Things worth while

of Life Series

Worth Whm

sWentworth Hi^dinson

15-81

r ,— -VT

Southern Branch
of the

University of California

Los Angeles

Form L 1

This book is DUE on the last date stamped below

^ JUN 24 1944

Form L-9-15m-8,'26

SIAlEHORMALSUx>v«,

The Art of Life Series

Things Worth While

THE ART OF LIFE SERIES

Edward Howard Griggs^ Editor

Things Worth While

BY

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON

" Ce n est pas la •victoire qui fait U bonheur des nobles caeurs
— c'est le combat.'"'' [Not in victory lies the joy of noble souls,
but in combat.] — Montalembert.

'X^ISl

NEW YORK

B. W. HUEBSCH

1908

Copyright, 1908, by
B. W. HUEBSCH

PRINTED IN V. S. A.

37
H53

To THE Reader

The germ of this little volume may be
found in a brief paper under a somewhat
similar name which was printed by the
author in the Boston Congregationalist
(December 7, 1907) and received some
kindly approbation. He is now making
a modest effort to follow up the same
theme a little, taking that earlier paper,
with some slight modifications, for his
first chapter. In doing this he has, of
course, the kind consent of the original
publishers.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I The things that are worth while . 1 1

II The conundrum of human life

III How TO elevate the average man

IV Unconscious successes .

V *< Wise through time "

VI " Heaven's best treasures, peace
AND health "

VII Truth is truth .

VIII Conclusion . .

19

27
37
45

53
61

72

Things Worth While

THE THINGS ThAt ARE WORTH WHILE

Amid a constant series of lamentations
on what life takes away, one rarely sees
any attempt to do justice to what It gives.
There are doubtless various tempera-
ments; some adapt themselves to events
better than others; some have a tend-
^ ency to look on the dark side rather
^ than the light. These are, it is to be
^ presumed, matters of inheritance, and
el inheritance is a thing beyond compre-
hending.

I have known a whole family fear-
fully punished by the inheritance of in-
temperate habits from a grandmother
whom none of them had ever seen; I

II

12 Things Worth While

have also known a smaller household
made terribly sad by the fact that the
mother and daughter were both hope-
lessly intemperate, though the only son
had utterly escaped the evil, and sup-
ported them all. But whatever the ex-
tremes or the variety of condition, we
may claim that the great majority of
human beings are more or less happy in
the mere fact of existence, and that the
taking away of life is generally regarded
as the greatest of evils. Let us consider
some of the points which explain this
ardent clinging to life.

There is, for instance, a stereo-
type lamentation over " The Flight of
Youth," a song best sung, perhaps, by
Lord Houghton in his fine poem under
that name. This fact stands for the one
unavoidable calamity, if such It really
be, which seems greater with every suc-
ceeding birthday. But there is, on the
other hand, a series of compensations
for all this, a balm which every year

Things Worth While 13

brings. Age, for instance, teaches
patience and charity. We see before us
the spectacle of men and women whom
the temptations of life have injured, but
also that of others who have grown,
without a visible struggle, more disin-
terested, more honest, more truthful
than they were during a passionate and
ungoverned period of youth. " I have
been through all that," says the anxious
mother, " and have seen the vanity of
it"; and the daughter herself is apt to
reply, " That is just what I wish,
mother, to go through it and sec the
vanity of it, for myself." The longing
suggests that of a little boy, eight years
old, whom I knew, who, when a desire
for Heaven was appealed to, expressed a
strong wish to go to the other place first
and see what it was like. Even the rich
man finds not merely the opportunity for
great benefactions; but, if he prefers,
for smaller ones, as one of the Roths-
childs is reported to have been fond of

14 Things Worth While

saying to his friends, " I advise you to
give a penny to a beggar sometimes; it
is very amusing."

Let us consider pleasures more sub-
stantial than this millionaire's penny rep-
resents. One of the first joys accessible
in life is friendship. " Friendship,"
says the French motto, " is love without
his wings " (I'amitie est I' amour sans
ailes) , and Lowell could find no symbol
so comforting for death itself as when
he wrote :

" Death is beautiful as feet of friend
Coming with welcome at our jour-
ney's end."

With friendship, or above it, is to be
ranked the love of family, of parents, of
children, and of those wedded partners
of whose love, at its highest, the children
themselves are but a symbol. But even
these types of love do not yield quite its
highest expression. " Greater love hath
no man than this, that a man lay down

Things Worth While i^

his life for his friends." Yet He who
said this was yet to show a higher love
when He gave His life for His enemies
also.

It is a point as yet unsettled by moral-
ists whether personal friendship at Its
highest, or even the mutual affection of
the sexes at its best, Is to be ranked
higher, either morally or as a means of
happiness, than that vaster emotion
which the Buddhist sacred books de-
scribe tersely as " Identifying one's self
with others," without thought of return.
"Wherein does religion consist?" asks
one of the pillar Inscriptions of King
Asoga, which date back two centuries
before our era. The answer that fol-
lows is, " In committing the least possi-
ble harm. In doing abundance of good.
In the practice of pity, love, truth and
likewise purity of life."

It is common to say that a man's high-
est duty is to his wife and children. Yet
we call it a still higher piece of self-

1 6 Things Worth While

devotion when he leaves a blissful home
for the defense of his country in war;
or when the life-saving crew puts off, at
risk of death, to save the families of
utter strangers. Does it not show the
essential goodness of human nature
when one finds its noblest standards in
acts like this? Think how widely re-
mote they are from that merely mer-
cenary view of Paley's, where he defines
virtue as consisting in " good done for
the sake of everlasting happiness."

Then come the pleasures of public
life, of literature, of science; all at their
highest in the hands of the unselfish; at
their lowest among those who receive
them selfishly; yet we see people to
whom the mere participation in such"
things is joy forever. No single thrill
among them all is perhaps to be com-
pared to that of the orator at his best,
when his aim is lofty and momentous,
and his grounds of argument are utterly
unselfish.

Things Worth While 17

On the other hand, the Influence of
oratory Is more temporary In Its nature
than any other, both on speaker and
audience; so that the scholar's peaceful
study In this respect gives dally the more
permanent happiness of the two, and
one that can be enjoyed almost at his
will. Both combine to give a large-
minded man happiness, even though he
be personally laid upon the shelf, for he
watches the progress of human events
and sees that on the whole all things
work together for good. The Increas-
ing breadth of thought which he sees
around him really supplies an added
companionship as earthly friends grow
fewer; and he finds himself accompan-
ied, and sometimes even praised, by
those who disapproved and perhaps
stoutly resisted his earlier career.

That Is moreover true which Cicero
has so well pointed out In his book on
"Old Age" {^De Senecttite,) that as
old age has less of strength than youth

1 8 Things Worth While

possesses, so it has less need of it.
Poverty becomes unimportant to those
who have no longer strength to spend,
and luxury to those with whom all but
the simplest living disagrees. That is
true of age which was pointed out by
that keen observer. Lady Eastlake, as
being sometimes true of the high-born
and rich, who often, she writes, " re-
turn to the simplest tastes; they have
everything that man can make, and
therefore they turn to what only God
can make."

II

THE CONUNDRUM OF HUMAN LIFE

Lowell says of the hero in his " The
Courtin'," an event described in a poem
as local and lasting as anything by
Burns :

"He was six feet o' man, A-i,
Clear grit and human natur'.

' '>

It is creatures like these who, appearing
sometimes, though not daily, in real life,
carry all before them as inevitably as
the hero in a novel by Scott or Dumas.
This simple insuperable quality of
vigorous human nature is, whether for
good or for evil, the part that re-
mains still perplexing in all the devices
for making the world over. Fourier
thought that he had thoroughly ana-
lyzed the gifts and passions of man; he

19

20 Thi?igs Worth While

was perfectly sure that among a certain
number of carefully chosen persons —
call It 1680, or whatever his complete
group was — you would find every pos-
sible shading of character and tempera-
ment so perfectly represented that the
whole would at once blend together and
work like a charm. All the faults and
virtues of these people would just bal-
ance each other; and you would have
nothing to do but set that squad apart
in a family party to be happy, and pro-
ceed to pick out the next. He provided
for no alternatives — there never were
any alternatives for Fourier — and he
did not make it clear what to do while
you were waiting; or, still worse, what
to do if you made a mistake and got one
wrongly combined person into your asso-
ciation. If you got only 1679 who were
the right persons and one who was the
wrong person, it is plain that you might
have to begin your work all over again;
supposing, for instance, that the one

Things Worth While 21

person out of place happened to be
Napoleon Bonaparte. It is clear that
one misplaced individual might wreck
the prospects of the whole enterprise.
In such a case numbers are nothing, for
Josh Billings has pointed out that " a
healthy hornet, that feels well, is more
than equal to breaking up a whole camp-
meeting."

One may recognize, as many are com-
ing to see, that certain tendencies toward
socialism are already modifying plat-
forms and parties and people. One may
also wonder, in reading the expounders
of these tendencies, who prophesy such
vast transformations as being a thing
so easy and speedy — one may wonder
what they also are going to do with the
sometimes inconvenient fact of human
nature. Grant that universal suffrage,
and shorter hours of labor, and collec-
tive ownership, and equalized incomes
will remove many of the existing tempta-
tions to evil, what is to become of the

22 Things Worth While

temptations that remain? Grant every
struggle In the world removed, what Is
to become of those of the flesh and of
the third member of the proverbial
trio? Giving everybody bread and
shelter will not give them protection,
except from the comparatively few sins
which grow out of the want of bread
and shelter. Looking through the col-
umns which record crime in the news-
papers, we find that only the minority
among penal offences come from any
such causes. Love and jealousy, hate
and malice, ambition and treachery —
these contribute most largely to swell
the list.

In a country village where all are
very nearly on an equality, and there
Is such an absence of poverty that the
arrival of a distressed family Is hailed
with joy as a convenient outlet for old
clothes, some terrible crime may at any
moment come to the surface. It may
equally come In the most carefully

Things Worth While 23

selected circle of millionaires, where
each man may, if he will, give $20,000
for a new dressing case. Some forms of
peril and temptation may diminish
through the mere changes in social insti-
tutions; thus, for instance, it is already
noticeable how rare a theme for a novel
in America is the seduction of the poor
but virtuous girl by the rich employer
or the powerful landholder, while this
still remains a stock situation in modern
English novels. In general, this class
of peril diminishes as the feudal con-
ditions vanish from the world. But,
after all, the main fact of sin and temp-
tation, as incidents of human nature,
remains. Nor is it yet plain what
socialism, in its best estate, expects to
do about it.

This does not imply any revival of
Calvinism or any special theories of
depravity. Calvinism in the strict
sense, has had both its confirmation and
its worst blow in the study of the laws

24 Things Worth While

of heredity — a study which has practi-
cally superseded it. Here is the tre-
mendous fact of alcoholism in the
blood, for instance, the parent of more
varied crimes than any other single
source. Social grades have absolutely
nothing to do with it. There is quite
as much of it among the rich as among
the poor. In the vast majority of cases
the victim is not driven into it by pov-
erty or discomfort; it is quite as often
the cause of these calamities. It visits
the sin of the parents on the children
to the third and fourth generation.
Grant that long periods may eliminate
this yearning from the blood, and that
improved habits in society may diminish,
if not wholly banish, the temptation.
This, at any rate, must be a very pro-
longed process. We are told, moreover,
that the German socialist usually refuses
to banish beer, and Mr. Bellamy ex-
pressly provides wine for the dwellers in
his paradise. If his imaginary year

Things Worth While 25

2000 could not suffice to bring about a
change so moderate as this, can it have so
transformed human nature that no two
men shall woo the same woman, and that
nobody shall have any enemies?

The final problem, what to do with
the obstinately idle or quarrelsome or
vindictive, is one with which the most
advanced theories fail as yet to grapple.
For years we have held social science
conventions, and the outcome of it all
is that some of the express champions of
humanity still maintain it to be a sacred
duty to punish troublesome prisoners by
personal application of a " paddle " on
the bare body. Mr. Bellamy, in his
reformed world, when the question is
asked what to do with the obstinately
rebellious, can only say that they will
be " cut off from all human society,"
whatever that may mean. It means
either forcible banishment from the
earth or else prison bars within it, and
in either case what is to become of the

26 Things Worth While

millenlum? It implies as long and
patient a working and waiting as did
the abolition of slavery or of the feudal
system. And meanwhile we must accept
the facts of human nature and make the
best we can of the conundrum they offer.

Ill

HOW TO ELEVATE THE AVERAGE MAN

Let us grant, for the sake of argument,
that we are a nation of average men and
women, comfortable in a worldly way,
but wanting in what is distinctive and
interesting; unable to produce anything
but beef, cotton, and mechanical inven-
tions. Thus say some of our visitors
and, being visitors, they must not be con-
tradicted, even if we believe them quite
wrong. The next question would seem
to be how to elevate ourselves out of
this lowly condition?

In some ways the proper answer
would seem — at least to our critics —
very easy. Instead of trying to write
books, for instance, and taking our
own literature seriously, these critics
would say that we should Import books

27

28 Things Worth While

written for us in England, and should
read those. Instead of cultivating our
own oratory, we should introduce Eng-
lish lecturers, and compare their voices
and manner of delivery with those of
Everett and Phillips and Curtis. It
would seem a simple remedy, but at once
we encounter difficulties. For one thing,
we are a composite nation; with the im-
migration of the old world, we already
have a cosmopolitan lineage. " What
then, is the American, this new man?"
asked Crevecoeur, in his " Letters of an
American Farmer," more than a hun-
dred years ago. " I could point out to
you a man whose grandfather was an
Englishman, whose wife was Dutch,
whose son married a French woman, and
whose present four sons have now four
wives of different nations. He is an
American, who, leaving behind him all
his ancient prejudices and manners, re-
ceives new ones from the new mode of
life he has embraced, the new govern-

Things Worth While 29

ment he obeys, and the new rank he
holds. . . . The American is a
new man, who acts upon new principles ;
he must, therefore, entertain new ideas
and form new opinions."

Grant now that we are humble, lowly,
and altogether unpromising. What bet-
ter can we do than to go to work in our
own way, and in the new spirit neces-
sarily involved in this situation to raise
ourselves? The mixture of blood
which Crevecoeur found in 1782 is now
far more complicated. There is hardly
a living American who has not several
European nationalities, at least, com-
mingled in his veins. Grant that we
must look to Europe for light {^ex or'iente
lux), to what part of Europe shall it
be? No doubt the identity of language
and the genealogy of institutions binds
us first of all to England. Is it not
evident that to be a mere transplanted
England is not enough? Even if there
is no chance left for originality, we are

30 Things Worth While

clearly placed here to select, not to
duplicate ; to choose from all civilizations
what suits us, not to be a servile copy of
any one among these. When England It-
self has borrowed from Germany Its one
great philologist. Max Miiller; when It
obtains from France the suggestion and
the very title of Its one humorous per-
iodical. Punch, or the London Chari-
vari; it Is absurd to suppose that we, a
far more mixed nation, shall not bor-
row what hints we need wherever we
can find them. If we can obtain a bet-
ter President through the Dutch blood
than through the English, let us have
him and stand by him. If our young
artists learn more In France than In
England, we shall send a hundred to
Paris and not one to London; if our
college graduates can acquire more in
Germany than in England, It will be at
Berlin, not Oxford, that they are regis-
tered. The more we need to learn, the
.more absolutely It is our duty to judge

Things Worth While 31

for ourselves under what teaching to
put ourselves; nor will the advance of
time or knowledge make us less reso-
lute in this selection. Voir le monde,
c'est jtiger les juges.

So much for what we are to take from
others, and as for ourselves, what bet-
ter can the average man do than to try
to educate the next generation of his
race, and provide for an improved civil-
ization? To complain that we have not
old castles; to point out indignantly, as
Renan did twenty years ago, that the
whole United States cannot yet claim to
have produced as many great pictures as
some third-rate Italian towns — this is as
unreasonable as if one were to twit Eng-
land or France with not possessing the
series of fossil horses found by Pro-
fessor Marsh in Wyoming Territory.
Each nation must begin with what it
has; if we have not Carnarvon Castle,
it is something to have had the Dinornis
and the Serpent Mound — " an ill-fav-

32 Things Worth While

ored thing, but mine own," as Touch-
stone says of his bride. For the rest,
we are trying to form collections of art,
that they may teach us art; to form
libraries, that we may modestly learn
something from books. When I en-
tered Harvard College the library
proper contained 38,000 volumes, and
was the largest in the country; it now
contains about half a million, and is not
the largest. All over the nation the
means of self-training have increased in
something like this proportion within
less than half a century. It would seem
a very modest and innocent method for
a nation to improve itself; and there
would seem to be something almost
meritorious in the effort, could we but
venture to trust our own poor judg-
ment.

But some of our critics, such as the
late Matthew Arnold, set aside all this
as a thing so unimportant as to be al-
most valueless, " Partial and material

Things Worth While 33

achievement is always being put for-
ward as civilization," he complained,
" We hear a nation called highly civil-
ized by reason of its industry, com-
merce, and wealth, or by reason of its
liberty or equality, or by reason of its
numerous churches, schools, libraries,
and newspapers. . . . Do not tell
me of the great and growing number of
your churches and schools, libraries and
newspapers." But if these institutions
are not a means of civilization, what
constitute such means? Grant that a
church is not religion, it certainly rep-
resents the impulse toward religion.
Grant that a library is not education,
it certainly implies the desire for It. It
is easy to object, to criticise; but In my
opinion the most ignorant young man
who pinches himself that he may give
a book to the public library of his town;
every mechanic who subscribes half a
dollar, as many a one did half a cen-
tury ago, to found the Boston Art

34 Thifigs Worth While

Museum or the Chicago Observatory,
does more for real civilization than the
foreigner who comes among us for a
short visit and goes home to vent his
spleen because a few more dollars than
he expected had to be spent on cab hire.
Nay, more, to use the word just now
brought into fashion, the myriad of un-
known men and women who are now
laboring as best they know how to build
up a true civilization in America, are,
in the highest degree, " interesting,"
and the man who fails to find them so
is the man who is unworthy of the civil-
ization of his time. The writer hap-
pened once to be one of the custodians
of four great gifts, proceeding from one
single man, to the city of his birth — a
new city hall, a new public library, the
land for a new high school building,
and the land, building, and outfit for an
industrial school, to be sustained for
four years by the donor. The whole
amount of these donations was about

Things Worth While 35

half a million dollars, and they pro-
ceeded from a young man of thirty,
whose wealth, though large, was not by
any means enormous, tried by the mod-
ern standard, and who spent his life in
California, and had but one glimpse at
the buildings for which he had paid.
No matter about the amount of the
gift, its spirit represents that of a vast
series of similar donations which are
being distributed from multitudes of
sources over our land. It is in this noble
way that America wars against the
ignoble; by this modest and unwearied
effort that it proves itself to be — not at
the top of civilization — far enough
away from that — but at least patiently
laboring on the ascent. It is not, per-
haps, to be expected that every foreigner
should have the discernment to see all
this, but that only offers the more rea-
son why we should see it for ourselves.
What we need as a nation, is not less
self-confidence, but more; to hold on our

36 Things Worth While

appointed way, though a thousand crit-
ics fail to comprehend what we aim at.
The American who does not see this
casts himself off from all the inspiration
of his country, from all hope of original
production. Fields are won by those
who believe in the winning.

IV

UNCONSCIOUS SUCCESSES

No BETTER social maxlm has been ut-
tered in our times than that laid down
fifty years ago by the veteran English
reformer, John Jacob Holyoke, in his
newspaper, The Reasoner, namely this:
" The unconscious progress of fifty
years is equivalent to a revolution."
The older one grows, the more the truth
of this doctrine Is felt. Another Eng-
lish reformer, on a somewhat higher
social plane, the late Honorable Mrs.
William Grey — to whom was largely
due, with Lady Stanley of Alderley, the
establishment of Girton College in Eng-
land— told me some thirty years ago, that
when she looked back on her youth and
counted over the reforms for which she
and her friends had then labored, and

37

38 Things Worth While

saw how large a part of them had tri-
umphed, it almost seemed as if there
were nothing left to be done. It is the
same with many Americans who sud-
denly have the thought come over them
anew that, no matter what happens,
negro slavery is dead on our soil. In
movements that affect whole nations, we
hardly appreciate the changes that have
come until we look back and wonder
what brought them about. When we
reflect that Pope Alexander VI once
divided the unexplored portions of the
globe between the Spaniards and the
Portuguese, as the two controlling na-
tions of the earth; that Lord Bacon
spoke of the Turks and Spaniards as the
only nations of Europe which could
claim real military greatness; that the
Dutch admiral. Van Tromp, once
cruised with a broom at the masthead
to show that he had swept the British
forever from the seas; it sometimes im-
presses us as being something almost as

Things Worth White 39

remote as the days of the Pleslosaurus
or the Mylodon in zoology.

Later still, we saw before our eyes,
the utter vanishing of the French mili-
tary prestige. There was a time when
merely to be French was to be formida-
ble, even though Napoleon was gone.
The tradition lasted really unbroken
down to the Crimean war, during which
the French still seemed, compared with
the English, like trained men beside
brave but clumsy schoolboys. In 1859,
Matthew Arnold wrote from Strasburg,
then still French, " He [Lord Cowley]
entirely shared my conviction as to the
French always beating any number of
Germans who came into the field against
them. They will never be beaten by any
other nation but the English." When
our American Civil War began, every
tradition of our army, every text-book,
every evolution was French. The tech-
nical words were often of that language
— echelon, glacis, barbette. There

40 Things Worth While

sprung up everywhere zouave com-
panies with gaiters. A few years later
this whole illusion suddenly broke and
subsided almost instantly like a wave on
the beach. Since the Civil War our
entire system of tactics has been modi-
fied and simplified, our young officers
are sent to Germany to study the maneu-
vers, and our militia men are trained
by German rules. Then came our easy
victory over Spain; in short, there has
passed before our eyes a change of posi-
tion as astonishing as that under which
Turkey and Holland had previously
become insignificant powers. It is to
be further noticed in such cases, that
our eyes are kept veiled up to the very
moment when the thing occurs. At the
outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War,
a deluge of war maps suddenly ap-
peared, both in London and in Paris.
They were invariably, however, maps
of North Germany and the Rhine prov-
inces and were, of course, utterly use-

Things Worth While 41

less. No one had dreamed for an in-
stant that the war would take place
wholly on French soil.

Lord Shelburne, chief of the English
ministry, predicted that with the loss of
the American colonies " the sun of Eng-
land would set and her glories be
eclipsed forever." Edmund Burke,
whom Macaulay declares to have prob-
ably ranked above all others in foresight,
pronounced France to be in 1790 "not
politically existing " and " expunged
out of the map of Europe." Mr. Glad-
stone thought that Jefferson Davis had
created not merely an army but a
nation. An acute English book, Pear-
son's " National Life and Character,"
after mentioning these and other in-
stances of the blindness of statesmen,
goes on to add to them two equally
striking of the author's own. Writing in
1893, and therefore before the war be-
tween China and Japan, he predicts that
China is likely to be organized into a

42 Things Worth While

great power, her flag floating on every
sea, but that she will gradually acquire
new dominion, and that we cannot imag-
ine such a thing as a foreign conquest
of China. Thus much in respect to the
history of nations, but his prediction
in regard to science goes even beyond
this in its failures. It is his favorite con-
clusion that human life is destined to
grow in the end more comfortable but
less enjoyable, since all the fine thoughts
will have been thought, and all the
really interesting discoveries made:
" Even if the epoch of great discovery
is not exhausted, the new results are al-
most certain to be less simple, less sen-
sational than the first revelations of
astronomy and geology have been."
Thus wrote Mr. Pearson in 1893, and
three years later came the .r-rays and
wireless telegraphy. The wit of man
could not have devised a greater anti-
climax, whatever we may think of the
deserts and alleged canals of Mars.

Things Worth While 43

When we turn to social progress, we
find similar high expectations, not al-
ways proved true by direct results, while
the aims and ideas represented often re-
appear in some higher form. Fourier,
having announced that he would remain
at home every noon to receive offers of
a million francs to carry out his vast
designs, kept faithfully the tryst for
twelve years, without a single visitor.
Robert Owen, disappointed at the fail-
ure of Parliament to take up his sug-
gestions for prompt action, said sadly,
"What! postpone the happiness of the
whole human race to the next session? "
The late Thomas Hughes admitted that
when Maurice and the Christian Social-
ists first formulated their plans, they
all believed that the results would
develop very quickly. The American
Socialists of the Brook Farm period
confidently believed, as one of their
leaders assured me, that the national
workshops of the French Revolution of

44 Thiyigs Worth While

1848 would be a complete success, al-
though Louis Blanc, who had charge
of them, told me in later years that he
personally had never shared this belief.
Brook Farm was in some ideal and
social ways so attractive, that I never
met any one who did not look back with
enjoyment on the life there; and all the
faithful believed that such experiments
would be multiplied on a larger and
larger scale, until they molded society.
Every succeeding effort in the same line
has broken down with great regularity,
after a period of promise; and yet who
can deny that the vast development of
organization among workingmen, the
growth of public ownership and of
philosophic thought, has come indirectly
as the fulfillment of what Fourier and
Owen and Maurice dreamed?

V

" WISE THROUGH TIME "

— Pope's Homefs Iliad, III: 197

A LADY living In the suburbs of an
American city heard, one day, just be-
fore breakfast-time, a timid knock at
her front door; opening it she saw be-
fore her a beautiful Italian boy, perhaps
ten years old, and looking as if he had
just stepped from a canvas of Raphael
or Francia. His soft eyes, his tangled
hair, his trustful smile won her In-
stantly; and when he stated In a voice as
lovely as his face, that he desired some
breakfast, she ordered everything in the
house to be set before him. He ate with
deliberate and comprehensive appetite,
while she sat at his side, rewarded occa-
sionally by a flash of the same seraphic
smile. Even breakfast has Its llmita-

45

46 Things Worth While

tlons, and she at last dismissed him from
the door with a sigh of regret. Hap-
pening to go out some two hours later,
she found him sitting peacefully on the
steps, smiling upon her as trustfully as
ever. " Why," she said with surprise,
" I thought you had gone away long
ago! " " Oh, no," he said In the same
heavenly voice, "What for go away?
Plenty time go away! "

What followed is not known. Every
story worth telling stops before the fin-
ish and leaves the performers still on
the stage. Yet for an absolutely vast
and unrestricted view of the resources
of the universe, this answer takes rank
with that of Thoreau's Indian who had,
as he said, " All the time there was."
It shows some real advantage to our
nervous and hurried race in the Importa-
tion of another people who have plenty
of time for everything, and can put an
absolutely undoubted leisure Into the
simple process of going away. But that

Things Worth While 47

little story yields also a more common-
place moral : that it is far easier to
begin an Interference with other peo-
ple, even to the extent of a breakfast,
than to get them out of our lives
afterward. Once open relations, for
instance, with a high-minded but per-
sistent crank, and who knows what sum-
mer hours must be lavished, what sheets
of good paper spoiled, before you can
detach yourself from that connection?
Once engage yourself to find a better
tenement for a poor family, and you feel
yourself responsible for every inconveni-
ence in the dw^elllng to which you re-
move them. Once subscribe to help a
bright boy to college, and you feel, with
dismay, that you are not only Involved
by conscience in the cost of all future
term bills, but even in the ultimate prob-
lems as to whether he ever ought to
have gone to college and to what voca-
tion he shall turn himself after he ob-
tains his diploma. The most simple and

48 Things Worth While

unquestionable deed of virtue may bring
upon us results far beyond counting; and
fate resembles that formidable piper in
Longfellow's " Spanish Students," who
asked only a maravedi (or farthing) for
playing, but charged ten for leaving off.
We must remember that every phase
of human life in America, at least, has
its joys and Its cares. As a rule, in our
\ climate and social life, people find
pleasure in toil. Our leisure classes have
to invent some form of hard work for
themselves in the way of golfing or auto-
mobiling, and aside from this the mere
social duties, when taken at their high-
est, develop gradually enough occupa-
tion to frighten any innocent rustic, and
sometimes to discourage even the votar-
ies themselves. Where is social pleas-
ure supposed to be carried to a higher
point than in Newport, R. L, In sum-
mer? Yet a lady, one of the very lead-
ers there, said to me some years ago, " It
takes my four daughters and myself

Things Worth While 49

every atom of our time and strength
from day to day simply to keep up with
our social obligations; this lasts all sum-
mer and then we return to the city " — in
this case Philadelphia — " and we com-
mence precisely the same life there, and
it will last all winter, with only a slight
mitigation in Lent." It is safe to say
that no farmer's or miner's daughter
would be able to tolerate such an exist-
ence for a month, and yet all these ladies
were cultivated, independent, and full of
higher impulses that remained ungrati-
fied through want of leisure. For men of
the same class, there is a shade of free-
dom with, perhaps, less refined tastes.
What can be Imagined in the way of
conversation more vapid than the talk
which may easily go on for a whole
morning at a club of fashionable men.
My most vivid impression of social
drudgery goes back to a day when I hap-
pened in at the chief club at Newport,
and three or four gentlemen of this

50 Things Worth While

stamp were sitting together and debat-
ing the question of servants' liveries.
Two hours later, I chanced to look in
again and they were still at it, a little
refreshed by the suggestion of a change
of tailors. They were all, I believe,
worthy men, but what must their ordi-
nary existence be, if this was their re-
laxation ! As a rule, the most enjoyable
pursuits in life are, so far as I can see,
those which bring the least intercourse
with money, so long as they afford an
earnest subsistence and one for which
even their drudgery is a pleasure.
" The artist is," said Goethe, " the only
man who lives with unconcealed aims."
Haydon, in his diary, says that when he
gets a large canvas up and goes to work
on a new historical picture, kings are not
his superiors. The old German pro-
fessor in Longfellow's " Hyperion "
hoped to die with a proof sheet In his
hand, and the utmost desire of the bril-
liant French author, Stendhal, was to

Things Worth While 51

spend his life in a Paris garret writing
plays and novels. Elmsley, the Greek
critic, when asked by Lady Eastlake
why the Germans beat the English in
scholarship, replied, " Because they
never go out to tea."

The only great and permanent fame
comes from great gifts which seem, at
least to their admirers, well used. In
one of Heinrich Heine's fragmentary
papers on England, there is a fine pas-
sage which may or may not be imagi-
nary, describing how he came among
the London docks to some great ship
just from an Oriental port, breathing
of the gorgeous East and manned with
a crew of dark Mohammedans of many
tribes. Weary of the land around him,
and yearning for the strange world from
which they came, he yet could not utter
a word of their language, till at last he
thought of a mode of greeting. Stretch-
ing forth his hands, he cried " Moham-
med I" Joy flashed over their dark

52 Things Worth While

faces, and assuming a reverent posture,
they answered, " Bonaparte ! " These
names stood for greatness, and yet there
is a greater greatness.

VI

''heaven's best treasures, peace
and health "

— Gray's Ode on Vicissitude.

"Take from our lives the strain and
stress," said Whittier. The words were
uttered amid the calm of a Quaker home
and in a quiet village, not yet given over
to manufacturing. If this was his
prayer, what must that of the world at
large be? Yet he himself loved at least
the thought of adventure and never
could forget how in early childhood the
solemn organ-roll of Gray's " Elegy "
and the lyric sweep and pathos of Cow-
per's " Lament for the Royal George,"
fascinated him with a sense of mystery
and power, felt rather than understood.
" A spirit passed before my face, but the
power thereof was not discerned," he
says, quoting it in his preface to " Child-

53

54 Things Worth While

Life in Prose." He says elsewhere, and
truly, that " the happiest people in the
world are those who still retain some-
thing of the child's creative faculty of
imagination, which makes atmosphere
and color, sun and shadow, and bound-
less horizons, out of what seems to
prosaic wisdom most inadequate mate-
rial— a tuft of grass, a mossy rock, the
rain-pools of a passing shower, a
glimpse of sky and cloud, a waft of west
wind, a bird's flutter and song. ..."

" Whittier had a great deal of the
natural man left under his brown home-
spun waistcoat and straight collar. He
had the reticence and presence of an
Arab chief, with the eye of an eagle."
Thus said his life-long neighbor and stu-
dent, Robert S. Rantoul, and no man
ever portrayed Whittier with such keen-
ness.

If this was Whittier's early prayer,
what would be his prayer to-day! It is
not much more than fifty years since the

Things Worth While 55

people in our country villages lived by
farming, the men mostly making their
own sleds, shingles, axe handles, scythes,
brooms, ox bows, bread troughs, and
mortars; the women carding, spinning,
braiding, binding and dyeing. They sat
around great fireplaces with hanging
crane, fire-dogs, and a spit turned by
hand or by clockwork; they made their
own tallow candles, and used, even on
festive occasions, wooden blocks or raw
potatoes for candlesticks; they ate from
pewter kept bright by the wild scouring-
rush {Equ'isetum) ^ they doctored their
own diseases by fifty different wild
herbs, all gathered near home, and all
put up in bags for the winter, or hung
in rows of dried bunches. They spun by
hour-glasses; they used dials, or had
noon-marks at different points on the
farm; in many cases they did not sit
down to regular meals, but each took a
bowl of milk, and helped himself from
the kettle of mashed potatoes or Indian

56 Things Worth While

pudding. Soap was made at home;
cheese, pearlash, birch vinegar, cider,
beer, baskets, straw hats. Each farm
was a factory of odds and ends — a vil-
lage store in itself, a laboratory of ap-
plied mechanics. Now all that period
of sturdy individualism is as utterly
passed by as the government of the
Pharaohs. The railroad has killed It
all. Every process on the farm has been
revolutionized by science or mechanical
Invention; every article can now be
bought more cheaply than It can be
made at home. The very mending of
clothes now hardly marks the good
housewife; you are told that it is cheaper
for the elder daughter to go to work
in the factory, and to buy with her
wages new suits of ready-made clothing
for the boys. The difference between
city and country life Is no longer a dif-
ference of kind, but only of degree. All
have become a part of a swiftly moving
machine.

Thifigs Worth While S7

One of the best things that ever hap-
pened to the wives and daughters of
American country farmers was the mus-
ter of both sexes into the Farmers'
Grange, where they have an equal sway
in choosing officers; and if they are
dressed with some especial decoration
and the women are called by the old
Latin names of Ceres and Pomona, it is
so much the better. It takes them from
those absolutely quiet lives on remote hill-
sides which have driven insane, as observ-
ing physicians tell us, so many women
of that rural class. " It is vain to
say," says Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre,
" that human beings ought to be satis-
fied with tranquillity; they must have
action, and they will make it if they
cannot find it. . . . They [women]
suffer from too rigid a restraint, too
absolute a stagnation, precisely as men
would suffer."

Taken in moderation, self-restraint is
admirable. One of the most cultivated

58 Things Worth While

and attractive women whom England
ever sent to this country, could never
express her astonishment on finding
Americans so calm and never in a hurry,
as she had expected to find people
" hustling " everywhere. This was in
Boston, however, and after Chicago
travelers had told her friends in Eng-
land that it would " take but little time
to make culture hum " in that vigorous
city. Yet my friend found culture seem-
ing to hum and peace prevailing. On
the other hand, another friend of mine
of wide local experience and who had
spent a winter in a stagnant Southern
village wrote that her one desire was to
stand on a corner in Buffalo and " see
things hustle," But the modern mail
carrier is so rapidly spreading himself
over the rural regions that he does the
hustling for all. He comes daily to the
humblest cottage with newspapers and
gay circulars and pictures from publish-
ers, and at any rate briefly informs the

Things Worth While 59

cottagers what the world Is doing, even
if their children are grown up and gone
away.

Thus the very Ceres and Pomona of
the Grange have company. Even in the
intervals of the Grange meeting, they
are not wholly banished from the world.
In their imaginations Ceres can protect
all the fruits of the earth like her
Roman ancestress, and so can Pomona
pick up pears beneath the trees. In cit-
ies, on the other hand, noise and tumult
increase with modern civilization, and
neither the artist nor the author is free
for five minutes from the most puzzling
duties or perplexing questions. The
country resident, however remote, hears
messages once a day and has twenty-
four hours in which to decide upon his
reply to them. He cannot consult with
his friends so instantaneously by mail,
nor perhaps even by telephone, but he
can be guided by second thoughts in-
stead of first impulses, and the pine

6o Things Worth While

woods or brooksides may be a better
adviser than the whirl of the city.
Truly said old John Dryden:

" Better to hunt in fields for health
unbought,
Than fee the doctor for a nau-
seous draught."

VII

TRUTH IS TRUTH

"Truth is truth
To the end of reckoning."
— Measure for Measure, Act v, Sc. i

Emerson somewhere says that at every
moment of a man's life it is he himself
and nobody else who fixes his position.
Coleridge was fond of an anecdote con-
cerning a silent stranger who sat next
him at a public dinner, and who would
have remained a dignified and com-
manding figure in his memory, had not
the excellence of some apple dumplings
called him for a moment from his shell
of silence. Coming out of it, he ar-
dently exclaimed, " Them's the jockies
for me." After that he might have
been a saint or hero at heart, but the
case was hopeless in the mind of Cole-

6i

62 Things Worth While

ridge. There may be whole grades of
social standing In a single sentence. If
a stranger begins by saying in our hear-
ing, " We was," or " He done It," we
regard him as distinctly uneducated,
even though he be a college professor
or a member of Congress. Of a little
higher grade would be the errors, " I
don't know as," or " a great ways," or
" cute." I remember when an ardent
young friend of mine, who had climbed
to the top of an old-fashioned stage
coach in order to be near a certain cele-
brated orator, and presently heard him
remark to his little daughter, " Sis, do
you set comfortable where you be?"
At the next stopping place, my young
friend decided that the day was very
windy, and thought she would get down
again and ride inside.

Yet there is no doubt that we learn
language mainly by ear and speak good
or bad English long before we have
looked into a grammar. Truth is truth,

Things Worth While 63

and correctness is correctness, but who
shall decide what correctness is? It is
to be remembered that the English lan-
guage itself is a peculiarly whimsical
and inconsistent one. The educated
American says, " It Is he," while the
educated Englishman still perversely
says, " It is him," and tries to defend it.
Just so an Englishman says " different
to" instead of "different from"; or
" directly I went," rather than " directly
after I went." The most curious of all
is the way in which an American phrase
like that of " I expect " is used instead
of " I think " by good talkers and writ-
ers in England, whereas it is now nearly
abandoned In this country, whence It
sprung.

As It Is with mere words, so it is with
all observation and thought. Wc must
never forget that our children have to
learn by actual life what is true and
what is not. Mere words from the
grown-ups are not enough. My little

64 Things Worth While

daughter in her childish years was al-
ways filled with a desire to reach the
stars, and during our early morning gos-
sip she looked with perpetual longing
upon the next-door neighbor's chimney.
On my explaining to her that even should
she reach the top of it the stars would
seem not much nearer, she meditated a
moment and then said, " What should
you think of a ladder? " and lost a good
deal of confidence in me when I doubted
the possibility of reaching the stars by a
device so simple. The changes in chil-
dren's imaginings often prove, however,
the most effectual way of removing them
from their woes. In Hans Andersen's
story, the old hen assures her chickens
that the world Is very much larger than
is generally supposed; that, indeed, it
stretches to the other side of the
parson's orchard, for she has looked
through a hole in the fence and has
seen. But to a child the whole realm
of knowledge is like the parson's

Things Worth While 65

orchard, and all experience is only a
glimpse through some new hole in the
fence.

The actual facts gradually observed
In the social world outdo all imagina-
tion, and would seem incredible to
those who had not seen them with
their own eyes. William Austin, a Bos-
ton lawyer, the author of the once
famous story " Peter Rugg, the Missing
Man," visited London more than a hun-
dred years ago, and records It as no un-
common thing to see In the streets of
that city a chariot and eight, namely a
vehicle drawn by four horses and with
four liveried servants In lace and gold,
one on the box and three standing be-
hind the carriage. Some carriages, he
reports, had four straps behind them,
with room for four of these lackeys.
Nothing in " Peter Rugg " seems quite
so Incredible as this, and London liver-
ies have now ceased to be even ludicrous,
because the servants would no longer

66 Things Worth While

bear it, and In America, they have never
been ludicrous at all. They are now
regarded as simply a badge of office,
like the uniform of a railway official,
which was, within my memory, much
disliked by those who wore it because
it seemed too much like being under
orders.

They tell in Cambridge a story of a
small boy of a distinguished professor
who, having been deprived of his dinner
as a penalty for a mis-statement, met the
punishment somewhat philosophically
by the vigorous avowal, " I guess I'll
truth it for a while." We all come back
to this at last, that truth Is the surest
ground and makes Its way.

Even religious thought and institu-
tions develop themselves In much the
same manner. Emerson, In his Divinity
Hall address in 1838, when giving that
description, never to be forgotten by
any reader, of his attendance In a coun-
try church during a snowstorm when the

Things Worth While 67

snow was real and the preacher merely
phenomenal, drew the conclusion that
the popular Interest in public worship
was gone or going. Walk the streets on
Sunday, seventy years later, and see if
you think so. Yet I remember well that
all who passed for radicals then held
this view; I know that I expected, for
one, to see a great diminution in the
building of churches and in the habit of
attendance. Practically the result has
not followed; even the automobiles have
not emptied the churches. The differ-
ence is not in the occupants of the pews,
but of the pulpits; that course has been
adopted which Henry Ward Beecher
recommended at a ministers' meeting —
'4iot to scold the people for sleeping in
church, but to send somebody into the
pulpit to wake up the minister. , There
is now a prevalence of larger thought,
of braver action than formerly. One of
the most brilliant women in Boston, who
had been brought up under the strict

68 Things Worth While

sway of the Rev. Nehemiah Adams,
once complained to me that the greatest
injustice had been done by unfair critics
to that worthy pastor. "He was," she
said, " the greatest and kindest of men.
He was never heard to say a harsh
or unkind word about any one — ex-
cept, indeed, the Almighty. He drew
the line there." But It is now a rare
thing even for the heretic to go Into
church and hear anything that makes his
blood run absolutely cold; and as for the
real things of life, can any one doubt
that he will hear more about them than
in those sterner days? In no direction
is this change more astounding to the
reformer than In the American Episco-
pal Church. I can look back on the time
when It was, distinctly and unequivo-
cally, the church of decorum, and had
In that direction, doubtless, a certain
value. No one looked there for a re-
former; whereas now all the younger
Episcopal clergy seem everywhere to

Things Worth While 69

take their place in the ranks of active
philanthropy; whether High Church or
Low Church, they are all strong on the
practical side. Note also the spirit of
the Roman Catholic Church in its
Washington University — how it adapts
Itself to American needs and to modern
days; how it grasped, for instance, the
opportunity of sending delegates to the
Chicago Parliament of Religions, which
the Episcopal Church missed.

That mighty gathering in 1893 of
men of various nationalities and opinions
was in itself an outcome of unconscious
revolution. What the Free Religious
Association had humbly imagined for
twenty-five years, and had ventured to
represent as far as It could, was sud-
denly taken up and swept into mag-
nificent realization v/ith the resources of
Chicago and under the admirable guid-
ance of a Presbyterian Doctor of
Divinity. There are tides of thought on
which we float and which are constantly

70 Things Worth While

bringing about, though usually in unex-
pected ways, the good of which the brave
and wise have dreamed. The higher
criticism of the Bible, for instance, Is
already giving back the book as sacred
literature to multitudes who had out-
grown the conviction of its infallibility.
In the church where I was bred, the
First Parish in Cambridge, Massachu-
setts, the prescribed reading of the Old
Testament had almost died out and dis-
appeared from families and it looked as
if the magnificent strains of David
would be left unknown by the young,
when Professor Toy came, full charged
with modern knowledge; and how soon
the greater part of the large congrega-
tion was ready to remain an hour after
rhurch every Sunday to hear him lecture
about Ezekiel and Jeremiah ! They took
their Bibles with them to be used in a
way to remind one of those old congre-
gations in Scotland, where all hearers
finger over the leaves for every text

Things Worth While 71

that is cited, as if to make sure that the
preacher is not cheating them. This is
unconscious revolution and if it has been
obvious through any given half century,
the same probably will hold good dur-
ing much longer periods. That, how-
ever, is much harder to estimate, for
as Joseph de Maistre well says, " One
may watch sixty generations of roses,
but what man can live to see the whole
development of an oak." {"On pent
voir soixante generations des roses, mais
quel homme pent assister ait developpe-
ment total d'un chenef ")

VIII

CONCLUSION

In the successive chapters of this little
volume, it is to be hoped that the author
has made its aim clear as well as the line
of thought which he has followed, giv-
ing as he hopes to each chapter, the
character of an unit. The first chapter
seeks to indicate what those things are
which make human life on the whole
worth living. The next seeks to con-
dense these same things into a conun-
drum, to be practically solved In life.
This may Involve, without doubt, some
alteration of habits and tastes In many
readers; and with the changes Involved
by these the third chapter seeks to deal.
The fourth chapter aims to show how

this Is to be done, not by following up

72

Things Worth While 73

these changes alone, but by ways lead-
ing to solid success. This being made
clear, the fifth shows also how quickly
it gives a new and sunny aspect to our
lives when we are wise in the use of
time; the sixth shows that the result
develops human life in two essential
aspects, those of peace and health; the
seventh sums it all up by a strong affirma-
tion that truth is truth, and we are left,
so far as this prevails, where the very
loftiest souls have found strength. That
some readers, at least, may find them-
selves helped both in joy and in sorrow
by this sincere effort is the earnest wish
of the author.

THE

USE OF THE

MARGIN

By EDWARD HOWARD GRIGGS

{In The Art of Life Series)

'T^HE author's theme is the problem of
'*' utilizing the time one has to spend as
one pleases for the aim of attaining the high-
est culture of mind and spirit. How to
work and how to play; how to read and
how to study, how to avoid intellectual dis-
sipation and how to apply the open secrets
of great achievement evidenced in conspicu-
ous lives are among the many phases of the
problem which he discusses, earnestly, yet
with a light touch and not without humor.

izmo, cloth, 50 cents, net;
by mail, - - 55 cents.

B. W. HUEBSCH

Publisher - - - New York

WHERE

KNOWLEDGE

FAILS

By earl BARNES

{In 'The Art of Life Series)

TT^ROM the pen of a scientific thinker,
•*■ one whose attitude is liberal yet rev-
erent, presenting the outlines oi^ a belief in
which the relations of knowledge and faith
are clearly established. While his platform
is certain to be seriously challenged, it is
nevertheless true that many will find in it a
solution of the most important problem pres-
ent-day men and women have to cope with.

l2mo, cloth, 50 cents, net;
by mail, - - 55 cents.

B. W. HUEBSCH

Publisher - - - New York

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