Part 7

No great writer of modern times has written more persuasively of the Christian way of life than Tolstoi; there is no doubt that his stories and tracts have had an immense influence on millions of readers and have inspired them toward unselfishness, kindness and humility. But of all great Russian writers, Tolstoi himself was the most difficult to get along with; he could not bear to hear any other writer praised and was lacking in the grace of appreciation. His rival, Turgenev, who had no religious belief of any kind, excelled Tolstoi in the virtues of modesty, unselfishness and consideration for others.

One of the many reasons why the art of bringing up children is the most difficult of all arts is that it is essential for parents to set a daily example. All the moral precepts in the world will not seriously impress children if their parents do not in their daily life come somewhere near the ideals they hold up. The child will after a fashion love his parents anyhow, but as he grows older and begins to compare what he has been taught with what he sees, the child is transformed into a judge. This partly explains that fear of their own children which so many parents secretly feel.

If the parents make their small children go to church and stay home themselves, the children quite naturally regard church-going as one of the numerous penalties imposed on youth and look forward to maturity as an escape from this and many other unpleasant compulsions. If parents impress on their children the necessity of telling the truth, they must not themselves tell lies; they are being watched by the sharpest eyes in the world.

Although in a certain sense we are all hypocrites--for no one can live up to his ideals--we hate any flagrant case of hypocrisy. I suppose one reason we have a sneaking admiration for pirates is that pirates are not hypocrites. There is no doubt that professional pirates are more generally admired than professional politicians. I do not say that politicians are hypocrites; I say that pirates are not.

It is the personalities of great leaders, much more than their sayings, that have had a beneficial influence. The sayings of Jesus--every word that has come down to us--can be read through in three hours. But from His life and character flows a vital force, tremendously effective after nineteen centuries. Very few people read the literary compositions of Sir Philip Sidney, but millions have been influenced by his life and character. The pure, unselfish life of George Herbert is more efficacious than his poems; and consider Saint Francis!

The Christian Church has had in every century of its existence able, honest, determined foes, who have done their best to destroy it; it is probable that they have done it no injury. Nor have the frank sensualists and materialists hurt it at all. It has been injured only by its professed friends.

If a physician opens an office, his most dangerous foes are not his competitors, that is to say, other doctors; his most dangerous foes are those of his patients who say, “Well, I took his medicine, and it did me no good.” The best advertising is done by one’s sincere friends and admirers; the good word about the new doctor, or the new novel, or the new play, is passed along.

The Christian religion professes to make those who accept it better and happier; every one who professes it and exhibits none of its graces is a powerful argument against its validity. A man’s foes are those of his own household.

Sometimes I think religion should first of all show itself in good manners; that is, in true politeness, consideration for others, kindness and deference without servility. Such persons are those we love to meet and be with; they are good advertisements of their religion; they will not have to talk about it because its effects are so plainly and attractively seen.

XXV

LONDON AS A SUMMER RESORT

I had an interesting conversation with Bernard Shaw last week. The next day he and Mrs. Shaw were leaving to spend the summer on the Riviera, which from time immemorial has been regarded as a winter resort. He gave, as is his custom, an original and diverting explanation of the fact that many now prefer to visit winter resorts in the summer. It is a matter of clothes. The Victorians were forced to go to cool places, or at any rate to avoid warm places; because they were compelled to wear stuffy clothes, the men being encased in frock coats, thick waistcoats, collars and swaddling neckcloths. But today, when one leaves off almost everything, the finest place in the world, according to G. B. S., is a climate where one can live outdoors in comfort, day and night.

It is certainly true that many European resorts, where the hotels used to be open only during a short winter season, now attract visitors the year round. The converse is also true. I can well remember when the great hotels of Switzerland--the playground of Europe--were open only during the summer; and were crowded only during the month of August. But now they never close and are as much sought after in December and January as in the good old summertime. The same is true of Lake Placid in America and of many other places. People in Victorian times were forced to dress according to the prevailing style, which bore no reference to climate or common sense; remember how the women used to look, playing golf and tennis!

Furthermore the old idea that everyone who could afford it must leave the city during the “heated term” has become obsolete, even in America. President Harper of the University of Chicago established a Summer Quarter, and professors who wished to do so could take their three months’ vacation in the winter, a privilege that many continue to enjoy. The Country clubs and golf have had much to do with the contentment of business men who remain in cities during the summer. As a matter of fact, the city is not at all a bad place, I mean, of course, for those who can afford to make themselves comfortable.

The city of Munich has for many years been a Mecca for summer pilgrims. The season of music, arranged for foreign visitors, reaches its climax in August. Now I wish to urge the millions of Americans who at one time or another cross the ocean to consider the merits of London as a summer resort.

For over a hundred years July has been a part of the London “season”; Parliament is in session, operas and theatres are open, and parties flourish amain. The twelfth of August, the opening of the grouse shooting season, is the formal beginning of the vacation; Parliament always adjourns for it, and London society flies north. But to an American London is day by day interesting, and there should be no closing of any season for him.

London has no prolonged hot weather, like St. Louis. It has been said that the English climate consists of eight months of winter, and four months of bad weather. This is an exaggeration. Every now and then there is a year when summer is omitted; but even in such an unfortunate time, one is better off in London than in the country. In fact, to an American London, while not the most beautiful city in the world, is assuredly the most interesting. It is inexhaustible. Every foot of it, to one well read in English literature, is hallowed ground; I think I could walk along Fleet street a thousand days in succession, and always receive a thrill.

I wish that every American journalist, every American book reviewer, every American drama critic, would spend a month in London and diligently read the morning newspapers, such as _The Times_, _The Telegraph_, _The Morning Post_. Every page seems to be written for intelligent readers. These London journalists review tennis, golf and cricket matches with more dignity than the average New Yorker reviews plays and books. One reason that militates steadily against intellectual progress in America is the fact that apparently we have no language suitable as a medium for the exchange of ideas. Our book reviews and our drama criticisms are too often written in a cheap kind of slang that is intended to be smart. If anyone imagines that the journalism of London loses in intensity by being written in suitable English, let him turn to a file of _The London Times_ and read the story of Tilden playing tennis at Wimbledon.

A remarkable thing about literary society in London is that age has nothing to do with it. One meets in social gatherings men and women in the twenties and in the eighties--disparity in years seems to be forgotten.

One should remember that, owing to the small size of England, one can use London as a base of operations and take excursions into the country on the swift English trains, returning to London every evening; many happy, baggageless days have I spent in this manner.

When G. K. Chesterton was in America, I asked him what difference between the two countries impressed him most. Instantly he replied, “Your wooden houses.” I had never thought of them as curiosities, but one does not see them in England. The thing that to me is most noticeable on the London streets is the absence of straw hats. There are many more bare male heads than there are straw hats. It is almost impossible to attract attention in London, but a straw hat will come nearest to doing the trick. Some men are exquisitely and others strangely clad, and nobody cares. I saw a man riding a bicycle. He had on tan shoes, homespun trousers, a frock coat, and a tall silk hat.

XXVI

WHAT THE MAN WILL WEAR

Men, women, and children are all interested in clothes; there have been many scholarly works, displaying vast erudition, on the history of costume; and two literary masterpieces, dealing with the philosophy of clothes, belong permanently to literature--_A Tale of a Tub_, by Jonathan Swift, and _Sartor Resartus_, by Thomas Carlyle.

So much attention has recently been paid in the newspapers and by the public to the clothes of women, that we are forgetting what revolutionary changes have taken place in the garments of men. Women’s clothes have decreased in number, weight, and size. Men’s clothes have gone through a process of _softening_. Hard hats, hard collars, hard shirts, hard shoes, hard suits, have given way to soft; and, for the first time in centuries, the carcasses of males are comfortably clad.

One hundred years ago the average gentleman, not satisfied with covering his body with an accumulation of intolerably thick clothes, wound an enormous stock around his neck. How stifling they look in those old family portraits! Robert Louis Stevenson applied an unexpected but accurate adjective to those collections of oil paintings of deceased ancestors, with which their descendants adorned walls of their dining rooms. Stevenson called them “these constipated portraits.”

This is the way my father dressed on practically every morning of his life; that is, after he left the farm, and entered upon the practice of his profession. He wore long, heavy flannel underwear, reaching to his ankles and his wrists. He put on a “hard-boiled,” white, full-bosomed shirt, stiff as sheet-iron. At the neck he fastened a stiff, upright, white linen choker collar; at the ends of the sleeves he buttoned on thick, three-ply linen cuffs. He imprisoned his feet, ankles, and shins in black, stiff, leather boots, reaching to the knees, but concealed above the ankles by his trousers. He wore a long-tailed coat, a waistcoat, and trousers made out of thick, dark-blue or black broadcloth. The trousers were strapped over his shoulders by suspenders. For the top of his head there was a tall, heavy, beaver hat.

Thus, clad in impenetrable armour from head to foot, he set out for the day’s work.

Fifty years ago was the age of dressing-gown and slippers. Why is it we never hear slippers mentioned nowadays? I have not owned a pair of slippers (except bedroom slippers) for more than thirty years. Yet in Victorian novels we are always reading of how, when the breadwinner returns to his home in the evening, he finds his slippers ready for him, warmed on the hearth. My father always took off his great boots--worn in summer as well as in winter--and put on his slippers when he came home, having called it a day.

Poets, novelists, and men whose occupation kept them at home, sat down to their desk in dressing-gown and slippers. The moment a man sat down in his own house to anything, with no immediate thought of going out, dressing-gown and slippers were the regulation costume. They were like knights-at-arms, taking off their suits of mail when they entered the interior of the castle.

Eventually the knee-boots gave way to high shoes--called boots in England--which were laced up to the top. In time these were succeeded by low shoes, which are now worn by millions of Americans the year round.

The swaddling, stifling, heavy underclothes were scrapped, and their place taken by sleeveless, shinless undergarments, light in weight, and more or less open in texture. Best of all, the intolerable stiff shirt, the bottom edge of which cut into the abdomen, and bellied out above like a sail in a fair wind, was reserved only for formal evening wear; shirts were made and worn that had no trace of starch in front, back, collar or cuff. I have not worn a stiff shirt (except for evening) in twenty years.

Suspenders (braces) became obsolete; and the pleasant belt came in, the belt that may be loosened or tightened at will, and which in any case leaves the shoulders free. In hot weather the waistcoat was discarded; and the man in his thin, loose clothes moved about almost as easily as Adam in Paradise.

Various are the names for the round stiff hat, derby, dicer, pot hat, bowler, billy-cock. Under any name it is just as bad. Some fifteen or twenty years ago the derby went temporarily out of fashion. Up to that time, if you looked into a cloak-room by a hotel dining-room, you saw about two hundred men’s hats looking exactly alike. Now you see a vast assortment of soft headgear, grey, brown, green, all of pleasing shape. The thousands of men at a football game now show variety aloft, instead of the intolerable black monotony of former years. I have not owned a “derby” since the war. Apart from my own hatred of the object, I always crushed it getting in or out of an automobile. And one indentation ruins a derby forever: every wound is mortal.

I am quite aware that the derby is returning. Everyone knows the nation-wide fame acquired by a certain brown derby. But no stiff hat, black or brown, will ever adorn my brows again during the hours of daylight.

The English, owing to their horrible climate and also partly to an invincible conservatism, still wear heavy clothes, thicksoled high shoes, braces, waistcoats, etc., even in hot weather. The only reform they have made is discarding the frock coat for daily wear, which up to a very few years ago was universal. A common sight in London was to see clerks going to the “city” on bicycles, arrayed in “Prince Albert” coats.

The clothes of an American tourist still look funny to an Englishman; how funny I never realised until I attended a play in London where an American was the object of good-natured caricature. He came on the stage with low shoes and silk shoe-laces, bright, thin socks, trousers held by a belt, no waistcoat, and jacket unbuttoned. The audience burst into roars of laughter and I laughed too, because he did look queer by contrast with the other actors. Then I suddenly realised that I was dressed precisely like the man they were laughing at!

One more reform must be made in men’s dress; and I believe it will come. In very hot weather, men must be allowed to discard the jacket. Even a thin jacket, with its collar and shouldercloth, is intolerable. A clean, attractive shirt, with soft collar and necktie, and belt around the trousers, looks so sensible in hot weather that it ought to become the rule rather than the exception.

XXVII

DREAMS

I look upon horrible dreams as one of the assets of humanity, one of the good things of life; because one feels so elated after waking. I am convinced that most men and women do not sufficiently appreciate the advantages they possess. They either exaggerate their sufferings and drawbacks or, instead of enjoying what they have, they spend their time in longing for what is beyond their reach.

Just as it takes an illness to make one appreciate the satisfactions of health, so one needs a calamity to make one realise how good daily existence really is. It is often said that experience is the best teacher. This is by no means always or even often true. Experience charges too much for her lessons.

There is no good in learning how one might have shown sagacity in business after one is bankrupt; there is no good in discovering how one ought to have avoided a certain article of diet after one is fatally poisoned; there is no good in receiving the proof of the danger in carelessly driving a motor car after one lies dead in the ditch.

Now the best way to discover how cheerful daily life may be is to be visited by a frightful dream. The horrible wild beast has seized us, because when we tried to flee, our legs were lead. Just as it is about to sink its terrible tusks in our shrinking frame, we wake up, and hear the good old trolley car go by. Hurrah! it was only a dream; and we are alive on the blessed earth. And we have learned how sweet plain ordinary life is without the lesson costing us anything but a transitory sweat.

I think, too, that many who either profess to hate life or at all events refuse to admit anything good about it, might appreciate it more if they could be temporarily transferred, not to hell, but to their own imagined heaven. Wagner in the famous music-drama, _Tannhäuser_, has given an admirable illustration. This knight, like all his fellow-creatures, felt the call of the senses; he was transported from this imperfect earth to the pagan Heaven, where he lived in the constant society of Venus. But after a time this palled upon him and eventually became intolerable. He tore himself away, and suddenly found himself back on the earth. He was in a green pasture in the springtime, and a shepherd boy was singing--what happiness!

The accomplished German dramatist Ludwig Fulda wrote a play, _Schlaraffenland_. There was a poor boy, ragged, cold and chronically hungry. He dreamed he was in a magic land. Remarkable birds flew so slowly by him that he found he could reach out his hand and grasp them. He did this, and lo, he had in his hand a broiled chicken! He ate several with avidity, but could not eat forever. Glancing at his ragged garments, a wardrobe door flew wide, and he had his choice among many elegant suits. Thus every desire was instantly and abundantly gratified. After some time, this palled upon him, and then became so unendurable that he gave a yell of horror; he woke up. He was cold, ragged, and hungry; but his heart was singing. He was back on the good old earth.

Thus, whether we dream of hell or of heaven, it is usually with a sigh or even a shout of satisfaction that we find ourselves back on this imperfect globe.

Many persons tell me that they never dream; their sleep is blank. It is with me quite otherwise; I almost always dream; many of my dreams are extraordinarily vivid and some are unforgettable.

When I was a child I dreamed three nights in succession of the Devil. The first night the Devil chased me upstairs. I ran as fast as I could, but sank down when only half way up. Then the Devil took from his pocket a shoemaker’s awl and bored it deftly into my right knee. The second night the Devil was in my front yard. Suddenly he changed into the form of a dog; and when another dog rushed barking at him the satanic hound swallowed him as easily as one takes a pill. The third night I also dreamed of the Devil, but I have forgotten the details.

One of the worst dreams I had in childhood was when I was being attacked by wild beasts, and suddenly my mother appeared on the scene. I shrieked to her for help, and she looked at me with calm indifference. That was the worst dream I ever had, and you may be sure it went by contraries.

I suppose the only way we can distinguish dreams from what is called actual life is that in dreams the law of causation is suspended. There is no order in events, and no principle of sufficient reason to account for them. Things change in an impossible manner. Apart from this, dreams are as real as life while they last.

I often have prolonged dreams that are not only fully as real as waking experiences, but are orderly and sensible, and sometimes delightful. Many years ago I dreamed that I was walking the streets of a Russian city with Count Tolstoi. It was one of the most agreeable and most inspiring days of my life, and I have always regretted it never happened. We walked together for hours and discussed modern literature. He said a great many wise and brilliant things, all of which I have, alas, forgotten. The only feature of that dream unlike reality was that Tolstoi had shaved off his beard.

Wilkie Collins, in _Armadale_, suggested that every dream we have is a repetition of an experience that has actually happened to us during the preceding twenty-four hours. I read that novel in my boyhood and was impressed by that explanation of dreams, and for several months I wrote down my dreams and found that every one was suggested by something that had happened to me during the preceding day.

The only thing I am certain of in dreams is that they do not in any way forecast the future. When I was a child I dreamed I saw heaven and Jesus sitting on a cloud. He called to me, “Willie Phelps, come here.” The next day I told my father and mother about it, and to my surprise they were exceedingly alarmed.

XXVIII

EATING BREAKFAST

In the daily life of the average person the longest interval between eating is that between the evening meal and breakfast; the very name for the morning repast accurately describes its nature. It should therefore, be taken seriously, which means that there should not only be enough to eat, but that plenty of time should be allowed to eat it.

I am aware that there are many men of excellent character who eat almost nothing for breakfast, and that there are some saints who eat no breakfast at all. In character and personal habits, I have never met a man more saintly than Henry Ford. I refer both to the asceticism of his physical life and to the purity of the motives that inspire his conduct. He eats no breakfast at all, not a morsel of food. He rises very early, goes outdoors, runs a mile or two and then works with absolute concentration till one o’clock, when he has the first meal of the day. I asked him if he never felt any desire for food during so long a morning; he replied that it was necessary for him in his vast undertakings to have a mind entirely fresh and clear, and that he found he could do better work on an empty stomach and with a brain unclouded by food.

I suppose every man must be a law unto himself. It does not seem to me that I could live happily without breakfast, yet I am sure that it is better to omit the meal altogether than to eat it in the hurry and fever in which many Americans devour it. Far too many prefer to lie in bed half an hour longer than to use that precious half hour in the consumption of food.

* * * * *

In the days when they had required morning chapel at Yale a great many students came to chapel either without any breakfast or with unassorted junks of it in their stomachs engaged in civil war. One early morning I was walking up Elm Street in New Haven; the streets ware filled with undergraduates sprinting to chapel. The lady with me said: “Do look at those poor boys running to chapel with their tongues hanging out!” I set her right at once. “Those are not tongues, those are griddle cakes!”