of fact, one look at Wallace should have been
enough to tell the teachers what sort of genius he was. At fourteen,
he was somewhat shorter than he should have been and a good deal
stouter. His face was round, owlish, and dirty. He had big, dark
eyes, and his black hair, which hardly ever got cut, was arranged on
his head as the four winds wanted it. He had been outfitted with
attractive and fairly expensive clothes, but he changed from one
suit to another only when his parents came to call on him and ordered
him to get out of what he had on.
[10] The two most expressive things about him were his mouth and
the pockets of his jacket. By looking at his mouth, one could tell
whether he was plotting evil or had recently accomplished it. If he
was bent upon malevolence, his lips were all puckered up, like those
of a billiard player about to make a difficult shot. After the deed was
RICHARD H. ROVERE 69
done, the pucker was replaced by a delicate, unearthly smile. How
a teacher who knew anything about boys could miss the fact that
both expressions were masks of Satan I'm sure I don't know. Wal-
lace's pockets were less interesting than his mouth, perhaps, but more
spectacular in a way. The side pockets of his jacket bulged out over
his pudgy haunches like burro hampers. They were filled with tools
screwdrivers, pliers, files, wrenches, wire cutters, nail sets, and I
don't know what else. In addition to all this, one pocket always con-
tained a rolled-up copy of Popular Mechanics, while from the top of
the other protruded Scientific American or some other such magazine.
His breast pocket contained, besides a large collection of fountain pens
and mechanical pencils, a picket fence of drill bits, gimlets, kitchen
knives, and other pointed instruments. When he walked, he clinked
and jangled and pealed.
[n] Wallace lived just down the hall from me, and I got to know
him one afternoon, a week or so after school started, when I was
wrestling with an algebra lesson. I was really trying to get good
marks at the time, for my father had threatened me with unpleasant
reprisals if my grades did not show early improvement. I could make
no sense of the algebra, though, and I thought that the scientific
genius, who had not as yet been unmasked, might be generous
enough to lend me a hand.
[12] It was a study period, but I found Wallace stretched out on
the floor working away at something he was learning to make from
Popular Mechanics. He received me with courtesy, but after hear-
ing my request he went immediately back to his tinkering. "I could
do that algebra, all right, 1 ' he said, "but I can't. be bothered with it.
Got to get this dingbat going this afternoon. Anyway, I don't care
about algebra. It's too twitchy. Real engineers never do any of
that stuff. It's too twitchy for them." I soon learned that "twitch"
was an all-purpose word of Wallace's. It turned up, in one form or
another, in about every third sentence he spoke. It did duty as a
noun, an adjective, a verb, and an adverb.
[13] I was disappointed by his refusal of help but fascinated by what
he was doing. I stayed on and watched him as he deftly cut and
spliced wires, removed and replaced screws, referring, every so often,
70 MISCHIEF
to his magazine for further instruction. He worked silently, lips
fiendishly puckered, for some time, then looked up at me and said,
"Say, you know anything about that organ in the chapel ? v
[14] "What about it?" I asked.
[15] "I mean do you know anything about how it works?"
[16] "No," I said. "I don't know anything about that."
[17] "Too bad," Wallace said, reaching for a pair of pliers. "I had
a really twitchy idea." He worked at his wires and screws for quite
a while. After perhaps ten minutes, he looked up again. "Well,
anyhow," he said, "maybe you know how to get in the chapel and
have a look at the organ ? "
[18] "Sure, that's easy,'' I said. "Just walk in. The chapel's always
open. They keep it open so you can go in and pray if you want to,
and things like that."
[19] "Oh" was Wallace's only comment.
[20] I didn't at all grasp what he had in mind until church time
the following Sunday. At about six o'clock that morning, several
hours before the service, he tiptoed into my room and shook me from
sleep. "Hey, get dressed," he said. "Let's you and I twitch over
to the chapel and have a look at the organ."
[21] Game for any form of amusement, I got up and went along.
In the bright, not quite frosty October morning, we scurried over the
lawns to the handsome Georgian chapel. It was an hour before the
rising bell.
[22] Wallace had brought along a flashlight as well as his usual
collection of hardware. We went to the rear of the chancel, where
the organ was, and he poked the light underneath the thing and in-
side it for a few minutes. Then he got out his pliers and screwdrivers
and performed some operations that I could neither see nor under-
stand. We were in the chapel for only a few minutes. "There,"
Wallace said as he came up from under the keyboard. "I guess I
got her twitched up just about right. Let's go." Back in my room,
we talked softly until the rest of the school began to stir. I asked
Wallace what, precisely, he had done to the organ. "You'll see," he
said with the faint, faraway smile where the pucker had been. Using
my commonplace imagination, I guessed that he had fixed the organ
RICHARD H. ROVERE 71
so it would give out peculiar noises or something like that. I didn't
realize then that Wallace's tricks were seldom commonplace.
[23] Church began as usual that Sunday morning. The head-
master delivered the invocation and then announced the number and
title of the first hymn. He held up his hymnal and gave the genteel,
throat-clearing cough that was his customary signal to the organist to
get going. The organist came down on the keys but not a peep
sounded from the pipes. He tried again. Nothing but a click.
[24] When the headmaster realized that the organ wasn't working,
he walked quickly to the rear and consulted in whispers with the
organist. Together they made a hurried inspection of the instru-
ment, peering inside it, snapping the electric switch back and forth,
and reaching to the base plug to make certain the juice was on.
Everything seemed all right, yet the organ wouldn't sound a note.
[25] "Something appears to be wrong with our organ," the head-
master said when he returned to the lectern. "I regret to say that for
this morning's service we shall have to "
[26] At the first word of the announcement, Wallace, who was
next to me in one of the rear pews, slid out of his scat and bustled
noisily clown the middle aisle. It was highly unusual conduct, and
every eye was on him. His gaudy magazines flapped from his
pockets, his portable workshop clattered and clanked as he strode
importantly to the chancel and rose on tiptoe to reach the ear of the
astonished headmaster. He spoke in a stage whisper that could be
heard everywhere in the chapel. "Worked around organs quite a
bit, sir," he said. "Think I can get this one going in a jiily."
[27] Given the chance, the headmaster would undoubtedly have
declined Wallace's kind offer. Wallace didn't give him the chance.
He scooted for the organ. For perhaps a minute, he worked on it,
hands flying, tools tinkling.
[28] Then, stuffing the tools back into his pockets, he returned to
the headmaster. "There you are, sir," he said, smiling up at him.
"Think she'll go all right now." The headmaster, with great doubt
in his heart, I am sure, nodded to the organist to try again. Wallace
stood by, looking rather like the inventor of a new kind of airplane
waiting to see his brain child take flight. He faked a look of deep
72 MISCHIEF
anxiety, which, when a fine, clear swell came from the pipes, was
replaced by a faint smile of relief, also faked. On the second or
third chord, he bustled back down the aisle, looking very solemn and
businesslike and ready for serious worship.
[29 ] It was a fine performance, particularly brilliant in its timing.
If Wallace had had to stay at the organ even a few seconds longer
that is, if he had done a slightly more elaborate job of twitching it in
the first place he would have been ordered back to his pew before
he had got done with the repairs. Moreover, someone would prob-
ably have guessed that it was he who had put it on the fritz in the
first place. But no one did guess it. Not then, anyway. For weeks
after that, Wallace's prestige in the school was enormous. Everyone
had had from the beginning a sense of honor and pride at having a
genius around, but no one up to then had realized how useful a
genius could be. Wallace let on after church that Sunday that he
was well up on the workings not merely of organs but also of heating
and plumbing systems, automobiles, radios, washing machines, and
just about everything else. He said he would be pleased to help out
in any emergency. Everyone thought he was wonderful.
[30] "That was a real good twitch, wasn't it?" he said to me when
we were by ourselves. I said that it certainly was.
[31] From that time on, I was proud and happy to be Wallace's
cupbearer. I find it hard now to explain exactly what his victory
with the organ, and all his later victories over authority, meant to
me, but I do know that they meant a very great deal. Partly, I guess,
it was just the knowledge that he enjoyed my company. I was an
authentic, certified dunce and he was an acknowledged genius, yet
he liked being with me. Better yet was my discovery that this super-
brain disliked schoolwork every bit as much as I did. He was bored
silly, as I was, by "II Penseroso" and completely unable to stir up any
enthusiasm for "Silas Marner" and all the foolish goings on over
Eppie. Finally, and this perhaps was what made me love him most,
he had it in his power to humiliate and bring low the very people
who had so often humiliated me and brought me low. . . .
[32] I no longer remember all of Wallace's inventions in detail.
Once, I recall, he made, in the chemistry laboratory, some kind of in-
RICHARD H. ROVERE 73
visible paint a sort of shellac, I suppose and covered every black-
board in the school with it. The next day, chalk skidded along the
slate and left about as much impression as it would have made on a
cake of ice. The dormitory he and I lived in was an old one of frame
construction, and when we had fire drills, we had to climb down out-
side fire escapes. One night, Wallace tied a piece of flypaper se-
curely around each rung of each ladder in the building, then rang
the fire alarm. Still another time, he went back to his first love, the
organ, and put several pounds of flour in the pipes, so that when the
organist turned on the pumps, a cloud of flour filled the chapel. One
of his favorite tricks was to take the dust jacket from a novel and
wrap it around a textbook. In a Latin class, then, he would appear
to be reading "Black April" when he should have been reading about
the campaigns in Gaul. After several of his teachers had discovered
that he had the right book in the wrong cover (he piously explained
that he put the covers on to keep his books clean), he felt free to re-
move the textbook and really read a novel in class.
[33] Wallace was expelled shortly before the Easter vacation. As
the winter had drawn on, life had become duller and duller for him,
and to brighten things up he had resorted to pranks of larger con-
ception and of an increasingly anti-social character. He poured five
pounds of sugar into the gasoline tank of the basketball coach's car
just before the coach was to start out, with two or three of the team's
best players in his car, for a game with a school about twenty-five
miles away. The engine functioned adequately until the car hit an
isolated spot on the highway, miles from any service place. Then
it gummed up completely. The coach and the players riding with
him came close to frostbite, and the game had to be called off. The
adventure cost Wallace's parents a couple of hundred dollars for
automobile repairs. Accused of the prank, which clearly bore his
trademark, Wallace had freely admitted his guilt. It was explained
to his parents that he would be given one more chance in school;
another trick of any sort and he would be packed off on the first train.
[34] Later, trying to justify himself to me, he said, "You don't like
that coach either, do you? He's the twerpiest twitch here. All
teachers are twitchy, but coaches are the worst ones of all."
74 MISCHIEF
[35] I don't recall what I said. Wallace had not consulted me
about several of his recent escapades, and although I was still loyal
to him, I was beginning to have misgivings about some of them.
[36] As I recall it, the affair that led directly to his expulsion was a
relatively trifling one, something to do with blown fuses or short
circuits. At any rate, Wallace's parents had to come and fetch him
home. It was a sad occasion for me, for Wallace had built in me the
foundations for a sense of security. My marks were improving, my
father was happier, and I no longer cringed at the sight of a teacher.
I feared, though, that without Wallace standing behind me and
giving me courage, 1 might slip back into the old ways. I was very
near to tears as I helped him pack up his turbines, his tools, and his
stacks of magazines. He, however, was quite cheerful. "1 suppose
my Pop will put me in another one of these places, and Til have to
twitch my way out of it all over again," he said.
[37] "J ust remember how dumb all those teachers are," he said to
me a few moments before he got into his parents' car. "They're so
twitchy dumb they can't even tell if anyone else is dumb." It was
rather a sweeping generalization, I later learned, but it served me
well for a number of years. Whenever I was belabored by a teacher,
I remembered my grimy genius friend and his reassurances. I got
through school somehow or other. I still cower a bit when I find that
someone I've met is a schoolteacher, but things aren't too bad and I
am on reasonably civil terms with a number of teachers, and even a
few professors.
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. Why does the author go into so much detail about his experiences
with schoolteachers? Why did he not simply tell the story of
Wallace?
2. Does the author ever adequately explain the attitude of teachers
toward him?
3. What type of student was the author? Wallace? (See Fuller's
"Four Types of Students.")
SUGGESTIONS FOR PAPERS 75
4. How are Wallace and Red Chief ("Ransom of Red Chief") alike?
How do they differ?
5. What were the "two most expressive things" about Wallace?
6. The author says that Wallace "had picked up his scientific knowl-
edge somewhere." Can you name the probable source of the
knowledge- 5
7. What specific pieces of literature are mentioned in this story ?
What was his and the author's attitude toward literature?
Suggestions for Papers
The material for your paper this week should be relatively easy to
find. Simply select the best example of mischief you can think of,
either your own or someone else's, and tell about it. (If you prefer,
or if your instructor prefers, you may write an essay on either "The
Ransom of Red Chief" or "Wallace," or you may compare and con-
trast the two. See 6 below.)
1. Can you recall the time when you carefully planned to get the
better of someone and then at the last moment had the tables turned
on you? If so, select only the essential details for telling the episode
as effectively as possible. Reject everything that does not bear directly
on your story.
2. If you have turned the tables on someone who was trying to get
the better of you, tell how you did it.
3. Do you know someone, perhaps yourself, who has gained a
reputation as a mischievous boy or girl? If so, tell how he or she
came to deserve or not deservethis reputation. Here you will be
following the pattern in "Wallace" except that you should simply
name, because of space limits, most of the mischievous actions and
then tell in sufficient detail only one of the best examples.
4. What was the prime example of mischief committed during your
four years in high school? Do you know the details well enough
76 MISCHIEF
to give a reader the full flavor of the prank? What motivated it?
How was it accomplished? What was the eventual result?
5. What were your grades in Deportment (if such grades were
given at your school) ? Explain the worst grade. Whether the
grade was justified or not does not matter.
6. Draw up a series of likenesses and differences between Red
Chief and Wallace: age, appearance, environment (time and place),
parents, interests, attitudes toward their elders. Comb both stories
for details to support your findings. Finally, can you decide which
is the more effective character? Can you write an inductive defini-
tion of mischief?
SOME TITLES FOR PAPERS
1. And the Class Roared 6. Adults Like Mischief Too!
2. A Red Chief I Have Known 7. The Tables Were Turned
3. A Wallace of My Acquaint- 8. My Attitude Toward Teach-
tance ers
4. Mischief Requires Careful 9. Red Chief and Wallace: A
Planning Comparison
5. When Does Mischief Become 10. Which Is the Better Story,
Delinquency? O. Henry's or Rovcre's?
n Being Found Out
S;
OME of us may wonder why it is that people
think js well of us as they clo. We are conscious perhaps of our
shining virtues, and we may think that these qualities carry the day
for us. Misgivings, however, may assail us and may make us con-
clude that it isn't what people know about us which really saves us
hut what they don't know. In any event, normally we are fairly
careful not to reveal anything truly unsavory about ourselves. If
someone wishes to find us out, we give him as little help as we can.
Though said of many men, "His life is an open book," the state-
ment is seldom accurate, and according to Thackeray in his essay
"On Being Found Out," it is fortunate indeed that most lives are not
open books. The effectiveness of the essay lies in its bantering style,
in the many illustrations, and in the essential truth of the idea.
The seven anecdotes under "The Most Disgraceful Thing I Ever
Did" were submitted as entries in a contest sponsored by the editors
of Vanity Fair. They illustrate how far a man will go in revealing his
worst faults, which, as you will see, is not very far. On the other
hand, Hardy in his poems, "In Church" and "At the Draper's," is ruth-
less in revealing how disgraceful he thinks men and women can be.
77
78 ON BEING FOUND OUT
On Being Found Out*
William Makepeace Thackeray
[i] At the close (let us say) of Queen Anne's reign, when I was a
boy at a private and preparatory school for young gentlemen, I re-
member the wiseacre of a master ordering us all, one night, to march
into a little garden at the back of the house, and thence to proceed one
by one into a tool- or hen-house (I was but a tender little thing just
put into short clothes, and can't exactly say whether the house was
for tools or hens), and in that house to put our hands into a sack
which stood on a bench, a candle burning beside it. I put my hand
into the sack. My hand came out quite black. I went and joined
the other boys in the schoolrofc)tn; and all their hands were black
too.
[2] By reason of my tender age (and there are some critics who, I
hope, will be satisfied by my acknowledging that I am a hundred and
fifty-six next birthday) I could not understand what was the meaning
of this night excursion this candle, this tool-house, this bag of soot.
I think we little boys were taken out of our sleep to be brought to
the ordeal. We came, then, and showed our little hands to the
master; washed them or not most probably, I should say, not and
so went bewildered back to bed.
[3] Something had been stolen in the school that day; and Mr.
Wiseacre having read in a book of an ingenious method of finding
out a thief by making him put his hand into a sack (which, if guilty,
the rogue would shirk from doing), all we boys were subjected to the
trial. Goodness knows what the lost object was, or who stole it. We
all had black hands to show to the master. And the thief, whoever
he was, was not Found Out that time.
[4] I wonder if the rascal is alive an elderly scoundrel he must be
* First published as a "Roundabout Paper" in Cotnhill Magazine (May 1861).
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 79
by this time; and a hoary old hypocrite, to whom an old schoolfellow
presents his kindest regards parenthetically remarking what a dread-
ful place that private school was: cold, chilblains, bad dinners, not
enough victuals, and caning awful! Are you alive still, I say, you
nameless villain, who escaped discovery on that day of crime? I hope
you have escaped often since, old sinner. Ah, what a lucky thing
it is, for you and me, my man, that we are not found out in all our
peccadilloes; and that our backs can slip away from the master and
the cane!
[5] Just consider what life would be, if every rogue was found out,
and (logged cor am populo! What a butchery, what an indecency,
what an endless swishing of the rod! Don't cry out about my
misanthropy. My good friend Mcalymouth, 1 will trouble you to tell
me, do you go to church? When there, do you say, or do you not,
that you are a miserable sinner? and saying so, do you believe or dis-
believe it? If you are a M.S., don't you deserve correction, and aren't
you grateful if you are to be let off ? I say, again, what a blessed thing
it is that we are not all found out!
[6] Just picture to yourself everybody who does wrong being found
out, and punished accordingly. Fancy all the boys in all the schools
being whipped; and then the assistants, and then the head master
(Doctor Badford let us call him). Fancy the provost-marshal being
tied up, having previously superintended the correction of the whole
army. After the young gentlemen have had their turn for the faulty
exercises, fancy Doctor Lincolnsinn being taken up for certain faults
in his Essay and Review. After the clergyman has cried his peccavi,
suppose we hoist up a Bishop, and give him a couple of dozen! (I see
my Lord Bishop of Double-Gloucester sitting in a very uneasy pos-
ture on his right reverend bench.) After we have cast oft the Bishop,
what are we to say to the Minister who appointed him? My Lord
Cinqwarden, it is painful to have to use personal correction to a boy
of your age; but really . . . Stste tandem, carnijex! The butchery is
too horrible. The hand drops powerless, appalled at the quantity of
birch which it must cut and brandish. I am glad we are not all found
out, I say again; and protest, my dear brethren, against our having
our deserts.
80 ON BEING FOUND OUT
[7] To fancy all men found out and punished is bad enough; but
imagine all women found out in the distinguished social circle in
which you and I have the honour to move. Is it not a mercy that so
many of these fair criminals remain unpunished and undiscovered?
There is Mrs. Longbow, who is for ever practising, and who shoots
poisoned arrows, too; when you meet her you don't call her liar, and
charge her with the wickedness she has done, and is doing. There
is Mrs. Painter, who passes for a most respectable woman, and a
model in society. There is no use in saying what you really know
regarding her and her goings on. There is Diana Hunter what a
little haughty prude it is; and yet we know stories about her which
are not altogether edifying. I say it is best, for the sake of the good,
that the bad should not all be found out. You don't want your
children to know the history of that lady in the next box, who is so
handsome, and whom they admire so. Ah me! what would life be
if we were all found out, and punished for all our faults ? Jack Ketch
would be in permanence; and then who would hang Jack Ketch?
[8] They talk of murderers being pretty certainly found out. Psha!
I have heard an authority awfully competent vow and declare that
scores and hundreds of murders are committed, and nobody is the
wiser. That terrible man mentioned one or two ways of committing
murder, which he maintained were quite common, and were scarcely
ever found out. A man, for instance, comes home to his wife, and
. . . but I pause I know that this Magazine has a very large circula-
tion. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands why not say a million
of people at once? well, say a million read it. And amongst these
countless readers, I might be teaching some monster how to make
away with his wife without being found out, some fiend of a woman
how to destroy her dear husband. I will not then tell this easy and
simple way of murder, as communicated to me by a most respectable
party in the confidence of private intercourse. Suppose some gentle
reader were to try this most simple and easy receipt it seems to me
almost infallible and come to grief in consequence, and be found
out and hanged? Should I ever pardon myself for having been the
means of doing injury to a single one of our esteemed subscribers?
The prescription whereof I speak that is to say whereof I don't
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 81
speak shall be buried in this bosom. No, I am a humane man. I
am not one of your Bluebeards to go and say to my wife, "My dear!
I am going away for a few days to Brighton. Here are all the keys of
the house. You may open every door and closet, except the one at
the end of the oak-room opposite the fireplace, with the little bronze
Shakespeare on the mantelpiece (or what not)." I don't say this to
a woman unless, to be sure, I want to get rid of her because, after
such a caution, I know she'll peep into the closet. I say nothing about
the closet at all. I keep the key in my pocket, and a being whom I
love, but who, as I know, has many weaknesses, out of harm's way.
You toss up your head, dear angel, drub on the ground with your
lovely little feet, on the table with your sweet rosy fingers, and cry,
"Oh, sneerer! You don't know the depth of woman's feeling, the
lofty scorn of all deceit, the entire absence of mean curiosity in the
sex, or never, never would you libel us so!" Ah, Delia! dear dear
Delia! It is because I fancy I do know something about you (not
all, mind no, no; no man knows that) Ah, my bride, my ringdove,
my rose, my poppet choose, in fact, whatever name you like bulbul
of my grove, fountain of my desert, sunshine of my darkling life, and
joy of my dungeoned existence, it is because I do know a little about
you that I conclude to say nothing of that private closet, and keep my
key in my pocket. You take away that closet-key then, and the
house-key. You lock Delia in. You keep her out of harm's way
and gadding, and so she never can be found out.
[9] And yet by little strange accidents and coincidences how we are
being found out every day. You remember that old story of the
Abbe Kakatoes, who told the company at supper one night how the
first confession he ever received was from a murderer let us say.
Presently enters to supper the Marquis dc Croquemitaine. "Palsam-
bleu, abbe!" says the brilliant Marquis, taking a pinch of snuff, "are
you here? Gentlemen and Ladies! I was the Abbe's first penitent,
and I made him a confession which I promise you astonished him."
[10] To be sure how queerly things are found out! Here is an in-
stance. Only the other day I was writing in these Roundabout
Papers about a certain man, whom I facetiously called Baggs, and
who had abused me to my friends, who of course told me. Shortly
82 ON 7 BEING FOUND OUT
after that paper was published another friend Sacks let us call him
scowls fiercely at me as I am sitting in perfect good-humour at the
club, and passes on without speaking. A cut. A quarrel. Sacks
thinks it is about him that I was writing: whereas, upon my honour
and conscience, I never had him once in my mind, and was pointing
my moral from quite another man. But don't you see, by this wrath
of the guilty-conscienced Sacks, that he had been abusing me too?
He has owned himself guilty, never having been accused. He has
winced when nobody thought of hitting him. I did but put the cap
out, and madly butting and chafing, behold my friend rushes to put
his head into it! Never mind, Sacks, you arc found out; but I bear
you no malice, my man.
[n] And yet to be found out, I know from my own experience,
must be painful and odious, and cruelly mortifying to the inward
vanity. Suppose I am a poltroon, let us say. With fierce moustache,
loud talk, plentiful oaths, and an immense stick, I keep up neverthe-
less a character for courage. I swear fearfully at cabmen and women;
brandish my bludgeon, and perhaps knock down a little man or two
with it: brag of the images which 1 break at the shooting-gallery, and
pass amongst my friends for a whiskery fire-eater, afraid of neither
man nor dragon. Ah me! Suppose some brisk little chap steps up
and gives me a caning in St. James's Street, with all the heads of my
friends looking out of all the club windows. My reputation is gone.
I frighten no man more. My nose is pulled by whipper-snappers,
who jump up on a chair to reach it. 1 am found out. And in the
days of my triumphs, when people were yet afraid of me, and were
taken in by my swagger, I always knew that I was a lily-liver, and
expected that I should be found out some day.
[12] That certainty of being found out must haunt and depress
many a bold braggadocio spirit. Let us say it is a clergyman, who
can pump copious floods of tears out of his own eyes and those of
his audience. He thinks to himself, "I am but a poor swindling
chattering rogue. My bills are unpaid. I have jilted several women
whom I have promised to marry. I don't know whether I believe
what I preach, and I know I have stolen the very sermon over which
I have been snivelling. Have they found me out?" says he, as his
head drops down on the cushion.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 83
[13] Then your writer, poet, historian, novelist, or what not? The
Beacon says that "J ones ' s work is one of the first order." The Lamp
declares that "} nes ' s tragedy surpasses every work since the days of
Him of Avon." The Comet asserts that "J.'s 'Life of Goody Two-
shoes' is ... a noble and enduring monument to the fame of that ad-
mirable Englishwoman," and so forth. But then Jones knows that
he has lent the critic of the Beacon five pounds; that his publisher has
a half-share in the Lamp; and that the Comet comes repeatedly to
dine with him. It is all very well. Jones is immortal until he is
found out; and then down comes the extinguisher, and the immortal
is dead and buried. The idea (dies trae!) of discovery must haunt
many a man, and make him uneasy, as the trumpets are puffing in
his triumph. Brown, who has a higher place than he deserves, cowers
before Smith, who has found him out. What is a chorus of critics
shouting "Bravo"? a public clapping hands and flinging garlands ?
Brown knows that Smith has found him out. Pull, trumpets!
Wave, banners! Hu//a, boys, for the immortal Brown! "This is
all very well," B. thinks (bowing the while, smiling, laying his hand
to his heart) ; "but there stands Smith at the window : he has measured
me; and some day the others will find me out too." It is a very curi-
ous sensation to sit by a man who has found you out, and who you
know has found you out; or, vice versa, to sit with a man whom you
have found out. His talent? Bah! His virtue? We know a little
story or two about his virtue, and he knows we know it. We are
thinking over friend Robinson's antecedents, as we grin, bow, and
talk; and we are both humbugs together. Robinson a good fellow,
is he? You know how he behaved to Hicks? A good-natured man,
is he? Pray do you remember that little story of Mrs. Robinson's
black eye? How men have to work, to talk, to smile, to go to bed,
and try to sleep, with this dread of being found out on their con-
sciences! Bardolph, who has robbed a church, and Nym, who has
taken a purse, go to their usual haunts, and smoke their pipes with
their companions. Mr. Detective Bull's-eye appears, and says, "Oh,
Bardolph, I want you about that there pyx business!" Mr. Bardolph
knocks the ashes out of his pipe, puts out his hands to the little steel
cuffs, and walks away quite meekly. He is found out. He must go.
"Good-bve, Doll Tearsheet ! Good-bve, Mrs. Ouicklv, ma'am ! " The
84 ON BEING FOUND OUT
other gentlemen and ladies de la societe look on and exchange mute
adieux with the departing friends. And an assured time will come
when the other gentlemen and ladies will be found out too.
[14] What a wonderful and beautiful provision of nature it has
been that, for the most part, our womankind are not endowed with
the faculty of finding us out! They don't doubt, and probe, and
weigh, and take your measure. Lay down this paper, my benevolent
friend and reader, go into your drawing-room now, and utter a joke
ever so old, and I wager sixpence the ladies there will all begin to
laugh. Go to Brown's house, and tell Mrs. Brown and the young
ladies what you think of him, and see what a welcome you will get!
In like manner, let him come to your house, and tell your good lady
his candid opinion of you, and fancy how she will receive him!
Would you have your wife and children know you exactly for what
you are, and esteem you precisely at your worth? If so, my friend,
you will live in a dreary house, and you will have but a chilly fireside.
Do you suppose the people round it don't sec your homely face as
under a glamour, and, as it were, with a halo of love round it ? You
don't fancy you are, as you seem to them? No such thing, my man.
Put away that monstrous conceit, and be thankful that they have not
found you out.
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. Queen Anne's reign closed in 1714. Thackeray was ten years
old in 1821. Is this an autobiographical essay?
2. By what test was it supposed that a thief could be caught?
3. How were the Marquis de Croquemitame and Sacks found out?
4. Look up coram popttlo, peccavi, dies irae, Jact( Ketch and pyx in
any college dictionary. The phrase Siste tandem, carntfex means
"Stop now, O executioner!"
5. Thackeray delights in using proper names which suggest the
chief characteristic of the person so named. What is the signifi-
cance of such names as these: Mr. Wiseacre; Mrs. Longbow;
Mrs. Painter; Diana Hunter; Marquis de Croquemitaine?
6. See Henry V, HI, vi, 40-120 for the scenes about Bardolph's rob-
bery. Is there a Mr. Detective Bull's-eye in that scene?
85
The Most Disgraceful Thing I Ever Did*
I The Scandal of the Anthology
Aldous Huxley
[i] "I should like to show you," she said, and hesitated, blushing;
embarrassed, she looked more ravishing than ever. "I should like
to show you the little poem 1 wrote yesterday. I believe it's the
best thing I've ever done."
[2] I was only too delighted, of course. A man and a honrgeois
how could I fail to be delighted? This dazzling young aristocrat,
so assured, so complete, so gloriously careless about everything and
everyone except herself and her own fun, had actually, in our grand-
mother's phrase, "set her cap at me." She had taken the trouble
to be charming. With what a delicious naive sincerity and an ob-
vious ignorance of all my works, she had flattered me. How much
she had enjoyed all those books of mine, which she hadn't read!
I basked in her radiance.
[3] "Here it is." She pulled out of her bosom a folded paper.
"Don't be too severe with it," she added, almost anxiously.
[4] I adjusted my pince-nez and unfolded the document. "O
Love," I began to read.
O Love is sweet when April showers fall,
And Love is lush when roses bloom in June,
And Love beneath the swelt'nng harvest moon
Is seldom pure; for love. . . .
[5] I read it over twice slowly, wondering what on earth I should
say. Why couldn't she be content with just living? And why, if
she must do something, did she choose verse? There was the piano,
there was the water-color sketching! ... 1 looked up at her, and
found myself confronted by her dark, intent eyes. She looked like
Cleopatra, and twenty, and her body oh, serpent of old Nile!
was sheathed in a skin of cloth-of -silver.
* From Vanity Fair (October 1923); copyright The Conde Nast Publications Inc.
Reprinted by permission of the author and the publisher.
86 ON BEING FOUND OUT
[6] "What do you think of it?" she asked.
[7] "I think it is quite wonderful," I said with enthusiasm.
[8] Her smile of pleasure was the loveliest thing in the world.
[9] 'Tm so glad," she said, with an air of detachment, "that you
are compiling an anthology of the hest modern verse."
[10] A gloom suddenly descended on my spirit. I nodded. I
couldn't deny it; everybody knew my anthology. It was going to be
the very best of its kind rigorously, austerely select.
[n] "I thought," she said, and smiled at me again, "I thought that,
perhaps, as you liked my little poem so much, you might. . . ."
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
T. What does the author's bourgeois have to do with this episode?
2. Why did a "gloom suddenly descend" on Huxley's spirit ?
3. Would Rousseau (pp. 33-34) consider Huxley's act disgraceful?
2. The Invasion of the Sanctuary *
F. Scott Fitzgerald
[i] It was Christmas eve. In a fashionable church were gathered
the great ones of the city in a pious swoon. For the hour bankers
had put out of their weary minds the number of farmers on whom
they must foreclose next day in order to make their twenty per cent.
Real estate men had ceased worrying what gaudy lies should embel-
lish their prospectuses on the following Monday. Even fatigued
flappers had returned to religion and were wondering if the man
two pews ahead really looked like Valentino, or whether it was just the
way his hair was cut in the back.
[2] And at that moment, I, who had been suppering heavily in a
house not two doors from the church, felt religion descending upon
me also. A warm current seemed to run through my body. My sins
were washed away and I felt, as my host strained a drop or so from
the ultimate bottle, that my life was beginning all over again.
[3] "Yes," I said softly to myself, drawing on my overshoes, "I
will go to church. I will find some friend, and sitting next to him, we
will sing the Christmas hymns."
HEYWOOD BROUN 87
[4] The church was silent. The rector had mounted to the pulpit
and was standing there motionless, conscious of the approving gaze
of Mrs. T. T. Conquadine, the wife of the flour king, sitting in the
front row.
[5] I entered quietly and walked up the aisle toward him, search-
ing the silent ranks of the faithful for some one whom I could call
my friend. But no one hailed me. In all the church there was no
sound but the metallic rasp of the huckles on my overshoes as I
plodded toward the rector. At the very foot of the pulpit a kindly
thought struck me perhaps inspired by the faint odor of sanctity
which exuded from the saintly man. I spoke.
[6 | "Don't mind me," I said, "go on with the sermon."
[7] Then, perhaps unstcadied a bit by my emotion, 1 passed down
the other aisle, followed by a sort of amazed awe, and so out into the
street. The papers had the extra out before midnight.
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. What is a flapper? How does this word serve to date this epi-
sode? Does the name Valentino make dating even more certain?
2. Does the last sentence help or harm the effect?
3. What is the significance of "the ultimate bottle"?
3. The Episode of the Bean-Shooter
Heywood Broun
[i] The boy who lived across the street (his name was Valentine)
boasted that his mother was horribly ailing. He said she had nerv-
ous prostration. My brother and I were interested, but sceptical.
We could see her reading by the window of the library, and her
nervous prostration did not show at all.
[2] Possibly the experiment with the bean-shooter and the buck-
shot was in the interest of science. My brother bought the weapons
and then we took up a position on the little balcony outside our room.
First we put out the lights, and then opened fire. The house of
Valentine's mother was a shining mark. She herself was plainly
visible as she rocked to and fro.
88 ON BEING FOUND OUT
[3] At the first crash of the shot against the window pane, she
leaped high out of her chair. And it was the same with the next.
Valentine seemed more truthful than we had imagined, for it was
quite evident that his mother was a nervous woman. My brother
and I took turns at shooting, and after each drive we ducked clown
behind the wall so that we were completely hidden in the darkness of
the balcony.
[4] Detection must have come merely from the direction of the
attack, for we found ourselves the center of a family council the next
morning. Valentine's mother had sent in a note of complaint.
After rebukes and reproaches came the sentence. We must go and
apologize. My brother, as the elder, apologized first. He said, "I
want to apologize." Then I said, "I'll never do it again."
[5] No horrible example at a temperance meeting, or murderer
confessing to full court, ever had a greater thrill of pride. For the
first time in my life I stood forth admittedly a sinner. The fact
that my career was cut short by this pledge of reform lessened my
enjoyment not at all. After all, I had lived.
[6] And now, for the first time, I am ready to confess the shame-
lessness of it all. The dramatic possibilities of the situation tempted
me beyond my strength. The truth of the matter is that I had not
hit the window; no, not once. I had tried to hit it, but effort toward
evil is not enough. But my aim and my manipulation of the bean-
shooter were inferior. From my hands the lead missiles fell harm-
lessly to the street below, or sailed over the roof of the stricken
woman's house. No crash of shaken glass rested on my conscience,
but eagerly and passionately I accepted guilt and clung to it. So much
did I long for an evil reputation that I was even willing to lie for it.
[7] It has marked me. To this day, if any lady were ever kind
enough to say to me, "I suppose you're a gay dog," I know I should
smile a weak protest, blush a little, drop my head, and try to make
her believe that the charge had hit home.
QUESTION ON CONTENT
i. Why does the author say that "Possibly the experiment with the
bean-shooter and the buckshot was in the interest of science"?
STEPHEN LEACOCK 89
4. Larceny among Lecturers
Stephen Leacock
[i] Once upon a time, when I was lecturing, as an alleged humorist,
in England, it happened that there was a very distinguished Ox-
ford professor lecturing on pretty much the same track. His lec-
tures were philosophical and very profound, with no pretence what-
ever of being funny. But, like most lecturers, he saw fit to open his
lecture with a harmless little joke, a sort of funny story which he
used as an introduction. It is customary, I helieve, for all public
speakers to pay this tribute to the lighter side of life.
[2] But, as a professional humorist, I naturally resented the use
of a joke by a professor of philosophy, just as a bricklayer objects to
non-union labor. I happened to lecture in Manchester, and I learned
that the professor was to lecture to the same society a week later.
Now, I had heard him lecture, and I knew his funny story. So, in
opening my talk I told the story to the audience, and then said, as
if in afterthought, "By the way, I shouldn't have told that joke, as
Professor Dry is to use it here next week. He finds it a little hard
to open his lecture without a touch of humor, and as a matter of fact
I have lent him that story for this season. Still, perhaps you won't
mind laughing at it again when he comes here."
[3] But, in the sequel, the joke worked the wrong way. The pro-
fessor, quite unconscious, got off his little funny story, and there was
a wild and sustained merriment which filled him with delight. And
I am sorry to say that the papers next morning spoke of his "spon-
taneous humor," and contrasted it with the "artificial merriment" of
professional humorists.
[4] After all, as Plato said, virtue is best.
QUESTION ON CONTENT
i. Does the author give any motivation for stealing the Oxford pro-
fessor's ioke?
90 ON BEING FOUND OUT
5. The Priggish Prize Poem
G. K. Chesterton
[i~| If I had been asked what was the most polite and respectable
action of my life, I could answer with some pride that it was a bur-
glary. I could have made a really romantic short story of it. It
was accompanied with moonlight; it was not, strictly speaking,
accompanied with murder; but it had remote potentialities of sui-
cide. It was highly conventional, for it concerned the recovery of a
lady's parasol.
[2] But as to what was the most disgraceful action, I have a greater
difficulty; there are so many more of them in one happy human life.
On the whole, I think the darkest page is that which records how I
once got a prize at school. It never became a habit. It remained
as one solitary black blot on an otherwise stainless educational career.
But the circumstances were such as to bow me down to the earth,
in retrospect.
[3] To begin with, it was for a prize poem. As it was a prize
poem, it is needless to say it was a priggish poem. But what is worse
still, it was not only priggish but Protestant; and what is worst of
all, it adopted a patronizing tone towards St. Francis Xavier, the
man who very nearly added all China to Christendom. It excused
his limitations on account of his good intentions; it apologized for
his being a Jesuit and pitied him for having lived in the sixteenth
century.
[4] It was a loathsome composition. It must have been, for I
thank God I have forgotten every line of it; though if I were as
penitent as I ought to be, I ought to reread the ghastly screed morn-
ing and evening; I can imagine no more complete penance. But the
story is something of a symbol; for I supposed I was broad and the
Jesuit narrow, whereas he was broad and I was narrow; and I have
since seen a good deal of the same thing.
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. What docs priggish mean?
2. Chesterton is known for his paradoxical statements. Point out
several in this episode.
JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER 91
3. Chesterton was converted to Roman Catholicism. Is this fact
necessary to the understanding of this confession? Why?
4. In what sense does the author use the word screed?
6. Infamy and Deception in Venice
Joseph Hergesheimer
[i] This is an absurd title and engagement, because, of course, no
one will answer it honestly. The moment I considered it I began to
think of something that would appear disgraceful and at the same
time reflect credit and distinction on me. For example, once when I
was leaving Venice on the Warsaw Express it leaves Venice very
early in the morning I found that I hadn't drawn enough money to
pay the extra charge for that train. It would have gone without
me but for my gondolier I had had him for a month or so, and he
offered me the forty lire I needed. I was to return it from Paris. The
accidents of travel kept me from reaching there, and my lamentable
character made it possible for Angclo or was it Pictro? never to
get the money. Undoubtedly I would call that my most disgraceful
act and write about Pictro or was it Angelo? with a touching sim-
plicity. But the truth was that, before then and since, I had done far
worse things things without a trace of distinction, low and cow-
ardly. But I wouldn't write about them in a contest that was a
problem of style. Nobody but a fool would. Nobndy would! And
anyhow, here, the manner was the thing and not the act; style had
nothing in the world to do with morals or a contrite heart; and the
Venetian episode was bad enough. At the same time, it wasn't too
bad, since it exhibited me in the picturesque and ingratiating posi-
tion of being a hero to my gondolier.
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. Do you agree with Hergesheimer's first sentence? Explain.
2. "No man is a hero to his valet." Explain and comment.
3. Does Hergesheimer's analysis of how writers would avoid the
truth in writing of a personally disgraceful act fit the preceding
episodes of this series?
92 ON BEING FOUND OUT
7. "It Never Can Be Told"
George Jean Nathan
[i] The most disgraceful thing I have ever done is to decline to
write an article entitled "The Most Disgraceful Thing I Have Ever
Done" for Vanity Fair. In the first place, the idea is an undignified
one; in the second place, I surely, at my age, do not wish to figure in
prize contests; and in the third place, I have done so many magnifi-
cently disgraceful things in my life that it would be sheer hypocrisy
and vainglory for me to pretend that one single such disgraceful
thing was worthy of the undue eminence of being embalmed in an
essay.
[3] But my friend, Nast, the owner of Vanity Fair, has so excellent
a cellar and is so liberal in the dispensation of its palate-warming
beauties; and my friend, Crowninshield, the editor of Vanity Fair,
gives such amusing parties, and the Misses Arabella, Mignonette,
Drusilla, Pearl and Mabel, the stenographers in the Vanity Fair
menage, are so fair to the eye and so amiably flirtatious, that to de-
cline to write the article is the mark of an ungrateful bounder. Yet
I do decline.
[3] Disgraceful it is, I know; disgraceful and boorish; yet I do
decline. If I were to write an article telling truthfully of the most
disgraceful thing I have ever done, Vanity Fair would promptly be
barred from the mails and my friend Nast would go broke and have
to sell his excellent cellar. And if I were instrumental in bringing
about such a calamity, the article would be untruthful after all, for
the most disgraceful thing I have ever done would thus become only
the second most disgraceful thing I have ever done. And I should
have to tear the article up and write another. But then, with Vanity
Fair suppressed, there wouldn't be any need to write it. So, what is
the use?
QUESTION ON CONTENT
i. Nathan's "Confession" is the purest evasion, but his nimbleness is
interesting. What does he mean bv sentence 3, oar. i?
93
In Church*
Thomas Hardy
"And now to God the Father," he ends,
And his voice thrills up to the topmost tiles:
Each listener chokes as he bows and bends,
And emotion pervades the crowded aisles.
Then the preacher glides to the vestry-door s
And shuts it, and thinks he is seen no more.
The door swings softly ajar meanwhile,
And a pupil of his in the Bible class,
Who adores him as one without gloss or guile,
Sees her idol stand with a satisfied smile 10
And re-enact at the vestry-glass
Each pulpit gesture in deft dumb-show
That had moved the congregation so.
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. Could this poem be called "Hypocrisy"?
2. Speculate on what difference the discovery of the preacher's dumb
show should make to the Bible class pupil's opinion of her idol.
At the Draper's*
Thomas Hardy
"I stood at the back of the shop, my clear,
But you did not perceive me.
Well, when they deliver what you were shown
/ shall know nothing of it, believe me!"
* From Thomas Hardy, Collected Poems. Copyright 1925 by the Macmillan Com-
pany and used with their permission.
94 ONBEINGFOUNDOUT
And he coughed and coughed as she paled and said, 5
"O, I didn't sec you come in there-
Why couldn't you speak?" "Well, I didn't. I left
That you should not notice I'd been there.
"You were viewing some lovely things. 'Soon required
For a widow, of latest fashion'; 10
And I knew 'twould upset you to meet the man
Who had to he cold and ashen
"And screwed in a box before they could dress you
'In the last new note in mourning,'
As they defined it. So, not to distress you, 15
I left you to your adorning."
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. Of what disease, probably, is the husband dying ?
2. In what essential respect is this poem like "In Church"?
Suggestions for Papers
The broad subject of your paper is "On Being Found Out."
There are several legitimate ways to write on this subject: (i) an
informal essay in the manner of Thackeray; (2) a narrative con-
fession in the manner of the episodes which are grouped under the
title "The Most Disgraceful Thing I Ever Did"; (3) satirical verses
in the manner of Hardy. (Secure permission from your instructor
before you try verse!) If your approach is through the essay form,
you may wish to follow suggestions 3, 5, 6, or 8, below. If you
choose a narrative approach, you may write a factual account about
yourself (suggestions i or 2) or an imaginative account (suggestions
4 or 7). For satirical verses, see suggestion 7.
SUGGESTIONS FOR PAPERS 95
1. Reread the first four paragraphs of Thackeray's essay. Do you
know any other "folk" ways of finding out the guilty person ? Have
you ever been subjected to any such testing? If you have, give the
specific details which will make your experience real to a reader.
(Note that Thackeray's first four paragraphs could stand alone as
a short theme, a theme approximately of the length of your theme.)
2. Thackeray suggests that one may be found out by accident or
coincidence. (See paragraphs 9 and 10.) Has some fault of yours
been discovered by accident or bad luck? Can you trace the steps
which led by odd coincidence to your being found out?
3. Imagine that you are an editor. Set yourself the task of select-
ing the best anecdote submitted under the title "The Most Disgrace-
ful Thing I Ever Did." (See the episodes under this heading.)
Establish your own standards for judging, but apply whatever
standards you choose to at least two of the seven anecdotes. You
might decide, for example, to rate the anecdote on the basis of how
truly disgraceful is the act each author admits. You might modify
this standard by judging also the effectiveness of the anecdote. Is
suspense maintained? Is the incident believable ? What details
make it so? Is the wording effective? Give examples.
4. After reading several times one of Hardy's "Satires of Cir-
cumstance," write an expanded prose version of the poem. Develop
the characters and provide enough additional narrative to account for
(not necessarily to excuse) the conduct of the characters concerned.
5. How do Hardy's poems illustrate Thackeray's point that we are
frequently "found out" through coincidence? Of these two poems,
which is the more believable? Why?
6. Hardy's Satires of Circumstance arc presumably fictional. The
anecdotes grouped under the title "The Most Disgraceful Thing I
Ever Did" are presumably true. Which accounts seem truer to
what you know of human nature? Discuss your answer to this
question. Quote supporting passages. He specific.
7. By rereading Hardy's poems, see if you can determine the "for-
mula" for his Satires of Circumstance. In verse or prose produce
a satire of your own in accordance with this formula.
8. Normally, it is thought, men and women shy away from
96
ON BEING FOUND OUT
revealing any of their truly wicked actions. Yet just as normal is
the desire to confess. Criminals, after years of freedom, give them-
selves up, confess all, and say they feel better. Catholics confess
weekly to their priests. Protestants enjoy testimonial meetings.
Literary men, poets in particular, like to reveal their shortcomings.
Could you write an essay on "The Joys of Being Found Out"? You
should be able to cite many incidental examples but should concen-
trate on one major illustration.
SOME TITLES FOR PAPERS
1. How Not to Be Found Out
2. Is Honesty the Best Policy ?
3. Murder Will Out
4. Stolen Fruits
5. The Jekyll and Hyde in Each
of Us
6. The Structure of Thack-
eray's Essay
7. A Formula for Satires of
Circumstance
8. The Legitimate Love of a Lie
9. Human Nature according to
Hardy
10. Human Nature according
to Thackeray
n. I Don't Gossip, But . . .
12. The Most Disgraceful Thing
I Have Ever Done
Now It Can Be Told
Mother Should Have Been
a Detective
15. My One Mistake
1 6. When My Luck Ran Out
17. A Cowardly Act
1 8. Credit Where It Wasn't Due
19. Tripped by a Coincidence
'3
'4
^^
crfect/onfsts
IOWN ING'S Grammarian (Chapter i)
could find no satisfaction in the attainable. He was driven by an
insatiable hunger to know all, clown to the tiniest detail. He was a
perfectionist. Few persons care to give their lives, as they conceive
life, to anything that is ultimate. They learn to settle for much less
than perfection. What this means is that they become impatient
with details, fretful at the demands that perfection, even human per-
fection, makes upon their time, energy, and attention. Yet, since all
of us have some drops of the perfectionist's blood flowing in our
veins, we bestow our homage on those who have the patience and
the talent to strive for perfect things, and we understand and sym-
pathize with those who have the patience but not the talent and go
down to defeat.
Four types of perfectionists are presented in this chapter. First,
there is Toscanim, one of the most famous names in music in our
time. He has the vision, the talent, the energy, and the infinite pa-
tience of the successful perfectionist. Next, there is Mr. Gessler in
Galsworthy's story "Quality." He makes boots. After you have
97
98 PERFECTIONISTS
read this story, you will decide whether or not Mr. Gessler has a
spiritual kinship with Toscanini. Thirdly there is St. Simeon Stylites
(Saint Simeon o{ the Pillar). He has long since withdrawn (or has
he?) from this life and seeks to perfect his soul for a life hereafter.
Finally, there is "the artist with carpenter's hands." Perfection was
out of his reach, but he refused to settle for anything less.
The filth selection in this chapter is called "The Importance of
Doing Things Badly." Here the contention is that many things
worth doing are not worth doing well. One may conclude that one
condition of being a perfectionist is the willingness to do many things
badly.
Tosccminf*
Stefan Zweig
/ love him who yearns for the impossible
Second part of Tattst
[i] Any attempt to detach the figure of Arturo Toscanini from the
fugitive element of the music re-created under the magical spell of
his baton, and to incorporate it in the more enduring substance
of the written word, must, willy-nilly, become something more than
the mere biography of a conductor. He who tries to describe Tos-
canini's services to the Spirit of Music and his wizard's influence over
his audiences is describing, above all, an ethical deed. For Tos-
canini is one of the sincerest men of our time, devoting himself to the
service of art with such fidelity, ardour, and humility as we arc rarely
privileged to admire in any other sphere of creative activity. He
bows his head before the higher will of the master he interprets, so
that he combines the mediating function of the priest with the
* From foreword by Stefan Zweig to Toscanini bv Paul Stefan. Cop> right 1936 by
The Viking Press, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the Viking Press, Inc , New York.
STEFAN ZWEIG 99
fervour of the disciple, combines the strictness of the teacher with the
unresting diligence and veneration of the pupil. This guardian of
the hallowed and primal forms of music is always concerned with
an integral effect rather than with detail, with faithful representa-
tion rather than with outward success. Since he invariably puts into
his work his personal genius and the whole of his peculiar moral and
spiritual energy, what he does sets an example, not in the realm of
music alone, but for all artists in every domain. His individual tri-
umphs transcend the boundaries of music to become the supra-
personal victory of creative will over the inertia of matter a splendid
proof that, even in a disintegrated and shattered age like ours, now
and again it is possible for the gifted few to achieve the miracle of
perfection.
[2] For the fulfilment of his colossal task Toscanini has, year after
year, steeled his soul with unparalleled inflexibility. Nothing but
perfection will satisfy him. Thus he shoulders his burden, and mani-
fests his moral grandeur. The fairly good, the nearly perfect, the
approximate, he cannot endure. Toscanini detests compromise in
all its forms, abominates an easy-going satisfaction. In vain will you
remind him that the perfect, the absolute, are rarely attainable in this
world; that, even to the sublimest will, no more is possible than an
approach to perfection, since perfection is God's attribute, not man's.
His glorious unwisdom makes it impossible for him to recognize this
wise dispensation. For him the idea of the absolute is supreme in
art; and like one of Balzac's heroes, he devotes his whole life to "la
recherche de Fabsolu." Now, the will of one who persistently en-
deavours to attain the unattainable has irresistible power both in art
and in life.
[3] When Toscanini wills, all must will; when he commands, all
must obey. Every musician who has been guided by the movements
of his wonder-working baton will testify that, within the range of
the elemental energy that radiates from it, lassitude and inaccuracy
are dispelled. By a mysterious induction some of his own electrical
energy passes from him into every muscle and nerve, not only of
the members of the orchestra, but also of all those who come to hear
and to enjoy Toscanini's will; for as soon as he addresses himself
100 PERFECTIONISTS
to his task, each individual is inspired with the power of a divine
terror, with a communicable strength which, after an initial phase
of palsied alarm, induces in those affected by it a might which
greatly transcends the ordinary. The discharge of his own tensions
increases the capacity for musical appreciation of those who happen
to be in his neighbourhood, expanding the faculties of every musi-
cian and, one might even say, of the lifeless instruments as well. As
out of every score he extracts its most deeply hidden mysteries, so,
with his unceasing demands, does he extract from every performer
in the orchestra the utmost of which each is capable, imposing a
fanatical zeal, a tenseness of will and execution, which the individual,
unstimulatecl by Toscamni, has never before known and may never
again experience.
[4] This forcible stimulation of the will is no easy or comfortable
matter. Perfection must be fought for sternly, savagely, mde-
fatigably. One of the most marvelous spectacles of our day, one of
the most glorious revelations to every creative or interpretative artist,
an hour never to be forgotten is the privilege of watching Toscanim
when engaged in his struggle for perfection, in his contest for the
maximum effect. The onlooker is enthralled, breathless, almost
terrified, as he beholds. In general an artist's fight for supreme
achievement takes place in privacy. The poet, the novelist, the
painter, the composer, works alone.
[5] From sketches and from much-corrected manuscripts one must
guess the ardours of creation. But whoever witnesses a rehearsal
conducted by Toscanini sees and hears Jacob wrestling with the
angel sights and sounds no less alarming and splendid than a thun-
derstorm.
[6] In whatever medium an artist works, the study of Toscanini
will help to keep him faithful to his ideals, that he may resemble the
conductor who, with sublime patience and sublime impatience, con-
strains to fit into the scheme of a flawless vision so much that, but
for him, would remain rough-hewn and indistinct. For and this
is Toscanini's most salient characteristic his interpretation of a work
does not come into being at rehearsal. A symphony he is to conduct
will have been thoroughly worked over in his mind from the score,
STEFAN ZWEIG 101
and the finest shades of its tonal reproduction will have been settled
for him long before he takes his place at the desk. A rehearsal, for
him, is no more than an instrumental adaptation to what he had
already heard again and again with the mind's ear. His extraor-
dinary frame needs only three or four hours' sleep in the twenty-
four. Night after night he sits up, the composer's text close to his
near-sighted eyes, scanning it bar by bar, note by note. He weighs
every modulation, scrupulously ponders every tone, mentally re-
hearses the rhythmic combinations.
[7] Since he is a man of unrivalled memory, the whole and the
parts become incorporated into his being, and the written score is
henceforward little more than waste paper. Just as in a Rembrandt
etching the lightest line has made its peculiar, its personal contribu-
tion to the copper plate, so in Toscanini's most musical of brains has
every phrase been indelibly registered before he begins to conduct
the first rehearsal. All that remains for him to do is to impose on
others the clarity of his own will; to transform his Platonic idea, his
perfected vision, into orchestrated sound; to ensure the concerted
outward reproduction of the music that exists in his mind; to make a
multiplicity of instrumentalists obey the law which for him has
already been formulated in imagined perfection.
[8] This is an enterprise bordering on the impossible. An assem-
blage of persons having different temperaments and talents is to work
as a unit, fulfilling and realizing, with photographic and phono-
graphic accuracy, the inspired vision of one individual. A thousand
times Toscanim has made a success of this undertaking, which is
at once his torment and his delight. To have watched the process
of unceasing assimilation whereby he transforms multiplicity into
unity, energetically clarifying the vague, is a memorable lesson for
anyone who reverences art in its highest form as symbolical of
morality. It is thus that during rehearsal observer and auditor come
to understand that Toscanim's work is ethical as well as artistic.
[9] Public performance discloses to connoisseurs, to artists, to
virtuosi, Toscanim as a leader of men, Toscanini celebrating one of
his triumphs. This is the victorious march into the conquered realm
of perfection. At rehearsal, on the other hand, we witness the strug-
102 PERFECTIONISTS
gle for perfection. There alone can be discerned the obscure but
genuine and tragical image of the fighter; there alone are we enabled
to understand the courage of Toscanini the warrior. Like battle-
fields, his rehearsals are full of the tumult and the fever of fluctuat-
ing successes. In them, and only in them, are the depths of Tos-
caninf s soul revealed.
[10] Every time he begins a rehearsal, it is, in very truth, as if he
were a general opening a campaign; his outward aspect changes
as he enters the hall. At ordinary times, when one is alone with him,
or with him among a circle of intimates, though his hearing is ex-
traordinarily acute, one is inclined to fancy him rather deaf. Walk-
ing or sitting he has his eyes fixed on vacancy, in a brown study, his
arms folded, his brows knitted, a man aloof from the world. Though
the fact is shown by no outward signs, something is at work within
him; he is listening to inner voices, is in a reverie, with all his senses
directed inward. If you come close to him and speak to him, he
starts; half a minute or more may elapse before his deep-set dark
eyes light up to recognize even a familiar friend, so profoundly has
he been shut away, spiritually deaf to everything but the inner music.
A day-dreamer, in the isolation and concentration of the creative and
interpretative artist such is Toscanini when not "on the battlefield."
[n] Yet the instant he raises his baton to undertake the mission
he is to fulfill, his isolation is transformed into intimate communion
with his fellows, his introspection is replaced by the alertness of the
man of action. His figure stiffens and straightens; he squares his
shoulders in martial fashion; he is now the commandant, the gov-
ernor, the dictator. His eyes sparkle beneath their bushy brows; his
mouth is firmly set; his movements are brisk, those of one ready for
all emergencies, as he steps up to the conductor's desk and, with
Napoleonic glance, faces his adversaries. For that is what the wait-
ing crowd of instrumentalists has become to him at this supreme
instant adversaries to be subjugated, persons with conflicting wills,
who have to be mastered, disciplined, and brought under the reign of
law. Encouragingly he greets his fellow-musicians, lifts his baton,
and therewith, like lightning into a lightningrod, the whole power
of his will is concentrated into this slender staff.
STEFAN ZWEIG 103
[12] A wave of the magic wand, and elemental forces are un-
chained; rhythmically the orchestra is guided by his clear-cut and
virile movements. On, on, on; we feel, we breathe, in unison. Sud-
denly (the sudden cessation hurts, and one shrinks as from the thrust
of a rapier), the performance, which to us, less sensitive than the
conductor, has seemed to be going flawlessly, is stopped by a sharp
tap on the desk. Silence fills the hall, till the startling stillness is
starthngly broken by Toscamni's tired and irritable "Ma no! Ma no!"
This abrupt negative, this pained exclamation, is like a sigh of re-
proach. Something has disturbed him. The sound of the instru-
ments, plain to us all, has been discordant with the music of Tosca-
mni's vision, audible to him alone.
[13] Quietly, civilly, speaking very much to the point, the con-
ductor now tries to make the orchestra understand how he feels the
music ought to be rendered. He raises his baton once more, and the
faulty phrase is repeated, less faultily indeed; but the orchestral
reproduction is not yet in full harmony with the master's inward
audition. Again he stops the performance with a tap. This time
the explanation that ensues is less patient, more irritable. Eager to
make his meaning perfectly plain, he uses all his powers of persua-
sion, and so great is his faculty for expression that in him the gesticu-
lativc talent proper to an Italian rises to the pitch of genius. Even
the most unmusical of persons cannot fail to grasp, from his gestures,
what he wants, what he demands, when he demonstrates the rhythm,
when he imploringly throws his arms wide, and then fervently
clasps them at his breast, to stress the need of a more lively interpreta-
tion; or when, setting his whole body plastically to work, he gives a
visual image of the tone-sequences in his mind. More and more
passionately does he employ the arts of persuasion, imploring, mim-
ing, counting, singing; becoming, so to say, each instrument in turn as
he wishes to stimulate the performer who plays it; one sees him
making the movements of a violinist, a flautist, kettlcdrummer. . . .
[14] But if, despite this fiery incitation, despite this urgent exem-
plification, the orchestra still fails to grasp and to fulfil the con-
ductor's wishes, Toscanini's suffering at their non-success and their
mortal fallibility becomes intense. Distressed by the discordancy
104 PERFECTIONISTS
between the orchestral performance and the inward audition, he
groans like a sorely wounded man, and seems beside himself because
he cannot get on properly with his work. Forgetting the restraints
of politeness, losing control, in his wrath against the stupidity of
material obstacles, he rages, curses, and delivers volleys of abuse. It is
easy to understand why none but his intimates arc allowed to attend
these rehearsals, at which he knows he will be overcome by his
insatiable passion for perfection. More and more alarming grows
the spectacle of the struggle, as Toscanini strives to wring from the
instrumentalists the visioned masterpiece which has to be fashioned
in the sphere of universally audible reality. His body quivers with
excitement, his voice becomes hoarse, his brow is beaded with sweat;
he looks exhausted and aged by these immeasurable hours of strenu-
ous toil; but never will he stop an inch short of the perfection of his
dream. With unceasingly renewed energy, he pushes onward and
onward until the orchestra has at length been subjected to his will
and can interpret the composer's music exactly as it has presented
itself to the great conductor's mind.
[15] Only he who has been privileged to witness this struggle for
perfection hour after hour, day after clay can grasp the heroism of a
Toscanini; he alone can estimate the cost of the super-excellence
which the public has come to expect as a matter of course. In truth
the highest levels of art are never attained until what is enormously
difficult seems to have been attained with consummate ease, until
perfection appears self-evident. If you see Toscanini of an evening in
a crowded concert-hall, the magician who holds sway over the duti-
ful instrumentalists, guiding them as if they were hypnotized by
the movements of his baton, you might think his triumph won
without effort himself, the acme of security, the supreme expres-
sion of victory. In reality Toscanini never regards a task as defin-
itively performed. What the public admires as completion has for
him already become once more a problem. After fifty years' study
of a composition, this man who is now verging upon seventy is
never wholly satisfied with the results; he can in no case get beyond
the stimulating uncertainty of the artist who is perpetually making
new trials. Not for him a futile comfort; he never attains what
STEFAN ZWEIG 105
Nietzsche calls the "brown happiness" of relaxation, of self-content.
No other living man perhaps suffers so much as does this superla-
tively successful conductor from the imperfection of all the instru-
mental reproduction as compared with the music of his dreams.
[16] Other inspired conductors are at least vouchsafed fleeting
moments of rapture. Bruno Walter, for example, Toscanim's Apol-
lonian brother in the realm of music, has them (one feels) from
time to time. When he is playing or conducting Mozart, his face is
now and again irradiated by the reflection of ecstasy. He is up-
borne on the waves of his own creation; he smiles unwittingly; he
dreams as he is dandled in the arms of music.
[17] But Toscanini, the insatiable, the captive of his longing for
perfection, is never granted the grace of self-forgetfulness. He is
consumed, as with undying fires, by the craving for ever-new forms
of perfection. The man is absolutely sincere, incapable of pose.
There is nothing studied about his behaviour when, at the close of
every concert, during the salvos of applause, he looks embarrassed
and ashamed as he retires, coming back reluctantly and only through
politeness when forced to respond to the acclamations of the audi-
ence. For him all achievement is mysterious, mournful. He knows
that what he has so heroically wrested from fate is preeminently
perishable; he feels, like Keats, that his name is "writ in water." The
work of an interpretative artist cannot endure; it exists only for the
moment, and leaves nothing that the senses of coming generations
will be able to delight in. Thus his successes, magnificent though
they are, can neither delude nor intoxicate him. He knows that in
the sphere of orchestral reproduction there is nothing perdurable;
that whatever is achieved must be re-achieved from performance
to performance, from hour to hour. Who can be better aware than
this man, to whom peace and full fruition are denied because he is
insatiable, that art is unending warfare, not a conclusion but a
perpetual recommencement ?
[18] Such moral strictness of conception and character is a signal
phenomenon in art and in life. Let us not repine, however, that so
pure and so disciplined a manifestation as Toscanini is a rarity, and
that only on a few days each year can we enjoy the delight of having
106 PERFECTIONISTS
works so admirably presented to us by this master of his craft.
Nothing can detract more from the dignity and the ethical value of
art than the undue facility and triteness of its presentation thanks
to the marvels of modern technique, whereby wireless and gramo-
phone offer the sublime at any moment to the most indifferent; for
thanks to this ease of presentation, most people forget the labour
of creation, consuming the treasures of art as thoughtlessly and ir-
reverently as if they were swilling beer or munching bread.
[19] It is therefore, in such days as ours, a benefaction and a spirit-
ual joy to behold one who so forcibly reminds us that art is sacramental
labour, is apostolical devotion to the perpetually elusive and divine
elements in our world; that it is not a chance gift of luck, but a
hard-earned grace; is more than tepid pleasure, being likewise, and
before all, creative need. In virtue of his genius and in virtue of his
steadfastness of character, Toscanini has wrought the miracle of
compelling millions to accept our glorious patrimony of music as
a constituent part of the living present. This interpretative wonder
bears fruit far beyond its obvious frontiers; for what is achieved
within the domain of any one art is an acquirement for art in gen-
eral. Only an exceptional man imposes order upon others, and
nothing arouses profounder veneration for this outstanding apostle
of faithfulness in work than his success in teaching a chaotic and
incredulous epoch to feel fresh reverence for its most hallowed
heritage.
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. Explain the phrase "an ethical deed" at the end of the second
sentence.
2. How does Toscanini's task differ from that of the poet, the
novelist, the painter, and the composer?
3. Explain the reference to "Jacob wrestling with the angel." Is
this an apt comparison?
4. Is there such a thing as "patient impatience"? Explain.
5. How much sleep does Toscanini need?
6. What is meant by "his Platonic idea" (paragraph 7) ?
JOHN GALSWORTHY 107
7. Why are only Toscanini's intimate friends allowed to attend his
rehearsals ?
8. Why are Toscanini's musicians called "adversaries"?
9. How and why is the phrase "writ in water" applied to Tos-
camm 3
10. Can you summarize the "moral" of this description of a great
artist?
11. "Art is sacramental labour." Explain.
Quality *
John Galsworthy
|"i] I knew him from the days of my extreme youth, because he
made my father's boots; inhabiting with his elder brother two
little shops let into one, in a small by-street now no more, but then
most fashionably placed in the West End.
[ 2] That tenement had a certain quiet distinction; there was no
sign upon its face that he made for any of the Royal Family merely
his own German name of Gessler Brothers; and in the window
a few pairs of boots. I remember that it alwa\s troubled me to
account for those unvarying boots in the window, for he made only
what was ordered, reaching nothing down, and it seemed so incon-
ceivable that what he made could ever have failed to fit. Had he
bought them to put there? That, too, seemed inconceivable. He
would never have tolerated in his house leather on which he had
not worked himself. Besides, they were too beautiful the pair of
pumps, so inexpressibly slim, the patent leathers with cloth tops,
making water come into one's mouth, the tall brown riding-boots
with marvellous sooty glow, as if, though new, they had been worn
* Reprinted from The Inn of Tranquillity by John Galsworthy; copynght 1912 by
Charles Scnbner's Sons, 1940 by Ada Galsworthy; ustd by permission of the pub-
lishers.
108 PERFECTIONISTS
a hundred years. Those pairs could only have been made by one
who saw before him the Soul of Boot so truly were they proto-
types incarnating the very spirit of all footgear. These thoughts,
of course, came to me later, though even when I was promoted to
him, at the age of perhaps fourteen, some inkling haunted me of
the dignity of himself and brother. For to make boots such boots
as he made seemed to me then, and still seems to me, mysterious
and wonderful.
[3] I remember well my shy remark, one day, while stretching
out to him my youthful foot:
[4] "Isn't it awfully hard to do, Mr. Gesslcr?"
[5] And his answer, given with a sudden smile from out of the
sardonic redness of his beard: "It is an Ardt!"
[6] Himself, he was a little as if made from leather, with his
yellow crinkly face, and crinkly reddish hair and beard, and neat
folds slanting down his cheeks to the corners of his mouth, and his
guttural and one-toned voice; for leather is a sardonic substance, and
stiff and slow of purpose. And that was the character of his face,
save that his eyes, which were grey-blue had in them the simple
gravity of one secretly possessed by the Ideal. His elder brother was
so very like him though watery, paler in every way, with a great
industry that sometimes in early days I was not quite sure of him
until the interview was over. Then I knew that it was he, if the
words, "I will ask my brudder," had not been spoken; and that, if
they had, it was his elder brother.
[7] When one grew old and wild and ran up bills, one somehow
never ran them up with Gessler Brothers. It would not have
seemed becoming to go in there and stretch out one's foot to that
blue iron-spectacled glance, owing him for more than say two
pairs, just the comfortable reassurance that one was still his client.
[8] For it was not possible to go to him very often his boots
lasted terribly, having something beyond the temporary some, as it
were, essence of boot stitched into them.
[9] One went in, not as into most shops, in the mood of: "Please
serve me, and let me go!" but restfully, as one enters a church; and,
sitting on the single wooden chair, waited for there was never
JOHN GALSWORTHY 109
anybody there. Soon, over the top edge of that sort of well rather
dark, and smelling soothingly of leather which formed the shop,
there would be seen his face, or that of his elder brother, peering
down. A guttural sound, and the tip-tap of bast slippers beating
the narrow wooden stairs, and he would stand before one without
coat, a little bent, in leather apron, with sleeves turned back, blinking
as if awakened from some dream of boots, or like an owl surprised
in daylight and annoyed at this interruption.
[10] And I would say: "How do you do, Mr. Gcssler? Could you
make me a pair of Russia leather boots ? "
[n] Without a word he would leave me, retiring whence he
came, or into the other portion of the shop, and 1 would continue to
rest in the wooden chair, inhaling the incense of his trade. Soon he
would come back, holding in his thin, veined hand a piece of gold-
brown leather. With eyes fixed on it, he would remark: "What
a beaudiful bicce!" When I, too, had admired it, he would speak
again. "When do you wand dem?" and I would answer: "Oh!
As soon as you conveniently can." And he would say: "To-morrow
fordnighd?" Or if he were his elder brother: "I will ask my
brudder!"
[12] Then I would murmur: "Thank you! Good-morning, Mr.
Gessler." "Goot-morning!" he would reply, still looking at the
leather in his hand. And as I moved to the door, I would hear the
tip-tap of his bast slippers restoring him, up the stairs, to his dream
of boots. But if it were some new kind of footgear that he had not
yet made me, then indeed he would observe ceremony divesting
me of my boot and holding it long in his hand, looking at it with
eyes at once critical and loving, as if recalling the glow with which
he had created it, and rebuking the way in which one had disor-
ganised this masterpiece. Then, placing my foot on a piece of
paper, he would two or three times tickle the outer edges with a
pencil and pass his nervous fingers over my toes, feeling himself
into the heart of my requirements.
[13] I cannot forget that day on which I had occasion to say to
him: "Mr. Gessler, that last pair of town walking-boots creaked, you
know."
110 PERFECTIONISTS
[14] He looked at me for a time without replying, as if expecting
me to withdraw or qualify the statement, then said:
[15] "Id shouldn'd 'ave grcaked."
[16] "It did, I'm afraid."
[17] "You goddem wed before dey found demselvcs?"
Li8] "I don't think so."
[19] At that he lowered his eyes, as if hunting for memory of
those boots, and I felt sorry I had mc-ntioned this grave thing.
[20] "Zend dem back!" he said; "1 will look at dem."
[21] A feeling of compassion for my creaking boots surged up
in me, so well could I imagine the sorrowful long curiosity of regard
which he would bend on them.
[22] "Zome boocls," he said slowly, "arc bad from birdt. I can do
noding wid dem, I dake dem off your bill."
[23] Once (once only) I went absentmmdeclly into his shop in a
pair of boots bought in an emergency at some large firm's. He took
my order without showing me any leather, and I could feel his eyes
penetrating the inferior integument of my foot. At last he said:
[24] "Dose are nod my boods."
[25] The tone was not one of anger, nor of sorrow, not even of
contempt, but there was in it something quiet that froze the blood.
He put his hand down and pressed a finger on the place where the
left boot, endeavouring to be fashionable, was not quite comfortable.
[26] "Id 'urds you dere," he said. "Dose big virms 'avc no self-
respect. Drash!" And then, as if something had given way within
him, he spoke long and bitterly. It was the only time I ever heard
him discuss the conditions and hardships of his trade.
[27] "Dey get id all," he said, "dey get id by adverdiscment, nod
by work. Dey dake it away from us, who lofc our boods. Id gomes
to this bresently I haf no work. Every year id gets less you will
see." And looking at his lined face I saw things I had never noticed
before, bitter things and bitter struggle and what a lot of grey hairs
there seemed suddenly in his red beard!
[28] As best I could, I explained the circumstances of the purchase
of those ill-omened boots. But his face and voice made a so deep
impression that during the next few minutes I ordered many pairs.
JOHN GALSWORTHY 111
Nemesis fell! They lasted more terribly than ever. And I was not
able conscientiously to go to him for nearly two years.
[29] When at last I went I was surprised to find that outside one
of the two little windows of his shop another name was painted, also
that of a bootmaker making, of course, for the Royal Family.
The old familiar boots, no longer in dignified isolation, were
huddled in the single window. Inside, the now contracted well of
the one little shop was more scented and darker than ever. And it
was longer than usual, too, before a face peered down, and the tip-
tap of the bast slippers began. At last he stood before me, and
gazing through those rusty iron spectacles, said:
[ 3 oJ "Mr. , isn'd it?"
[31] "Ah! Mr. Gessler?" I stammered, "but your boots are
really too good, you know! See, these arc quite decent still!"
And I stretched out to him my foot. He looked at it.
[32] "Yes," he said, "bcople do nod wand good boods, id seems."
[33] To get away from his reproachful eyes and voice I hastily
remarked: "What have you done to your shop?"
[34] He answered quietly: "Id was too exbensif. Do you wand
some boods?"
[35] I ordered three pairs, though I had only wanted two, and
quickly left. I had, I know not quite what feeling of being part,
in his mind, of a conspiracy against him; or not perhaps so much
against him as against his idea of boot. One does not, I suppose,
care to feel like that; for it was again many months before my
next visit to his shop, paid, I remember, with the feeling: "Oh, well,
I can't leave the old boy so here goes! Perhaps it'll be his elder
brother!"
[36] For his elder brother, I knew, had not character enough to
reproach me even dumbly.
[37] And, to my relief, in the shop there did appear to be his elder
brother, handling a piece of leather.
[38] "Well, Mr. Gessler," I said, "how are you?"
[39] He came close, and peered at me.
[40] "I am breddy well," he said slowly; "but my older brudder
is dead."
112 PERFECTIONISTS
[41] And I saw that it was indeed himself but how aged and
wan! And never before had I heard him mention his brother.
Much shocked, I murmured: "Oh, I am sorry!"
[42] "Yes," he answered, "he was a good man, he made a good
bood; but he is dead." And he touched the top of his head, where
the hair had suddenly gone as thin as it had been on that of his pooi
brother, to indicate, I suppose, the cause of death. "He could nod
ged over losing de oder shop. Do you wand any boods?" And he
held up the leather in his hand: "Id's a beaudiful biece."
[43] I ordered several pairs. It was very long before they came
but they were better than ever. One simply could not wear them
out. And soon after that I went abroad.
[44] It was over a year before I was again in London. And the
first shop I went to was my old friend's. I had left a man of sixty,
I came back to one of seventy-five, pinched and worn and tremu-
lous, who genuinely, this time, did not at first know me.
[45] "Oh! Mr. Gesslcr," I said, sick at heart; "how splendid your
boots are! See, I've been wearing this pair nearly all the time I've
been abroad; and they're not half worn out, are they?"
[46] He looked long at my boots a pair of Russia leather, and
his face seemed to regain steadiness. Putting his hand on my instep,
he said:
[47] "Do dey vid you here? I 'ad drouble wid dat hair, I re-
member."
[48] I assured him that they had fitted beautifully.
[49] "Do you wand any boods?" he said. "I can make dem
quickly; id is a slack dime."
[50] I answered: "Please, please! I want boots all round every
kind!"
[51] "I will make a vresh model. Your food must be bigger."
And with utter slowness, he traced round my foot, and felt my toes,
only once looking up to say:
[52] "Did I dell you my brudder was dead?"
[53] To watch him was painful, so feeble had he grown; I was
glad to get away.
[54] I had given those boots up, when one evening they came.
JOHN GALSWORTHY 113
Opening the parcel, I set the four pairs out in a row. Then one
by one I tried them on. There was no doubt about it. In shape and
fit, in finish and quality of leather, they were the best he had ever
made me. And in the mouth of one of the town walking-boots I
found his bill. The amount was the same as usual, but it gave me
quite a shock. He had never before sent it in till quarter day. I
flew downstairs and wrote a cheque, and posted it .at once with my
own hand.
[55] A week later, passing the little street, I thought I would go
in and tell him how splendidly the new boots fitted. Hut when I
came to where his shop had been, his name was gone. Still there,
in the window, were the slim pumps, the patent leathers with cloth
tops, the sooty riding-boots.
[56] I went in, very much disturbed. In the two little shops
again made into one was a young man with an English face.
[57] "Mr. Gessler in?" I said.
[58] He gave me a strange, ingratiating look.
[59] "No, sir," he said; "no. But we can attend to anything with
pleasure. We've taken the shop over. You've seen our name, no
doubt, next door. We make for some very good people."
[60] "Yes, yes," I said; "but Mr. Gessler?"
[61] "Oh!" he answered; "dead."
[62] "Dead! But I only received these boots from him last Wed-
nesday week."
[63] "Ah!" he said; "a shockin' go. Poor old man starved 'im-
self."
[64! "Good God!"
[65] "Slow starvation, the doctor called it! You see he went to
work in such a way! Would keep the shop on; wouldn't have a
soul touch his boots except himself. When he got an order, it took
him such a time. People won't wait. He lost everybody. And
there he'd sit, goin' on and on I will say that for him not a man in
London made a better boot! But look at the competition! He
never advertised! Would 'ave the best leather, too, and do it all
'imsclf. Well, there it is. What could you expect with his ideas?"
[66] "But starvation !"
114 PERFECTIONISTS
[67] "That may be a bit flowery, as the say in' is but I know my-
self he was sittin' over his boots day and night, to the very last.
You see, I used to watch him. Never gave 'imself time to eat; never
had a penny in the house. All went in rent and leather. How he
lived so long I don't know. He regular let his fire go out. He was
a character. But he made good boots."
[68] "Yes," 1 said, "he made good boots."
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. What does "the Soul of Boot" mean? Compare the later state-
ment that Mr. Gesslcr was "one secretly possessed of the Ideal."
Can you relate these statements to Toscamm's "Platonic Idea"?
2. How did the narrator of this story tell the brothers Gesslcr apart?
3. Upon what does Mr. Gcssler blame his plight?
4. Explain: "Nemesis fell."
5. Zweig found Toscamm's approach to art a lesson in ethics. What
ethical lesson, if any, can you find in Mr. Gessler's approach to his
"art"?
St. Simeon Stylites*
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Altho' I be the basest of mankind,
From scalp to sole one slough and crust of sin,
Unfit for earth, unfit for heaven, scarce meet
For troops of devils, mad with blasphemy,
I will not cease to grasp the hope I hold
Of saintdom, and to clamour, mourn and sob,
Battering the gates of heaven with storms of prayer,
Have mercy, Lord, and take away my sin!
* From Poems (1842).
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 115
Let this avail, just, dreadful, mighty God,
This not be all in vain, that thrice ten years, 10
Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs,
In hungers and in thirsts, fevers and cold,
In coughs, aches, stitches, ulcerous throes and cramps,
A sign betwixt the meadow and the cloud,
Patient on this tall pillar I have borne 15
Ram, wind, frost, heat, hail, damp, and sleet, and snow;
And I had hoped that ere this period closed
Thou wouldst have caught me up into thy rest,
Denying not these weather-beaten limbs
The meed of saints, the white robe and the palm. *>
O take the meaning, Lord: I do not breathe,
Not whisper, any murmur of complaint.
Pain heap'd ten-hundred-lold to this, were still
Less burthen, by ten-hundred-fold, to bear,
Than were those lead-like tons of sin, that crush'd *s
My spirit flat before thec.
O Lord, Lord,
Thou knowcst I bore this better at the first,
For I was strong and hale of body then;
And tho' my teeth, which now are dropt away,
Would chatter with the cold, and all my beard 30
Was tagg'd with icy fringes in the moon,
I drown'd the whoopings of the owl with sound
Of pious hymns and psalms, and sometimes saw
An angel stand and watch me, as I sang.
Now am I feeble grown; my end draws nigh; 35
I hope my end draws nigh : half deaf I am,
So that I scarce can hear the people hum
About the column's base, and almost blind,
And scarce can recognise the fields I know;
And both my thighs are rotted with the dew; 40
Yet cease I not to clamour and to cry,
While my stiff spine can hold my weary head,
Till all my limbs drop piecemeal from the stone,
116 PERFECTIONISTS
Have mercy, mercy! take away my sin.
O Jesus, if thou wilt not save my soul, 45
Who may be saved ? who is it may be saved ?
Who may be made a saint, if I fail here?
Show me the man hath suffer'd more than I.
For did not all thy martyrs die one death?
For either they were stoned, or crucified, 50
Or burn'd in fire, or boil'd in oil, or sawn
In twain beneath the ribs; but I die here
To-day, and whole years long, a life of death.
Bear witness, if I could have found a way
(And needfully I sifted all my thought) ss
More slowly-painful to subdue this home
Of sin, my flesh, which I despise and hate,
I had not stinted practice, O my God.
For not alone this pillar-punishment,
Not this alone I bore: but while I lived 60
In the white convent down the valley there,
For many weeks about my loins I wore
The rope that haled the buckets from the well,
Twisted as tight as I could knot the noose;
And spake not of it to a single soul, 65
Until the ulcer, eating thro' my skin,
Betray 'd my secret penance, so that all
My brethren marvell'd greatly. More than this
I bore, whereof, O God, thou k no west all.
Three winters, that my soul might grow to thee, 70
I lived up there on yonder mountain side.
My right leg chained into the crag, I lay
Pent in a roofless close of ragged stones;
Inswathed sometimes in wandering mist, and twice
Black'd with thy branding thunder, and sometimes 75
Sucking the damps for drink, and eating not,
Except the spare chance-gift of those that came
To touch my body and be heal'd, and live:
And they say then that I work'd miracles,
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 117
Whereof my fame is loud amongst mankind, &>
Cured lameness, palsies, cancers. Thou, O God,
Knowest alone whether this was or no.
Have mercy, mercy! cover all my sin.
Then, that I might be more alone with thee,
Three years I lived upon a pillar, high %
Six cubits, and three years on one of twelve;
And twice three years I crouch \1 on one that rose
Twenty by measure; last of all, I grew
Twice ten long weary weary years to this,
That numbers forty cubits from the soil. n<>
I think that I have borne as much as this
Or else I dream and for so long a time,
If I may measure time by yon slow light,
And this high dial which my sorrow crowns
So much even so. <;5
And yet I know not well,
For the evil ones come here, and say,
"Fall down, O Simeon: thou hast suffered long
For ages and for ages!" then they prate
Of penances I cannot have gone thro',
Perplexing me with lies; and oft I fall, i>
Maybe for months, in such blind lethargies
That Heaven, and Earth, and Time are choked.
But yet
Bethink thee, Lord, while thou and all the saints
Enjoy themselves in heaven, and men on earth
House in the shade of comfortable roofs, 105
Sit with their wives by fires, eat wholesome food,
And wear warm clothes, and even beasts have stalls,
I, 'tween the spring and downfall of the light,
Bow down one thousand and two hundred times,
To Christ, the Virgin Mother, and the saints; no
Or in the night, after a little sleep,
I wake: the chill stars sparkle; I am wet
With drenching dews, or stiff with crackling frost.
118 PERFECTIONISTS
I wear an undress'd goatskin on my back;
A grazing iron collar grinds my neck; us
And in my weak, lean arms I lift the cross,
And strive and wrestle with thee till I die:
mercy, mercy! wash away my sin.
O Lord, thou knowcst what a man I am;
A sinful man, conceived and born in sin: 120
'Tis their own doing; this is none of mine;
Lay it not to me. Am I to blame for this,
That here come those that worship me? Ha! ha!
They think that I am somewhat. What am I?
The silly people take me for a saint, 125
And bring me offerings of fruit and flowers:
And I, in truth (thou wilt bear witness here)
Have all in all endured as much, and more
Than many just and holy men, whose names
Are register'd and calendared for saints. 130
Good people, you do ill to kneel to me.
What is it I can have clone to merit this?
1 am a sinner viler than you all.
It may be I have wrought some miracles,
And cured some halt and maim'd; but what of that? 135
It may be, no one, even among the saints,
May match his pains with mine; but what of that?
Yet do not rise; for you may look on me,
And in your looking you may kneel to God.
Speak! is there any of you halt or maim'd? M<>
I think you know I have some power with Heaven
From my long penance: let him speak his wish.
Yes, I can heal him. Power goes forth from me.
They say that they are heal'd. Ah, hark! they shout,
"St. Simeon Stylites." Why, if so, 145
God reaps a harvest in me. O my soul,
God reaps a harvest in thee. If this be,
Can I work miracles and not be saved?
This is not told of any. They were saints.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON 119
It cannot be but that I shall be saved; 150
Yea, crown'd a saint. They shout, "Behold a saint!"
And lower voices saint me from above.
Courage, St. Simeon! This dull chrysalis
Cracks into shining wings, and hope ere death
Spreads more and more and more, that God hath now 155
Sponged and made blank of cnmeful record all
My mortal archives.
O my sons, my sons,
I, Simeon of the pillar, by surname
Styhtes, among men: 1, Simeon,
The watcher on the column till the end; 160
I, Simeon, whose brain the sunshine bakes;
I, whose bald brows in silent hours become
Unnaturally hoar with rime, do now
From my high nest of penance here proclaim
That Pontius and Iscanot by my side 165
Show'd like fair seraphs. On the coals I lay,
A vessel full of sin: all hell beneath
Made me boil over. Devils pluck'd my sleeve;
Abaddon and Asmodcus caught at me.
I smote them with the cross; they swarm'd again. 170
In bed like monstrous apes they crush'd my chest:
They flapp'd my light out as I read: I saw
Their faces grow between me and my book;
With colt-like whinny and with hoggish whine
They burst my prayer. Yet this way was left, 175
And by this way I 'scaped them. Mortify
Your flesh, like me, with scourges and with thorns;
Smite, shrink not, spare not. If it may be, fast
Whole Lents, and pray. I hardly, with slow steps,
With slow, faint steps, and much exceeding pain, 180
Have scrambled past those pits of fire, that still
Sing in mine ears. But yield not me the praise:
God only thro' his bounty hath thought fit,
Among the powers and princes of this world,
120 PERFECTIONISTS
To make me an example to mankind, 185
Which few can reach to. Yet I do not say
But that a time may come yea, even now,
Now, now, his footsteps smite the threshold stairs
Of life I say, that time is at the doors
When you may worship me without reproach; 190
For I will leave my relics in your land,
And you may carve a shrine about my dust,
And burn a fragrant lamp before my bones,
When I am gathered to the glorious saints.
While I spake then, a sting of shrewdest pain 195
Ran shrivelling thro' me, and a cloudlike change,
In passing, with a grosser film made thick
These heavy, horny eyes. The end! the end!
Surely the end! What's here? a shape, a shade,
A flash of light. Is that the angel there *>o
That holds a crown? Come, blessed brother, come.
I know thy glittering face. I waited long;
My brows are ready. What! deny it now?
Nay, draw, draw, draw nigh. So I clutch it. Christ!
'Tis gone! 'tis here again; the crown! the crown! *> 5
So now 'tis fitted on and grows to me,
And from it melt the dews of Paradise,
Sweet! sweet! spikenard, and balm, and frankincense.
Ah! let me not be fool'd, sweet saints: I trust
That I am whole, and clean, and meet for Heaven. 210
Speak, if there be a priest, a man of God,
Among you there, and let him presently
Approach, and lean a ladder on the shaft,
And climbing up into my airy home,
Deliver me the blessed sacrament; 215
For by the warning of the Holy Ghost,
I prophesy that I shall die to-night,
A quarter before twelve.
But thou, O Lord,
Aid all this foolish people; let them take
Example, pattern : lead them to thy light. **>
ROBERT C. RUARK 121
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. What is Simeon's imagined sin?
2. What is his real sin?
3. Are there any people near him? Why are they there? Does
Simeon speak to them?
4. A cubit varies from 17 to 21 inches. Why? Approximately
how high was Simeon's pillar?
5. Why does Simeon compare himself to "Pontius and Iscariot"
(line 165) ?
6. What advice does Simeon give on how to escape sin?
7. The speaker in this poem seeks perfection. Compare his mode
of seeking with Toscanini's and Mr. Gessler's.
Art/'st with Carpenter's Hands*
Robert C. Ruark
[i] Last week a lean, starved-lookmg young man with wild hair
committed suicide here in New York. The papers called him a
poet. First he jumped off a building in Greenwich Village and
when that didn't kill him, he went home and strung himself up
from a pipe.
[2] His name was Jack Demoreland. The police knew little
about him; the papers less. The art critic whom he visited just
before he leaped of! the roof knew him scarcely at all. He attracted
attention only because his first attempt at suicide failed to kill him.
[3] I knew Demoreland well. He was a friend of mine for many
years, before the war. He wasn't a poet. He was an artist a
painter and a cartoonist. We had worked together on The Wash-
ington Daily News. I have several of his pictures.
* Published in the Scnpps-Howarel newspapers, September 13, 1948. Reprinted
by permission of the author.
122 PERFECTIONISTS
[4] The anatomy of suicide is a strange, complex thing; rarely
the same in any man. I know why Dcmoreland killed himself.
He killed himself because he saw the most beautiful pictures any
man ever saw. They were right there, clamoring to come out of
his head, but his hands weren't good enough to draw them forth.
[5] Jack knew what he wanted to put on paper, knew it so well
that it hurt him. But when he picked up the brush or the pen it
was always a bad distortion of what he was trying to say. He was
like a man whose head rings with wondrous music, but, when he
opens his mouth to sing, only croaks emerge.
[6] An alienist would say that the man was a definite psychopath,
and so, I suppose, he was. He had tried to kill himself once before,
long ago, in a fit of horrid depression. He had spent a short time in
a mental hospital. It was the one true case of complete artistic frus-
tration I ever knew.
[7] Demoreland used to do little line sketches for me on sports
stories, and later illustrated the top city-side feature of the day.
During the first clays of the war we set him to doing the daily
military map. Those maps finally got him. Here was a guy who
wanted to scream out loud with a paintbrush, and he was over in
the corner with an inkwell, tracing the progress of the Germans
against the Russians, the Japs against the Americans.
[8] Most of the time Demoreland was a quiet, seemingly "normal"
human being, who wore neckties, shaved, drank moderately, went
out with a variety of women, and who rarely talked art. But oc-
casionally the black desperation would stifle him, and he would
forget to come home. He would forget to eat, to sleep, to wash.
[9] It was then that a girl reporter used to take him in hand.
She would throw a big slug of bourbon into him, feed him forcibly
and plant him on the divan, where he VI sleep for 20 hours or so and
snap back to his cartoons and his maps. I think the girl loved him
very much, but there wasn't much future in it; his head was too
full of pictures pictures that couldn't be born.
[10] You meet a lot of dilettante artists in big cities like New
York. They live in Greenwich Village, mostly, and spend more time
in the smoky little cheap-gin joints looking picturesque than they
I. A. WILLIAMS 123
[n] Jack Demoreland was no dilettante. He was a worker. He
would work 24, 36 hours at a crack, striving for a perfection he knew,
actually, he'd never achieve. There was no bogus Bohemian in
Jack at least not through the years I knew him. He dressed like
a young business executive, when he was o(T on one ol his "tranquil"
stretches, which sometimes ran for a year at a crack. He was a
handsome youngster. He talked well. There was never anything
"arty" about him.
[12] Something, I guess, finally went really wrong in his head.
New York, which he once told me seemed like the answer, obviously
couldn't supply the necessary skill his hands lacked. He triccl^ and
he tried again, and finally he got so tired it all seemed too tough to
live with.
[13 | Hut a great artist lies in the morgue as 1 write this. It wasn't
his fault that he was born with a carpenter's hands.
QUESTION ON CONTENT
r. "He saw the most beautiful pictures any man ever saw." Com-
pare "the flawless vision" of Toscanmi; the ideal of Mr. Gessler;
the mystic moments of Simeon.
The Importance of Doing
Things Badly*
I. A. Williams
[i] Charles Lamb wrote a series of essays upon popular fallacies.
I do not, at the moment, carry them very clearly in my memory;
but, unless that treacherous servant misleads me more even than
she usually does, he did not write of one piece of proverbial so-
called wisdom that has always seemed to me to be peculiarly per-
* From The Outlook, LI (London, April 21, 1923). By pci mission of the author.
124 PERFECTIONISTS
nicious. And this saw, this scrap of specious advice, this untruth
masquerading as logic, is one that I remember to have had hurled
at my head at frequent intervals from my earliest youth right up to
my present advanced age. How many times have I not been told
that "If a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well"?
[2] Never was there a more untruthful word spoken in earnest.
For the world is full of things that are worth doing, but certainly
not worth doing well. Was it not so great a sage as Herbert
Spencer who said to the young man who had just beaten him at
billiards, "Moderate skill, sir, is the sign of a good eye and a steady
hanoj, but skill such as yours argues a youth misspent"? Is any
game worth playing supremely well, at the price of constant practice
and application ?
[3] Against the professional player I say nothing; he is a public
entertainer, like any other, and by his skill in his particular sport he
at least fulfills the first social duty of man that of supporting him-
self and his family by his own legitimate exertions. Hut what is
to be said of the crack amateur? To me he seems one of the most
contemptible of mankind. He earns no money, but devotes him-
self, for the mere selfish pleasure of the thing, to some game, which
he plays day in day out; he breaks down the salutary distinction
between the amateur and the professional; eventually his skill
deserts him, and he leaves behind him nothing that is of service to
his fellow men not a brick laid, not an acre ploughed, not a line
written, not even a family supported and educated by his labor.
[4] It is true that he has provided entertainment for a certain
number of persons, but he has never had the pluck to submit himself
to the test by which we demand that every entertainer should justify
his choice of a calling the demonstration of the fact that the public
is willing to pay him for his entertainment. And, when his day is
over, what is left, not even to the world, but to himself? Nothing
but a name that is at once forgotten, or is remembered by stout
gentlemen in clubs.
[5] The playing of games, certainly, is a thing which is not worth
doing well.
[6] But that does not prove that it is not worth doing at all, as
I. A. WILLIAMS 125
the proverb would, by implication, persuade us. There is nothing
more agreeable and salutary than playing a game which one likes,
and the circumstance of doing it badly interferes with the pleasure
of no real devotee of any pastime. The man who minds whether
or not he wins is no true sportsman which observation is trite, but
the rule it implies is seldom observed, and comparatively few peo-
ple really play games for the sheer enjoyment of the playi ng.
Is this not proved by the prevalence and popularity of handicaps' 5
Why should we expect to be given points unless it be that we wish
to win by means other than our own skill ?
[7] "Ah! but," my reader may say, "the weaker player wants to
receive points in order that he may give the stronger one a better
game." Really, 1 do not believe that that is so. Possibly, sometimes,
a strong and vainglorious player may wish to give points, in order
that his victory may be the more notable. But I do not think that
even this is the true explanation. That, I suspect, was given to me
the other day by the secretary of a lawn-tennis tournament, in
which 1 played. "Why all this nonsense of handicaps? Why not
let us be squarely beaten, and done with it?" I asked him. "Be-
cause," he replied, "if we did not give handicaps, none of the less
good players would enter." Is that not a confession that the
majority of us have not realized the true value of doing a trivial
thing badly, for its own sake, and must needs have our minds buoyed
and cheated into a false sense of excellence?
1 8] Moreover it is not only such intrinsically trivial things as
games that are worth doing badly. This is a truth which, oddly
enough, we accept freely of some things but not of others and as
a thing which we are quite content to do ill let me instance acting.
Acting, at its best, can be a great art, a thing worth doing supremely
well, though its worth, like that of all interpretative arts, is lessened
by its evanescence. For it works in the impermanent medium of
human flesh and blood, and the thing that the actor creates for
what we call an interpretative artist is really a creative artist work-
ing in a perishable medium is an impression upon, an emotion or a
thought aroused in, the minds of an audience, and is incapable
of record.
126 PERFECTIONISTS
[9] Acting, then, let me postulate, though I have only sketched
ever so briefly the proof of my belief, can be a great art. But is
anyone ever deterred from taking part in amateur theatricals by the
consideration that he cannot act well? Not a bit of it! And quite
rightly not, for acting is one of the things about which I am writing
this essay the things that are worth doing badly.
[10] Another such thing is music; but here the proverbial fallacy
again exerts its power, as it docs not, for some obscure and unreason-
ing discrimination, in acting. Most people seem to think that if they
cannot sing, or play the piano, fiddle, or sackbut, admirably well,
they must not do any of these things at all. That they should not
indiscriminately force their inferior performances upon the public,
or even upon their acquaintance, I admit. Hut that there is no place
"in the home" for inferior musical performances, is an untruth that
I flatly deny.
|n] How many sons and daughters have not, with a very small
talent, given their parents and even the less lonclly prejudiced cars
of their friends great pleasure with the singing of simple songs ?
Then one day there comes to the singer the serpent of dissatisfaction;
singing-lessons are taken, and if the pupil is of moderate talent
and modest disposition limitations are discovered. And then, in
nine cases out of ten, the singing is dropped, like a hot penny. How
many fathers have not banished music from their homes by en-
couraging their daughters to take singing-lessons? Yet a home may
be the fresher for singing that would deserve brickbats at a parish
concert.
[12] I may pause here to notice the curious exception that people
who cannot on any account be persuaded to sing in the drawing-
room, or even in the bath, will without hesitation uplift their tuneless
voices at religious meetings or in church. There is a perfectly
good and honorable explanation of this, I believe, but it belongs to
the realm of metaphysics and is beyond my present scope.
[13] This cursed belief, that if a thing is worth doing at all, it is
worth doing well, is the cause of a great impoverishment in our
private life, and also, to some extent, of the lowering of standards
in our public life. For this tenet of proverbial faith has two effects
I. A. WILLIAMS 127
on small talents: it leads modest persons not to exercise them at all,
and immodest persons to attempt to do so too much and to force
themselves upon the public. It leads to the decay of letter-writing
and of the keeping of diaries, and, as surely, it leads to the publica-
tion of memoirs and diaries that should remain locked in the
writers 1 desks.
[14] It leads Mr. Blank not to write verses at all which he might
very well do, for the sake of his own happiness, and for the amuse-
ment of his friends and it leads Miss Dash to pester the over-
worked editors of various journals with her unsuccessful imitations
of Mr. de la Mare, Mr. Yeats, and Dr. Bridges. The result is that
our national artistic life now suffers from two great needs: a wider
amateur practice of the arts, and a higher, more exclusive, profes-
sional standard. Until these arc achieved we shall not get the best
out of our souls.
[15] The truth is, I conceive, that there is for most of us only one
thing beyond, of course, our duties of citizenship and our personal
duties as sons, or husbands, or fathers, daughters, or wives, or
mothers that is worth doing well that is to say, with all our
energy. That one thing may be writing, or it may be making
steam-engines, or laying bricks. But after that there arc hundreds
of things that arc worth doing badly, with only part of our energy,
for the sake of the relaxation they bring us, and for the contacts
which they give us with our minds. And the sooner Kngland
realizes this, as once she did, the happier, the more contented, the
more gracious, will our land be.
[16] There are even, I maintain, things that are in themselves
better done badly than well. Consider fishing, where one's whole
pleasure is often spoiled by having to kill a fish. Now, if one could
contrive always to try to catch a fish, and never to do so, one might
But that is another story.
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. What, according to the author, is "the first social duty of man"?
2. What is the significance of a "handicap"?
128 PERFECTIONISTS
3. Define "an interpretative artist." Compare Toscanini.
4. The author recognizes two great needs of "our national artistic
life." What are these? How would a willingness to do certain
things badly serve these needs?
5. What one thing in each person's life is worth doing well?
Suggestions /or Papers
You have perhaps not yet settled on the direction in which you will
strive for perfection. Indeed, you may have already accepted com-
promise as the sensible way to live; a C attitude is less rewarding
but more comfortable than an A attitude. Yet the chances are that
you do want to be best at something. Your paper on the general
idea of perfectionism may be mainly personal with incidental ref-
erences to the selections in this chapter, or it may be mainly im-
personal with incidental references to your beliefs or experiences.
Comparison and contrast will be the obvious method of this paper.
1. Write a paper in which you isolate as narrowly as you can the
one thing which you wish to do supremely well. In your first para-
graph, define what this one thing is which you wish to do supremely
well. In the remainder of your paper (two or three paragraphs)
make clear what subordinate things you must learn to do well before
you can be sure of achieving your central ambition. Try to find
ways to refer to passages from the selections in this chapter.
2. List those things which you do but do not do well. Do you
consider them worth doing badly? Why? The answer will re-
quire perhaps an analysis of what constitutes a well-balanced life.
3. What is specialization? Can you name several reasons for
the rise of specialization in the twentieth century ? Does it have a
connection with the idea of perfectionism? Or is it simply a neces-
sity forced upon a highly complex society? (Does football provide
a good example of detailed specialization?)
4. Zweig insists that Toscanini provides an ethical lesson for his
SUGGESTIONS FOR PAPERS 129
generation. What kind of lesson could one learn from the ex-
periences of Mr. Gessler? Of St. Simeon? Of "the artist with
carpenter's hands"? This analysis will call for (i) a listing of the
requirements for successful specialization; (2) the application of
the terms of this list to the four persons (Toscanim, Gessler, St.
Simeon, and the artist) ; (3) the reaching a conclusion on the basis
of the analysis and the application.
5. Follow the suggestions under 4 above but use examples of
your own. Draw your examples from people you know or from
people you have read about.
6. Write a careful, detailed comparison of Toscanim and the artist
with carpenter's hands. Compare "the vision," the patience, the
energy, the talent, the personal satisfaction, and the result. What
conclusion do you arrive at? That all men are created equal?
That one man's dream is another man's nightmare? How does
your conclusion apply to yourself?
7. Write a careful, detailed comparison of Mr. Gessler and the
artist with carpenter's hands. Use the details of comparison sug-
gested in 6 above. Note, however, the totally different causes for
defeat in the two men. Arrive at some conclusion and apply the
conclusion to yourself.
8. Write a careful, detailed comparison of Mr. Gessler and St.
Simeon. Use the details of comparison in 6 above. Add usefulness
and personality to the list. What do you conclude? How docs
your conclusion apply to yourself?
9. Other possible comparisons are these: Toscamni and Mr. Gess-
ler; Toscanini and St. Simeon; St. Simeon and the artist.
10. All four of the perfectionists described in the selections of
this chapter feel a more or less acute sense of frustration. Show
of what this frustration consisted in each instance. What do you
conclude about the dangers of perfectionism ?
n. A poet has said that it is not what man docs but what he
would do that counts. This same poet has said that "all services
rank the same with God." Apply these conceptions to the four
perfectionists described in this chapter. By the poet's reasoning,
would the four end in a tie? Explain.
130 PERFECTIONISTS
SOME TITLES FOR PAPERS
1. The A Attitude 7. Was Simeon a Saint?
2. The C Attitude 8. Perfectionism Conquers the
3. The Perfection I Covet Flesh
4. The Ethics of Perfectionism 9. The Ethics of Doing Things
5. Penalties of Perfectionism Badly
6. Quality in a Machine Age 10. Perfection Is for Heaven
e Problem of
College Athletics
I T IS easy to get used to absurdities. "All study
and no exercise make Joseph College a dull boy." Th.it seemed logi-
cal and, educators thought, something should be done about it.
"Much study and some exercise make Joseph less dull." That seemed
better. "Less study and much exercise make Joseph still less dull."
That began to be questionable. "No study and all exercise make
Joe a dull boy." That's logical but bad. The original statement is
now topsy-turvy. Joe no longer Joseph likes exercise; he doesn't
like work and even if he did, he wouldn't have time for it. His
attitude wouldn't matter very much but for the ama/Jng public in-
terest in Joe's exercise. The public in this matter consists of most
college presidents, some faculty members, almost all the students
and the alumni of all the colleges, and a vast body of so-called sports
lovers.
As far back as the 1920*5 the problem of what to do with the bull
in the china closet of education, college athletics, had become so acute
131
132 THE PROBLEM OF COLLEGE ATHLETICS
that thoughtful persons were duly alarmed and said so. Robert K.
Root in "Sport Versus Athletics" adequately summarized the situa-
tion and offered a possible cure. You will be interested to see how
"dated" this essay is. How much of it, more than a quarter of a cen-
tury after, is still valid? Have conditions improved or worsened?
Possibly the classic analysis of college athletics in relation to higher
education is provided in Robert Maynard Hutchms's "Gate Receipts
and Glory." Mr. Hutchins describes the golden knot which holds
together the incompatibles of education and partly professionalized
athletics. His cure? Cut the knot.
Even in an era of generous subsidy for college athletes, the chief
recompense for stupendous effort is glory. How lasting, however,
is this reward? Housman's poignant little poem, "To an Athlete
Dying Young," answers for a village-hero runner, but the answer may
stand for all athletes in their quest for glory.
Sport Versus Athletics*
Robert K. Root
[i] Among the countless thousands who flock, the nation over, on
a bright Saturday of mid-November to witness a "big" football
game in some nearby academic town, there must be a few who, in
the interval between the halves, ask themselves, What is this amazing
spectacle at which we are assisting? How vast a swarming multi-
tude! Special trains by the score pour out their living freight;
the roads of a dozen counties overflow their brims with the con-
verging streams of motors; a battalion of special police keeps the
crowds in order; countless hawkers stridently recommend stale
edibles or "winning colors." And the occasion of it all is that two
and twenty college youths are to play a friendly game of ball.
While every autumn sets new records of congregated attendance,
* From The Forum, LXXII (November 1924), 657-664. Reprinted b> permission
of the author.
ROBERT K. ROOT 133
there is, I think, a steadily growing sense of something not alto-
gether right and normal in the great edifice of organized college
athletics of which the "big" game is the crowning pinnacle.
[2] What is wrong? It is certainly no cause for regret that the
vigorous youth of our universities likes to play manly games.
Heaven for fend the contrary! If, then, I have to speak with scant
respect of organized athletics, the reader will please understand
from the start that I am no enemy of outdoor games. On the
contrary, my chief quarrel with the existing state of organized ath-
letics may be summed up in the fact that it is itself an enemy of
healthy play. The very word "athletics" suggests such analogous
formations as "mathematics" and "dynamics" and "kinematics";
and the very idea of "organization" belongs to the work-shop rather
than the play field. What purports to be, and should in fact be,
play and a game has been bedevilled into a scientific profession.
Our national curse of commercialism has laid a coarse and heavy
finger on it. If college records show that football tends to make
Jack a dull boy, perhaps the explanation may be that football, as
our colleges play it, is all work and no play.
[3] If our college athletes are only technically amateurs, and es-
sentially professionals, something is indeed wrong.
[4] Of professionalism in the narrowly technical sense of the term
there is, in our more reputable colleges, little or none at all. The
"amateur standing" of the young gentlemen who exhibit their skill
for your delectation is jealously guarded by many a taboo. If the
college athlete wishes to use the long summer holiday to earn
money to pay next year's term-bill, he must be careful that his gainful
occupation has no relation to sport. He may sell groceries or safety
razors; but he must not sell golf balls or baseball bats. He may
tutor a boy in Latin or algebra, though the star athlete is not
always fitted for this occupation, but on peril of his amateur soul
he must not for hire teach a boy to play tennis.
[5] But if the amateur code forbids that the college athlete be a
penny the richer for his mighty punts, it provides that he shall not
be a cent the poorer. He pays neither for his railway ticket to
Cambridge nor for his football, not even for the clothes in which he
134 THE PROBLEM OF COLLEGE ATHLETICS
plays. If the gate receipts at Soldier's Field are to amount to some
hundred and fifty thousand dollars, should not these things be
added to him freely at the hands of the athletic treasury 15 Of
course, in all equity. But if so, why has he not an equal right to
some modest percentage of these gate receipts' 5 Nefas ncfandiitnl
| Unspeakable crime! | He would at once cease to be an amateur!
The code permits the one and sternly reprobates the other.
[6] Amateurs they are according to the letter of the code, these
sturdy youths of the football squad; but could there be anything less
amateur in its real essence than present-day college football? Even
the vast assemblage ot spectators is professionalized. If you go to
a big league baseball game, you know that the players are profes-
sionals, and that the whole a/Tair is frankly and avowedly com-
mercial; but you, the spectator, may still be an amateur. When you
feel like yelling, your lungs may bellow forth as lustily as you will;
when you are disposed for gloomy silence, you may hold your peace
with a clear conscience. Hut at a college football game your en-
thusiasm is organized. You cheer when you are ordered to cheer.
It is a kindly tyranny to be sure; for the cheer-leader in his uniform
of spotless white is a charming and engaging lad, lithe and graceful
in his amazing contortions, which combine the sharp energy of a
jumping-jack with the gyrations of a whirling dervish. It were
sullen and churlish to refuse his blandishments, and is it not,
after all, part of the show? What a mighty frog chorus echoes from
the stands, what a deafening "tiger, siss, boom, ah!" Yet it is not
exactly spontaneous; and spontaneity is an essential element in the
amateur spirit.
[7] The enthusiasm of the undergraduate spectators who fill the
sonorous cheering sections has for many weeks before the game
been artificially stimulated by an organized system of propaganda.
The college daily has solemnly preached to them the duty of being
present not only at the minor games, but at daily practice also, that
by their presence they may "support" the team. If on a pleasant
afternoon they desert the hard seats of the stadium to play a round
of golf or a set of tennis, mere selfish exercise and sport, it is with
the guilty consciousness of a duty left undone. What if through
lack of "support" their team should lose the game? Are they
ROBERT K. ROOT 135
fiddling while Rome burns? Shortly before the "big" game they
are assembled in a great mass meeting rally, where captain and
coaches, and I fear sometimes even officers of the university itself,
appeal to the emotion of "College spirit" till every last vestige of
any just sense of proportion is banished from their adolescent minds.
[8] If the enthusiasm of the spectators is professionalized out of
all spontaneity, what of the twice eleven players who arc tensely
waiting for the snap-back ? That they are a pair of disciplined teams
instead of merely spontaneous individuals, each on his own, is en-
tirely right. But whence proceeds the discipline? Is it from the
quarterback who sharply calls the signals ? Is it from the captain
whom they have themselves elected? Only to the smallest possible
extent. So far as it is feasible to make them so, they are highly
trained automatons executing the will of their coaches. There are
dramatic moments, when, with a fumbled ball loose on the field,
an individual must use his own quick intelligence and initiative.
Something must be left to the judgment of the quarterback, since
the development of radio-telephony has not yet devised a pocket
receiving set which shall keep him in constant touch with the
coaches, and since one cannot at every juncture of the game send in
a mcsscngcr-boy substitute. Hut as tar as possible even the emer-
gencies have been foreseen. As for the broad strategy of the game,
it has been laid out in advance by the coaches; and the tactics,
running formations, wing-shifts, forward passes, have all been
studied out and perfected, not by the boys who play, but by the
council of elder statesmen who sit, as statesmen always sit, on the
side-lines. The intelligence and ingenuity of a highly paid profes-
sional coach at Princeton is pitted against the skill of another highly
paid professional coach at Cambridge or New Haven. And under
this supreme dictator is a small army of lesser coaches; so that it is
hardly an exaggeration to say that there is a coach for every one
of the eleven players. Head Coach X. is playing chess with Head
Coach Y. seated across the white-streaked table, a very exciting
game of chess in which the knights and rooks and bishops, splendidly
chiselled pieces though they be, may, through human weakness,
fail to carry out the move that has been called.
[9] And the animated chess-men themselves, what do they think
136 THE PROBLEM OF COLLEGE ATHLETICS
about it? They have competed with all that is in their young bodies
to "make" the team. They very naturally covet the ephemeral glory
they may win; they have been taught to believe that they are "doing
something" for Harvard or for Yale or for Stanford, adding to the
prestige of those already somewhat eminent seats of higher learning.
Here they are in the Bowl, or the Palmer Stadium, the cynosure of
a hundred thousand neighboring eyes. It is the "big" game; they
have "made" the team. Are they not supremely happy? In the
sense of ambition realized, no doubt they are. But the joy of sport,
the healthy fun of playing a beautiful game and playing it well,
it is not for them. I have talked to many "varsity" players, and
have never found one to whom the football season, or at any rate
the closing weeks of it, was not something to be stolidly endured.
They hate the daily grind of practice; they lie awake o' nights with
nervous apprehension of the fatal fumble that they may make on the
Great Day, before the cloud of accusing witnesses.
[10] And we call it a game, and amateur sport! For the spectators
it is a splendid spectacle and an ecstasy of surging emotion. So, I
am told, is the bull ring at Madrid or Mexico City. So, no doubt,
must have been the gladiatorial games in the great amphitheatre
at many a Roman holiday. I would not have these comparisons mis-
understood. I have no sympathy with the assertion that football
is a "brutalizing" game. You must, I understand, to play it well,
feel for the time being, a bitter hatred for the man opposite you;
but you must also control that hatred, and self-control is anything
but brutish. It is a rough game, to be sure, but only wholesomely
rough; and it is no more dangerous to life and limb than many
another activity of generous youth. The game of football as a game
is a very fine game. But what you pay your three dollars to sec on a
crisp November afternoon is not a game, but a commercialized
spectacle and an exhibition of highly organized professional skill.
Is it any part of the proper function of a university to provide a great
public spectacle, the providing of which tends to the complete
subordination of proper university interests, not only in the players
but in the whole undergraduate body? They tlo the thing better
in Spain. Is it wholesome that these honest lads should be made
ROBERT K. ROOT 137
a spectacle for the gaping multitude at three dollars a seat, that their
pictures should fill all the Sunday supplements, that the quivering
ether, if the physicists still believe in ether, should be syllabling
their names and blazoning their every move to the radio fans of
half a continent? They are, moreover, innocent accomplices to a
huge hypocrisy, the pretense that all this is amateur sport. They
are amateurs only to the extent that an established code deprives
them of any personal share in the profits of this pitiless publicity.
[n] But if the individual player receives no money, the athletic
treasury receives a great deal. Gross receipts for the football season
of one of the major teams should not fall far short of three hundred
thousand dollars. Even after paying a dozen professional coaches
and heavy incidental expenses, there is a handsome profit. During
the years, the athletic treasury is further enriched by a smaller
profit from the baseball team, and by some net income from hockey
and basketball. This very considerable income is expended to the
last penny on the lavish maintenance of other forms of organized
athletics which are not commercially profitable. Besides the crews
and the track teams, "varsity" and freshman, there is a bewildering
array of minor sports, swimming and water-polo, gymnastics, la-
crosse, soccer, golf, and tennis. At one university the number of
different sports so organized is seventeen, and the number of separate
teams engaged in intercollegiate contests is nearly forty. There are
coaches and trainers to be hired, uniforms and equipment to be
provided, and expensive out of town trips to be financed. Less
profitably than football, but no less thoroughly, these sports also arc
professionalized.
[12] What can be done about it? One can think of several things
that might be done. One might, for example, push present tend-
encies to their logical conclusion, drop all pretense of amateur sport
and be frankly professional. Every institution of higher learning
would then hire the best players it could find, as it now hires the
most skilled professional coach. The boundless enthusiasm of the
sport-loving alumnus, that must now be held in check, would then
have free play. He could range through all the promising athletic
material of the country, and of his bounty present to Harvard or
138 THE PROBLEM OF COLLEGE ATHLETICS
Princeton or Yale the best fullback that money will buy. When
money payments no longer made a player ineligible, we should
hardly debar him because of failure in the classroom. Is it not
even now intolerable that every season good football players should
be ineligible because they are deficient in their academic studies 3
Why should they even pretend to be students? If it happens that
a university student can play football, the fact that he is a student
need not disqualify him for the employment. He may thus earn
his way through college, provided of course that he does not let his
studies interfere with football. Or if, now and then, an athlete
professionally resident in the university town should, through some
freak of temperament, care to attend an academic lecture or two
at hours which do not interfere with practice, there should be no
objection. But from all the impertinences of tests and themes and
term examinations the normal athlete would be completely exempt.
If after many years of association with a university he should covet
such a thing as a degree, he might be made Bachelor of Athletics,
honoris causa, and then be able to subscribe himself B.A. The de-
gree of B.A. can already be acquired without a syllable of Latin!
[13] The suggestion is a fruitful one. The university which
already owned a championship football team might become am-
bitious to attach to itself the heavy-weight boxing champion. Mr.
Dempsey, with the honorary degree of B. Pug. in prospect, would
not object to staining his gloves a good gory crimson. Why not a
university racing stable, with Yale-Princeton meets at Belmont Park?
[14] But enough of the rediictio ad adsurduml Is there no
remedy that one could suggest in sober earnest? One might, of
course, stop by faculty decree all intercollegiate contests. This
remedy has often been proposed, and was indeed for a time actually
adopted by Columbia. But it would be a pity, even in a relatively
unimportant realm of things, to add one more to the "Verboten"
signs which are coming to be the mark of American civilization.
Outright prohibition is usually an unintelligent way of reforming
social abuses. If outdoor games are a desirable element in a young
man's life, as every one admits, it is a pity to deprive him of the
added zest which comes from competition beyond the boundaries
ROBERT K. ROOT 139
of the college playing fields. Only let it be an added zest rather
than the one and only incentive.
[15] One can think of a number of remedies more intelligent
than outright abolition. One might begin by reducing very ma-
terially the number of intercollegiate contests in a given season.
During October a dozen Yale teams might play football mtra-
murally, and then in November the best of these teams, or some
composite of the best, might meet champion teams similarly chosen
at Princeton and at Cambridge. One might curtail, or abolish al-
together, the professional coaching system. Suppose, for example,
Harvard, Yale, and Princeton should agree to retain the skilled
trainer, whose business it is to keep the players in perfect physical
trim, but leave to the undergraduates themselves the devising of new
formations, the training of recruits, and the strategy of the game.
One might charge one dollar instead of three ior a seat, and so lessen
the implication of commercialism which now pervades football, and
the lesser organized sports which are its pensioners. The resultant
intercollegiate games would no doubt be less brilliant exhibitions
of football skill; but amateurs are usually less skilful than profes-
sionals. With such a decrease in technical skill, and the players
once more amateurs in fact as well as in name, football might be
somewhat less interesting to sporting editors, be less prominently
displayed in the daily press, and so occupy a less exaggerated place
in the national consciousness.
| i6J But I have scant faith in any program of reform, or in any
easy nostrum. What we need is, in theological language, convic-
tion of sin and a change ol heart. So long as the university world
and its multitudinous patrons prefer the great spectacle of profes-
sional athletics, there is little use in urging mitigations.
[17] But do they so prefer ? So far as one can discover, no one
in particular is responsible for the present deformation of college
sport. It is not the result of conscious choice, but of blind drifting.
The professional coaching system, for example, has become more
and more professional, more complicated and highly specialized,
by the same processes which turned all Europe into a camp of
competitive armaments. If one plays a game, one very naturally
140 THE PROBLEM OF COLLEGE ATHLETICS
wishes to win; and a genuinely amateur team would have small
chance to win against a professionally trained rival. So, step by
step, each would-be champion meets and goes beyond its rival. The
best hope for the recovery of amateur methods lies in some Wash-
ington Conference of the great athletic powers.
[18] If the will is there, the way is easy. We may yet have a
chance to see amateur sport resume the place in our university life
so long usurped by the profession of organized athletics.
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. Have organized athletics become more work than play? Is this
a bad practice ? For whom ?
2. The amateur code permits what and forbids what in payment
to athletes?
3. Comment on the organized enthusiasm at football games. Do
you agree that "spontaneity is an essential of the amateur spirit"?
4. Can coaches now send in "messenger-boy substitutes" as often
as they like?
5. Can you guess from internal evidence with what university
the author of this essay is associated?
6. Is the figure of football as a chess-game between highly paid
coaches still valid? Explain.
7. What limits does the author place on his comparison of a foot-
hall game with a bull fight or a gladiatorial combat?
S. What constitutes the "huge hypocrisy" (see paragraph 9) ?
9. Do you think that minor sports are as thoroughly profession-
alized as the major sports?
10. Study paragraph 12. The author intends this paragraph to be
amusingly farfetched. Today, how much of what he says is
still farfetched?
IT. What serious suggestion does the author make for correcting
the overemphasis on athletics? Does he believe in his sugges-
tion ?
12. Does the author make any case at all for the "multitudinous
patrons" not preferring professionalized athletics?
141
Gate Receipts and Glory *
Robert M. Hutchins
[i] The football season is about to release the nation's colleges to
the pursuit of education, more or less. Soon the last nickel will be
rung up at the gate, the last halfback will receive his check, and the
last alumnus will try to pay off those bets he can recall. Most of the
students have cheered themselves into insensibility long ago.
[2] This has been going on for almost fifty years. It is called
"overemphasis on athletics," and everybody deplores it. It has been
the subject of scores of reports, all of them shocking. It has been
held to be crass professionalism, all the more shameful because it
masquerades as higher education. But nobody has done anything
about it. Whyr 5 I think it is because nobody wants to. Nobody
wants, or dares, to defy the public, dishearten the students, or deprive
alma mater of the loyalty of the alumni. Most emphatically of all,
nobody wants to give up the gate receipts. The trouble with foot-
ball is the money that is in it, and every code of amateurism ever
written has failed for this reason.
[3] Money is the cause of athleticism in the American colleges.
Athleticism is not athletics. Athletics is physical education, a
proper function of the college if carried on for the welfare of the
students. Athleticism is not physical education but sports pro-
motion, and it is carried on for the monetary profit of the colleges
through the entertainment of the public. This article deals with
athleticism, its cause, its symptoms and its cure.
[4] Of all the crimes committed by athleticism under the guise of
athletics, the most heinous is the confusion of the country about the
primary purpose of higher education. The primary purpose of
higher education is the development of the mind. This does not
mean that colleges and universities should neglect the health of
their students or should fail to provide them with every oppor-
tunity for physical development. The question is a question of
* From The Saturday Evening Post, December 3, 1938. Reprinted by permission
of the author.
142 THE PROBLEM OF COLLEGE ATHLETICS
emphasis. Colleges and universities are the only institutions which
are dedicated to the training of the mind. In these institutions, the
development of the body is important, but secondary.
[ 5] The apologists of athleticism have created a collection of
myths to convince the public that biceps is a substitute for brains.
Athletics, we are told, produces well-rounded men, filled with the
spirit of fair play. Athletics is good for the health of the players;
it is also good for the morals of the spectators. Leadership on the
playing fields means leadership in life. The Duke of Wellington
said so. Athletes are red-blooded Americans, and athletic colleges
are bulwarks against Communism. Gate receipts arc used to build
laboratories and to pay for those sports that can't pay for themselves.
Football is purely a supplement to study. And without a winning
team a college cannot hope to attract the students or the gifts which
its work requires.
[6J These myths have about them a certain air of plausibility.
They are widely accepted. But they arc myths. As the Carnegie
Foundation has said, "The fact that all these supposed advantages
are tinged at one point or another with the color of money casts
over every relaxation of standards a mercenary shadow." The myths
are designed, consciously or unconsciously, to conceal the color of
money and to surround a financial enterprise with the rosy glow
of Health, Manhood, Public Spirit and Education.
[7] Since the primary task of colleges and universities is the de-
velopment of the mind, young people who are more interested in
their bodies than in their minds should not go to college. Institu-
tions devoted to the development of the body arc numerous and
inexpensive. They do not pretend to be institutions of learning,
and there is no faculty of learned men to consume their assets or
interfere with their objectives.
[8] Athleticism attracts boys and girls to college who do not want
and cannot use a college education. They come to college for "fun."
They would be just as happy in the grandstand at the Yankee
Stadium, and at less expense to their parents. They drop out of
college after a while, but they are a sizable fraction of many freshman
classes, and, while they last, they make it harder for the college to
educate the rest. Even the earnest boys and girls who come to
ROBERT M. HUTCHINS 143
college for an education find it difficult, around the middle of No-
vember, to concentrate on the physiology of the frog or the me-
chanics of the price structure.
[9] Worse yet, athleticism gives the student a mistaken notion of
the qualities that make for leadership in later life. The ambition
of the average student who grew up reading Stover at Yale is to
imitate as closely as possible the attitude and manners of the current
football hero. Since this country, like all others, needs brains more
than brawn at the moment, proposing football heroes as models for
the rising generation can hardly have a beneficial elTect on the
national future.
[10] The exponents of athleticism tell us that athletics is good for
a boy. They are right. But athleticism focuses its attention on
doing good for the boys who least need it. Less than half of
the undergraduate males Soo out of 1900 at the University of
Chicago, for instance are eligible for intercollegiate competition.
But where athleticism reigns, as happily it docs not at Chicago, 75
per cent of the attention of the physical-education stafT must be
lavished on that fraction of the student body who make varsity
squads. The Carnegie Foundation found that 37 per cent of all
undergraduates engage in no athletic activity, not even in intra-
mural games. Since graduate and professional students are also
eliminated from competition, we have more than half the college
and university population of the country neglected because we
devote ourselves, on the pretext that athletics is good for a boy, to
overdeveloping a handful of stars.
fn] And athletics, as it is conducted in many colleges today, is
not even good for the handful. Since the fate of the coach some-
times depends on victory, players have sometimes been filled with
college spirit through cailein tablets and strychnine. At least one
case reached the public in which a coach removed a plaster cast from
a star's ankle and sent him in "to win." The Carnegie Foundation
found that 17.6 per cent of all football players in twenty-two colleges
suffered serious injuries. The same report asserts that college ath-
letes have about the same life expectancy as the average college man
and not so good an expectancy as men of high scholarship rank.
[12] Most athletes will admit that the combination of weariness
144 THE PROBLEM OF COLLEGE ATHLETICS
and nervousness after a hard practice is not conducive to study. We
can thus understand why athleticism does not contribute to the pro-
duction of well-rounded men destined for leadership after gradua-
tion. In many American colleges it is possible for a boy to win
twelve letters without learning how to write one. I need only sug-
gest that you conjure up the name of the greatest college football
star of fifteen years ago and ask yourself, "Where is he now ?" Many
of his contemporaries who made no ninety-yard runs enjoy at least
as good health as our hero and considerably more esteem. The
cheers that rock the stadium have a rapid depreciation rate.
[13] The alleged connection between athletic experience and moral
principles is highly dubious. At worst, the college athlete is led
to believe that whatever he does, including slugging, is done for
the sake of alma mater. He does not learn that it is sometimes
better, both on and off the playing field, to lose than to win. At
best, the college athlete acquires habits of fair play, but there is no
evidence that he needs to join the football squad to acquire them;
he can get them from the studies he pursues and from living in a
college community which, since it is a community of comparatively
idealistic people, is less tolerant of meanness than most. The foot-
ball players who threw the campus "radicals" into the lake at the
University of Wisconsin knew little of fair play, and incidents in
which free speech in the colleges is suppressed have frequently shown
the athletic group lined up on the side of suppression.
[14] Even if it were true that athletics developed courage, pru-
dence, tolerance and justice, the commercialism that characterizes
amateur sport today would be sufficient to harden the purest young
man. He is made to feel that his primary function in college is to
win football games. The coach demands it, because the coach wants
to hold his job. The college demands it, because the college wants
the gate receipts. And the alumni demand it, because the test of a
college is the success of its teams and they want to be alumni of a
good college.
[15] The university with which I am connected has a different
kind of college and a different kind of alumni. I can make this state-
ment because I am in no way responsible for its happy condition.
ROBERT M. HUTCHINS 145
When John D. Rockefeller founded the University of Chicago forty-
five years ago, he told William Rainey Harper to run it as he pleased.
It pleased Mr. Harper to appoint men of character and distinction.
One of the men he appointed was Amos Alonzo Stagg. To the
amazement of the country, Mr. Harper made Mr. Stagg a professor
on life appointment. It was the first time such a thing had hap-
pened.
[16] Secure in his position, whether he produced winning teams or
not, Mr. Stagg for forty years kept Chicago an amateur university.
Some of his teams were champions. Chicago still has the second
best won-and-lost record in the Big Ten, although we are using it
up pretty fast. But through all those years Chicago students learned
that athletics is only one aspect, and a secondary one, of college
education. The result is that today Chicago's alumni are loyal to
their university and generous with their moral and financial sup-
port.
[17] The prestige that winning teams confer upon a university,
and the profits that arc alleged to accompany prestige, are the most
serious obstacles to reform. Alumni whose sole interest in their
alma mater is its athletic standing lose their interest when its teams
run on bad years. The result, which horrifies college presidents, is
that the alumni do not encourage their children or their neighbors'
children to attend the old college. The American public believes
that there is a correlation between muscle and manliness. Poor teams
at any college are supposed to mean that the character of its student
body is in decay.
[i8J The myth that donors, like alumni and the public, arc im-
pressed by football victories collapses on examination of the report
recently issued by the John Price Jones Corporation, showing gifts
and bequests to colleges and universities between 1920 and 1937.
Among the universities, Harvard, Yale and Chicago led the list, each
having received more than $50,000,000. The records of these uni-
versities on the gridiron were highly irregular, to say the least; that
of one of them was positively bad. Among the colleges, Williams,
Wesleyan and Bowdoin led the list, each having received more than
$5,000,000. Men of wealth were undeterred by the inconsequential
146 THE PROBLEM OF COLLEGE ATHLETICS
athletic status of these colleges; it does not appear that philan-
thropists were attracted to their rivals by the glorious victories they
scored over them.
[19] If athleticism is bad for students, players, alumni and the
public, it is even worse for the colleges and universities themselves.
They want to be educational institutions, but they can't. The story
of the famous halfback whose only regret, when he bade his coach
farewell, was that he hadn't learned to read and write is probably
exaggerated. But we must admit that pressure from trustees, gradu-
ates, "friends," presidents, and even professors has tended to relax
academic standards. These gentry often overlook the fact that
a college should not be interested in a fullback who is a half-wit.
Recruiting, subsidizing and the double educational standard cannot
exist without the knowledge and the tacit approval, at least, of the
colleges and universities themselves. Certain institutions encourage
susceptible professors to be nice to athletes now admitted by paying
them for serving as "faculty representatives" on the college athletic
board.
[20] We have the word of the famous Carnegie Report that the
maxim "every athlete is a needy athlete" is applied up and down the
land. Hard times have reduced the price of football players in
conformity with the stock-market index. But when we get back
to prosperity we may hope to see the resurrection of that phenom-
enon of the Golden Era, a corporation which tried to corner the
market by signing up high-school athletes and auctioning them off
to the highest bidder. The promoter of this interesting venture
came to a bad end, and I regretted his fate, for he was a man of
imagination and a friend of the football tramp, who has always been
a victim of cutthroat competition.
[21] Enthusiastic alumni find it hard to understand why a fine
young man who can play football should be deprived of a college
education just because he is poor. No young man should be de-
prived of an education just because he is poor. We need more
scholarships, but athletic ability should have nothing to do with their
award. Frequently the fine young man the alumnus has in mind
can do nothing but play football. The alumnus should try hiring
ROBERT M. HUTCHINS 147
the young man and turning him loose in his factory. From the
damage that would result he could gam some insight into the dam-
age done his alma mater through admitting students without in-
tellectual interests or capacity.
| 22] If the colleges and universities arc to commend themselves to
the puhlic chiefly through their athletic accomplishments, it seems
to me that they ought to he reorganized with that aim in view. In-
stead of looking for college presidents among educators, we should
find them among those gentlemen who have a solid record of sports
promotion behind them. Consider what Tex Rickard could have
done for Harvard. I am rapidly approaching the retirement age,
and I can think of no worthier successor, from the standpoint of
athleticism, than Mike Jacobs, the sage of the prize ring. Mr. Jacobs
has demonstrated his genius at selecting young men and developing
them in such a way as to gather both gold and glory for the profession
of wmch he is the principal ornament.
[23] Another suggestion for elevating Chicago to the level of some
of its sister institutions was advanced last year by Mr. William
McNeil), editor of the student paper. Mr. McNeill proposed that
instead of buying football players, the colleges should buy race horses.
Alumni could show their devotion to alma mater by giving their
stables to alma mater. For the time being, Yale would be way out
in front, for both Mr. Jock Whitney and Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt
Whitney graduated there. But by a judicious distribution of hon-
orary degrees horse fanciers who never went to college might be
induced to come to the assistance ot institutions which had not
attracted students who had become prosperous enough to indulge in
the sport of kings. Chicago could, for instance, confer the doc-
torate of letters upon that prominent turf-man, Alderman Bath-
house John Coughhn, and persuade The Bath to change the color
of his silks from green to maroon. The alumni could place their
money on Chicago across the board. The students could cheer.
Most important of all, the horses would not have to pass examina-
tions.
[24] The center of football strength has been moving, since the
turn of the centurv, from the East to the Middle West, from the
148 THE PROBLEM OF COLLEGE ATHLETICS
Middle West to the Pacific Coast, and from the Pacific Coast to the
South and Southwest. According to a recent analysis by Professor
Eclls, of Stanford, the leading educational institutions of the country
are, in order of their eminence, Harvard, Chicago, Columbia, Yale,
California, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Michigan and Wisconsin.
None of these universities, except California, is close to the top of
Professor Dickinson's annual athletic ranking, and California's suc-
cess has something to do with the fact that it has a male under-
graduate enrollment of 7500 compared with Harvard's 3700 and
Chicago's 1900. We used to say that Harvard enjoyed its greatest
years as an educational institution when Ted Coy was playing at
Yale. If football continues to move to the poorer colleges, the good
ones may be saved. Meanwhile it is only fair to say that some in-
ferior colleges are going broke attempting to get rich and famous
at football.
[25 ] Athleticism, like crime, does not pay. Last summer St. Mary's
College, home of the Galloping Gaels, was sold at auction and
bought in by a bondholders' committee. This was the country's
most sensational football college. Since 1924 it has won eighty-six
and tied seven of its 114 games. Its academic efforts were inexpen-
sive and its gate receipts immense. The bondholders were sur-
prised to learn that it was running $72,000 a year behind in its budget.
They were even more surprised to find that football expenses were
almost equal to football income.
[26] To make big money in athletics you have to spend big money.
Winning coaches come high. The head coaches in our larger col-
leges and universities receive, on the average, $611 a year more than
the highest-ranking professors in the same institutions. One fa-
mous coach of a small college was found, not long ago, receiving
$25,000 in a year, between his salary and his percentage of the receipts.
This situation is not without its advantages to the members of my
hard-pressed profession. The president of one celebrated univer-
sity was paid $8000 a year. A coach qualified to direct the football
destinies of the institution could not be found for less than $15,000.
Since the trustees had to have the coach, and since they couldn't pay
the president less than the coach, they raised the president's salary
to $15,000 too.
ROBERT M. HUTCHINS 149
[27] Subsidizing is expensive. Equipment, travel, advertising and
publicity are expensive. These things have been known to run to
$10,000 or $15,000, even in the smaller colleges, for football alone.
Some of the more glorious teams carry a Pullman full of newspaper-
men across the country with them, paying the reporters' expenses.
[28] The myth that football receipts support research, education, or
even other sports has just been exploded by President Wilkins, of
Oberlin. His analysis of football costs in twenty-two typical colleges
shows that only two have a surplus of football income over expense.
The twenty others spend on football all they get from football and
$1743 apiece a year additional. This is the income on $45,000 of their
endowment.
[29] President Wilkins' investigation of the colleges raises an
interesting question. If most of the colleges lose money at football,
is it not likely that most of the universities, with their proportionately
heavy expense, are also playing a losing game? I know of only one
university that ever claimed to have built a laboratory out of excess
gate receipts, but many of our larger institutions claim that football
finances their so-called minor sports. Perhaps it does in a few uni-
versities and in the years of their great teams. But I should like
to see a study made of the universities along the lines of President
Wilkins' investigation of the colleges; and I might suggest to those
who make the study that they scrutinize the accounting methods of
some of our educators to see if they arc charging up coaches and even
trainers as "professors," the purchase of players to "contingent ex-
pense/' and the debt on the stadium to "real estate."
[30] In 1925 the American Association of University Professors
expressed the hope that colleges would in time publish the cost of
their stadiums. This hope has not been fulfilled, and for the most
part the cost of stadiums remains one of the dark secrets of the
athletic underworld. I understand that there are only two stadiums
in the Big Ten which were not built with borrowed money, and that
two have not yet been paid for. One cost $1,700,000.
[31] Last fall I met a university president the day before his team
was to play its opening game. All he could say was, "We've got to
win tomorrow. We've got to pay off that $35,000 on the stadium
this year." The necessity of packing these arenas has led colleges to
150 THE PROBLEM OF COLLEGE ATHLETICS
schedule as many big games as possible. In order to establish the
team's value as a spectacle as soon as possible, a big game must be
played to open the season. The old scheme of playing easy games
until the team is in shape has had to be abandoned. Consequently,
practice must be^in earlier to get the team in shape earlier. Har-
vard and Princeton have iust extended pre-scason practice and have
given a bad example to the country.
[32] The reason that college stadiums can't be paid off is plain.
They are built for one sport, football. A great team year after year
might, in fifteen or twenty years, pay of! the bond issue. Hut there
arc no great teams year after year. Athletic eminence is cyclical.
College A has a great team and decides to build a great stadium, so
that the entire population can watch it. But the alumni of Col-
lege B, which is the traditional rival of College A, are irritated be-
cause their alma mater is being beaten by those thugs across the
river.
[33] So the alumni go out and buy a great team for College B.
Colleges C and D also have alumni who also like to win.
[34] In a few years College A is being beaten regularly and the
stadium, except for those local citizens who can't afford to get away
to watch B, C, and D, is empty. Then College B builds a great new
stadium to cash in on its great new record, and goes through the
.same routine.
[35] There are several factors already operating to reduce ath-
leticism, whether or not we decide to do anything about it. The rise
of the junior colleges, which educate freshmen and sophomores
only, is reducing the supply of athletic material for the four-year
colleges and universities.
[36] Professional football, which is attracting larger and larger
crowds, may ultimately do for college football what professional
baseball has done for college baseball. And the United States
Supreme Court, in a case involving the taxation of gate receipts,
has clarified the national mind to some extent by indicating that
intercollegiate football is business.
[37] But neither the Supreme Court, nor professional football, nor
junior colleges can be depended upon to reform us. We must re-
form ourselves. How?
ROBERT M. HUTCHINS 151
[38] The committees which have studied the subject and their
name is legion have suggested stricter eligibility rules, reduction
of training periods, elimination of recruiting and subsidizing, easier
schedules, limitation of each student's participation to one sport,
and abandonment of the double scholastic standard for athletes.
President-Emeritus Lowell, of Harvard, once proposed the Oxford
and Cambridge system of limiting each sport to one game a season,
and that one with the college's natural rival. Mr. Lowell's scheme
might have the merit of enabling students and the public to work
off their seasonal fren/y in one big saturnalia.
[39] These reforms will never achieve reform. They may serve to
offset athleticism at those few institutions which arc already trying
to be colleges instead of football teams. But it is too much to hope
that they will affect the colleges and universities at large.
[40] Since money is the cause of athleticism, the cure is to take the
money out of athletics. This can be done only in defiance of the
students, the alumni, the public, and, in many cases, the colleges
themselves. The majority of the colleges and universities will not
do it, because in the aggregate they dare not. Johns Hopkins, in
Maryland, and Reed College, in Oregon, have dared, but nobody
cares, athletically speaking, what Johns Hopkins or Rccd does.
[41] The task of taking the money out of athletics must be under-
taken by those institutions which are leaders, institutions which can
afford the loss of prestige and popularity involved. 1 suggest that
a group of colleges and of universities composed, say, of Amherst,
Williams, Dartmouth, Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Michigan, Stanford
and California agree to take the following steps, to take them in
unison and to take them at once:
1. Reduce admission to ten cents. This will cover the handling
costs. For years prominent educators, all the way from Harper,
of Chicago, to Butler, of Columbia, have insisted that college ath-
letics should be supported from endowment like any other educa-
tional activity. Colleges should support athletics out of their budgets,
or get out of athletics, or get out of education.
2. Give the director of athletics and the major coaches some kind
of academic tenure, so that their jobs depend on their ability as in-
structors and their character as men and not on the gates they draw.
152 THE PROBLEM OF COLLEGE ATHLETICS
[42] While these two steps are being taken, it might be well, for
the sake of once more putting students instead of athletes on the
college playing fields, to try to stimulate the urge to play for fun and
health, instead of the urge to win at any cost. There are two ways to
do this, and many colleges and universities are trying both with con-
siderable satisfaction to their students:
1. Broaden the base of athletic participation, so that all students,
graduate and undergraduate, big fellows and little fellows, can play.
The development of intramural athletics, which costs less than the
maintenance of present programs, is a step in this direction. The
English system of selecting a varsity from the intramural teams
toward the end of the season and then playing a limited number of
intercollegiate games suggests itself at this point. -
2. Emphasize games which students will play in later life, when
they need recreation and physical fitness as much as in college. Such
sports are tennis, handball, skating, swimming, softball, bowling,
rackets, golf and touch football. Few college graduates are able to
use football, baseball or basketball except as topics of conversation.
[43] In a word: More athletics, less athleticism.
[44] I think that after the steps I have suggested have been taken
by the colleges and universities I have named, the rest of the country's
educational institutions will not long be able to ignore their ex-
ample.
[45] Nor will the public, once the break has been made, attempt
for long to prevent reform. The public, in the last analysis, pays
for the colleges and the universities. It wants something for its
money. It has been taught to accept football. It can, I am confident,
be taught to accept education.
[46] The public will not like ten-cent football, because ten-cent
football will not be great football. The task of the colleges and
the universities, then, is to show the country a substitute for ath-
leticism.
[47] That substitute is light and learning. The colleges and uni-
versities, which taught the country football, can teach the country
that the effort to discover truth, to transmit the wisdom of the race,
and to preserve civilization is exciting and perhaps important too.
ROBERT M. HUTCHINS 153
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. "The trouble with football is the money that is in it." Does that
summarize the key difficulty? (See the recommendations at
the end of this essay.)
2. Note that Hutchins distinguishes between athletics and ath-
leticism. What similar distinction does Root make (see pre-
vious essay)? Is there a difference between the distinctions?
3. In what sentence does the author announce the purpose and the
organization of his essay?
4. What is the purpose of paragraph 5 ?
5. Name the myths about athletics. One by one decide whether
you agree that they are myths.
6. What should the athletic-minded boy do if he cannot go to col-
lege ?
7. "Athleticism focuses its attention on doing good for the boys
who least need it." Comment.
(S. Does high athletic status attract large gifts? Explain.
9. What is meant by the "double educational standard" ?
0. At what points during this essay docs the author become lightly
satirical? (Example: reorganization of the colleges with ath-
leticism as the core.)
1. Would there be any reason to suspect that the student editor (see
paragraph 22) had read Root's "Sport Versus Athletics"? Ex-
plain.
2. How does rank of an institution educationally compare with
its rank athletically? What universities from rhe list in para-
graph 23 have advanced in athletic rank since n;$H?
}. Does football add any money to a university's academic funds ?
4. Hutchins recognizes three factors as operating to reduce the
emphasis on athletics. What are they? Have they in fact re-
duced the emphasis ?
15. What grotips must be defied if athleticism is to be eliminated in
the colleges?
[6. What are Hutchins' specific recommendations? Discuss.
154 THE PROBLEM OF COLLEGE ATHLETICS
To an Athlete Dying Young *
A. E. Housman
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come, s
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay 10
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers 15
After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man. *>
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
* From A Shropshire Lad by A. E. Housman. Reprinted by pei mission of Henry
Holt and Company, Inc.
SUGGESTIONS FOR PAPERS 155
And round that early-laurelled head 25
Will flock to gaze the strcngthlcss dead,
And find unwithcred on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. What is the contrast between stanzas i and 2?
2. Why is the champion runner called ''Smart lad"? Do stanzas
4 and 5 justify the phrase ?
}. What does Lntrcl signify' Does it actually wither "quicker than
the rose" 5 Discuss.
4. To what record does the poet refer in stanza 4?
5. What is the low lintel?
6. How would you express the theme of this poem?
7. Does the poet touch on a point which is also mentioned in the two
other selections of this chapter?
Suggestions for Papers
Is athleticism a problem at your college or university' 5 If all is
well in this respect, then you may choose to write an analysis of this
fortunate situation. If all is less than well, you have the opportunity
now of sizing up the trouble -with assistance from the selections
in this chapter and suggesting a remedy.
T. If you participate in any form of athletics, you may write a
paper on the extent to which your sport is professionalized. (Struc-
ture: I The extent of my participation; II How professionalized my
sport was in high school; III How professionalized in college; IV
Conclusion.)
2. If you do not participate in athletics, you may write a paper
on the professional status of your favorite spectator sport. (Struc-
156 THE PROBLEM OF COLLEGE ATHLETICS
ture: I What is done for [and to] the athletes; II The status of the
coaching staff; III The relation of the sport to the rest of the college.)
3. Make a careful study of Root's "Sport Versus Athletics" and
list those parts of the essay which are now out of date. (Only $3 for a
football ticket, for example.) Also list the essential statements that
are still valid. Finally, indicate in what respects sports have become
even more professionalized than they were in the iQ2o's.
4. Make a careful study of Hutchins's "Gate Receipts and Glory."
Then follow the same process as in suggestion 3.
5. Draw up a close comparison of the two essays in this chapter.
Note, for example, such details as these: both essays recommend
reducing admission prices (Root suggests fi; Hutchms ten cents);
one essay prefers the word sport to athletics while the other prefers
athletics to athleticism. If your comparison is thorough, you will
have four lists: I Similarities; II Differences; HI Points Exclusively
in "Sport Versus Athletics"; IV Points Exclusively in "Gate Receipts
and Glory."
6. If you wish to do a bit of interesting investigation upon which
a paper may be based, look up the football records of Michigan, Stan-
ford, and California from 1937 to c ' atc - Draw a conclusion about
the effectiveness of Hutchins' suggestion that these universities de-
emphasize football.
7. Both Root and Hutchins make a point of the fleeting glory which
comes to athletes. A. E. Housman's "To an Athlete Dying Young"
concentrates on the brevity of athletic fame. Write your own ver-
sion of the impermanency of an athlete's laurels. (Test of team
fame: can you name the football teams which played last year's bowl
games? Or the top ten teams in last year's national standing? Test
of individual fame: name a half-dozen All-Americans for any year
along with their school and the positions they played.)
8. If you wish to defend athletes from the charge of imperma-
nent fame, you could compare their impact on the public with that
made by winners of scholastic honors. You probably don't know
the names of any brilliant students at other colleges. Do you know
the best students in your own college? Do you know the differ-
ence between Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi? Is either of
SUGGESTIONS FOR PAPERS 157
these organizations on your campus? What are the requirements
for membership? (Note: if you choose this subject, do not ask
others for the answers to these questions. The interest and value
of the paper will come from an honest appraisal of what you do or
do not know about scholars and the rewards of scholarship.)
9. Examine the possibilities of a thoroughgoing professionalizing
of college athletics, particularly football, which is already, many
believe, the most professional of college sports. (Structure: I The
absurdities of the present status; II The easy steps to full profes-
sionalizing; III Advantages to the athletes, to the college, to the
public.)
10. Write a paper of comment on these two statements which were
made by college presidents: (i) "I only hope that our university can
be worthy of our football team"; (2) "Our university is known far-
ther and wider for its football team than it is for anything the
faculty does." A non seqmtttr is a phrase meaning that there is no
logical relation between one statement and the statement which pre-
cedes it. Are there non scqniturs in the two statements quoted
above ?
SOME TITLES FOR PAPERS
1. Athletics: More Work than 8. A Football Player's Weekly
Play Schedule
2. The Latest Code for Ama- 9. The Cross Purposes of Ath-
teurs letics and Higher Education
3. Every Athlete Is a Needy 10. The Public's Right to Col-
Athlete! legc Football Spectacles
4. Far-flung Recruiting n. Ten-cent Football
5. Where Our Football Players 12. Bachelor of Athletics
Come From (consult a foot- 13. Amateurs vs. Professionals
ball program) 14. Horse Racing on a Collegiate
6. Athletes Should Be Paid Footing
7. What a Good Team Does 15. High-paid Coaches
for a College (or to a Col- 16. Give the Game Back to the
lege) Boys
A
dvertising
and Mass Media
N
OTHING in America so insistently demands
our attention as advertising. Quite literally it is everywhere, at the
breakfast table, on every means of public transportation, on billboards
and handbills, in the air, newspapers, magazines, and mailboxes.
It is inescapable.
The advertising man would be the first to say that advertising has
produced the American way of life. It stimulates the demand for
goods; a stimulated demand for goods increases production; increased
production makes prosperity; prosperity provides money for all the
people; money for all the people makes it possible for the advertising
man to redouble his efforts to stimulate the demand for goods. It
is a perfect circle and self-perpetuating.
Nevertheless, advertising irritates many people for many reasons,
and the selections in this chapter set forth some of the reasons for
public irritation. The speaker in "Talks on Advertising" brings two
general charges against advertising men, one moral, the other
158
HERMAN WOUK 159
esthetic. The sort of person this speaker perhaps has in mind is
described in "Self-Hypnotist," a report of an interview with a spec-
tacularly successful ad-man. In "Radio Must Grow Up" the author
shows the fundamental tie-up between radio broadcasting and
advertising. He advises station owners to avoid action by the Fed-
eral Communications Commission or by Congress through voluntary
action to correct advertising abuses. This article was written in 1945.
You will decide how seriously the station owners have taken this
advice.
The newest medium of communication, television, has already
acquired all the vices of other mass media of communication.
The final selection in this chapter, "Television's Peril to Culture,"
predicts that perfecting the technique of television will not remove
the clanger to culture that is implicit in any medium designed to ap-
peal to the masses.
Talks on Aduertis/ng*
An After-dinner Oration by the Artist
Herman Wouk
[i] Marquis, while you were talking I looked around this table
and saw that (nearly) everyone here wins subsistence through the
activity called advertising. Now, I realize that you invited me in
the absence, enforced by your sedentary ways, of stuffed tiger heads
or other trophies on your walls, a live artist being the equivalent of
a dead beast as a social ornament. I will not question your motive
because it has given me a chance to do a beautiful and good thing.
1 should like to entreat all these gentlemen to redeem the strange,
bittersweet miracle of their lives, while there is yet time, by giving up
the advertising business at once.
* From An) ot a Dawn, copyright, 1947, by Herman Wouk. Reprinted by per-
mission of Simon and Schuster, Publishers.
160 ADVERTISING AND MASS MEDIA
[2] Has it ever occurred to any of you gentlemen to examine the
peculiar fact that you find bread in your mouths daily? How does
this happen ? Who is it that you have persuaded to feed you ? The
obvious answer is that you buy your food, but this just states the ques-
tion in another, less clear way, because money is nothing but an ex-
change token. Drop the confusing element of money from the
whole process, and the question I've posed must confront you bleakly.
What is it that you do, that entitles you to eat?
[3] A shoemaker gives shoes for his bread. Well. A singer sings
for her supper. Well. A capitalist leads a large enterprise. Well.
A pilot flies, a coal-miner digs, a sailor moves things, a minister
preaches, an author tells stories, a laundry man washes, an auto
worker makes cars, a painter makes pictures, a street car conductor
moves people, a stenographer writes down words, a lumberjack saws,
and a tailor sews. The people with the victuals appreciate these serv-
ices and cheerfully feed the performers. But what does an adver-
tising man do?
[4] He induces human beings to want things they don't want.
[5] Now, I will be deeply obliged if you will tell me by what links
of logic anybody can be convinced that your activity the creation of
want where want does not exist is a useful one and should be re-
warded with food. Doesn't it seem, rather, the worst sort of mis-
chief, deserving to be starved into extinction?
[6] None of you, however, is anything but well fed; yet I am sure
that until this moment it has never occurred to you on what a dubious
basis your feeding is accomplished. I shall tell you exactly how you
eat. You induce people to use more things than they naturally de-
sire the more useless and undesirable the article, the greater the
advertising effort needed to dispose of it, and in all the profit from
that unnatural purchasing, you share. You are fed by the makers
of undesired things, who exchange these things for food by means
of your arts and give you your share of the haul.
[7] Lest you think I oversimplify, I give you an obvious illustration.
People naturally crave meat; so the advertising of meat is on a neg-
ligible scale. However, nobody is born craving tobacco, and even
HERMAN WOUK 161
its slaves instinctively loathe it. So the advertising of tobacco is the
largest item of expense in its distribution. It follows, of course, that
advertising men thrive most richly in the service of utterly useless
commodities like tobacco or under-arm pastes, or in a field where
there is a hopeless plethora of goods, such as soap or whisky.
[8] But the great evil of advertising is not that it is unproductive
and wasteful; were it so, it would be no worse than idleness. No. Ad-
vertising blasts everything that is good and beautiful in this land
with a horrid spreading mildew. It has tarnished Creation. What
is sweet to any of you in this world ? Love? Nature? Art? Lan-
guage? Youth? Behold them all, yoked by advertising in the
harness of commerce!
[9] Aurora Dawn! Has any of you enough of an ear for English
to realize what a crime against the language is in that (trade) name?
Aurora is the dawn! The redundancy should assail your ears like
the shriek of a bad hinge. But you are so numbed by habit that
it conveys no offense. So it is with all your barbarities. Shake-
speare used the rhyming of "double" and "bubble" to create two
immortal lines in Macbeth. You use it to help sell your Dubl-Bubl
Shampoo, and you have no slightest sense of doing anything wrong.
Should someone tell you that language is the Promethean fire that
lifts man above the animals and that you are smothering the flame
in mud, you would stare. You arc staring. Let me tell you with-
out images, then, that you are cheapening speech until it is ceasing
to be an honest method of exchange, and that the people, not know-
ing that the English in a radio commercial is meant to be a lie and
the English in the President's speech which follows, a truth, will in
the end fall into a paralyzing skepticism in which all utterance will
be disbelieved.
[10] God made a great green wonderland when he spread out the
span of the United States. Where is the square mile inhabited by
men wherein advertising has not drowned out the land's meek hymn
with the blare of billboards? By what right do you turn Nature
Into a painted hag crying "Come buy"?
[n] A few heavenly talents brighten the world in each generation.
162 ADVERTISING AND MASS MEDIA
Artistic inspiration is entrusted to weak human beings who can be
tempted with gold. Has advertising scrupled to buy up the holiest
of these gifts and set them to work peddling?
[12] And the traffic in lovely youth! By the Lord, gentlemen, I
would close every advertising agency in the country tomorrow, if
only to head oil the droves of silly girls, sufficiently cursed with
beauty, who troop into the cities each month, most of them to be
stained and scarred, a few to find ashy success in the hardening life
of a model! When will a strong voice call a halt to this dismal pil-
grimage, this Children's Crusade to the Unholy Land? When will
someone denounce the snaring allurements of the picture maga-
zines? When will someone tell these babies that for each girl who
grins on a magazine cover a hundred weep in back rooms, and thai
even the grin is a bought and forced thing that fades with the flash of
the photographer's bulb, leaving a face grim with scheming or heart-
break ?
[13] To what end is all this lying, vandalism, and misuse? You
arc trying to Sell; never mind what, never mind how, never mind
to whom just Sell, Sell, Sell! Small wonder that in good old
American slang "sell" means "fraud"! Come now! Do you hesitate
to promise requited love to miserable girls, triumph to failures, virility
to weaklings, even prowess to little children, for the price of a mouth
wash or a breakfast food ? Docs it ever occur to you to be ashamed
to live by preying on the myriad little tragedies of unf uliillmcnt which
make your methods pay so well ?
[14] I trust that I am offending everybody very deeply. An artist
has the privileges of the court fool, you know. I paint because I see
with a seeing eye, an eye that familiarity never glazes. Advertising
strikes me as it would a man from Mars and as it undoubtedly appears
to the angels: an occupation the aim of which is subtle prevarication
for gain, and the effect of which is the blighting of everything fair
and pleasant in our time with the garish fungus of greed. If I
have made all of you, or just one of you, repent of this career and
determine to seek decent work, I will not have breathed in vain to-
day.
THE NEW YORKER 163
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. How docs the artist-orator define the function of an advertising
man ?
2. "The more useless and undesirable the article, the greater the
advertising effort needed to dispose of it." Comment.
3. What does plethora mean 3 If you don't know, gtiess the mean-
ing from the context (paragraph 7).
4. What is Promethean fire?
5. Could you find the specific newspaper or maga/me advertise-
ments referred to in paragraph 13 ?
6. Name the two complaints against advertising voiced in this
speech.
Self -hypnotist"
The Editors of The Netv Yorker
[i] After seeing "The Hucksters," the film about advertising men
and their woes, we decided to have a talk with an advertising man
we have long heard about, Mr. John Caples, a vice-president of
Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn, a distinguished member of the
pushcart set for over twenty years, and a man who did as much as
Calvin Coohdge to contribute to the merriment of the middle twen-
ties. Mr. Caples was quick to tell us that the clients he has dealt
with have been nothing like the spitting soap king who dominates
"The Hucksters." "I haven't been interfered with," he said, "and, in
fact, I have never laid eyes on many of the men I've written ads for."
Mr. Caples' ads are among the most famous ever penned. Who
* From Talk of the Town, August 23, 1947. Rcpnntui by permission. Copyright
1947 The New Yorker Magazine, Inc.
164 ADVERTISING AND MASS MEDIA
does not remember his immortal "They Laughed When I Sat Down
at the Piano But When I Started to Play!" or his "They Grinned
When the Waiter Spoke to Me in French But Their Laughter
Changed to Amazement at My Reply!" Mr. Caplcs put these to-
gether when he was only twenty-five and could barely make his way
through either "Chopsticks" or a French menu. We asked him how
his inspiration came to him, and found him as inarticulate as a poet
on that score. "I was just a young copy writer at RuthraufT & Ryan
and got hold of a couple of mailorder accounts," he said. "I was
sitting around thinking about them one day and out popped that
business about the piano. The waiter and the French followed
naturally." Mr. Caplcs was interrupted at this point by the tele-
phone. When he'd hung up, he courteously informed us about the
call. "That was a friend of mine," he said. "Wanted to know who
could handle copy on a method of teaching piano by lights. Don't do
any of that stuff any more, but it certainly was good basic training."
[2] Mr. Caples asked us if we'd like to see his scrapbook and, when
we said we would, broke out a formidable volume, on the first page
of which were the arresting and familiar headline "Fat Men'" and,
beneath it, a sketch of a portly gentleman whose midriff had been
shaded to emphasize starkly his proper proportions. "Damn thing
still pulls," remarked Mr. Caples contentedly, turning to a page that
screamed, "Dandruff? Til End It in 48 Hours or No Cost!" We
browsed through similar copy until we came upon the line "I Can
Make You Magnetic Irresistible! Give Me Five Da\s to Prove
It Free," strung over the photograph of a gray-haired, imposing
figure. "Who's that?" we inquired. "That's a model," Mr. Caples
told us. "The fellow selling the personality was too weak-looking
for the ad." Quite a few of the ads in Mr. Caples' collection included
triumphant personal stories by men called James Perkins, James
Blackford, and James C. Crawford, all of whom turned out to be Mr.
Caples. "Those were wild days," he said. "A few pseudonyms
gave testimonials authenticity. Everybody did it." While we were
trying to digest that thought, he related one of his difficulties with
the They-Laughed-When ads. "I wrote an ad saying that the thing
THE NEW YORKER 165
the fellow played after he sat down was Beethoven's 'Moonlight So-
nata,' " Mr. Caples said, "but a lot of teachers jumped on it and said
that after years of practice they couldn't play the 'Sonata' easily. I
substituted 'Liebestraum,' and everybody seemed to be satisfied."
[3] Mr. Caples closed his scrapbook with a faraway look in his eye.
"Those were the days!" he said. "How about these days?" we in-
quired. Mr. Caples looked solemn. "I am in charge of a committee
on the Continuing Study of Newspaper Reading of the American
Association of Advertising Agencies," he said. "It's designed to
learn what captures the interest of people reading newspapers and
to apply the findings to advertising." He went to the wall and
pulled down a large photostat of the first page of a newspaper. "You
see this item on Truman's budget report?" he asked. "Well, it got
twenty-three per cent of the women. But this item on three boys
putting a splint on the leg of a dog that had been struck by an auto-
mobile got forty-four percent of the men and forty-live per cent of
the women." "Gosh!" we said. "Before you go," said Mr. Caples,
"let me give you a copy of my 'Tested Advertising Methods.' " Back
at the office, we opened the volume and came upon the passage "Use
a process of self-hypnotism. Say to yourself that Smith's Liver Pills
are the best pills in the world that no other pills are like them that
they can produce any conceivable result, turn weaklings into giants,
oldsters into youngsters, rejuvenate the human race in twenty-four
hours."
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. Advertising men are called hucksters. Why? What would a
"member of the pushcart set" be?
2. Have you seen the "most famous" ads referred to in paragraph i ?
3. Does this interview point up the fundamental unreliability of
all advertising or only of some advertising 15
4. Must the advertising man believe what he says? Can he so be-
lieve? (See the title of this interview.)
166 ADVERTISING AND MASS MEDIA
Radio Must Groiu Up*
Paul A. Porter
I
fi] A group of friends and I were listening the other evening to
the radio. The program was interesting and in good taste, and we
sat quietly as we enjoyed it. Suddenly general conversation was re-
sumed. I reali/ed that it was because the commercial had come on.
I commented on this, and my hostess said, "Oh, yes. I've trained
myself so that I never hear the commercials. So many of them are
silly, anyway."
[2] A columnist for a newspaper chain, which also operates a
number of prosperous radio stations, observes tlvit the listeners' ears
"have become schooled to close automatically when the commercial
comes on, and the great bulk of this synthetic verbiage is never heard
at all/'
[3] But other numbers of people, to judge from complaints which
reach the Federal Communications Commission, have not developed
this new faculty of "tune -out ear." On a recent summer afternoon
in the New Hampshire mountains, a famous American scientist and
a group of friends were listening via a local station to the broadcast
of a symphony. What happened next so enraged him that he wrote
a long letter to the broadcasting company, copy to the Federal Com-
munications Commission (FCC), Washington, D.C. This copy is
before me.
[4] "The reception was fine," he writes. "The mood was noth-
ing short of ecstatic as these supreme artists, working for probably five
million Americans, interpreted grandly a symphony little known to
me. Its conclusion left me and my myriads of listening colleagues
breathless with admiration and wonder. . . .
[5] "And then suddenly . . . before we could defend ourselves, a
squalling, dissonant, nasty, singing commercial (from the local
station) burst in on the mood."
[6] The scientist snapped off the radio, dashed to the pantry,
* From The Ametnan Magazine (October i<)4s)> b> permission of the publisher.
Copyright 1945 b> Crovvell-Oolhcr Publishing Co.
PAUL A. PORTER 167
found some boxes of the advertised article, and hurled them into
the nearby ravine. Then he swore a mighty oath never again to
have the offending product in his house.
[7] And yet this irate citizen is not, to itidgc from his letter, a foe
of radio advertising as such. His main suggestion is that no ques-
tionable commercials be used unless they have first been cleared by a
"good-taste committee" of the National Association of Broadcasters.
[8 | Earlier this year Lewis Gannett, critic and war correspondent
of the New Yor/( Herald Tribune, returning home after having been
painfully injured at the front, recorded his impressions thus:
[9] "The aspect of homcfront life which most disgusted me on my
return was the radio. BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation)
programs may be dull and army radio programs may be shallow,
but if the soldier in Europe has had a chance to hear at all, he has
heard it straight, without the neurotic advertising twaddle which
punctuates virtually every American program. . . .
[10 | "The first evening I sat by the radio at home I heard one long
parade of headaches, coughs, aching muscles, stained teeth, unpleas-
ant full feeling, and gastric hyperacidity. . . . GUI radio evenings are
a sick parade of sickness, and if they haven't yet made us a sick
nation, I wonder why."
[n] Such complaints are not rare. Perhaps you have heard some
of them yourself. They are symptomatic of a growing body of
public opinion which resents radio's commercial excesses excesses
which the wartime boom seems to have aggravated. Responsible
radio executives and advertisers are themselves disturbed about it.
Congress has begun to take notice of the situation.
[12] I believe in the American system of broadcasting. In many
respects it is the best in the world. It has resulted in a wider dis-
tribution of radio sets than any other system. Much of its coverage
of the war has been superb, except when a tragic account of Ameri-
can boys dying in battle has been interrupted without change of
voice by a grating commercial. For livestock market reports,
weather reports, and many other services, radio has become a house-
hold utility. And great music has been brought to many cross-
roads by radio. However, it is painfully apparent that many of the
168 ADVERTISING AND MASS MEDIA
great features and services with which broadcasting won our favor
and confidence in the past have been tossed away by commercial op-
portunism. The Farm and Home Hour is but one notable example.
This program, especially designed for rural America, contained lively
music and entertainment, weather and market news, and technical
information of interest to farmers. It was reduced from an hour
to 45 minutes, then to 30 minutes, and finally another program of
different character was substituted.
[13] It is clear to those who have studied the development of broad-
casting that the time is approaching, if it has not already arrived,
when two questions of highest public importance must be answered,
first : What kind of limitation, if any, should be placed, and by \vhom,
on radio commercials which seem to a large section of the listening
public to be too long and repetitious, or offensive, silly, and in bad
taste? Second, a kindred and larger question: Is broadcasting to
become an almost exclusive medium for advertising and entertain-
ment, or will it, in addition, continue to perform public service func-
tions in increasing measure?
[14] I don't know the answers. My hope in this article is to stim-
ulate public discussion of these questions which concern every radio
listener in America. Your debates will serve as a democratic and
invaluable guide to policy. The air waves do not belong to the
Government, or to the FCC, or to the broadcasting stations. They
belong, by law, to you the public. It is right and necessary for
you to debate and seriously consider the nature of this guest who
comes into your home.
[15] Such discussion among you listeners is especially needed at
the present moment, because radio has come to a turning point in
history. We stand on the threshold of scientific advances, including
especially FM the new system of high-frequency modulation which
is relatively free from static and other interference which will open
up a new empire of the ether. Instead of the 933 standard broad-
casting stations now licensed, it will be technically possible to have
upward of 5,000 stations, each serving its particular area. Radio lis-
teners will have clearer reception and a far wider choice of stations.
Broadcasting stations will have greater opportunities for service than
ever before.
PAUL A. PORTER 169
[16] The transition period will be difficult and confusing. It will
be immensely helpful, to the radio and government alike, if we
can have the guidance of your matured and reasoned public opinion,
including that of minorities. Such discussion has been hindered in
the past by the fact that so many of the radio public, including ardent
fans, lack information on the setup of American radio and of its
regulatory controls. For example, many of the letters of complaint
to the FCC conclude by saying: "Why don't they do something about
it?" True, the FCC is the regulatory authority for radio, but the
powers of the Commission are specifically limited by law.
II
[17] As soon as public broadcasting was born, the question arose:
"Who is going to pay for it?" Magazines and newspapers sell for a
price; theaters and movies charge admission. Hut, the question was
raised, how can you charge for vibrations in the air which can be
picked up by anyone with a radio set?
f 18] Most of the large countries of the world solved the question
by turning radio over to the government, which ran the radio and
paid for it by some form of taxes. The deadly clangers of this are
shown by the number of modern dictators who have consolidated
their power by means of the government radio. The British, hand-
ing their radio over to a government corporation, hedged it about
with safe-guards which have, I believe, pretty well protected the
interests of the minority parties and groups. The BBC has generally
high standards of public service and good taste. But it suffers from
bureaucratic ailments. It lacks the competitive zeal, imagination,
audacity, and variety which characterize America's private-enterprise
broadcasting at its best.
[19] America chose (or perhaps drifted into) what seemed the
only practical alternative to government operation. That is, we
allowed broadcasting stations to use certain channels of the air, and
to support themselves primarily by selling part of their time to ad-
vertisers. Even at that time, back in the 1920*5, there were apprehen-
sions that this might lead to excessive commercialism. One prom-
inent American spoke thus about the future of radio:
[20] "It is inconceivable that we should allow so great a possibility
for service, for news, for entertainment, for education, and for vital
170 ADVERTISING AND MASS MEDIA
commercial purposes to be drowned in advertising chatter." These
were not the words of an irresponsible crackpot or a reckless re-
former, but of Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce and
later President of the United States.
[21] The prevailing belief, then, was that broadcasting stations,
competing for the public ear, would be forced to limit commercial
announcements to modest and pleasing proportions. This belief
may partly explain why Congress, when it drew the laws and prin-
ciples governing radio broadcasting, made no specific attempt to
limit commercialism or advertising content. But Congress made
it very clear that, in radio, the public interest comes first, and that
interests which conflict with this public interest must give way. And
this was a Republican Congress, in the days of Calvin Coolidge.
[22] That Radio Act of 1927 is, with minor changes, the law
under which broadcasting operates today. It expressly reserves to
the public the ownership of all radio channels; it directs that licenses
be granted only to applicants who undertake to use these channels
in the "public interest, convenience, and necessity"; and it provides
that no broadcasting license shall be granted for a period of longer
than three years. The law places on the Commission the duty of
not renewing such a license unless it finds that the broadcasting sta-
tion has operated in the public interest. But the Commission has
absolutely no power to censor the radio. The law declares this, and
also forbids the Commission to make any regulation "which shall
interfere with the right of free speech by radio communication."
[23] At the lime Congress laid down these broad policies for radio,
there were few broadcasting stations with widespread coverage in
the United States, no nation-wide networks as we have today, and
less than 6,500,000 receivers in the homes. Today there arc 933 sta-
tions licensed, 4 aggressive national networks, and upward of 60,000,-
ooo receiving sets. And advertisers last year spent $285,000,000 to
cry out their wares over the ether.
[24] During most of this period of growth, broadcasting stations
competed also for the advertiser's dollar, but the public ear came first,
because without that the advertiser's dollar would depart thence.
This competition for your approval usually served to keep radio ad-
PAUL A. PORTER 171
vcrtising within reasonable bounds. There were certain abuses,
and some listeners found commercials irritating, but these things were
considered part of the price which must be paid for the many ad-
vantages of a private-enterprise system. Broadcasters developed some
brilliant sustaining programs and service features to win your esteem.
[25] And then, just a few years ago, a change became apparent.
The competition for the advertiser's dollar began to draw abreast
and go ahead of the competition for the public ear. The advertising
content of radio programs became larger, bolder, and more intru-
sive. A murmur of complaint began to rise from the listening
public. Some broadcasting groups were concerned, but others
shrugged ofT the complaints. "We have more listeners than ever be-
fore," they said. "The surveys and sales reports prove it."
[26] In a way, they were right. An abnormal war situation was
producing more radio listeners. Every one of us was interested in
the war, and vast numbers of us tuned in on news broadcasts. Mil-
lions of American families, with relatives in the service, left their
radios turned on to catch any scrap of news which might hint at the
programs of our men at the front. Other millions, no longer able
to go pleasure-driving in the family car, stayed at home and turned
on the radio instead. Furthermore, the radio had a great reservoir
of past good will, and deeply ingrained listening habits, to hold even
a grievously annoyed car to the radio receiving set.
[27] The temptation was thus great to think less of the listeners'
tastes and more of the competition for commercials. There was
much loose money around, in the pockets of the public and the spon-
sors. Radio station profits zoomed. In 1944 earned net profits be-
fore taxes, as reported to the FCC by 836 stations, were 125 per cent
over 1942. A leading radio official expressed the new mood thus:
[28] "One must consider balance sheets to measure the progress of
radio. For balance sheets represent an index of the medium's ef-
fectiveness."
[29] Certainly I do not begrudge profits or scorn balance sheets,
but the FCC, charged by law to regard the "public interest, con-
venience, and necessity," cannot accept them as the final criterion,
particularly under abnormal wartime conditions and when it is made
172 ADVERTISING AND MASS MEDIA
to appear that "excessive commercialism" is preventing many sta-
tions from discharging their public responsibilities.
[30] Obviously, there are many offsetting factors on the other side
of the ledger. Certainly a blanket condemnation of broadcasting
stations and networks would be unfair. Leading networks and
trade associations have undertaken to lay down standards which, if
generally followed, would go far toward mending matters. But
competition among stations and networks is so intense that usually
the commercial sponsor or his agent has the last word. Often the
blame rests partly on the sponsor, who buys time and insists on ob-
jectionable material; and partly on the radio station owner, who says
to himself, "I know this program and these commercials are un-
pleasant, but if I don't accept them my competitor will." But the
responsibility rests squarely on the station owner, who holds his
license "in the public interest."
[31] Some of the top businessmen in radio are deeply concerned.
The Association of Radio News Analysts is working steadily for
higher standards. But there are others in radio who regard even
the friendliest suggestion that radio could improve its ways as "an
attempt to abolish the American system of broadcasting." This is
nonsense. There is scarcely a whisper of support in America for a
government-owned system. On the other hand, the American pub-
lic has the right, and the FCC a legal duty, to advise and consider as
to whether the public interest is duly regarded.
[32] Some of the arguments of the professional radio apologists
are worth noting. They frequently draw a misguided analogy
between broadcasting and printed publications. I agree, and insist,
that the radio must have just as much freedom of speech as maga-
zines and newspapers. But radio advertising and printed advertis-
ing are two different things. The eye of a reader can reject an
advertisement with a split-second glance. Therefore, printed ad-
vertisements must be designed to attract and hold the interest of the
reader. The radio listener has no such easy choice. When the
commercial comes on the air he can, of course, leap up and snap off
the radio. Even then he does not know when to tune into the regu-
lar program again, unless he is a stop-watch expert. He is thus to
PAUL A. PORTER 173
some extent at the mercy of an unpleasant commercial, and this
is the root of the public dissatisfaction.
[33] The analogy between radio and the newspapers and maga-
zines breaks down in another way. In radio, many of the large
sponsors supply not only the advertising commercial, but the entire
program which goes with it. Responsible newspapers and maga-
zines sell advertising space, but they don't allow advertisers to sup-
ply the reading material and illustrations. If they did the public
would yell as loudly about that as it does now about the radio. Many
of radio's present difficulties would be resolved if it would reassert,
exercise, and maintain the editorial responsibility which goes with its
license.
[34] Another argument of the apologists is that the radio, with its
intensified commercialism, is merely "giving the people what they
want." I venture to doubt that people do want some of the current
commercials. Complaints indicate that many swallow them under
protest. Wise advertisers have proved that an effective commercial
can be not only inoffensive, but actually popular. That requires
care, skill, restraint, imagination, and good taste. All these fine
talents and qualities exist in the radio field in abundant measure,
but ihe public seems to feel that they have not had full play in re-
cent years.
1 35] In reporting the many complaints against radio practices
which have come to my attention I certainly don't want to strike
any high-and-mighty attitude. The recent developments in radio
have been very natural and human, and perhaps almost inevitable.
Competitive pressures have been powerful. If I had been in radio
during the last couple of years doubtless I, like many a better man,
would have gone along with the trend. But I believe, and I think
many in the industry agree, that this trend to commercialism is reach-
ing a danger point. Large influential sections of the public arc
beginning to demand that "something be done about it."
Ill
[36] The question of what to do really divides itself into three
questions: What can the FCC do? What might Congress do?
What should the radio industry itself do?
174 ADVERTISING AND MASS MEDIA
[37] The FCC is now surveying the operations of some 200 stand-
ard broadcasting stations, as part of its duty to determine whether
a station is operating "in the public interest" before renewing that
station's license. For example, when a man first makes applica-
tion for a broadcasting license, he must make certain representations
as to the type of service he proposes to render. These include
pledges that certain amounts of time will be made available for
civic, educational, agricultural, and other public-service programs.
The station is constructed and begins operation. Subsequently
the broadcaster asks for a ^-ycar renewal of his license. Frequently
we find, when we survey his record, that he has almost completely
disregarded his promises, and chucked his service program out in
favor of tempting commercial opportunities.
[38] From this survey we hope to develop stricter procedures for
the renewal of radio licenses. In this we have no thought of
making the original license application a rigid blueprint for the
future. But we do expect to remind the broadcaster of his public
responsibilities, and to narrow the gap between promise and per-
formance. But the FCC has no power at all to interfere with any
specific program. It has no power to ban any commercial, however
unpleasant, unless it violates the laws against obscenity, lotteries,
and the like. Nor is that a power which I would want the Com-
mission to have, because it would be a threat to radio's freedom of
speech.
[ 39] Radio is operating under a statute drafted 18 years ago,
when no one could have foreseen the pattern of the future. Maybe
the time has come for Congress to clarify public policy in the
field. It is certain that if Congress did undertake a revision of
the old Radio Act of 1927, it would not confine its considerations to
the lengthy commercial announcement. Congress would doubt-
less take up questions of whether news should be sponsored at all,
and consider proposals that certain hours of good listening time be
withheld from sale entirely, in order that stations would have no
alternative but to broadcast sustaining public-service programs dur-
ing that period. They might consider the question of how radio
can best be used to develop local talent in its own communities.
PAUL A. PORTER 175
And it would appear certain that provisions in the present act
which require the Commission to encourage and foster compe-
tition would be strengthened and not weakened. These and many
more problems would run the gamut of legislative debate if Con-
gress decided to act.
[40] Therefore it must be clear to the radio industry that if it is
to avoid legislative intervention in certain phases of its operations, it
should undertake to discontinue practices which are making the
public angry. The industry needs the strong will and resolution
to co-operate in setting up its own system of controlling commercial
excesses. Such self-regulation would enable radio stations and net-
works to re-establish and maintain their full editorial rights and
responsibilities. It can be done. It will not be easy, but it will be
far better than continuing the present dangerous drift. There arc
storms ahead, and now is the time to get things ship-shape. There
is already a cloud in the sky much larger than a man's hand.
There is a saying about "putting your own house in order, before
the law does it for you with a rough hand." It is an old, trite say-
ing, but still true, as many a proud industry, from the railroads to
the stock exchanges, knows to its sorrow.
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. This article opens with three specific complaints against radio
commercials. Summarize the gist of these complaints.
2. What does the phrase commercial opportunism mean?
3. Name the "two questions of highest public importance" con-
cerning radio and advertising. Has anything been done about
these questions since 1945, the date of this article?
4. In what paragraph does the author state his purpose in writing
this article? What is that purpose?
5. What basic difference is there between British and American
radio broadcasting? Name advantages and disadvantages of
each.
6. Name the basic provisions of the Radio Act of 1927.
7. What are the figures today for the number of licensed radio (and
176 ADVERTISING AND MASS MEDIA
television) stations, national networks, and receiving sets (see
The World Almanac)?
8. What is meant by sustaining program?
9. Upon whom rests the responsibility for accepting or rejecting
a radio program?
10. What two differences does the author see between blatant news-
paper and magazine advertising and radio advertising? Do you
recognize other differences?
n. Name three agencies that might reform radio advertising.
What can each do? Has any one of them done anything yet?
12. Can you summarize in a sentence the controlling idea of this
article ?
Teleofsfon's Peril to Culture*
R. W. Emerson, secundus
[i] The first great achievement of the art of communication was
the invention of writing. Further developments through the ages
have produced the invention of printing and of the wireless, and
now, most recently, television. Since the invention of writing was
one of the most important of those propulsive forces which trans-
muted barbarism into civilization, we have assumed, rather un-
critically, that each new technical advance in communication must
have as creative a relation to the cultural development of mankind
as the first. But the very ambiguous effect of television upon our
contemporary culture may force us to revise our estimates.
[2] Television may not be as dangerous to culture as the atomic
bomb is to our civilization. (The atomic bomb is related to the
plow in the history of the conquest of nature as television is related
to writing in the history of communications.) But this last word
in the art of communication seems suddenly to illumine a disturbing
* Editorial in The American Scholar (Spring 11)50). Reprinted by permission.
R. W. EMERSON, SECUNDUS 177
aspect of this history which we had not sufficiently noted. Each
new development in the art of communication seems to have
broadened the base of culture on the one hand and to have vulgarized
the arts on the other.
[3] The technical triumphs of moving pictures cannot obscure
the difference between the maturity of the art of the drama and the
infantilism of Hollywood art. There is, however, an important
difference between the vulgarization of art in moving pictures and
the vulgarizations of television. Sentimentality and vulgarity in
the movies are not caused by any limitations in the medium itself.
They stem rather from the effort of a mass medium to hold a mass
audience by gauging its appeal to the lowest common denominator
of aesthetic receptivity.
[4] The case of television is more complicated and a little more
hopeless than that of the movies; for some of the limitations spring
from the medium itself. The comedy currently popular on tele-
vision is almost completely bereft of any genuine wit or humor.
This may be partly a result of the fact that a television chain, fight-
ing desperately to make both ends meet, strives for a maximum
audience for each program. Again, it may be that only the most
obvious kind of slapstick is sufficiently vivid visually. At any rate,
the descent from Fred Allen to Milton Berlc is, for the moment at
least, the measure of the difference between radio and television
humor. It must be noted also that technical limitations make the
presentation of genuine dramatic art on television difficult. Sports
are more popular on television than drama; and the pri/c fight
seems to be the most acceptable sport, because it conforms best to the
limitations of the camera's eye.
[5] Many are rightly reminded that television is in its infancy.
Its present estate may have the same relation to a subsequent state of
perfection as the nickelodeon has to the present cinema. But even
this comparison is not too reassuring. It suggests that in each new
technical development of mass communication, the new medium is
gradually mastered; but the highest state of perfection is still below
the artistic level of a previous period in which there was less pre-
occupation with the mass "outlets" of the medium.
178 ADVERTISING AND MASS MEDIA
[6] Television affords an even more serious threat to culture
in terms of the communication of ideas than it does in the projec-
tion of artistic images. The discussion of public issues and the
disserrnnn^'m of ideas on the radio represent an almost clear gam,
since radio has augmented communication through the written
word without vulgar r/ation. We must admit, of course, that the
radio hnd given modern tyrannies a new weapon by piping Dr.
GoehbePs or Stalin's propaganda into every home. But the con-
tent and form of discussion on television is on an obviously lower
level of maturity. Visual aids, graphs and maps are introduced
into the discussion even when they arc only slightly relevant.
What is worse, discussion topics seem to be chosen not because they
are important but because they lend themselves to visual elabora-
tion. There is, furthermore, considerable preoccupation with the
posture of speakers, their facial expressions and all manner of ir-
relevant considerations. A television discussion is a studied effort
to present a scene of unstudied conversation in which the visual
effects are regarded as much more important than the content of the
discussion. If the speakers are also constantly warned against the
use of words which might not be understood by a tenth grade
child, this proves that some of the difficulties arise not from the
limitations of the medium but from preoccupation with the mass
audience. Television will have to learn that, even in the most
democratic culture, it is simply not possible to address everybody
on every subject.
[7] All these apprehensions may seem to be dictated by a too
aristocratic concept of culture, which lacks a proper appreciation
of the immense benefits which mass communications confer upon
"the masses" by making every treasure of culture more widely
available. There is some merit in such a democratic criticism.
But one must also consider the degree to which the "common" men
of every age have an unspoiled art and a simple culture, upon which
the artificialities and sentimentalities of the mass media may have a
deleterious effect. Pretending to serve hypothetical mass tastes, they
actually contaminate them. Furthermore, the mass media of the
present day tend to destroy the inner core of a cultural discipline
R. W. EMERSON, SEC UNDUS 179
by their too frantic efforts at popularization. Even a democratic
culture cannot afford an equalilananism which threatens the sources
of discipline of the mind and heart by trying to bring them down to
the lowest common denominator.
| 8] It is possible that some of the cultural defects of the mass
media, revealed in the movies and radio and accentuated in tele-
vision, can be cured if there is a less immediate relation between
commercial and cultural interests. Americans are rather too un-
critically proud of the advantages of the "free enterprise system,"
including the advantages of competition in radio and television
programs. There are indeed some advantages if comparison is made
with the programs of the British Broadcasting Corporation, tor in-
stance. But on the other hand there is nothing in American radio
so consistently mature as the "Third Program" of the BBC, which
is frankly designed for the more thoughtful tenth of the popula-
tion. There is increasing evidence that a public service corporation
of the type of the BBC will have a similar advantage in television,
in furnishing adult entertainment for adults and mature discussions
for mature minds.
[9] Insofar as the inanities of television are derived from limita-
tions in the medium itselt, we may well expect these to be overcome
as the medium is technically perfected. Insofar as they spring
from a preoccupation with the mass audience and an unwillingness
to cater for higher cultural needs, they must be corrected by de-
stroying the too intimate relation between the advertiser and the
medium. The assumed "automatic" controls of the competitive
process are inoperative because they result in purely quantitative,
rather than qualitative criteria of excellence. Television is on the
same cultural level as "throwaway" newspapers in which the news
and cultural content of the journal is a mere adjunct to the com-
mercial ends of the advertisers. Since we do have excellent journals
which have managed to achieve standards, which are only occasion-
ally and incidentally corrupted by commercial pressure, we may
reasonably hope for a similar development in radio and television.
It may even be possible to achieve this end without resorting to the
expedient of a public service monopoly. It is, however, a much
180 ADVERTISING AND MASS MEDIA
more difficult end to achieve in radio and television, because no
newspaper is forced to reach the "total market" in the same way
as the newer mass mrdia.
[10] In any event, television can no more be left under the control
of the special interest of advertisers than atomic energy can finally
he left under the control of single nation-states. The anarchy of
conflicting national interests threatens the life of our civilization
in the one cnse; and the anarchy of competing commercial interests
threatens the integrity of our culture in the other.
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. How is the atomic bomb related to the plow- 3
2. In its archaic sense, vulgar means "the common people." Com-
ment on the word vulgarized in sentence 4, par. 2.
3. What makes for "infantilism of Hollywood art"?
4. Can you explain the meaning of "the descent from Fred Allen
to Milton Berle" (paragraph 5) ?
5. What was a nickelodeon?
6. Who was Dr. Goebbels?
7. What does this article say about British and American systems of
broadcasting? Compare the statements on the same subject in
"Radio Must Grow Up."
8. The author mentions newspapers, motion pictures, radio, and
television as "mass media." What relationship is there between
advertising and mass media, and, in turn, what effect does this
relationship have on culture?
Suggestions for Papers
It would be difficult to find anyone in America completely in-
different to advertising. Most of us express ourselves volubly about
the excess of this "art." You will find material for your paper at
hand in a thousand forms. Selection of definite points of attack
or defense, if you wish will be your chief problem.
SUGGESTIONS FOR PAPERS 181
1. The selection, "Talks on Advertising," accuses the writers of
advertisements of a woeful lack of taste. Write your paper on this
point. Choose advertisements from newspapers, magazines, or
radio which, you feel, offend good taste because they are too childish,
too sentimental, too crude, too suggestive, or too ugly. Match these
examples with others illustrating opposite qualities.
2. Another charge against advertising is its fundamental dis-
honesty. Since blatant dishonesty in advertising is illegal, you will
have to show the ways advertisers evade the law by suggestion
rather than outright claims. Study ten magazine advertisements,
and judge the truth of what they say. (This is an inductive study
that is, you will be reasoning from particulars to a generalization.)
What do you conclude about the honesty of advertising?
3. "Self-hypnotism" brings no direct charges against ad-mcn.
Carefully study this selection and, on the basis of what this ad-man
admits, draw up a set of conclusions about the ethics of advertising.
Refer to "Talks on Advertising" for appropriate quotations.
4. Radio belongs to the people, according to the article, "Radio
Must Grow Up." Radio is supported by the advertisers. To whom,
then, does the radio really belong? Discuss the advantages and the
disadvantages of this sort of ownership. Use specific examples.
5. Listen to four radio commercials advertising cigarettes. To
what sort of audience are the commercials directed? What is the
central point of their appeal? Does any one of them appeal to an
adult level of intelligence? Rate the four commercials in the order
of their dignity and good taste.
6. "Radio Must Grow Up" was written in 1945. From your
own observation of advertising methods today, has the advice given in
1945 been followed? There were many singing commercials then;
are there any now? News broadcasts were frequently interrupted
for the sake of advertising; is that still clone? Simple advertising
words were spelled out by the announcer; arc they now?
7. "The more useless and undesirable the article the greater the
advertising effort needed to dispose of it." Test this statement
and write about the results. Here are two suggested approaches:
(i) Select a magazine which carries many advertisements. Make
up lists to show which articles are given double pages, which are
182 ADVERTISING AND MASS MEDIA
given a single page, which a half page, which a quarter page. Those
products given the most space should he less useful and desirable
than those given less space. Docs it work out this way? (2) The
most desirable and the most costly radio hours are evening hours from
seven to ten, Sunday through Friday. What articles have purchased
this radio time? According to the statement quoted above, what
can you conclude about these products'
8. "Television's Peril to Culture" states that "it is simply not
possible to address everybody on every subject." How does this
statement illuminate the title of the article and the whole problem
of television's dependence on advertisers ? Your reasoning may
begin : "Since advertisers think that they must address everybody . . ."
g. Consumers 1 organizations attempt to find out the truth behind
advertising. They do this through the testing of competing products
and report findings to their subscribers. Investigate one of these re-
ports (Consumers' Union or Consumers' Research)* and estimate the
advantages and disadvantages of this approach to buying.
SOME TITLES FOR PAPERS
1. Ethics of the Ad-man n. Fifty Magazine Advcrtisc-
2. What Billboard Advertising mcnts: An Analysis
Does to a City (or to Conn- 12. Health Advertisements:
try Roads) What Claims!
3. Advantages to the Con- 1 3. Advertisers Who Support
sumer of Advertising Culture
4. Examples of Dignified Ad- 14. Radio and Television Arc
vcrtisements for the People
5. Advertising Everywhere 15. Mass Media and Aristo-
6. Advertisers Cannot Please cratic Culture
Everybody 16. The Lowest Common De-
7. The Worst Radio Advertis- nominator
ing 17. Should Radio and Television
8. The Best Radio Advertising Be Responsible for Culture?
9. The Amazing Perfumes! iS. Radio and Television Are
10. Least Wanted, Most Adver- Exclusively for the People's
tised Amusement
M
\AN f thoroughly perplexed hy his apparent
inability to avoid war, cannot he charged with thoughtlessness on the
subject. Library shelves arc overflowing with the results of the best
thinking that the best brains can give to the subject. Kvcry road,
every bypath that might lead nations into conflict has been minutely
surveyed and drawn to a scale for the world to see. Perhaps not
enough people read these charts. Perhaps those who read them do
not translate their meaning into a working, active faith that war can
be avoided. It is certain that few subjects in our time are of more
compelling significance or worth more hard, clear thinking.
A fundamental document is Karl von Clausewitz's coldly imper-
sonal analysis of what war is. He regards war as something which
may be accurately defined. He is concerned with the essence oi war
in the abstract and war as modified by actual conditions. It is a good
thing to examine this point of view before one sets about finding ways
to amend it.
William James obviously did examine this point of view and dozens
of others before he prepared his essay on "The Moral Equivalent of
184 WAR
War." War, say James, serves a positive need; one will find no cure
for war if he blinks this fact. Suppose, he goes on, one can isolate
and absolutely identity what this need is. The next step would be
to find an adequate substitute which will be just as satisfactory to man
as war but less harmful. This approach is sound. Whether or not
the need and the adequate substitute have been properly named, you,
along with the thousands who have read "The Moral Equivalent of
War," will judge.
What Is War?
Karl von Clausewitz
I. INTRODUCTION
[i] We propose to consider, first, the several elements of our sub-
ject, then its several parts or divisions, and, finally, the whole in its
internal connection. Thus we proceed from the simple to the com-
plex. But in this subject more than in any other it is necessary to
begin with a glance at the nature of the whole, because here more
than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be considered
together.
2. DfcHNITION
[2] We shall not begin here with a clumsy, pedantic definition
of war, but confine ourselves to its essence, the duel. War is nothing
but a duel on a larger scale. If we would combine into one con-
ception the countless separate duels of which it consists, we would
do well to think of two wrestlers. Each tries by physical force to
compel the other to do his will; his immediate object is to overthrow
his adversary and thereby make him incapable of any further re-
sistance.
* From On IVai , first published posthumously in Rcrlm after 1851. Copyright,
1943, b> Random House, Inc. Rcpnnttd by courtesv of Random House, Inc
KARL VON CLAUSEWITZ 185
[3] War is thus an act of force to compel our adversary to do our
will.
[4] Force, to meet force, arms itself with the inventions of art and
science. It is accompanied by insignificant restrictions, hardly worth
mentioning, which it imposes on itself under the name of inter-
national law and usage, but which do not really weaken its power.
Force, that is to say, physical force (for no moral force exists apart
from the conception of a state and law), is thus the means; to impose
our will upon the enemy is the object. To achieve this object with
certainty we must disarm the enemy, and this disarming is by
definition the proper aim of military action. It takes the place of
the object and in a certain sense pushes it aside as something not
belonging to war itself.
3. THE USE OF l-ORCR THEORETICALLY WITHOUT LIMITS
[5] Now philanthropic souls might easily imagine that there was
an artistic way of disarming or overthrowing our adversary without
too much bloodshed and that this was what the art of war should
seek to achieve. However agreeable this may sound, it is a false
idea which must be demolished. In affairs so dangerous as war,
false ideas proceeding from kindness of heart are precisely the worst.
As the most extensive use of physical force by no means excludes
the co-operation of intelligence, he who uses this force ruthlessly,
shrinking from no amount of bloodshed, must gain an advantage
if his adversary does not do the same. Thereby he forces his ad-
versary's hand, and thus each pushes the other to extremities to
which the only limitation is the strength of resistance on the other
side.
[6] This is how the matter must be regarded, and it is a waste
and worse than a waste of effort to ignore the element of brutality
because of the repugnance it excites.
[7] If the wars of civilized nations are far less cruel and destruc-
tive than those of the uncivilized, the reason lies in the social con-
dition of the states, both in themselves and in their relations to one
another. From this condition, with its attendant circumstances, war
arises and is shaped, limited and modified. But these things do not
186 WAR
themselves belong to war; they already exist. Never in the phi-
losophy of war itself can we introduce a modifying principle without
committing an absurdity.
[8] Conflict between men really consists of two different elements:
hostile feeling and hostile intention. We have chosen the latter of
these two elements as the distinguishing mark of our definition
because it is the more general. We cannot conceive the most savage,
almost instinctive passion of hatred as existing without hostile in-
tention, whereas there are many hostile intentions accompanied by
absolutely no hostility, or at all events, no predominant hostility, of
feeling. Among savages intentions inspired by emotion prevail;
among civilized peoples those prescribed by intelligence. But this
difference lies not in the intrinsic nature of savagery and civiliza-
tion, but in their accompanying circumstances, institutions, and so
forth. It docs not necessarily, therefore, exist in every case, but only
prevails in the majority of cases. In a word, even the most civilized
nations can be passionately inflamed against one another.
[9] From this we see how far from the truth we should be if we
ascribed war among civilized men to a purely rational act of the
governments and conceived it as continually freeing itself more and
more from all passion, so that at last there was no longer need of the
physical existence of armies, but only of the theoretical relations
between them a sort of algebra of action.
f 10] Theory was already beginning to move in this direction when
the events of the last war | the war with Napoleon | taught us better.
If war is an act of force, the emotions are also necessarily involved
in it. If war does not originate from them, it will still more or less
react upon them, and the degree of this depends not upon the stage
of civilization, but upon the importance and duration of the hostile
interests.
[n] If, therefore, we find that civilized peoples do not put pris-
oners to death or sack cities and lay countries waste, this is because
intelligence plays a greater part in their conduct of war and has
taught them more effective ways of applying force than these crude
manifestations of 'instinct.
[12] The invention of gunpowder and the advances continually
KARL VON CLAUSEWITZ 187
being made in the development of firearms in themselves show
clearly enough that the demand for the destruction of the enemy,
inherent in the theoretical conception of war, has been in no way
actually weakened or diverted by the advance of civilization.
[13] So we repeat our statement: War is an act of force, and to
the application of that force there is no limit. Each of the ad-
versaries forces the hand of the other, and a reciprocal action results
which in theory can have no limit. This is the first reciprocal action
that we meet and the first extreme.
(First reciprocal action)
4. THE AIM IS TO DISVKM THE ENEMY
[ 14] We have said that the disarming of the enemy is the aim of
military action, and we shall now show that, theoretically, at all
events, this is necessarily so.
[15] If our opponent is to do our will, we must put him in a
position more disadvantageous to him than the sacrifice would be
that we demand. The disadvantages of his position should natu-
rally, however, not be transitory, or at least, should not appear to be
so, or our opponent would wait for a more favourable moment and
refuse to yield. Hvery change in his position that will result from
the continuance of military activity must thus, at all events in theory,
lead to a position still less advantageous. The worst position in
which a belligerent can be placed is that of being completely dis-
armed. If, therefore, our opponent is to be forced by military action
to do our will, we must either actually disarm him or put him in
such a condition that he is threatened with the probability of our
doing so. From this it follows that the disarming or the overthrow
of the enemy whichever we choose to call it must always be the
aim of military action.
[16] Now war is not the action of a live force upon a dead mass
absolute non-resistance would be no sort of war at all but always
the collision of two live forces with each other, and what we have
said of the ultimate aim of military action must be assumed to apply
to both sides. Here then, is again reciprocal action. So long as I
have not overthrown my adversary I must fear that he may over-
188 WAR
throw me. I am no longer my own master, but he forces my hand
as I force his. This is the second reciprocal action, which leads
to the second extreme.
(Second reciprocal action}
5. t'TMOST EXERTION OF FORCE
[17] If we want to overthrow our opponent, we must proportion
our effort to his power of resistance. This power is expressed as
a product of two inseparable factors: the extent of the means at his
disposal and the strength of his will. The extent of the means at
his disposal would be capable of estimation, as it rests (though not
entirely) on figures, but the strength of the will is much less so and
only approximately to be measured by the strength of the motive
behind it. Assuming that in this way we have got a reasonably
probable estimate of our opponent's power of resistance, we can
proportion our efforts accordingly and increase them so as to secure
a preponderance or, if our means do not suffice for this, as much as
we can. But our opponent does the same; and thus a fresh com-
petition arises between us which in pure theory once more involves
pushing to an extreme. This is the third reciprocal action we meet
and a third extreme.
(Third reciprocal action}
6. MODIFICATIONS IN PR \CTICE
f 18] In the abstract realm of pure conceptions the reflective mind
nowhere finds rest till it has reached the extreme, because it is with
an extreme that it has to do a conflict of powers left to themselves
and obeying no law but their own. If, therefore, we wanted from
the mere theoretical conception of war to deduce an absolute aim
which we are to set before ourselves and the means we are to em-
ploy, these continuous reciprocal actions would land us in extremes
which would be nothing but a play of fancies produced by a scarcely
visible train of logical hair-splitting. If, adhering closely to the
absolute, we proposed to get round all difficulties with a stroke of
the pen and insist with logical strictness that on every occasion we
KARL VON CLAUSEWITZ 189
must be prepared for the extreme of effort, such a stroke of the pen
would be a mere paper law with no application to the real world.
[19] Assuming, too, that this extreme of effort were an absolute
quantity that could easily be discovered, we must nevertheless admit
that the human mind would hardly submit to be ruled by such
logical fantasies. In many cases the result would be a futile ex-
penditure of strength which would be bound to find a restriction
in other principles of statesmanship. An effort of will would be
required disproportionate to the object in view and impossible to
call forth. For the will of man never derives its strength from logical
hair-splitting.
[20] Everything, however, assumes a different shape if we pass
from the abstract world to that of reality. In the former everything
had to remain subject to optimism and we had to conceive both one
side and the other as not merely striving toward perfection but also
attaining it. Will this ever be so in practice? It would if:
1. war were a wholly isolated act, which arose quite suddenly and
had no connection with the previous course of events,
2. if it consisted of a single decision or of several simultaneous
decisions,
3. if its decision were complete in itself and the ensuing political
situation were not already being taken into account and reacting
upon it.
7. WAR IS NEVER AN ISOLATED ACT
[21] With reference to the first of these three points we must re-
member that neither of the two opponents is for the other an abstract
person, even as regards that factor in the power of resistance which
does not depend on external things, namely, the will. This will is
no wholly unknown quantity: what it has been today tells us what it
will be tomorrow. War never breaks out quite suddenly, and its
spreading is not the work of a moment. Each of the two opponents
can thus to a great extent form an opinion of the other from what he
actually is and does, not from what, theoretically, he should be and
should do. With his imperfect organization, however, man always
remains below the level of the absolute best, and thus these de-
ficiencies, operative on both sides, become a modifying influence.
190 WAR
8. WAR DOES NOT CONSIST OF ONE BLOW WITHOUT DURATION
[22] The second of the three points gives occasion for the fol-
lowing observations:
If the issue in war depended on a single decision or several simul-
taneous decisions, the preparations for that decision or those several
decisions would naturally have to be carried to the last extreme.
A lost opportunity could never be recalled; the only standard the
real world could give us for the preparations we must make would,
at best, be those of our adversary, so far as they are known to us,
and everything else would once more be relegated to the realm of
abstraction. But if the decision consists of several successive acts,
each of these with all its attendant circumstances can provide a
measure for those which follow, and thus here, too, the real world
takes the place of the abstract, and modifies, accordingly, the trend
to the extreme.
[23] Every war, however, would necessarily be confined to a single
decision or several simultaneous decisions if the means available for
the conflict were all brought into operation together or could be so
brought into operation. For an adverse decision necessarily dimin-
ishes these means, and if they have all been used up in the first
decision, a second really becomes unthinkable. All acts of war
which could follow would be essentially part of the first and really
only constitute its duration.
[24] But we have seen that in the preparations for war the real
world has already taken the place of the mere abstract idea, and an
actual standard that of a hypothetical extreme. Each of the two
opponents, if for no other reason, will therefore in their reciprocal
action stop short of the extreme eflort, and their resources will thus
not all be called up together.
[25] But the very nature of these resources and of their employ-
ment makes it impossible to put them all into operation at one and
the same moment. They consist of the military forces proper, the
country with its superficial extent and its population, and the allies.
[26] The country with its superficial extent and its population, as
well as being the source of all military forces proper, is also in itself
an integral part of the factors operative in war, if only with that part
which provides the theatre of war or has a marked influence upon it.
KARL VON CLAUSEWITZ 191
[27] Now all movable military resources can very well be put into
operation simultaneously, but not all the fortresses, rivers, moun-
tains, inhabitants, and so forth in a word, the whole country,
unless it is so small as to be wholly embraced by the first act of war.
Furthermore, the co-operation of the allies does not depend upon
the will of the belligerents, and from the very nature of political
relations, it frequently does not come into effect or become active
till later, for the purpose of restoring a balance of forces that has
been upset.
[28] That this part of the means of resistance, which cannot be
brought into operation all at once, in many cases is a much larger
part of the whole than at first sight we should think; and that
consequently it is capable of restoring the balance of forces even
when the first decision has been made with great violence and that
balance has thus been seriously disturbed, will be more fully ex-
plained later. At this point it is enough to show that to make all
our resources available at one and the same moment is contrary
to the nature or. war. Now in itself this could furnish no ground
for relaxing the intensity of our efforts for the first decision, because
an unfavourable issue is always a disadvantage to which no one will
purposely expose himself, because even if the first decision is fol-
lowed by others, the more decisive it has been, the greater will be its
influence upon 1 them. But the possibility of a subsequent decision
is something in which man's shrinking from excessive effort causes
him to seek refuge, and thus for the first decision his resources are
not concentrated and strained to the same degree as they would
otherwise have been. What cither of the two opponents omits from
weakness becomes for the other a real, objective ground for re-
laxing his own efforts, and thus, through this reciprocal action, the
trend to the extreme is once more reduced to a limited measure of
effort.
9. THE RESULT OF A WAR IS NEVER ABSOLUTE
[29] Lastly, the final decision of a whole war is not always to be
regarded as an absolute one. The defeated state often sees in it only
a transitory evil, for which a remedy can yet be found in the political
circumstances of a later day. How greatly this also must modify
the violence of the strain and the intensity of the effort is obvious.
192 WAR
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. Do nations state bluntly: "I am using force to make you do my
will"? What do they say?
2. Is it true that international restrictions on the kinds of force
(poison gas, atomic or hydrogen bombs, etc.) permitted are
"hardly worth mentioning"?
3. Explain how disarming an enemy is "the proper aim of military
action."
4. Explain: "Never in the philosophy of war itself can we introduce
a modifying principle without committing an absurdity."
5. Which can a nation have without the other: hostile feeling or
hostile intention? Give a current example.
6. "Absolute non-resistance would be no sort of war at all." Is this
the argument of pacifists? Was it the argument of Gandhi's
theory of passive resistance?
7. Means and will which is more readily measurable?
8. According to von Clausewitz, can there be noncombatants in a
warring country? Discuss.
9. List the factors which reduce absolute war to relative war.
The Moral Equivalent of War*
William James
[i] The war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or
camping party. The military feelings are too deeply grounded to
abdicate their place among our ideals until better substitutes are
offered than the glory and shame that come to nations as well as to
individuals from the ups and downs of politics and the vicissitudes of
trade. There is something highly paradoxical in the modern man's
relation to war. Ask all our millions, north and south, whether
* From William James, Memones and Studies (1911), Longmans, Green and Com-
pany, Inc. Appeared first in International Conciliation (1910), No. 27.
WILLIAM JAMES 193
they would vote now (were such a thing possible) to have our war
for the Union expunged from history, and the record of a peaceful
transition to the present time substituted for that of its marches and
battles, and probably hardly a handful of eccentrics would say yes.
Those ancestors, those efforts, those memories and legends, are the
most ideal part of what we now own together, a sacred spiritual
possession worth more than all the blood poured out. Yet ask those
same people whether they would be willing in cold blood to start
another civil war now to gain another similar possession, and not
one man or woman would vote for the proposition. In modern
eyes, precious though wars may be, they must not be waged solely
for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one,
only when an enemy's injustice leaves us no alternative, is a war now
thought permissible.
[2] It was not thus in ancient times. The earlier men were hunt-
ing men, and to hunt a neighboring tribe, kill the males, loot the
village and possess the females, was the most profitable, as well as
the most exciting, way of living. Thus were the more martial tribes
selected, and in chiefs and peoples a pure pugnacity and love of glory
came to mingle with the more fundamental appetite for plunder.
[3] Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better
avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity
and all the love of glory of his ancestors. Showing war's irration-
ality and horror is of no effect upon him. The horrors make the
fascination. War is the strong life; it is life in extremis; war taxes
are the only ones men never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of all
nations show us.
[4] History is a bath of blood. The Iliad is one long recital of
how Diomedes and Ajax, Sarpedon and Hector, lulled. No detail
of the wounds they made is spared us, and the Greek mind fed upon
the story. Greek history is a panorama of jingoism and imperial-
ism war for war's sake, all the citizens being warriors. It is hor-
rible reading, because of the irrationality of it all save for the
purpose of making "history" and the history is that of the utter
ruin of a civilization in intellectual respects perhaps the highest the
earth has ever seen.
194 WAR
[5] Those wars were purely piratical. Pride, gold, women, slaves,
excitement, were their only motives. In the Peloponnesian War,
for example, the Athenians asked the inhabitants of Melos (the
island where the "Venus of Milo" was found), hitherto neutral, to
own their lordship. The envoys meet, and hold a dchate which
Thucydides gives in full, and which, for sweet reasonableness of
form, would have satisfied Matthew Arnold. "The powerful exact
what they can," said the Athenians, "and the weak grant what they
must." When the Melcans say that sooner than he slaves they will
appeal to the gods, the Athenians reply: "Of the gods we believe
and of men we know that, by a law of their nature, wherever they
can rule they will. This law was not made by us, and we are not
the first to have acted upon it; we did but inherit it, and we know
that you and all mankind, if you were strong as we are, would do
as we do. So much for the gods; we have tolcl you why we expect
to stand as high in their good opinion as you." Well, the Meleans
still refused, and their town was taken. "The Athenians," Thucyd-
ides quietly says, "thereupon put to death all who were of military
age and made slaves of the women and children. They then
colonized the island, sending thither five hundred settlers of their
own."
[6] Alexander's career was piracy pure and simple, nothing but
an orgy of power and plunder, made romantic by the character of
the hero. There was no rational principle in it, and the moment he
died his generals and governors attacked one another. The cruelty
of those times is incredible. When Rome finally conquered Greece,
Paulus Aemilius was told by the Roman Senate to reward his soldiers
for their toil by "giving" them the old kingdom of Epirus. They
sacked seventy cities and carried off a hundred and fifty thousand
inhabitants as slaves. How many they killed I know not; but in
Etolia they killed all the senators, five hundred and fifty in number.
Brutus was "the noblest Roman of them all," but to reanimate his
soldiers on the eve of Philippi he similarly promises to give them the
cities of Sparta and Thessalonica to ravage, if they win the fight.
[7] Such was the gory nurse that trained societies to cohesiveness.
We inherit the warlike type; and for most of the capacities of heroism
WILLIAM JAMES 195
that the human race is full of we have to thank this cruel history.
Dead men tell no tales, and if there were any tribes of other type than
this they have left no survivors. Our ancestors have bred pugnacity
into our bone and marrow, and thousands of years of peace won't
breed it out of us. The popular imagination fairly fattens on the
thought of wars. Let public opinion once reach a certain fighting
pitch, and no ruler can withstand it. In the Boer War both gov-
ernments began with blufT, but couldn't stay there; the military
tension was too much for them. In 1898 our people had read the
word WAR in letters three inches high for three months in every
newspaper. The pliant politician McKmley was swept away by
their eagerness, and our squalid war with Spain became a necessity.
[8] At the present day, civilized opinion is a curious mental mix-
ture. The military instincts and ideals arc as strong as ever, but
are confronted by reflective criticisms which sorely curb their ancient
freedom. Innumerable writers are showing up the bestial side of
military service. Pure loot and mastery seem no longer morally
avowablc motives, and pretexts must be found for attributing them
solely to the enemy. England and we, our army and navy authorities
repeat without ceasing, arm solely for "peace"; Germany and Japan
it is who are bent on loot and glory. "Peace" in military mouths
today is a synonym for "war expected." The word has become
a pure provocative, and no government wishing peace sincerely
should allow it ever to be printed in a newspaper, Every up-to-date
dictionary should say that "peace" and "war" mean the same thing,
now m posse, now in acttt. It may even reasonably be said that
the intensely sharp competitive preparation for war by the nations
is the real war, permanent, unceasing; and that the battles are only
a sort of public verification of the mastery gained during the "peace"
interval.
[9] It is plain that on this subject civilized man has developed
a sort of double personality. If we take European nations, no
legitimate interest of any one of them would seem to justify the
tremendous destructions which a war to compass it would necessarily
entail. It would seem as though common sense and reason ought
to find a way to reach agreement in every conflict of honest interests.
196 WAR
I myself think it our bounden duty to believe in such international
rationality as possible. But, as things stand, I see how desperately
hard it is to bring the peace party and the war party together,
and I believe that the difficulty is due to certain deficiencies in the
program of pacificism which set the militarist imagination strongly,
and to a certain extent justifiably, against it. In the whole discus-
sion both sides are on imaginative and sentimental ground. It is
but one Utopia against another, and everything one says must be
abstract and hypothetical. Subject to this criticism and caution,
I will try to characterize in abstract strokes the opposite imaginative
forces, and point out what to my own very fallible mind seems the
best Utopian hypothesis, the most promising line of conciliation.
[10] In my remarks, pacifist though I am, I will refuse to speak of
the bestial side of the war regime (already done justice to by many
writers) and consider only the higher aspects of militaristic senti-
ment. Patriotism no one thinks discreditable; nor does anyone deny
that war is the romance of history. But inordinate ambitions are
the soul of every patriotism, and the possibility of violent death
the soul of all romance. The militarily patriotic and romantic-
minded everywhere, and especially the professional military class,
refuse to admit for a moment that war may be a transitory phe-
nomenon in social evolution. The notion of a sheep's paradise like
that revolts, they say, our higher imagination. Where then would
be the steeps of life? If war had ever stopped, we should have to
reinvent it, on this view, to redeem life from flat degeneration.
[n] Reflective apologists for war at the present day all take it
religiously. It is a sort of sacrament. Its profits are to the van-
quished as well as to the victor; and quite apart from any question
of profit, it is an absolute good, we are told, for it is human nature at
its highest dynamic. Its "horrors" are a cheap price to pay for
rescue from the only alternative supposed of a world of clerks and
teachers, of co-education and zoophily, of "consumer's leagues" and
"associated charities," of industrialism unlimited and feminism un-
abashed. No scorn, no hardness, no valor any more! Fie upon
such a cattleyard of a planet!
[12] So far as the central essence of this feeling goes, no healthy-
WILLIAM JAMES 197
minded person, it seems to me, can help to some degree partaking of
it. Militarism is the great preserver of our ideals of hardihood, and
human life with no use for hardihood would be contemptible.
Without risks or prizes for the darer, history would be insipid in-
deed; and there is a type of military character which everyone feels
that the race should never cease to breed, for everyone is sensitive
to its superiority. The duty is incumbent on mankind, of keeping
military characters in stock of keeping them, if not for use, then
as ends in themselves and as pure pieces of perfection so that
[Theodore] Roosevelt's weaklings and mollycoddles may not end
by making everything else disappear from the face of nature.
[13] This natural sort of feeling forms, I think, the innermost
soul of army writings. Without any exception known to me, mili-
tarist authors take a highly mystical view of their subject, and regard
war as a biological or sociological necessity, uncontrolled by ordinary
psychological checks and motives. When the time of development
is ripe the war must come, reason or no reason, for the justifications
pleaded are invariably fictitious. War is, in short, a permanent
human obligation. General Homer Lea, in his recent book, The
Valor of Ignorance, plants himself squarely on this ground. Readi-
ness for war is for him the essence of nationality, and ability in it
the supreme measure of the health of nations.
[14] Nations, General Lea says, arc never stationary they must
necessarily expand or shrink, according to their vitality or decrepi-
tude. Japan now is culminating; and by the fatal law in question
it is impossible that her statesmen should not long since have en-
tered, with extraordinary foresight, upon a vast policy of conquest
the game in which the first moves were her wars with China and
Russia and her treaty with England, and of which the final objective
is the capture of the Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands, Alaska, and
the whole of our coast west of the Sierra Passes. This will give
Japan what her ineluctable vocation as a state absolutely forces her
to claim, the possession of the entire Pacific Ocean; and to oppose
these deep designs we Americans have, according to our author,
nothing but our conceit, our ignorance, our commercialism, our
corruption, and our feminism. General Lea makes a minute tech-
198 WAR
nical comparison of the military strength which we at present could
oppose to the strength of Japan, and concludes that the islands,
Alaska, Oregon, and Southern California, would fall almost without
resistance, that San Francisco must surrender in a fort-night to a
Japanese investment, that in three or four months the war would
be over, and our Republic, unable to regain what it had heedlessly
neglected to protect sufficiently, would then "disintegrate," until
perhaps some Caesar should arise to weld us again into a nation.
[15] A dismal forecast indeed! Yet not unplausible, if the men-
tality of Japan's statesmen be of the Caesarian type of which history
shows so many examples, and which is all that General Lea seems
able to imagine. But there is no reason to think that women can
no longer be the mothers of Napoleonic or Alexandrian characters;
and if these come in Japan and find their opportunity, just such sur-
prises as The Valor of Ignorance paints may lurk in ambush for
us. Ignorant as we still are of the innermost recesses of Japanese
mentality, we may be foolhardy to disregard such possibilities.
[16] Other militarists are more complex and more moral in their
considerations. The Philosophic dcs Kneges, by S. R. Steinmetz, is
a good example. War, according to this author, is an ordeal in-
stituted by God, who weighs the nations in its balance. It is the
essential form of the state, and the only function in which peoples
can employ all their powers at once and convergently. No victory
is possible save as the resultant of a totality of virtues, no defeat
for which some vice or weakness is not responsible. Fidelity, co-
hesiveness, tenacity, heroism, conscience, education, inventiveness,
economy, wealth, physical health and vigor there isn't a moral or
intellectual point of superiority that doesn't tell, when God holds his
assizes and hurls the people upon one another. Die Weltgeschichte
tst das Weltgencht \ "The history of the world is the judgment of the
world."); and Dr. Steinmetz does not believe that in the long run
chance and luck play any part in apportioning the issues.
[17] The virtues that prevail, it must be noted, are virtues any-
how, superiorities that count in peaceful as well as in military
competition; but the strain on them, being infinitely intenser in the
latter case, makes war infinitely more searching as a trial. No ordeal
WILLIAM JAMES 199
is comparable to its winnowings. Its dread hammer is the welder of
men into cohesive states, and nowhere but in such states can human
nature adequately develop its capacity. The only alternative is
"degeneration."
[18] Dr. Stcinmetz is a conscientious thinker, and his book, short
as it is, takes much into account. Its upshot can, it seems to me, be
summed up in Simon Patten's word, that mankind was nursed
in pain and fear, and that the transition to a "pleasure economy"
may be fatal to a being wielding no powers of defense against its
disintegrative influences. If we speak of the fear of emancipation
from the fear regime, we put the whole situation into a single
phrase; fear regarding ourselves now taking the place of the ancient
fear of the enemy.
[19] Turn the fear over as I will in my mind, it all seems to lead
back to two unwillingnesses of the imagination, one esthetic, and the
other moral: unwillingness, first to envisage a future in which army
life, with its many elements of charm, shall be forever impossible,
and in which the destinies of peoples shall nevermore be decided
quickly, thnllingly, and tragically, by force, but only gradually
and insipidly by "evolution"; and, secondly, unwillingness to see
the supreme theater of human strcnuousncss closed, and the splendid
military aptitudes of men doomed to keep always in a state of
latency and never show themselves in action. These insistent un-
willingnesses, no less than other esthetic and ethical insistencies,
have, it seems to me, to be listened to and respected. One cannot
meet them effectively by mere counter-insistency on war's cxpcnsive-
ness and horror. The horror makes the thrill; and when the ques-
tion is of getting the extremest and supremest out oi human nature,
talk of expense sounds ignominious. The weakness of so much
merely negative criticism is evident pacifism makes no converts
from the military party. The military party denies neither the
bestiality nor the horror, nor the expense; it only says that these
things tell but half the story. It only says that war is worth them;
that, taking human nature as a whole, its wars arc its best protection
against its weaker and more cowardly self, and that mankind can-
not afford to adopt a peace economy.
200 WAR
[20] Pacifists ought to enter more deeply into the esthetical and
ethical point of view of their opponents. Do that first in any con-
troversy, says J. J. Chapman; then move the point, and your op-
ponent will follow. So long as anti-militarists propose no substitute
for war's disciplinary function, no moral equivalent of war, analo-
gous, as one might say, to the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long
they fail to realize the full inwardness of the situation. And as a
rule they do fail. The duties, penalties, and sanctions pictured in
the Utopias they paint are all too weak and tame to touch the military-
minded. Tolstoi's pacificism is the only exception to this rule, for
it is profoundly pessimistic as regards all this world's values, and
makes the fear of the Lord furnish the moral spur provided else-
where by the fear of the enemy. But our socialistic peace advocates
all believe absolutely in this world's values; and instead of the fear
of the Lord and the fear of the enemy, the only fear they reckon
with is the fear of poverty if one be lazy. This weakness pervades
all the socialistic literature with which I am acquainted. Even in
Lowes Dickinson's exquisite dialogue \Jttstice and Liberty, New
York, 1909], high wages and short hours are the only forces invoked
for overcoming man's distaste for repulsive kinds of labor. Mean-
while men at large still live as they always have lived, under a pain-
ancl-fear economy for those of us who live in an ease economy are
but an island in the stormy ocean and the whole atmosphere of
present-day Utopian literature tastes mawkish and clishwatery to
people who still keep a sense for life's more bitter flavors. It sug-
gests, in truth, ubiquitous inferiority.
[21] Inferiority is always with us, and merciless scorn of it is the
keynote of the military temper. "Dogs, would you live forever ? "
shouted Frederick the Great. "Yes," say our Utopians, "let us live
forever, and raise our level gradually." The best thing about our
"inferiors" today is that they are as tough as nails, and physically
and morally almost as insensitive. Utopianism would see them soft
and squeamish, while militarism would keep their callousness, but
transfigure it into a meritorious characteristic, needed by "the serv-
ice," and redeemed by that from the suspicion of inferiority. All the
qualities of a man acquire dignity when he knows that the service
WILLIAM JAMES 201
of the collectivity that owns him needs them. If proud of the col-
lectivity, his own pride rises in proportion. No collectivity is like
an army for nourishing such pride; but it has to be confessed that the
only sentiment which the image of pacific cosmopolitan industrialism
is capable of arousing in countless worthy breasts is shame at the
idea of belonging to such a collectivity. It is obvious that the United
States of America as they exist today impress a mind like General
Lea's as so much human blubber. Where is the sharpness and pre-
cipitousness, the contempt for life, whether one's own or another's?
Where is the savage "yes" and "no," the unconditional duty ? Where
is the conscription? Where is the blood tax? Where is anything
that one feels honored by belonging to?
[22] Having said thus much in preparation, I will now confess my
own Utopia. I devoutly believe in the reign of peace and in the
gradual advent of some sort of socialistic equilibrium. The fatalistic
view of the war function is to me nonsense, for I know that war-
making is due to definite motives and subject to prudential checks
and reasonable criticisms, just like any other form of enterprise.
And when whole nations are the armies, and the science of destruc-
tion vies in intellectual refinement with the sciences of production, I
see that war becomes absurd and impossible from its own monstrosity.
Extravagant ambitions will have to be replaced by reasonable claims,
and nations must make common cause against them. I see no rea-
son why all this should not apply to yellow as well as to white coun-
tries, and I look forward to a future when acts of war shall be for-
mally outlawed as between civilized peoples.
[23] All these beliefs of mine put me squarely into the anti-
militarist party. Hut I do not believe that peace cither ought to be
or will be permanent on this globe, unless the states pacifically or-
ganized preserve some of the old elements of army discipline. A
permanently successful peace economy cannot be a simple pleasure
economy. In the more or less socialistic future toward which man-
kind seems drifting we must still subject ourselves collectively to
these severities which answer to our real position upon this only
partly hospitable globe. We must make new energies and hardi-
hoods continue the manliness to which the military mind so faith-
202 WAR
fully clings. Martial virtues must he the enduring cement; in-
trepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of private interest, obedi-
ence to command, must still remain the rock upon which states are
built unless, indeed, we wish for dangerous reactions against com-
monwealth fit only for contempt, and liable to invite attack when-
ever a center of crystallization for military-minded enterprise gets
formed anywhere in their neighborhood.
[24] The war party is assuredly right in affirming and reaffirming
that the martial virtues, although originally gained by the race
through war, are absolute and permanent human goods. Patriotic
pride and ambition in their military form are, after all, only specifica-
tions of a more general competitive passion. They are its first form,
but that is no reason tor supposing them to be its last form. Men
now are proud of belonging to a conquering nation, and without a
murmur they lay down their persons and their wealth, if by so
doing they may fend ofT subjection. But who can be sure that other
aspects of one's country may not, with time and education and sug-
gestion enough, come to be regarded with similarly effective feelings
of pride and shame ? Why should men not some day feel that it is
worth a blood tax to belong to a collectivity superior in any ideal
respect? Why should they not blush with indignant shame if the
community that owns them is vile in any way whatsoever? In-
dividuals, daily more numerous, now feel this civic passion. It is
only a question of blowing on the spark till the whole population
gets incandescent, and on the ruins of the old morals of military
honor, a stable system of morals of civic honor builds itself up. What
the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as
in a vise. The war function has grasped us so far; but constructive
interests may some day seem no less imperative, and impose on the
individual a hardly lighter burden.
[25] Let me illustrate my idea more concretely. There is nothing
to make one indignant in the mere fact that life is hard, that men
should toil and suffer pain. The planetary conditions once for all
are such, and we can stand it. But that so many men, by mere
accidents of birth and opportunity, should have a life of nothing else
but toil and pain and hardness and inferiority imposed upon them,
WILLIAM JAMES 203
should have no vacation, while others natively no more deserving
never get any taste of this campaigning life at all this is capable of
arousing indignation in reflective minds. It may end by seeming
shameful to all of us that some of us have nothing but campaign-
ing, and others nothing but unmanly ease. If now and this is my
idea there were, instead of military conscription, a conscription of
the whole youthful population to form for a certain number of years
a part of the army enlisted against Nature, the injustice would tend
to be evened out, and numerous other goods to the commonwealth
would follow. The military ideals of hardihood and discipline
would be wrought into the growing fiber of the people; no one would
remain blind as the luxurious classes now are blind, to man's real
relations to the globe he lives on, and to the permanently sour and
hard foundations of his higher lite. To coal and iron mines, to
freight trains, to fishing fleets in December, to dish-washing, clothes-
washing, and window-washing, to road-building and tunnel-making,
to foundries and stoke-holes, and to the frames of skyscrapers, would
our gilded youths be drafted off, according to their choice, to get the
childishness knocked out of them, and to come back into society
with healthier sympathies and soberer ideas. They would have paid
their blood tax, done their own part in the immemorial human war-
fare against nature, they would tread the earth more proudly, the
women would value them more highly, they would be better fathers
and teachers of the following generation.
[26] Such a conscription, with the state of public opinion that
would have required it, and the many moral fruits it would bear,
would preserve in the midst of a pacific civilization the manly vir-
tues which the military party is so afraid of seeing disappear in peace.
We should get toughness without callousness, authority with as little
criminal cruelty as possible, and painful work clone cheerily because
the duty is temporary, and threatens not, as now, to degrade the
whole remainder of one's life. I spoke of the "moral equivalent"
of war. So far, war has been the only force that can discipline a
whole community, and until an equivalent discipline is organized, I
believe that war must have its way. But I have no serious doubt
that the ordinary prides and shames of social man, once developed
204 WAR
to a certain intensity, are capable of organizing such a moral equiva-
lent as I have sketched, or some other just as effective for preserving
manliness of type. It is but a question of time, of skillful propa-
gandism, and of opinion-making men seizing historic opportunities.
[27] The martial type of character can be bred without war. Stren-
uous honor and disinterestedness abound elsewhere. Priests and
medical men are in a fashion educated to it, and we should all feel
some degree of it imperative if we were conscious of our work as an
obligatory service to the state. We should be owned, as soldiers are
by the army, and our pride would rise accordingly. We could be
poor, then, without humiliation, as army officers now are. The only
thing needed henceforward is to inflame the civic temper as past his-
tory has inflamed the military temper. H. G. Wells, as usual, sees
the center of the situation. "In many ways," he says, "military or-
ganization is the most peaceful of activities. When the contem-
porary man steps from the street, of clamorous insincere advertise-
ment, push, adulteration, underselling and intermittent employment,
into the barrack yard, he steps on to a higher social plane, into an
atmosphere of service and co-operation and of infinitely more honor-
able emulations. Here at least men are not flung out of employment
to degenerate because there is no immediate work for them to do.
They are fed and drilled and trained for better services. Here at
least a man is supposed to win promotion by self-forgetfulness and
not by self-seeking/' . . . \First and Last Things, 1908, p. 215.!
[28] Wells adds that he thinks that the conceptions of order and
discipline, the tradition of service and devotion, of physical fitness,
unstinted exertion, and universal responsibility, which universal
military duty is now teaching European nations, will remain a per-
manent acquisition, when the last ammunition has been used in the
fireworks that celebrate the final peace. I believe as he does. It
would be simply preposterous if the only force that could work ideals
of honor and standards of efficiency into English or American na-
tures should be the fear of being killed by the Germans or the Japa-
nese. Great indeed is Fear; but it is not, as our military enthusiasts
believe and try to make us believe, the only stimulus known for
awakening the higher ranges of men's spiritual energy. The amount
WILLIAM JAMES 205
of alteration in public opinion which my Utopia postulates is vastly
less than the difference between the mentality of those black warriors
who pursued Stanley's party on the Congo with their cannibal war
cry of "Meat! Meat!" and that of the General Staff of any civilized
nation. History has seen the latter interval bridged over: the former
one can be bridged over much more easily.
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. How would you vote on the author's questions about the Civil
War (paragraph i) ? Does something besides "ideal harvest"
influence your answer?
2. Do you agree that "appetite for plunder" is more fundamental
than "pugnacity and love of glory"?
3. Does man pay "war taxes" because "War is the strong life"?
4. What does jingoism mean and how did it originate?
5. Do you think that James's theory of pugnacity is tenable?
6. Do the people push their rulers into war (paragraph 7) ?
7. Explain the author's saying that peace and war mean the same
thing.
(S. At what point does the author begin his review of the militarist's
attitude toward war? How sympathetic is he toward this atti-
tude?
9. How nearly correct was General Homer Lea in his predictions
about Japan?
10. What argument docs Steinmetz offer to prove that war is good
in itself?
H. Explain: "fear of emancipation from the fear regime" (para-
graph 1 8).
12. What two "unwillingnesses" of man make him reluctant to turn
pacifist ?
13. Why does James spend so much time on the esthetics and the
ethics of war? Does this emphasis serve his own purposes?
Explain.
14. Comment on the phrase "pleasure economy."
206 WAR
15. Is it James's main point that martial virtue may be retained with-
out war ?
1 6. What one sentence contains the essence of James's idea for
pushing war out of men's minds? How does he herald the sen-
tence? How does he support it?
Suggestions for Papers
There arc two extreme attitudes toward war: that of the mili-
tarist and that of the pacifist. The absolute militarist and the abso-
lute pacifist are comparatively rare, for most persons take a stand
somewhere between these extremes. Every human being, and par-
ticularly the educated person, is duty bound to examine the question
of war and to declare himself on the subject.
1. Define absolute pacifism. What is it ? You may include what
it is not that is, it is not capable of compromise. Then, you should
list, with brief discussion, the immediate and the long-run advan-
tages and disadvantages of the pacifist idea. How far could you go
in accepting this idea for yourself? (Von Clauscwitz gives an ex-
cellent model: "War is an act of force to compel our adversary to
do our will." Can you frame a definition of pacifism in such precise
terms?)
2. Define absolute militarism. This is not a definition of war.
It is a definition of an attitude. William James's "Moral Equivalent
of War" summarizes some basic thinking of the militarist. Exam-
ine this mode of thinking. How far do you go in accepting this
thinking ?
3. Is it possible strictly to distinguish a combatant from a non-
combatant in modern warfare? Men and women in uniforms are
combatants. Are the persons who supply the armed forces com-
batants? And what of the persons who supply the persons who sup-
ply the armed forces? What of women and children? Is it logic
SUGGESTIONS FOR PAPERS 207
or sentiment which traditionally lists women and children as non-
comhatants? (Possible organization, by paragraphs, of this paper:
I the problem; II obvious combatants; III questionable combatants;
IV obvious noncomhatants, if any.)
4. "Never in the philosophy of war itself can we introduce a modi-
fying principle without committing an absurdity" (von Clausewitz).
Examine the full meaning and the full implication of this statement.
According to this view, what is the sole criterion for the use or non-
use of any given instrument of force? Can a humanitarian war be
fought? Do you know why poison gas was used in World War I
but not in World War II? Do you know why the atom bomb was
used in World War II and may not be used again? Bigger and
better flame-throwers were used and doubtless will continue to be
used. Can you explain this?
5. Some historians believe that leaders lead their people into war.
Others (see William James) believe the people force their leaders
to lead them into war. Is there some truth in both points of view?
State the two positions; then try to decide what the reciprocal
action is which does produce war.
6. William James thinks that "war against Nature" would pro-
vide a "moral equivalent" for war in the traditional sense. Reread
the closing paragraphs of James's essay, paraphrase his theory, then
examine the logic of the idea. (James himself says that the horror
of war is one of its fascinations; how would his "moral equivalent"
satisfy man's craving for horror if, indeed, he has such a craving?)
7. Some writers name four reasons for war: psychological, bio-
logical, economic, and political. The psychological involves essen-
tially man's pugnacity; the biological, his group's pugnacity; the
economic, his group's acquisitiveness; the political, his group's states-
manship (making his state dominant). Which is the most impor-
tant of these reasons? Without which of these causes would the
remaining causes become inoperative?
8. Some writers list "the material needs of societies" as one of the
causes of war. Can you reduce this "cause" to an absurdity?
9. William James speaks of the incredible cruelties of ancient
wars. Is there any reason to believe that cruelty either in quality
208
WAR
or quantity has been reduced in modern times? Is any discernible
progress to be found in fact or in attitude?
10. How has the United Nations simplified on the one hand and
complicated on the other hand the problem of war? State the
theory, which is simple, of the U.N.'s way to control warfare. What
arc some of the factors which complicate the working of this theory?
SOME TITLES FOR PAPERS
1. The Ideal Pacifist
2. The Ideal Militarist
3. War Is Immoral: How Can
There Be a Moral Equiva-
lent?
4. No Noncombatants
5. The Philosophy of Passive
Resistance
6. Force Is Force and Cannot
Be Modified
7. War Is God's Test of Man
8. The Cost of Peace versus
The Cost of War
9. Who Would Fight for More
Land ?
10. Cruelty, Then and Now
11. Wars to Prevent Wars
12. Our Economic Excuses for
War
13. The Limits of Patriotism
14. Pulling the Eyeteeth of Na-
tional Sovereignty
15. People Always (Sometimes,
Never) Want War
1 6. The United Nations Are Dis-
united
outh and Old Age
X
\ HE rival claims of youth and old age have
been argued since the beginning of time, probably since a Cro-
Magnon father beetled a brow at the upstart ofTspring who called
him an old fogy. The battle has been unequal from the beginning,
for youth has had no appetite for old age and old age has had a
sadly insistent appetite for youth. Consequently, youth's most elo-
quent admirers have always been old men; whereas, whatever ad-
mirers old age has been able to muster, have been old men too.
The twentieth century, however, has brought about some changes.
Men are living longer. There arc more old people, and the old
people are becoming restless as some of the selections in this chapter
will show.
The chapter opens with the traditional and authentic view that
youth has certain physical advantages of which he (or she in this
instance) had better make the most of. "To the Virgins, to Make
Much of Time" flatly asserts that
"That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer/'
209
210 YOUTH AND OLD AGE
The second selection, Matthew Arnold's "On Growing Old," ex-
pands the warning of the previous poem: old age means a physical
loss, but it means more than that; it means stark, simple loss with-
out compensation. These poems, then, may represent the conven-
tional view of old age.
The next three selections are rebuttals. "A % Plca for an Age Move-
ment" asks that old people do battle to regain their lost prestige.
The author insists that there is nothing more to lose and that any
assertion of rights will be clear gain. Even more militant is Dr.
Martin Gumpert, a specialist in diseases of the aged (geriatrician),
who admires all the qualities of full maturity and says so in his book,
You Arc younger than You Thinly, from which I have selected "The
Rights of the Aged to Life, Liberty and Happiness." Finally, Robert
Browning, through his mouthpiece, Rabbi Ben Ezra, sets forth the
classic defense of old age. (This is not a rebuttal, incidentally, of
Arnold's "On Growing Old," for Arnold's poem came after Brown-
ing's and may be an answer to "Rabbi lien E/.ra.")
One may assume that youth will wish the Age Movement every
success because eligibility for membership is soon attained.
To the Virgins, to Make
Much of Time*
Robert Herrick
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying,
And this same flower that smiles to-day,
To-morrow will be dying.
* Published in 1648.
MATTHEW ARNOLD 211
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, 5
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.
That age is best which is the first.
When youth and blood are warmer; 10
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while you may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime, 15
You may for ever tarry.
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. Is the predicted dying of the "rosebuds" of the same significance
as the setting of the sun ?
2. With what phase of life is the poet apparently solely concerned?
Growing Old*
Matthew Arnold
What is it to grow old ?
Is it to lose the glory of the form,
The lustre of the eye ?
Is it for beauty to forego her wreath?
Yes, but not this alone.
* First published in 1867.
212 YOUTH AND OLD AGE
Is it to feel our strength
Not our bloom only, but our strength decay?
Is it to feel each limb
Grow stififer, every function less exact,
Each nerve more weakly strung? 10
Yes, this, and more! but not,
Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dream'd 'twould be!
Tis not to have our life
Mellow'd and soften'd as with sunset glow,
A golden day's decline! is
Tis not to see the world
As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes,
And heart profoundly stirr'd;
And weep, and feel the fullness of the past,
The years that are no more! 20
It is to spend long days
And not once feel that we were ever young.
It is to add, immured
In the hot prison of the present, month
To month with weary pain. 25
It is to suffer this,
And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel.
Deep in our hidden heart
Festers the dull remembrance of a change,
But no emotion none. 30
It is last stage of all
When we are frozen up within, and quite
The phantom of ourselves,
To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost
Which blamed the living man. 35
RALPH BARTON PERRY 213
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. Does the whole of this poem seem to be additional comment on
Herrick's "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time"? Does
"bloom" suggest Herrick's "rosebuds"? Are there other echoes?
2. What is the purpose of the first four stan/as? Of the last three?
3. Read and reread the last stanza until you can paraphrase it, par-
ticularly the last two lines. Is the "hollow ghost" the same thing
as the "phantom"? Is the "phantom" what is left of an old man?
Now, what is "the living man"?
Plea for an Age Mooement
Ralph Barton Perry
King David arid King Solomon
Led merry, merry lives,
With many, many lady friends
And many, many wives;
But when old age crept over them
With many, many qualms,
King Solomon wrote the Proverbs
And King David wrote the Psalms.
[i] I read this selection from an unknown poet to set the key for
my remarks. I need not say that I claim neither the wisdom of
Solomon, nor the sweet singing of David. Hut I find that as the
years roll by I devote less and less time to doing things and more and
more time to advising other people to do them. I assume that you
are having the same experience, that you will not think it out of
place if I give less place to merriment, and more to what might be
called "Reflections on Senescence."
[2] We have heard a good deal recently about the "youth move-
ment" and I think it's about time we started an "age movement."
There was a time when old men held a good position in the world.
I need not remind an audience of classical scholars that a Roman
* Reprinted b> permission of Vanguard Press, Inc., from Pica joi an Age Move-
ment by Ralph Barton Pcir>. Copyright 1942, b> Ralph Raiton Pciry.
214 YOUTH AND OLD AGE
named Cicero devoted a work called De Senectute to this topic. I
haven't the Latin handy. The translation runs as follows:
Intelligence, and reflection, and judgment, reside in old men, and if
there had been none of them, no state could exist at all. (xix)
Old age, especially an honored old age, has so great authority, that
this is of more value than all the pleasures of youth, (xvii)
The theory was that although we had slowed down physically,
and although our arteries had hardened a bit, and although our wind
was short except for talking, and although we had lost something of
our sex appeal, we had more than made up for it. We were supposed
to have laid by stores of wisdom so that we could offer sound advice.
Our very disabilities were supposed to have given us a long view of
things, and a certain elevation above passion and action.
[3] We were supposed to dwell in the realm of ideas, and to sur-
vey all of history, so that we could speak profoundly when we con-
descended to advise our inferiors. We were supposed thus to be
qualified to be the rulers of our wives, the mentors of our children,
and the elder statesmen of the realm.
[4] Recently we have fallen to an all-time low. We are retired
at an early age from business and the professions. We are hustled
by our juniors in politics. And as to the armed services, we hear it
said on every side that what they need is young officers. The JoflYes
and Hindcnburgs are regarded as accidents. The success of the
Germans is attributed to the youth of their officers, the failure of
the French to the age of theirs.
[5] The most striking evidence of the downfall of the aged is to be
found in the domestic circle. The authority of the father was first
broken by the mother, and the children poured through the breach.
The last remnant of paternal authority was the period in which the
father was an ogre, who came home at the end of the day to deal with
major offenses, and who could be invoked by the mother as a threat
during his absence. Although he was no longer magistrate he was at
least executioner.
[6] But even this role disappeared when domestic criminology
was modernized, and the child's insubordination was regarded as a
RALPH BARTON PERRY 215
personality problem to be solved by love, hygiene, and psycho-
analysis. The father, knowing neither physiology nor Freud, and
having been denied all natural affection in order to serve as the big
stick, now played no part whatever in the civil order of the home. As
head of the family he went definitely out, along with such ideas as
naughtiness, punishment, discipline and obedience. He remained,
of course, as bread winner, choreman, and studhorse, but these func-
tions carried no prestige. The mother, who had conspired with the
children to break down the authority of the father, lived to regret it.
She suffered from the same age disability as the father and she was
more continuously exposed to its consequences. The outcome was
that both parents found themselves on the defensive.
[7] Children now learned the facts of life almost at birth, and par-
ents could no longer deny their ultimate responsibility. They were
overtaken with a sense of conscious guilt and spent their domestic life
apologizing to their children for having brought them into existence
and for having endowed them with all their less endearing traits.
[ 8] The institution of the school was originally created in order
that the young might learn from the old, who had when young
learned from their elders. The idea was that the infant was a vege-
table, the small child an animal, the adult a human being, and the
aged adult a wise human being with a touch of deity. On this theory
the individual learned from a superior who had something to give.
[9] Progressive education (though just why progressive is not
clear) reversed all this. The child being a genius and the adult a
fossil, nobody taught anybody anything. The child unfolded in
accordance with his own creative impulses and the adult provided
the tools and conveniences. Meanwhile as the child grew to man-
hood he himself gradually fossilized until he became a dodo in his
own right.
[10] Something of the same sort happened in ihe field of so-called
higher education. It was supposed that the professor derived au-
thority from his years, from his knowledge, and from his learning.
This authority began to disappear as soon as the idea got abroad
that there was no such thing as knowledge and that learning em-
braced only the obsolete litter of the dead past.
216 YOUTH AND OLD AGE
[n] Learning went out with the attic when the mind, like the
house, became functional. So professors changed their tone, and
began to use the subjunctive and interrogative instead of the in-
dicative and affirmative. They presented so-called facts and tenta-
tive opinions and anxiously awaited the verdict of their students,
promising when the verdict was unfavorable, to do better next time.
They sought the guidance of "undergraduate opinion," deterred
only by the fear of seeming to oflfcr guidance. The students, mean-
while, tolerated the aged professor for reasons of humanity, but
deprecated his large salary, encouraged his early retirement, and
transferred their allegiance to the younger instructors who, being
young themselves, could be counted upon to understand the young,
and who, not having yet lived, could be counted upon to be in touch
with the life of the times or with the life of the times to come.
[12] There is an application of all this to the present situation in
the world at large. The young having ceased to respect their elders
have banded together and become a sort of social class or political
party, under their own leaders. Their opinions and sentiments are
treated as touchstones of policy.
[13] Those who are old enough to remember several wars are sup-
posed on that account to be disqualified from judgment about this
one [World War II |. Those whose judgment is respected, those
who are supposed to know what war is, are those who have never
experienced war and who have even forgotten their history. They
tell us, for example, that wars never settle anything, and they are
supposed to know. The elders being rejected from military service
for physical reasons, may not offer counsel lest they be suspected of a
sadistic desire to sacrifice the young.
[14] Such, in brief outline, is the story of the fall of age from its
once high eminence. We have taken it. We have with pathetic
eagerness tried to please our juniors and do whatever they would
in a world of youth. But where does modesty get us? It is my ma-
ture opinion, discredited no doubt by its maturity, that it gets us
nowhere. We are victims of the fallacy now known as appease-
ment. The more we try to please the more our opponents raise their
RALPH BARTON PERRY 217
demand. Whereas once we were feared enough to provoke rebel-
lion, we are rapidly approaching a position in which we shall inspire
only contempt. If by this procedure we could excuse ourselves and
evade responsibility, that would be something.
[15] But it hasn't worked that way. The children to whom we
deferred turn upon us and say, "Why did you spoil us?" The stu-
dents to whose opinions we have modestly deferred now turn upon
us and say, "Why didn't you make us take the courses that were
good for us? Why didn't you give us your solutions of the prob-
lems of life so that we would have some anchorage and landmark
in a world of change?" So it appears that we are going to be blamed
anyway; and if so, I say let us also enjoy the rank, the prerogatives,
the esteem, and the authority.
[16] This is a serious matter. The vital statisticians tell us that
the average age of living Americans is rapidly rising. In other
words, at the same time that there is an increasing number of old
men in the world there is less use for them; at the same time that
people live longer there is a more rapid turnover and depreciation.
Either the majority of mankind are going to be kept in idleness, or
liquidated; or we have got to change our ideas of the value of age.
[17] Now I admit that it isn't easy to regain an ascendancy once
lost. But let us begin by starting an age movement. Let us band
together and not allow our force to be weakened by division. I do
not mean that we should associate exclusively with one another.
That has, as a matter of fact, been one of the sources of our weakness.
We have acquired a sense of social inferiority until we hesitate to
intrude upon the circles of youth, lest our accent, our manners or our
clothes betray a trace of obsolescence. No, let us mingle freely with
the young, with an air of confidence and length of life. After all, we
don't say that a youth of eighteen is less alive than an infant of three
weeks; though he is much older. Some individuals are born dead
and remain dead. Some individuals are born with a low degree of
vitality and grow more alive with the years.
[18] Between physical birth and physical death there is no fixed
point at which men can be said to reach the maximum of liveliness.
218 YOUTH AND OLD AGE
It behooves us, then, as elders to take the view that the course of
years is a passage from less to greater vitality, from inertness to ac-
tivity. We can prove the idea by applying it, so that it comes back
in the end to what you and I are going to do with our years.
[19] This is only a special application of a very general idea, which
I think it is now time to proclaim. Every form and every stage of
life has its own gifts, and its own pride. There is a pride of youth,
and I would not have it one whit abated. But there is also a pride
of age, which is ours if we will only affirm it. Let us leave off
apologizing. The alternative is not boasting, which is only a com-
pensation for self-distrust. But let us have confidence in our powers,
and earn our own self-respect and the respect of others by asking
much of ourselves. If we expect much of ourselves we shall rise to
the high level of our own expectations.
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. How does the introductory poem "set the key" for the remarks
that follow?
2. Apparently this essay was delivered as a speech to what group?
Does the identity of this group help explain the reference to
Cicero ?
3. What is the purpose of paragraphs 2, 3, and 4?
4. Explain the phrase "domestic criminology" (paragraph 7).
5. List the areas in which the authority of the aged has, according
to the author, suffered eclipse.
6. Explain: "So professors changed their tone, and began to use the
subjunctive and interrogative instead of the indicative and af-
firmative" (paragraph 12).
7. Can you summarize in one sentence the controlling idea of this
speech ?
8. So far as you can tell, has anything been done about Mr. Perry's
proposal for an age movement? Would your parents subscribe to
such a movement ?
219
The Rights of the Aged to
Life, Liberty, and Happiness*
Martin Gumpert
[i] ... I have felt old all my life. Whether I was ten or twenty
or forty, I have always looked back and forward with an immense
curiosity, which has continued to grow to the present clay. Not
only have I looked at my own life; I have always felt the sohdantv of
the human species and a kind of responsibility for everything that has
ever happened and was ever going to happen. I remember that
when I was ten years of age, someone returned from the wilds of
Africa after ten years' absence. It seemed unbelievable to me that
anyone could be cut ofT from the stream of events for a period that
seemed tremendous because it comprised the experiences and adven-
tures of my whole lifetime.
[2] This feeling has not changed as I have grown older. I lead the
average life of an inhabitant of this century, full of excitement and
worry and deadly danger, full of miracles, misconceptions, disillu-
sions and hopes. So far, I have not cracked up. Indeed, I feel
stronger, healthier and saner as the years go by. I have built up
a mechanism of self-defense and restraint and humility that gives
me more confidence. Hut I have seen others crack up: friends and
patients, thousands who crossed my path. Many of them died,
though they were young and did not want to die or need not have
died. Others just could not or did not want to go on. Death and
sickness become familiar to a doctor and, to some degree, lose their
terror. Fear is mostly lack of knowledge. Children are easily fright-
ened, and many people remain children up to the most advanced
age. But death that basic clement of life is no secret and has its
own inherent laws, which can be studied and revealed.
[3] Most men are dead long before they die. They are on bad
terms with life. They are rebels or cowards, or cannot forgive, or
* From Yon Are Younger than Yon Thinly, published by Ducll, Sloan, and Pearcc
(1944), and reprinted by permission of the author.
220 YOUTH AND OLD AGE
they are just bored and tired. Every day is a challenge which has to
be met with strong nerves, patience and a lot of good humor. The
person who cannot manage himself inevitably gets sick.
[4] It is true that there are diseases of murderous power which kill
the healthy. But during these last years we have acquired a miracu-
lous ability to kill these diseases. Most sickness is our weaknesses
and our sins. The idea that sickness is sin is not as irrational as it
sounds. A man who is healthy will rarely be sick. Even before the
onslaught of bacteria comes the willingness to give them the green
light, or the unwillingness to fight them. But the man or woman
who wants to live, and at the same time loves to be sick, should not
be surprised at the results of this strange confusion of desires.
[5] This is one problem to which too little thought has been given :
how much it depends on our own will whether or not we succumb
to disease and death. There are many reasons for sacrificing one's
life. There is despair so heartbreaking that we can understand with-
drawal into death. There are catastrophes of mankind, war and
flood and famine, in which the individual feels powerless. There
is the wisdom of a good and pious end when one's harvest has been
brought in. But the fact remains that millions of men die today
before their time is up, for reasons of mismanagement, of insuffi-
cient care, of unjust neglect or, last but not least, of their own in-
ertia. . . .
[6] It is a good thing to be old early: to have the fragility and
sensitivity of the old, and a bit of wisdom, before the years of plan-
ning and building have run out. The old body and the old mind
fortunately develop at a different pace. There is indeed nothing
more precious than an old and healthy mind. For centuries the
overstatements of youth have confused our judgment. We are prone
to attribute to youth action and audacity and inventiveness, although
often these qualities show nothing but inexperience and arrogance.
How often do we wish we could do things over again because they
were hopelessly muddled by our first youthful attempts! Imagine
a world in which the very old and very wise were still physically able
to retain power. Imagine leaders of our social life like Einstein,
Charles Beard and Justice Stone, say, alive in the year 2000, their
MARTIN GUMPERT 221
voices still heard and respected. The mistakes and failures of their
long life-span would be worth far more, in the lessons learned, than
their victories and triumphs, and their gift of generous leadership
would engender an unprecedented regime of wisdom and knowl-
edge.
[7] Great men are rare and we have a foolish way of wasting their
energy. But the physician, whose sacred duty it is to maintain life
even in its most deteriorated form, cannot help being horrified by the
tremendous waste of all living substance in our present society. The
face of humanity now not too pretty could be entirely changed if
we could decide to devote to mutual reconstruction and help, a frac-
tion of the expenditure and moral effort that is now spent for mutual
destruction.
[8] But how can anyone expect such effort in a world in which we
start waiting and providing for death at an early age, in which volun-
tary or involuntary "retirement" from active life is considered a
measure of social care, and in which people who survive their life
expectancy are treated as statistical errors?
[9] Around 1800 we discovered the rights of man. Around 1900
we discovered the child and his rights, and we have done much good
and some bad to make up for our previous neglect. We should not
have to wait in this accelerated century until the year 2000 to dis-
cover the aged and their rights. We can do it here and now.
[10] But real revolutions cannot be managed for us. People who
suffer have to free themselves by their own power or they will never
be free. Old people are neither morons nor in! ants. Neither do
they have to be cripples or invalids. Their diseases can be prevented
and cured as well as the diseases of any other period of life. Their
potential capacities are of the highest order and their participation
in the activities of the community can change the community for
the better.
f ii ] Eternal youth is a wishful dream of the immature and infan-
tile, who lack the faculty of ripening. The term "rejuvenation"
has done much damage. Eternal health, on the contrary, is not a
Utopian idea. Throughout the entire cycle of life, certain functions
begin to fail while others begin to grow mature. It is a mistake to
222 YOUTHANDOLDAGE
classify old age as the age of decline. Outgrown functions have to
be discarded and new functions adopted, it is true, but this is a crea-
tive and adventurous act in the drama of life. And only the man
who grows to like being old, who knows no regret, who declines to
make himself the object of endless self-pity, will succeed in being a
"modern" old man. The Incas in their rigid social structure erected
a fixed age scheme: from eight to sixteen one was a boy playing,
from sixteen to twenty one was a coca-picker, from twenty to
twenty-five one was a worker, from twenty-five to fifty a head of a
family and taxpayer, from fifty to sixty one was nearly old and after
sixty one was "an old man sleeping/' From "old man sleeping" to
"old man awake" this is the difference between a proud civilization
that has perished and a proud civilization that will stand.
[12] "Old man awake" versus "old man asleep": that is the chal-
lenge of this book. Judge for yoursclt to which group you would
rather belong. There is truth in the saying: "As one grows older
more and more things are done for the last time and fewer and fewer
are done for the first time." It is easy to accept this accurate old-age
meter, but it is healthier to repudiate it. Many of us may discover
at a deplorably early date that our lives fit this description. Like
Boy Scouts performing their daily good deeds, at a certain stage of
existence we should strive to make daily discoveries. We all agree
that life is far too short to grasp more than an infinitesimal fraction
of its opportunities. A prolonged and healthy life-span will help to
fill at least some of the gaps of knowledge, of happiness, of unful-
filled dreams.
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. How do the sentences of paragraph T contribute to the topic
sentence: "I have felt old all my hie"?
2. Explain: "The person who cannot manage himself inevitably
gets sick."
3. "Eternal youth is a wishful dream of the immature and infantile."
Comment, urbanely!
4. How does the author define "a 'modern' old man"?
5. What is the "old-age meter" (last paragraph) ?
223
Rabbi Ben Ezra *
Robert Browning
[This poem should he read through rapidly once and then reread
more slowly. The first reading will reveal the essentially conver-
sational tone and the informal organization as well as much of the
broad meaning. Carefully observe punctuation in the first and all
subsequent readings. The controlling idea is that old age is as much
a part of life as youth and a better part at that. The basic premise is
that God made man and in doing so conceived of youth, age, and
death as parts of a whole which will be brought to completion in an
after-life. Since old age is nearer completion than youth, it is a
better, more knowing phase of life. Incompleteness in this life is an
attribute of human beings; completeness is an attribute of the lower
animals who have only this life.)
I
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith "A whole I planned, 5
"Youth shows but half; trust God: see all nor be afraid! 1 '
ii
Not that, amassing flowers,
Youth sighed "Which rose make ours,
"Which lily leave and then as best recall?"
Not that, admiring stars, 10
It yearned "Nor Jove, nor Mars;
"Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends
them all!"
in
Not for such hopes and fears
Annulling youth's brief years,
Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark! 15
Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.
* From Dramatis Pctsonae (1864).
224 YOUTH AND OLD AGE
IV
Poor vaunt of life indeed,
Were man but formed to feed 20
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast:
Such feasting ended, then
As sure an end to men;
Irks care the crop-full bird ? Frets doubt the maw-crammed
beast ?
v
Rejoice we are allied 25
To That which doth provide
And not partake, effect and not receive!
A spark disturbs our clod;
Nearer we hold of God
Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe. 3<>
VI
Then, welcome each rebuff
That turns earth's smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!
He our joys three-parts pain!
Strive, and hold cheap the strain; 3s
Learn, nor account' the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!
VII
For thence, a paradox
Which comforts while it mocks,
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
What I aspired to be, 4
And was not, comforts me:
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i 1 the scale.
VIII
What is he but a brute
Whose flesh has soul to suit,
Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play? ^
To man, propose this test
Thy body at its best,
How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?
ROBERT BROWNING 225
IX
Yet gifts should prove their use:
I own the Past profuse so
Of power each side, perfection every turn:
Eyes, ears took in their dole,
Brain treasured up the whole;
Should not the heart beat once "How good to live and learn ?"
x
Not once beat "Praise be Thine! 55
"I see the whole design,
"I, who saw power, sec now love perfect too:
"Perfect I call Thy plan:
"Thanks that I was a man!
"Maker, remake, complete, I trust what Thou shah do!" 60
XI
For pleasant is this flesh;
Our soul, in its rosc-mcsh
Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest;
Would we some prize might hold
To match those manifold ^
Possessions of the brute, gain most, as we did best!
XII
Let us not always say
"Spite of this flesh to-day
I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!"
As the bird wings and sings, 70
Let us cry "All good things
"Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps
soul!"
XIII
Therefore I summon age
To grant youth's heritage,
Life's struggle having so far reached its term: 75
Thence shall I pass, approved
A man, for aye removed
From the developed brute; a god though in the germ.
226 YOUTH AND OLD AGE
XIV
And I shall thereupon
Take rest, ere I he gone 80
Once more on my adventure brave and new:
Fearless and unperplexed,
When I wage battle next,
What weapons to select, what armour to indue.
xv
Youth ended, I shall try 85
My gain or loss thereby;
Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold:
And I shall weigh the same,
Give life its praise or blame:
Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old. 90
XVI
For note, when evening shuts,
A certain moment cuts
The deed o(T, calls the glory from the grey :
A whisper from the west
Shoots "Add this U> the rest, 95
"Take it and try its worth: here dies another day."
XVII
So, still within this life.
Though lifted o'er its strife,
Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last,
"This rage was right f the main, 100
"That acquiescence vain:
"The Future I may face now I have proved the Past."
XVIII
For more is not reserved
To man, with soul just nerved
To act to-morrow what he learns to-day: 105
Here, work enough to watch
The Master work, and catch
Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play.
ROBERT BROWNING 227
XIX
As it was better, youth
Should strive, through acts uncouth, no
Toward making, than repose on aught found made:
So, better, age, exempt
From strife, should know, than tempt
Further. Thou waitedcst age: wait death nor he afraid!
xx
Enough now, if the Right 115
And Good and Infinite
Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own,
With knowledge absolute,
Subject to no dispute
From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone. uo
XXI
Be there, for once and all,
Severed great minds from small,
Announced to each his station in the Past!
Was I, the world arraigned,
Were they, my soul disdained, us
Right- 5 Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!
XXII
Now, who shall arbitrate ?
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten, who in ears and eyes ij
Match me: we all surmise,
They this thing, and I that: whom shall my soul believe?
XXIII
Not on the vulgar mass
Called "work," must sentence pass,
Things done, that took the eye and had the price; 135
O'er which, from level stand,
The low world laid its hand,
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:
228 YOUTH AND OLD AGE
XXIV
But all, the world's coarse thumb
And finger failed to plumb, 140
So passed in making up the main account;
All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:
xxv
Thoughts hardly to be packed 145
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
All I could never be,
All, men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped,
xxvi
Ay, note that Potter's wheel, 151
That metaphor! and feel
Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,
Thou, to whom fools propound,
When the wine makes its round, 155
''Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, sei/e to-day!"
xxvi i
Fool! All that is, at all,
Lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee, 160
That was, is, and shall be:
Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.
XXVIII
He fixed thee mid this dance
Of plastic circumstance,
This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest: 165
Machinery just meant
To give thy soul its bent,
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.
ROBERT BROWNING 229
XXIX
What though the earlier grooves
Which ran the laughing loves 170
Around thy base, no longer pause and press?
What though, about thy rim,
Skull-things in order grim
Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?
xxx
Look not thou down but up! 175
To uses of a cup,
The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal,
The new wine's foaming flow,
The Master's lips a-glow!
Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what need'st thou with
earth's wheel? jo
XXXI
But I need, now as then,
Thee, God, who mouldest men;
And since, not even while the whirl was worst,
Did I, to the wheel of life
With shapes and colours rife, is
Bound dizzily, mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst:
XXXII
So, take and use Thy work:
Amend what flaws may lurk
What strain o' the stuff, what warpmgs past the aim!
My times be in Thy hand! 19
Perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!
QUESTIONS ON CONTENT
1. In line 7 what is the meaning of "flowers"? May they be iden-
tified with experiences ?
2. In line 11, does "It" refer to youth?
3. What are "finished and finite clods" (line 18) ?
230 YOUTH AND OLD AGE
4. Can you supply the missing words in line 24 ("care" is the
subject of the first sentence of this line; "doubt" of the second) ?
What is the answer to these questions? Then, what does that
prove ?
5. What is the spark which "disturbs our clod" (line 28) ?
6. What are the "tribes that take" (line 30) ?
7. How docs the reasoning clown to Stanza VI justify the hearty
advice to "welcome each rebuff"?
8. Define paradox. Explain the paradox of Stanza VII.
9. What are the "gifts" of line 49 ? From whence did they come?
10. What is the contention of Stanzas XI and XII?
11. What is the "adventure brave and new" (line Si)?
12. "Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old" (line 90).
How can this be reconciled with the prizing of doubt in youth?
13. Docs the word "rage" (line too) probably mean "enthusiasm"?
And what does "proved" (line 102) mean? (Compare: "The
exception proves the rule.")
14. What limits to man's capacity arc suggested by Stanza XVIII 5
15. Compare Stanza XIX with Perry's statement: "As the years
roll by I devote less and less time to doing things and more and
more to advising other people to do them" ("Pica 1'or an Age
Movement").
16. Should old people "prize the doubt" as youth should (see
Stanza XX) ? Explain.
17. Are Stanzas XXII-XXV summarized in lines 148-1 50 ? Discuss
this principle of aspiration versus accomplishment.
18. If you have read the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, do you be-
lieve Browning had that poem in mind in Stanza XXVI? Ex-
plain.
19. Who is the "thou" of line 165? How do you know?
20. Explain the phrase "now as then" (line 181).
231
Suggestions for Papers
You are in the forest of youthful experiences; the trees may ob-
struct your view. You are to try, however, to see as clearly as you
can what youth really is and to measure it as best you can against
what you believe old age will be. The selections in this chapter
ought to be of more than ordinary use in helping you to clarify your
feelings and your thoughts.
1. What arc a youth's most obvious assets? What are his less ob-
vious ones? Are they those which older people seem least to
remember? What are a youth's most obvious liabilities? His less
obvious oncs^ Are they those that older people seem to ignore- 3
You need mainly to look intently within yourself for the answers
to these questions, but observation of older people and of other
young people should help. Cite apt passages, too, from your read-
ing.
2. What has happened to the authority of older people? In "Plea
for an Age Movement," the author says that the male aged have
reached "an all-time low" in politics, military service, at home with
the mother and the children, in school, and in college. Examine
this observation in the light of your own experience.
3. How do you account for the friction between old age and
youth? Is it basically that older persons have learned to make a
compromise peace with life and try to force this compromise on
youth? Look for what you think are the fundamentals of the
conflict and illustrate your findings by specific examples.
4. How could the "fixed age scheme" of the Incas (see "The
Rights of the Aged to Life, Liberty and Happiness") be applied
to our social structure? For example, from six to sixteen would be
boy (and girl) in school. There are other fairly arbitrary age
limits for voting, for holding certain public offices, for marriage,
for retirement, for obtaining driving licenses. Discuss these modern
age rulings.
232 YOUTH AND OLD AGE
5. Consider Arnold's "On Growing Old" as an answer to Brown-
ing's "Rabbi Ben Ezra." Outline the reasoning of the Rabbi: life
is an orderly process set in motion by God; youth, age, and death
are but segments of the process, and so on. Now, examine Arnold's
reply. Is it based on reason? Or does it consist of statements, de-
nials, and a description of old age ?
6. Is the average young person filled with doubts, fears, and
uncertainties? If so, on what subjects? Religion? How to make
a living? Sex? Education? Many educators feel that the average
young person is not disturbed by any of these things but, on the
contrary, is sure of all the answers. Who is right?
7. "All I could never be,/All, men ignored in me,/This, I was
worth to God." Compare this statement with the philosophy of the
Grammarian in "A Grammarian's Funeral" (Chapter i). These
are expressions of the Doctrine of the Imperfect: the idea that what
you try to attain or have a vision of attaining is more important
than what you do attain; more important because perfection is re-
served for Heaven. Does this Doctrine apply equally to youth and
old age? Discuss.
SOME TITLES FOR PAPERS
1. Here Today, Old Age To- 8. Advice to My Elders
morrow! 9. Do My College Teachers
2. Young Man Awake, Old Lack Authority?
Man Sleeping 10. The Doubts and Uncertain-
3. Life Should Be Lived Back- ties of Youth
ward 11. Is It a Young Man's World?
4. Young Fogies I Have 12. Youth and the Doctrine of
Known Imperfection
5. Satisfactions of Youth 13. Seize Today
6. Dissatisfactions of Youth 14. "A Whole I Planned"
7. If I Were an Old Man (or 15. Trying to Understand
Woman) Parents
10
J
obs
OU may know already exactly the job you
want. You may not. The great variety of possibilities may seem
overwhelming. How is one to reduce all jobs to some sort of order,
to a set of common characteristics? Richard Cabot has attempted
an answer to this question (and to many others) in "The Call of the
Job." He has, among other things, isolated seven qualities of all
good jobs. Then, since "every fact in the universe depends on every
other fact," the author suggests before he finishes his essay how an
analysis of work can lead to a discussion of the meaning of life itself.
As you read, you will naturally measure your idea of a job with his.
Any job which you have had will come to mind for specific com-
parison. And you may wish to agree with or object to or amend
or carry forward the philosophical suggestions at the end of the
essay.
Robert Frost's poem, "Two Tramps in Mud Time," emphasizes
the philosophy of work, the object of which is to unite avocation and
vocation, "love and need." You may feel that the poem, perhaps in
the last sixteen lines, is also an essay on "the call of the job."
233
234 JOBS
The Call of the Job*
Richard Cabot
[i] A camper starting into the woods on his annual vacation
undertakes with enthusiasm the familiar task of carrying a Saranac
boat upon a shoulder yoke. The pressure of the yoke on his
shoulders feels as good as the grasp of an old friend's hand. The
tautening of his muscles to the strain of carrying seems to gird up
his loins and true up his whole frame. With the spring of the
ground beneath him and the elastic rebound of the boat on its springy
yoke, he seems to dance over the ground between two enlivening
rhythms. It is pure fun.
[2] In the course of half a mile or so, the carry begins to feel like
work. The pleasant, snug fit of the yoke has become a very
respectable burden, cheerfully borne lor the sake of the object in
view, but not pleasant. The satisfaction of the carry is now some-
thing anticipated, no longer grasped in the present. The job is well
worth while, but it is no joke. It will feel good to reach the end
and set the boat down.
[3] Finally, if in about ten minutes more there is still no sight of
the end, no blue sparkling glimmer of distant water low down among
the trees, the work becomes drudgery. Will it ever end? Are we
on the right trail at all? Is it worth while to go on?
[4] Perhaps not, but to stop means painfully lowering the boat
to the ground and later heaving it up again, which is the worst task
of all worse than going on as we are. So we hang to it, but now
in scowling, stumbling, swearing misery, that edges always nearer
to revolt.
[5] In varying proportions every one's life mingles the experi-
ences of that carry. At its best and for a few, work becomes play,
at least for blessed jewel-like moments. By the larger number it
is seen not a joy but as a tolerable burden, borne for the sake of
the children's education, the butter on the daily bread, the hope
* From The Atlantic Monthly, CXII (November 1913), 599-609. Reprinted by
permission of The Atlantic Monthly.
RICHARD CABOT 235
of promotion. Finally, for the submerged fraction of humanity
who are forced to labor without choice and almost from childhood,
life seems drudgery, borne simply because they cannot stop without
still greater misery. They are committed to it, as to a prison, and
they cannot get out.
[6] It is not often, I believe, that a whole life is possessed by any
one of these elements, play, work, or drudgery. Work usually
makes up the larger part of life, with play and drudgery sprinkled
in. Some of us at most seasons, all of us at some seasons, find work
a galling yoke to which we have to submit blindly or angrily for a
time, but with revolt in our hearts. Yet I have rarely seen drudgery
so overwhelming as to crush out altogether the play of humor and
good fellowship during the clay's toil as well as after it.
[7] In play you have what you want. In work you know what
you want and believe that you are serving or approaching it. In
drudgery no desired object is in sight; blind forces push you on.
| 8] In all work and all education the worker should be in touch
with the distant sources of interest, else he is being trained to slavery,
not to self-government and self-respect.
[ 9 ] Present good, future good, no good, these possibilities are
mingled in the crude ore which we ordinarily call work. Out of
that we must smelt, if we can, the pure metal of a vocation fit for
the spirit of man. The crude mass of "work" as it exists to-day in
mines, stores, railroads, schoolrooms, studies, and ships, contains
elements that should be abolished, elements that are hard, but no
harder than we need to call out the best of us, and here and there
a nugget of pure delight.
[10] Defined in this way, work is always, I suppose, an acquired
taste. For its rewards are not immediate, but come in foretastes
and aftertastes. It involves postponement and waiting. In the
acquisition of wealth, economists rightly distinguish labor and wait-
ing; but in another sense labor is always waiting. You work for your
picture or your log-house because you want it, and because it cannot
be had just for the asking. It awaits you in a future visible only to
imagination. Into the further realization of that future you can
penetrate only by work; meantime you must wait for your reward.
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[n] Further, this future is never perfectly certain. There is many
a slip between the cup and the lip, and even when gross accidents
are avoided, your goal, your promotion, your home, the degree for
which you have worked, usually do not turn out to be what you
have pictured them. This variation you learn to expect, to discount,
perhaps to enjoy, beforehand, if you are a trained worker, just be-
cause you have been trained in faith. For work is always justified
by faith. Faith, holding the substance (not the details) of things
unseen, keeps us at our tasks. We have faith that our efforts will
some day reach their goal, and that this goal will be something like
we expected. But no literalism will serve us here. If we are willing
to accept nothing but the very pattern of our first desires, we are
forever disappointed in work and soon grow slack in it. In the
more fortunate of us, the love of work includes a love of the un-
expected, and finds a pleasant spice of adventure in the difference
between what we work for and what we actually get.
[12] Yet this working faith is not pure speculation. It includes
a foretaste of the satisfaction to come. We plunge into it as we
jump into a cold bath, not because the present sensations are alto-
gether sweet, but because they are mingled with a dawning aware-
ness of the glow to follow. We do our work happily because the
future is alive in the present, not like a ghost but like a leader.
[13] Where do we get this capacity to incarnate the future and to
feel it swelling within us as a present inspiration? The power to
go in pursuit of the future with seven-leagued boots or magic carpets
can hardly be acquired or even longed for until we have had some
actual experience of its rewards. We seem, then, to be caught in
one of those circles which may turn out to be either vicious or
virtuous. In the beginning something, or somebody, must magically
entice us into doing a bit of work. Having done that bit, we can
see the treasure of its results; these results will in turn spur us to
redoubled efforts, and so once more to increased rewards. Given
the initial miracle and we are soon established in the habit and in
the enjoyment of work.
[14] But there is a self-maintaining circularity in disease, idle-
ness, and sloth, as well as in work, virtue, and health. Until we
RICHARD CABOT 237
make the exertion (despite present pain and a barren outlook) we
cannot taste the delightful result, or feel the spur to further effort.
The wheel is at the dead point! Why should it ever move?
[15] Probably some of us are moved at first by the leap of an
elemental instinct in our muscles, which act before and beyond our
conscious reason. Other people are tempted into labor by the ir-
rational contagion of example. We want to be "in it" with the rest
of our gang, or to win some one's approval. So we get past the
dead point, often a most alarming point to parents and teachers,
and once in motion, keep at it by the circular process just described.
[16] Various auxiliary motives reinforce the ordinary energies of
work. Here I will allude only to one a queer pleasure in the mere
stretch and strain of our muscles. If we are physically fresh and
not worried, there is a grim exhilaration, a sort of frowning delight,
in taking up a heavy load and feeling that our strength is adequate
to it. It seems paradoxical to enjoy a discomfort, but the paradox
is now getting familiar. For modern psychologists have satisfac-
torily bridged the chasm between pleasure and pain, so that we can
now conceive what athletes and German poets have long felt, the
delight in a complex of agreeable and disagreeable elements. In
work we do not get as far as the "sclige Schmerzcn" so familiar in
German lyrics, but we welcome difficulties, risks, and physical strains
because (if we can easily conquer them) they add a spice to life,
a spice of play in the midst of labor.
[17] Work gets itself started, then, by the contagion of somebody
else's activity or by an explosion of animal energies within us.
After a few turns of the work-rest cycle we begin to get a foretaste
of rewards. A flavor of enjoyment appears in the midst of strain.
Habit then takes hold and carries us along until the taste for work
is definitely acquired.
[18] In the crude job as we get it there is much rubbish. For
work is a very human product. It is no better than we have made
it, and even when it is redeemed from brutal drudgery it is apt to be
scarred and warped by our stupidities and our ineptitudes. Out of
the rough-hewn masses in which work comes to us it is our busi-
ness it is civilization's business to shape a vocation fit for man.
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We shall have to remake it again and again; meantime, before we
reject what we now have, it is worth while to see what we want.
[19] What (besides better hours, better wages, healthier con-
ditions) are the points of a good job? Imagine a sensible man
looking for a satisfactory work, a vocational adviser guiding novices
toward the best available occupation, and a statesman trying to
mold the industrial world somewhat nearer to the heart's desire,
what should they try for? Physical and financial standards deter-
mine what we get out of a job. But what shall we get m it? Much
or little, I think, according to its fitness or unfitness for our person-
ality, a factor much neglected nowadays.
[20] Among the points of a good job I shall name seven: T.
Difficulty and crudcness enough to call out our latent powers of
mastery. 2. Variety and initiative balanced by monotony and super-
vision. 3. A boss. 4. A chance to achieve, to build something and
to recognize what we have done. 5. A title and a place which is
ours. 6. Connection with some institution, some firm, or some
cause, which we can loyally serve. 7. Honorable and pleasant rela-
tions with our comrades in work.
[21] Fulfil these conditions and work is one of the best things in
life. Let me describe them more fully.
[22] We want a chance to subdue. We want to encounter the
raw and crude. Before the commercial age, war, hunting, and
agriculture gave us this foil. We want it still, and for the lack of it
often find our work too soft.
[23] Of course, we can easily get an over-dose of crude resistance.
A good job should offer us a fair chance of our winning. We have
no desire to be crushed without a struggle. But we are all the
better pleased if the fish makes a good fight before he yields.
[24] Not only in the wilderness, btit wherever we deal with raw
material, our hands meet adventures. Every bit of wood and stone,
every stream and every season has its own tantalizing but fascinating
individuality, and as long as we have health and courage, these novel-
ties strike not as a frustration but as a challenge.
[25] Even in half-tamed products, like leather or steel, there are,
experts tell me, incalculable variations which keep us on the alert
RICHARD CABOT 239
if we arc still close enough to the elemental to feel its fascinating
materiality. When a clerk sells drygoods over the counter, I sup-
pose he has to nourish his frontiersman's spirit chiefly in foiling the
wily bargain-hunter or trapping the incautious countryman. But
I doubt if the work is as interesting as a carpenter's or a plumber's.
It reeks so strong of civilization and the "finished product" that it
often sends us back to the woods to seek in a "vacation" that touch
with the elemental which should properly form part of daily work.
[26] We want both monotony and variety. The monotony of
work is perhaps the quality of which we complain most, and often
justifiably. Yet monotony is really demanded by almost everyone.
Even children cry for it, though in doses smaller than those which
suit their elders. Your secretary does not like her work, if you put
more than her regular portion of variety into it. She does not want
to be constantly undertaking new tasks, adapting herself to new
situations. She wants some regularity in her traveling, some plain
stretches in which she can get up speed and feel quantity of ac-
complishment, that is, she wants a reasonable amount of monotony.
Change and novelty in work are apt to demand fresh thought, and
reduce our speed.
[27] Naturally, there is a limit to this. We want some variety,
some independence in our work. But we can easily get too much.
1 have heard as many complaints and felt in myself as many ob-
jections against variety as against monotony. I have seen and felt
as much discontent with "uncharted freedom" as with irksome
restraint. Bewilderment, a sense of incompetence and of rudderless
drifting, are never far off from any one of us in our work. There
is in all of us something that likes to trot along in harness, not too
tight or galling, to be sure, but still in guidance and with support.
That makes us show our best paces.
[28] Nor is there anything slavish or humiliating in this. It is
simply the admission that we are not ready at every moment to be
original, inventive, creative. We have found out the immense
strain and cost of fresh thinking. We are certain that we were not
born to be at it perpetually. We want some rest in our work, some
relief from high tension. Monotony supplies that relief. Moreover
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the rhythmic and habitual elements in us (ancient labor-saving de-
vices) demand their representation. To do something again and
again as the trees, the birds, and our own hearts do, is a fundamental
need which demands and receives satisfaction in work as well as in
play.
[29] For the tragedies and abominations, the slaveries and degra-
dations of manual labor we cannot put all the blame on the large
element of monotony and repetition which such labor often contains.
We should revolt and destroy any work that was not somewhat
monotonous. But the point is that work should offer to each
worker as much variety and independence as he has originality and
genius, no more and no less. Give us either more or less than our
share and we are miserable. We can be crushed and overdriven by
too much responsibility, as well as by too little. Our initiative, as
well as our docility, can be overworked.
[30] We want a boss, especially in heavy or monotonous labor.
Most monotonous work is ot the sort that is cut out and supplied
ready to hand. This implies that some one else plans and directs it.
In so far as we want monotony, therefore, we want to be driven,
though not overdriven, by a boss. If we arc to do the pulling some
one else should hold the reins. When I am digging my wife's
garden beds I want her to specify where they shall go. We all want
a master of some kind, and most of us want a master in human
shape. The more manual our work is, the more we want him.
Boatmen poling a scow through a creek need some one to steer and
tell them which should push harder as they turn the bends of the
stream. The steersman may be chosen by lot or each may steer in
turn, but some boss we must have, for when we are poling we can-
not well steer and we don't want the strain of trying fruitlessly to
do both. This example is typical of the world's work. It demands
to be bossed, and it is more efficient, even more original when it is
bossed, just enough!
[31] Monotony, then, and bossing we need, but in our own quan-
tity and also of our own kind. For there are different kinds (as
well as different doses) and some are better than others. For exam-
ple, to go to the same place of work every day is a monotony that
RICHARD CABOT 241
simplifies life advantageously for most of us, hut to teach the same
subject over and over again is for most teachers an evil, though it
may be just now a necessary evil.
[32] We must try to distinguish. When we delight in thinking
ourselves abused, or allow ourselves the luxury of grumbling, we
often single out monotony as the target of our wrath. But we must
not take all complaints (our own or other people's) at their face
value. A coat is a misfit if it is too big or too small, or if it puckers
in the wrong place. A job can be a misfit in twenty different ways
and can be complained of in as many different tones. Let us be
clear about this. If our discontent is as divine as it feels, it is not
because all monotony is evil, but because our particular share and
kind of monotony has proved to be a degrading waste of energy.
[33] We want to see the product of our worJ{. The bridge we
planned, the house we built, the shoes we cobbled, help us to get
before ourselves and so to realize more than a moment's worth of
life and effort. The impermanence of each instant's thought, the
transience of every flush of effort tends to make our lives seem shad-
owy even to ourselves. Our memory is like a sieve through which
most that we pick up runs back like sand. But in work we find
refuge and stability, because in the accumulated product of many
days' labor we can build up and present at last to our own sight the
durable structure of what we meant to do. Then we can believe that
our intentions, our hopes, our plans, our daily food and drink, have
not passed through us for nothing, for we have funded their worth
in some tangible achievement which outlasts them.
[34] Further, such external proofs of our efficiency win us not only
self-respect, but the recognition of others. We need something to
show for ourselves, something to prove that our dreams are not
impotent. Work gives us the means to prove it.
[35] I want to acknowledge here my agreement in the charge often
brought against modern factory labor, namely that since no work-
man plans or finishes his product, no one can recognize his product,
take pride in it or see its defects. Even when factory labor is well
paid, its impersonal and wholesale merging of the man in the machine
goes to make it unfit for men and women.
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[36] We want a handle to our name. Everyone has a right to the
distinction which titles of nobility are meant to give, but it is from
our work that we should get them. The grocer, the trapper, the
night-watchman, the cook, is a person lit to be recognized, both by
his own timid self and by the rest of the world. In time the title of
our job comes to stand for us, to enlarge our personality and to give
us permanence. Thus it supplements the standing which is given
us by our product. To "hold down a job" gives us a place in the
world, something approaching the home for which in some form
or other everyone longs. "Have you any place for me?" we ask
with eagerness, for until we find "a place" we are tramps, men
without a country.
[37] A man with a job has, at least in embryo, the kind of recog-
nition which we all crave. He has won membership in a club that
he wants to belong to and especially hates to be left out of. To be
in it as a member in full standing gives a taste of self-respect and
self-confidence.
[38] We want congeniality in our fellow workmen. One of the
few non-physical "points" which people have already learned to look
for in selecting work, is the temper and character of the "boss."
Men, and especially women, care almost as much about this as about
the hours and wages of the jobs. Young physicians will work in a
laboratory at starvation wages for the sake of being near a great
teacher, even though he rarely notices them. The congeniality of
fellow workmen is almost as important as the temper of the boss.
Two unfriendly stenographers in a single room will often give up
their work and take lower wages elsewhere in order to escape each
other.
[39] All this is so obvious to those who look for jobs that I won-
der why so few employers have noticed it. The housewives who
keep their servants, the manufacturers who avoid strikes, are not
always those who pay the best wages and offer the best condition
of work. The human facts the personal relations of employer and
employee are often disregarded, but always at the employer's peril.
The personal factor is as great as the economic in the industrial
unrest of to-day. Are not even the "captains of industry" begin-
ning to wake up to this fact?
RICHARD CABOT 243
[40 | Payment can be given a working man only for what some
other man might have done, because his pay is fixed by estimate of
"what the work is worth," that is, what you can get other people to
do it for. Hence you never pay anyone for what he individually
does, but for what "a man like him," that fictitious being, that sup-
posedly fair specimen of his type and trade, can be expected to do.
[41] The man himself you cannot pay. Yet anyone who does his
work well or gets satisfaction out of it, puts himself into it. More-
over he does things that he cannot be given credit for, finishes parts
that no one else will notice. Even a mediocre amateur musician
knows that the best parts of his playing, his personal tributes to the
genius of the composer whom he plays, are heard by no one but
himself and "the God of things as they arc.*' There might be bit-
terness in the thought that in our work we get paid or praised only
for what is not particularly ours, while the work that we put our
hearts into is not recognized or rewarded. But in the struggle for
spiritual existence we adapt ourselves to the unappreciative features
of our environment and learn to look elsewhere for recognition. We
do not expect people to pay us for our best. We look to the ap-
proval of conscience, to the light of our ideal seen more clearly when
our work is good, or to the judgment of God. Our terms difTer
more than our tendencies. The essential point is that for apprecia-
tion of our best work we look to a Judge more just and keen-sighted
than our paymaster.
[42] Nevertheless there is a spiritual value in being paid in hard
cash. For though money is no measure of the individual value in
work, it gives precious assurance of some value, some usefulness to
people out of the worker's sight. Workers who do not need a
money wage for the sake of anything that they can buy with it,
still need it for its spiritual value. Doctors find this out when they
try to get invalids or neurasthenics to work for the good of their
health. Exercise clone for exercise's sake, is of very little value, even
to the body, for half its purpose is to stimulate the will, and most wills
refuse to work at chest-weights and treadmills, however disguised.
But our minds are still harder to fool with hygienic exercise clone for
the sake of keeping busy. To get any health or satisfaction out
of work it must seem to the worker to be of some use. If he knows
244 10 BS
that the market for raffia baskets is nil, and that he is merely en-
ticed into using his hands for the good of his muscles or of his soul,
he soon gets a moral nausea at the whole attempt.
[43] This is the flaw in ideals of studiousness and self-culture. It
is not enough that the self-culture shall seem good to President
A. Lawrence Lowell or to some kind neurologist. The college boy
himself, the psychoneurotic herself must feel some zest along with
the labor if it is to do them any good. And this zest comes because
they believe that by this bit of work they are "getting somewhere,"
winning some standing among those whose approval they desire,
serving something or somebody besides the hired teacher or trainer.
[44] I once set a neurasthenic patient, formerly a stenographer, to
helping me with the clerical work in my office. She began to im-
prove at once, because the rapid return of her former technical skill
made her believe (after many months of idleness and gnawing worry
about money) that some day she might get back to work. But what
did her far more good was the check which I sent her at the end of
her first week's work. She had not expected it, for she did not think
her work good enough. But she knew me well enough to know
that I had sworn off lying in all forms (even the most philanthropic
and hygienic) and would not deceive her by pretending to value her
work. The money was good for what it would buy, but it was even
better because it proved to her the world's need for what she could
do, and thus gave her a right to space and time upon the earth.
[45] This is the spiritual value of pay. So f 
