Part 7

So he triumphed--yet without pride; nor did one hear in his spirit's victory any hint of animosity, or talk of reprisals, or bitterness, or demand for indemnities, or hidden hate. Rather, he was to be found each day undefeated in his impregnable gentleness, that still unfallen province in which he dwelt. His were some incalculable riches of the spirit which Poverty had heaped up and amassed for him through those years when his fingers handled without complaint the miserable pennies; his was some towering strength under the disguise of the weak and broken body; like that Olympian glory fabled inevitably to appear some time, under the mortal humility of gods in exile. There was about him, for all his slenderness, something grand, something epic, and allegorical. He might have stood as a symbol of a downtrodden people, such nations as the world (be it said to our shame) sees still, and that not in small numbers--crushed, oppressed by the arrogant, the strong, yet still surviving and giving to the other nations their gifts of gay song or heroic endurance, and out of an incredible bounty still bestowing love and kindness and beauty on the world which has behaved toward them without mercy.

Look, if you will, at the beggar nations of the world, and search the heart of the poor among peoples, and I am convinced that you will find in these also corroborative evidence of truths I have tried here to touch upon but lightly. Let be their follies and their mistakes and all their incredible assumptions: who shall declare that poverty has not enriched them likewise? And among them, shall you not find high and royal and single spirits, who, like Horatio, have both known and loved the world and triumphed over it without animosity? To have known and yet to have loved the world! Is not this the real heart of the matter? Is not this the true test after all, and the indisputable mark of a king's son? And shall you not find it oftener among the poor than elsewhere? For he cannot be said to know the world who has never been at its mercy; even as only he can be said to have triumphed over it, who, having suffered all things at its hands, yet loves it with unconquerable fidelity.

GUESTS

I

RELATIONS OF THE SPIRIT

In his essay on "Character" Emerson points to the mutation and change of religions and theological teachings, and then thunders characteristically, "The moral sentiment alone is omnipotent." Now, Emerson never takes away anything traditional and cherished, but he puts something nobler into your hands in place of it. Hear him: "The lines of religious sects are very shifting, their platforms unstable; the whole science of theology of great uncertainty. No man can tell what religious revolutions await us in the next years." Then with thundering assurance he gives us the coveted reassurance. "But the science of ethics has no mutation. The pulpit may shake, but this platform will not. All the victories of religion belong to the moral sentiment."

I wish it were given me to speak with some such force and truth of what we are wont to call education. Theories are very shifting; the whole science of instruction is of great uncertainty. No man can tell what pedagogic revolutions await us. But the educational value of life has no uncertainty. Schools may come and go; this, the school of life, remains--the greatest of them all. The highest attainments of mankind are due to its teachings.

In still another essay, Emerson, depicting, we suppose, the ideal not the academic scholar, declares with the same tonic forcefulness that "his use of books is occasional and infinitely subordinate; that he should read a little proudly, as one who knows the original and cannot therefore very highly value the copy." Always, life is to Emerson the greater art, and learning, literature, and all other arts whatsoever, but lesser things. "You send your child to the schoolmaster," he flings out, "but it is the schoolboys who educate him."

Precisely. When shall we have taken wholly to heart the so obvious truth? It cannot be but the author of the "Greatest Show on Earth" was right. The world _likes_ to be humbugged; else why all this elaboration of educational systems and theories, educational forms and creeds, this multiplication of modern methods and "didactic material"? These are, indeed, but things that change and fluctuate, and already are on the way to being superseded. Meanwhile the older and larger schoolroom of Life never closes its doors, makes no bid for patronage, retains its old teachers, changes its methods not at all, and still turns out the best pupils.

My own education is generally thought to be above the average. It is my belief that it would be far less considerable but for those various circumstances which in my childhood denied me much schooling, and accorded me a good deal of staying at home.

The home of those days had, it is true, a far greater educative value than can be claimed justly for the home of the present day, owing mainly--I hold it almost beyond dispute--to the fact that it was more given to the practice of hospitality and the entertainment of guests.

Of the homes of my day my own was, I believe, fairly typical. Though a full description of it and of the men and women who frequented it would make a colored recital, so would a like description of the homes of many others besides myself, who were children also at that time. I do not mean that such homes were entirely the rule; yet there were enough of them certainly to constitute a type. They were not likely to be luxurious; those of people of less position nowadays are far finer.

The old house of my childhood was a large and comfortable one, with low-ceilinged, well-proportioned rooms, and wide verandas. Its furnishings were in taste, and contributed greatly to its character. The big Holland secretary, with its bulging sides and secret drawer, was a very piece of romance; the tall clock, with its brass balls and moon face, the old clawfoot mahogany tables, the long scroll sofa, the heavy scroll mahogany sideboard, were as mellow in tone as the old Martin guitar on which men and women, beaux and belles of a past generation, had played; or the harp that stood in a corner, all gold in the afternoon sunlight; or the square Steck piano of the front room, a true grandee in its day. Several really well-painted portraits looked down from the walls, and added a certain stateliness to the warmth of every welcome.

Many people, recalling that home, have spoken to me since of a peculiarly warm and beautiful light which on sunny days was present in the three lower rooms--parlor, sitting-room, and dining-room--that opened one into another.

This light, which had first to make its way past maples and a few pear trees, entered, it seemed, with an especial graciousness, touching softly and lingeringly the old mahogany as it went; and from morning until late afternoon abode in the rooms with a kind of mellow gentleness hardly to be described. There was something well-mannered, unobtrusive, in its coming and going, as though it were conscious of being a guest there; a kind of gracious enjoyment it seemed to take in the place, noticeable in its gentle behaviors among the dark colors and the old books, and in its manner of moving about delicately from object to object, and pausing at last, as it always did, before the tall pier-glass, as though it pleased it to reflect on the three long rooms, doubled to twice their length, before it slipped away again past the western windows and departed across the hills.

I have mentioned carefully the perpetual coming and going of the sunlight because it seems to me symbolical of that coming and going of guests which perpetually lighted the old house, lent it its chief charm, and gave me my most memorable schooling. The educative value of life has no uncertainty. These men and women who came and went as guests were my first memorable lessons of life, and, as I take it, they were lessons marvelously well adapted to the understanding and needs of a little child.

I would not seem to undervalue the silent influence and worth of that material loveliness which was often found in the old houses of that day, and was evident in my own home; but I believe this alone could have done little to educate me. Such loveliness was but a means to an end. I would be loath to give great credit for my education to the furniture, old and interesting as it was. The real credit is due, first, to the customs of that time, which made hospitality one of the first virtues; and, second, to the guests who, coming there, furnished the house with its best opportunities, and incidentally--I beg you to note that word--afforded me, there can be no doubt, the better part of my education.

How far have we gone, "progressed," as we say, in a short span of years! I am still a young woman, yet guests are not indeed what they once were. There were poverty and riches in those days, too, but the "high cost of living," that phrase forever turning up nowadays, was a bad penny not yet coined, and guest-discouraging "flats" were anomalies that my old home town rejected.

Guests came and stayed then as they do not now. Visiting was still in those days one of the accomplishments of life; a gracious habit not yet broken up by ubiquitous hotels, ten, fifteen, twenty stories high; not yet rendered superfluous by trains every hour on the hour, or old-fashioned by scudding automobiles which, like Aladdin Abushamut's magic sofa, snatch up whole parties of people, and in the twinkling of an eye set them down in new lands with hardly time for greeting or farewell.

Life may be more provident, compact, convenient nowadays. I am not prepared to dispute it. But of one thing I am certain: the modern child in this almost guestless age has no such chance to acquire a broad education out of school hours as had I, whose childhood flourished when guests were the rule and the tinkling of the doorbell was more likely than not to be a summons to a fine adventure in visitors.

Ah, there was an education! An education indeed! Its A B C was that every child of the house should be delighted to be turned out of his or her bed, to sleep four in a four-poster, or on a mattress on the floor, so that one more guest might be given welcome. Its simple mathematics were concerned mainly with the addition of guests, the eager subtraction of one's own comforts, the multiplications of welcomes, and the long divisions of all delights and pleasures, which by some kind of higher calculus miraculously increased the meaning and richness of life. Its geography, if any, was no geography at all, beyond the fact that the guest-room was the sunniest and largest and best in the house, and that exports from all the other rooms flowed into it and rendered it the most desirable and the "most important city." As to history, it consisted of people at all times and of all ages, and the traditions of men and women of many types. It concerned itself, not with the succession of kings and durations of dynasties so much as with a succession of visitors and the probable length of their stay.

I cannot say what enlightenment or learning or benefit the guests themselves derived from these visits; though, if measured by the frequent length of their sojourn, these must have been very considerable; but I do know that we, the children of that household, gained high benefits immensely educative; I know that we assimilated much knowledge, and attained to much learning of a very high order, intellectual and spiritual; and what is best of all, I know that in that old home, antedating and long anticipating Madame Montessori and her "Houses of Childhood," we learned with neither desk, blackboard, nor semblance of schooling, and never for a moment so much as dreamed that we were being taught.

This is not the place to enter on a discussion of the Montessori method. Briefly Madame Montessori's chief tenets may be stated thus: Liberty for the child; a careful education of the child's senses, resulting in an extraordinary sense-control to which the child attains without consciousness of learning.

The "didactic material" (frankly so called by the author of this distinctive system of education) is material by means of which the child's senses are trained. It consists of many parts. To name only a few--there are one hundred and twenty-eight color-tablets; thirty-six geometrical insets; three series of thirty-six cards; the "dimension material" consists of nine cylinders, each differing from the rest in height and diameter, ten quadrilateral prisms, ten four-sided striped rods, and so on. This and much more is the equipment daily used in the "Houses of Childhood."

The home of my childhood was bare, bare of such things. Neither cubes nor cylinders were there that I remember, nor thermatic tests, nor color-tablets, nor quadrilateral prisms; and yet--

What was there of especial value? There was, first of all, the household. "The household," to quote Emerson further, "is a school of power. There within the door learn the tragi-comedy of human life. Here is the sincere thing, the wondrous composition for which day and night go round. In that routine are the sacred relations, the passions that bind and sever. Here is poverty and all the wisdom its hated necessities can teach; here labor drudges, here affections glow, here the secrets of character are told, the guards of man, the guards of woman, the compensations which, like angels of justice, pay every debt; the opium of custom, whereof all drink and many go mad. Here is Economy, and Glee, and Hospitality, and Ceremony, and Frankness, and Calamity, and Death, and Hope."

Didactic material enough, if one chooses to call it that. But, besides all this, there were guests--guests who came and lingered, guests of an almost incredible variety. By recalling a few of them I can best explain somewhat of their influence on my life.

The first one I remember very clearly was a beautiful young lady,--beautiful to me,--who spent I believe about six months with us. I might have been a trifle over five years old. I remember her with great exactness. Certain sparkling characteristics that she wore as noticeably as the several heavy rings on her white hand, shine still with surprising clearness in my memory.

She was slender. She affected overskirts. She wore elbow-sleeves, and trains, though she could hardly have been over eighteen or nineteen. Her hair was plastered on her fashionably high forehead in what were then known as "water-waves."

On a collar of box-plaited lace she often wore a jet necklace, set in gold, a kind of jewelry much in fashion at that time, I believe. Also I remember that she had a pair of lemon-colored kid gloves; and on dress occasions she wore heavy gold bracelets.

But these were all as trifles to the fact that she sang. That was her crowning glory. My mother sang sweetly, too, the beautiful songs of "her day": "Flow Gently, Sweet Afton," "Lightly the Troubadour," "Ye Banks and Braes," "The Gypsy's Warning," "Roll On, Silver Moon," "Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms"--and many more. When she sang them, she played on the old Steck piano or softly plucked the strings of the old Martin guitar--simple and trill-less accompaniments.

But you, Miss Lou Brooks! You, oh, you!--compounded of every creature's best,--could sing the old and simple songs, if you chose, and very graciously, for any one who asked for them; but better still if, left to your own preference, you could take your seat how languidly at the piano, how gracefully play a prelude in which the white jeweled hands followed each other up and down the keyboard over and under, in what moods and fancies, in what rippling runs and rapid arpeggios; now lighting to flutter in a twinkling trill, with jewel-flash, like whirring hummingbirds; now resting humble, two meek white doves, in the long and waited-for preliminary pause. _Then_, you could break forth at last into what burst of passion and fire of song!

I can close my eyes still and see her. I have not a good memory, but the words come to me almost unerring across the past (and I have to remind you that I was a little over five years old):--

"The stars shine o'er his pathway!

[_Long pause, with the white hands quivering on the pressed keys!_]

"The trees bend back their leaves,

[_Languid softness_]

"To guide him to the meadow Among the golden sheaves;

[_Trills and expectancy!_]

"Where stand I, loving, longing, And list'ning while I wait To the nightingale's sweet singing, Sweet singing to its mate. Singing!--Singing! [_The last, soft like an echo_] Swe-e-eet singing to-oo its mate!"

[_More trills and arpeggios to send shivers of delight over you--then in a new measure._]

"Come, for my arms are empty, Come for the day is long. Turn the darkness into glory;-- The sorrow into song!"

[_More pauses of which you were glad--then a beginning again of all delight._]

"I hear his footfall's music; I feel his presence near, All my soul responsive answers And tells me he is here! O stars, shine out your brightest!

[_This with eyes cast to where the stars should have been_]

"O nightingale, sing sweet;-- To guide him to me waiting And speed his flying feet;-- To guide him to me waiting, And speed his flying feet!"

This was what they did in a world outside the walls of my childish experience!--they sang like that!--of such things! I did not know what it meant save in some incomplete half-lunar way; but its effect drew me, and, like the seasons and tides of the moon, changed the face of the earth for me.

Further, it should be noted that I heard this song, not only on one occasion, not detached, isolated, as at a concert. Here was nothing paid for cold-bloodedly at a box-office; here was something all woven in with the daily chance of life. I heard the song many a time. I might come upon it unexpected when I woke from my nap. I might be drawn from my toys by it to the more desirable pleasure of standing big-eyed by the piano while such glory as this rolled around about me; or eat my bowl of bread and milk in the early evening to the accompaniment of it; or try to keep the Sandman on my pillow from throwing the last handful of sand until the final note of it was sung.

Miss Brooks was, I believe, the daughter of an army officer. She had lived in various parts of the world; common on her lips were tales of a life wholly different from that which I knew.

To my eyes, water-waves and all, she was incredibly beautiful. Moreover,--and here you see the fine discriminating points which children make,--she was engaged; already selected; chosen; set apart! I cannot tell you what glamour that lent her in my eyes. Child-psychology is not a thing that always can be reduced to measurement of reflexes and the like. I responded to all this by some unmeasured law of the soul. This knowledge and appreciation of her--or of her type, if you prefer--was as distinct and yet intangible a thing as the light of the prism. The sun fell on her and was changed to color. I could not touch or define her charm, but it was there; and the color and wonder of it seemed to fall across me too as I sat near her, and upon my sun-browned hands, if they touched her, until I could see colored jewels of rings on them too, as there might be, and as I hoped there would be some day.

I thought then that I was fond of her. Certainly her word was law to me. I know that I used to run my little legs tired to wait upon her. Her smiles and favors were precious to me as only the favors of the beautiful and the gifted can be to a little child. The tap of her fan on my cheek or my hand satisfied me altogether with life.

But I was too near her then to judge of her fairly. I know now the truth of the matter. I have never seen her since. The glamour of her presence no longer colors and impedes the white truth. She was _not_ the most beautiful young lady in the world, as I so generously took her to be. She was _not_ the only person in the world who could play dazzling accompaniments, and sing to melt one's soul, and make one a stranger to one's self. She was not the only one in the universe who knew the dim and lovely secret chambers of a little child's nature. She was after all, only, indeed, by courtesy, Miss Lou Brooks. For she was less and more than all this: she was a guest; a passing influence; an ineffaceable impression; a glorious experience; a far adventure in new lands; a glimpse into other worlds unknown; a new planet swum into my ken. She was a magic mirror held up to me--one in which I could for the first time clearly see myself as I might be; she was a glass of fashion, a mould of form. In her I saw moving evidences of a world more wonderful than any of my fancy; she was a passing guest in the house, yes, but a permanency in the scheme of things--a very piece of life itself; and the knowledge of her, an acquirement in learning and an acquisition in education. The educative value of life has no uncertainty.

Let Montessori children in "Houses of Childhood" feel of wooden circles and quadrangles and be taught with care the words "round," "square"; let them touch sandpaper and know thereby "this is rough," or linen and apprehend "this is smooth." I, a child of the same age, needed nothing of such information. I knew smooth and rough more nearly by the mere chance touch of my play-roughened hand on her fine satiny one; I, of a like age, wholly lacking in cubes and cylinders and color-slabs, was learning nevertheless to discriminate between short and long, heavy and light, were it but by dread of her departure, or the length of her train.

Put beside Miss Lou Brooks and all that she taught me and revealed to me any didactic material you may choose, and I wonder if it compares with her. Place beside her most of the lessons learned from books. The rule of three is useful, but I would not exchange her for it. I might do without my multiplication-tables, and indeed do get along without them fairly well, never having learned the seven, eight, and nine tables properly. But these I take to be but subordinate things--pawns, or, at the very best, but bishops and knights of the game, limited to move in certain lines without deviation, and not to be compared with a queen, who can move here or there at will, taking, disconcerting, winning, and setting the whole of life into new relations.

I have named Miss Lou Brooks first because she made the first strong impression on me; but she was only one of many not less memorable. She was indeed but one star in a certain notable constellation of guests, which shone in one quarter of my heavens.

Belonging to the same constellation, though of a different magnitude, was the young German army officer, for instance, who came all the way from Germany, where my brother in his _Wanderjahr_ had met him. His visit was short, but the glory of it enduring. I was not yet seven. I remember how he rose out of respect for me when I entered the room; how he clicked his heels together and stood formal and attendant; how he drew out my chair for me at the table, and saw me seated with all the respect due an empress. To be allowed to come and sit in my brief piqué dress at table with him and his shoulder-straps was an essay in form and a treatise on self-respect.

As brilliant a star, but of a steely blue radiance, was the physician-scientist, Doctor Highway. He would be classified readily now as a Christian gentleman of highest honor, brilliant gifts, and scientific attainments. But the name scientist was not in those days worn so easily. Huxley and Darwin were old but yet alive, as were many who still believed them to be emissaries of the devil.