Part 2

I had halted in the lower hall, to rest a minute before climbing the stairs to my own apartment. I stood with my foot on the lower step, leaning heavily against the banisters. The outside door opened and Miss Marsh came in. I was too tired to try and escape her. She stopped beside me and asked anxiously:-

“What’s the matter, Mr. Allen?”

“Nothing. Just a little tired,” I answered, and started on up the stairs.

She followed. In the hall above I stopped at the door of my apartment, and she moved on toward hers. Then she turned suddenly, and came back to me.

“I sure would like to do something for you if I could, Mr. Allen,” she said, in her Southern way of speaking.

I turned and looked at her. In her face was an expression different from any that I had ever seen there-more sincere and earnest. It commanded a respect that I had never felt for her. I mumbled something or other in the way of thanks, to which she paid no attention, but went on to say:-

“I know it must be mighty hard to have to look for a new job after you have worked for so many years in the same place.”

I cringed, and I think I must have scowled. For I was wondering how she had found out that I was looking for another job. I thought that I had kept the fact pretty carefully concealed. But I guess the most of us are ostriches, stretching our heads down in the sands of our own secret conceits. While I stood there, wondering, she kept on talking. The next thing that I caught was:-

“Don’t reckon you’ll want to take any advice from me, but you can’t afford to let yourself grow old like this, Mr. Allen. Nobody wants us if we’re old.”

I tried to laugh. It was a sickly attempt. What she had said hit me in so many sore spots that I squirmed to get away. But inside my own apartment, the thing that she had said repeated itself in my thoughts.

“You can’t afford to let yourself grow old.”

I smiled satirically. How folks can fool themselves. That little old maid, with her dyed hair and painted face, thinking that she was hiding the fact of her age!

But still the thing kept repeating itself-“You mustn’t let yourself grow old.”

“_Let! Let! Let!_”

That word finally got to hammering itself in my tired brain. I tried to get away from it, but I couldn’t. There was something accusing about it, like the gesture of a pointed finger. It seemed to put the blame of all my failure up to me-some wrong understanding in myself.

_And then came my first experience with the Voice!_

I call it the Voice, for I don’t know what else to call it. But I know that some Power outside a man’s own being can speak to him in the time of his need; when his ego is weakened by the discouragement of defeat. When he listens, he learns and is helped. For this Voice teaches _Life_! Our schools and churches have taught us systems and creeds.

I had pulled up a chair to the kitchen table, on which I had set out a scrambled sort of supper. I was going over to Brooklyn as soon as I had finished eating. The “_Let! Let! Let!_” was still pounding away in my thoughts. Finally I halted in my supper, set down my coffee-cup and asked:-

“Have I let myself grow old?”

And the Voice replied quickly:-

“Yes. You should be now right in your prime, knowing how to use and enjoy life. If you are thrown on the dump-heap, it is because you have put your own self there.”

You may laugh. You may say that I was tired and a little woozy in the head. But I _know_ the Voice did speak. It spoke to my inner consciousness, but the thoughts were not my own. I even winced from some of the things it said.

It makes no difference whether or not you believe in the Voice, you must be impressed by the results of its teachings as applied in my own life. For I followed its teachings and learned the Great Lesson.

This first night only the glimmering light of a new understanding came to me. But that light grew. I saw that, up to now, I had been putting upon others all the blame for my own weaknesses-and thought of myself as a helpless victim of an unenlightened social order. I was slumping into a slough of self-pity. Worst of all, _I was losing my sense of humor_. I know that this is the big calamity. As long as a man can laugh humorously-laugh with his mind as well as with his mouth-he has the vitality to create new brain-cells.

And, after this first talk with the Voice, _I smiled at myself!_-a thing of big encouragement! One has caught at a strong life-saver when he can rise above the swamping power of self-pity long enough to laugh at his own weaknesses.

When I was putting on my overcoat, getting ready to go over to Brooklyn, I took a critical survey of myself in the bedroom mirror. I had been considered a pretty good-looking man-was tall and broad-shouldered, and had been quite athletic in my day. But I could see now that in many ways I had let myself grow old. There was no necessity for me to be so stooped, with such a caved-in chest and protruding abdomen. I pulled myself up and saw that I could stand straight. And I realized at once more command of myself when I stood right, with my chest up and my abdomen pulled in. Yes, I could stand straight when I made the effort.

Then, in quick response to this thought, the Voice again spoke:-

“_When you make the effort!_ It is the _you_ inside that must make the effort.”

And I finally came into this understanding.

I want to impress the fact that I did not learn at once all the things I am now telling. This knowledge grew. But I’m going to state some things before I go on to tell of how I found my life’s big opportunity.

I gained the understanding that old age is a matter of the _ignorance_ of Life. New laws of Nature are continually being discovered. In the last century science discovered electricity. This century will see the discovery of Life.

Man has both the mental and physical power to keep young, _if he will use that power_. Instead of being a thing on the dump-heap, _man may grow in power as he grows in years_. His body is made by food, drink, air, and _thoughts_. Its cells are constantly rebuilding. By understanding his own power, he can direct this rebuilding to an increased Life-capacity.

His power to do so has been limited by his own ignorance. Once men said that there could never be a steam-engine. Later they scoffed at the possibility of building a flying machine. In his discovery of new laws, man is learning that he has hindered his own growth through his lack of understanding. A man can never _grow_ old. He may _stop_ growing, and stagnate. That is what I had done.

The first lesson that I had to learn was the difference between youth and old age. Both are really matters of the spirit, rather than of years. One may be aged at twenty, and a youth at eighty.

The spirit of youth has courage, is venturesome, progressive, optimistic, _creative_. The spirit of old age is afraid, reactionary, pessimistic, and stagnant. Youth laughs. Old age sighs. Youth is eager to discover new paths. Old age wants to stay in the prison of habit and travel the same old ruts.

I had been traveling in ruts. And I had worn them _deep_. For twenty years I had _let_ myself live in the same old dark apartment, and take the same old route to the same old printing-plant. And I had wanted to cling to the same old ways of doing work. The time came when I realized that I must have been something of a proposition to the printing-plant’s young management. For I had stubbornly opposed the new efficiency system.

Because I felt tired at night, I had _let_ my wife give up all other associations to keep me company. I had _let_ myself lose interest in my old friends, and I had shunned making new ones. I selfishly clung to just my own immediate family. That meant heart-stagnation. The man is old who has let himself lose his heart-interest in _people_.

The man who loves most, lives most. Youth loves.

I had _let_ myself drop out of touch with all the big public issues. I felt no interest in any country but the United States, and that meant very little to me outside of New York City. And here in New York, where every opportunity offered, I never went to a lecture, or to a concert. I had stopped going to see the new plays; I talked about the superior old days of the theatre, when Daly’s was in its prime. I didn’t even read the new books, but prided myself on sticking to the old ones. All of which made for brain-stagnation.

_I had grown afraid of adventure._

This revelation came to me suddenly, the next day after my first experience with the Voice. It sent a tingle of protest through me, and I cringed with something like shame. But I halted on the sidewalk and faced the fact squarely. Then I rebelliously pulled myself together, quit my hunt for a job, forgot my poverty-stricken bank-account, and went for a trip through Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum. I had not been there for years. It all seemed like a new world to me. It stirred my stagnant emotions and filled me with new interests.

We are continually losing these life-building values that lie right at our elbow. A man will travel the same old route day after day to his business. If, once in a while, he would go even a block out of his way, he might have the feeling of new adventure-get a new view, or some experience to stimulate new cell-activity in his stagnating heart and brain.

When I got home that night, I was several years younger.

IV

Having conquered my fears and tasted adventure, I was hungry now for more. My wife felt the change in me when I saw her that evening in Brooklyn. In fact, she has always declared that it was the influence which I brought into the house that night-the feeling of new vigor and of new hope-that made George take a turn for the better and get well.

As usual, on my Brooklyn subway trip, I read the want advertisements in the evening papers. An office over in a small New Jersey town was advertising for a printer! I read it two or three times. But if I had not taken that Central Park adventure trip, I don’t believe I should have answered this advertisement. I had never thought of going to New Jersey to look for a job. I felt all the self-centred New Yorker’s prejudices against New Jersey. But I did go. I was up and on my way early the next morning.

And that was how I happened to meet Ben Hutchins and find my life’s big opportunity.

The first time I saw Ben Hutchins, I laughed. I knew at once that he was a crank. He was an old-school printer, like myself. For years he had run this little job office and published a weekly newspaper. Afterwards, I learned that he had plenty of money-was, in fact, rich-and that the only reason he kept on publishing his paper was that he didn’t quite know how to get out of the habit.

His little old one-story building stood off by itself, in the business section of this small New Jersey town. To get to it, you had to cross a bridge and follow a narrow dirt path. The path this morning was muddy, after a short flurry of wet snow. The paint was worn off the building. One of the old-fashioned shutters was loose and flapped in the November wind. On the roof was a rooster weather-vane that looked as if it might have been crowing into the teeth of a half-century of storms.

I opened the door and went in. It was one large room-a typical, old-fashioned, country-newspaper office. Its assortment of junk looked as if it might have been accumulating there since the American Revolution. An antiquated roll-topped desk stood in the corner, by one of the front windows. A tipsy old swivel-chair stood in front of it. Near it, a lop-sided old waste-basket spilled its overload of newspapers on the floor. In the centre of the room a rusty base-burner stove glowed with a red-hot coal fire.

Ben Hutchins, in his shirt-sleeves, and wearing a printer’s dirty apron, stood in front of one of the cases, setting type. He was a stockily built man of about seventy, with a belligerent shock of gray hair that stood up straight on his head.

When I entered, he waited to space out a line before recognizing my presence. Then he turned and glowered at me over his glasses, which hung on the tip of his bulbous nose.

“Well-?” he said, finally, after a critical sniff.

Then, as I said, I laughed-a laugh born of my feeling of new confidence, gained from the teachings of the Voice. It caught Ben Hutchins’s interest and made him take a liking to me from the start. I have learned that he is very quick and very decided in his likes and dislikes. In fact, he never does anything half-way. He is either stubbornly for a thing or against it. No argument can ever convince him either way. And down under all his surface peculiarities he has a keen and most original sense of humor. It was the liking that he conceived for me from the start which made him let me do the things that I have done.

He gave me again the once-over; then he, too, indulged in a faint grin.

“I’ve come for that job,” I informed him, with all my new courage of adventure. “And I’m just the man you’re looking for.”

“Oh, are you?” and he gave another of his critical sniffs, which I soon discovered to be habitual. “Well, come and sit down, and we’ll see. I may not be of your opinion.”

With his composing-stick still in his hand, he led the way to the corner where stood the ancient roll-top desk. He seated himself heavily in the creaking swivel-chair, and I pulled up another old chair that stood near. All this time he was studying me closely over his glasses.

“I’ve got the reputation,” he told me, after I was seated, “of never keeping a man very long.”

He waited to see if this was going to discourage me any. But it didn’t, and so he went on to say:-

“But the ones that come out here for a job are generally no good. Or, if they are, they get discouraged and don’t want to stay.”

“Well, I’m going to stay,” I said, “you can’t get rid of me. And I’m all to the good.”

Again he met my laughing gaze, and again he grinned. Then after studying me once more, he came to a decision. He rheumatically pulled himself to his feet and said:-

“Well, take off your coat and go to work.”

And that ended our conference. We made no sort of bargain, said nothing whatever about the pay I was to get, or what I was expected to do. It was like Ben Hutchins-that snap sort of conclusion. But once he has made up his mind, you may be sure that he will carry his part of the bargain to the end. Of course, I had to learn this about him. I thought then that he was just going to try me out, give me a chance to make good if I could.

I took off my overcoat and other coat, and hung them up with my hat. Then I found another printer’s dirty apron, and started in to work.

It may be hard to understand how a man, after having been employed for years in one of New York’s big printing-plants, should have finally found his life’s opportunity in that little country junk-shop of a printing-office. But that is what I did. I could not have done so, however, without having had the experience of the previous few days, as well as the new lessons I was learning all the time from the Voice.

_It was because I was finding youth that I found my opportunity._ Youth, which is courageous, venturesome, progressive, optimistic, and _creative_! Cowardly old age, pessimistic, stagnant, and traveling in ruts, never finds a big life-opportunity.

V

I had been at my new job two weeks. We had issued two editions of the weekly paper. I had done the work of editor, reporter, compositor, proof-reader, pressman, and mailing clerk. Every day I was growing more and more in love with my job. I whistled again like a boy, at my work-this, in spite of the fact that I was taking that long trip each night and morning to and from New York. It is not work-the kind that is made creative-but stagnation, which wearies.

New demands were stirring every part of my being into new activities. My faculties were all alert. So were my emotions, my imaginations, _and my sense of humor_. Values were being aroused in me that, for lack of something to call them into use, had all my life been lying dormant. I had never known that I could do some of the things which I now did. I had begun to take an interest in national and world affairs, about which I had to furnish copy. I also had begun to take more interest in people.

For years, when making my daily trips on the Elevated, I had most of the time kept my eyes glued to the latest criminal sensation in the newspapers. When I was not reading a newspaper, my thoughts were occupied with my own small interests.

The thing always of big importance was that I should beat someone else to a seat in the car. But now I began to watch and study that mass of humanity packed into the car with me. The mass resolved itself into individual beings. I picked out those having the old-age spirit from the ones who had the spirit of youth. By far the larger number-regardless of the years they had lived-were caught in the grip of the old-age fear, and were traveling in the old-age ruts. A good many, like little Miss Marsh, were trying to camouflage their old age by artificial means.

A new sympathy began to warm in my heart for mankind-so pitiably ignorant of Life and of the ways to gain its _real_ joys. My New Yorker’s reserve began to relax, and I let myself do little helpful things for my fellow travelers. One night I helped an old East-Side Jew struggling under a load of second-hand clothing. The poor old chap’s surprised smile of appreciation brought a quick lump into my throat; and a kindlier feeling for the whole Jewish race warmed in my heart. I was growing tensely interested, too, in all the doings of our little New Jersey town. Each day I was making new friends. All of which meant a vitalizing of my heart’s stagnation.

My son George was well again, and had gone back to his work. Mattie-my wife-had come home. I had rented a small house not far from the printing-office, and we were getting ready to move to New Jersey.

Then, after I had been working for him two weeks, Ben Hutchins was seized with a bad attack of lumbago, and was laid up at home for a month. At the end of that time his daughter had persuaded him to go to California and spend the rest of the winter.

When he reached a final decision relative to this California trip, he sent for me to come and see him. I had been several times, during his sickness, to the big, old-fashioned house, where he lived with his widowed daughter. His wife was dead. When I went now we had another of our brief talks. He was going to leave the printing-plant entirely up to me.

“Run it as well as you can, and keep me posted how you’re coming on.”

He gave no further instructions. But by this time I had learned that he liked to be met in his own brief way of doing business-never wanted any fuss of words; when he felt justified in trusting a man, he trusted him absolutely. And I knew now that he felt this trust in me. When, on leaving, I shook hands with him, I gave him a tight grip of appreciation, and we exchanged a look of mutual understanding.

I had already hired another printer. And Mattie, now that we had moved over to our new home, came every day to the office and helped. I made a number of changes in the old plant. I even put into operation some of the modern efficiency methods which I had scorned in the New York plant. Our job printing was growing; and we were getting new subscribers and more advertising for the newspaper.

One day a peculiar thing happened. I had run over to New York, to get some new parts for our old press. This errand took me down town, in the neighborhood of the Sixth Avenue Elevated station, which had been a part of my daily rut for so many years. The sight of it now took me back to the day when I got my discharge. I smiled when I thought of how helpless I had stood there in the rain. It made me realize how far from the old rut I had traveled.

Then I thought of the old chap who had sold newspapers, and wondered if he was still working on his beat. I looked about for him and, sure enough, there he was, wearing the same ancient discolored straw hat. I followed and spoke to him. I had lost all fear now of being submerged in his old-age class. It was noon, and I asked him to go to lunch with me. He gazed in a daze of questioning surprise, then accepted the invitation.

I took him to a quiet little place, where we might have a table to ourselves. During the meal I learned more about him. His name was James Shaw, and he was alone in the world. He talked well-used good English. I had always felt that there must be something of intelligence back of his good clean teeth. And he, too, _was an old printer_. Probably that was why he had drifted naturally to the selling of newspapers. It is hard for a printer to keep away from the smell of printer’s ink.

Well, the upshot of it was that I hired Jimmy Shaw, and took him back with me to New Jersey. And Jimmy has made good. After he was barbered and had put on a new suit of clothes, and had his first lessons in Finding Youth, he was as spry and dudish as anything on Broadway.

Then, the final Big Adventure was brought about by my articles in our weekly newspaper.

I had been running a series of articles on my Finding-Youth revelations. Some of them were copied in other newspapers. Ben Hutchins, out in California, read them in our own paper, which we sent him each week. Afterwards, his daughter told me that he showed them to the different guests in the hotel where they were stopping.

Then I wrote an article on the old-age problem. I headed it, “Why the Dump-Heap?” Among other things, I said that one of the biggest social wastes was the waste of the latter years of the lives of men and women. Instead of being a waste product at eighty, a man should be a Life masterpiece-_still creative_. But we cling-theoretically, at least-to the savage belief that man possesses no other creative power than the sex-function; and that, after they have passed the age of race-propagation, men and women are of no further social use. Savages, not knowing what else to do with their people of years, kill them. We let them stagnate.

By this time we should have learned that Life here, and always, is a thing creative. We are incidentally parents. We are creators always. For if God made us in His own image, then He made us all creators. As creators, we grow. And growth is the law of life. Stagnation is decay and death. We must have new educational methods. We must have new ideals-a new heaven. And this new heaven will be a place filled with creators, instead of with stagnant resters.

Then I went on to suggest that society might organize Youthland colonies, instead of relegating each year so many thousands of men and women to the fate of dependence and stagnation. These colonies might be made centres of big usefulness, of broad education and creative growth.

I outlined my scheme of a Youthland colony. It should be a place of individual homes, with certain coöperative community buildings-an auditorium and recreation centre, a hotel and laundry, and other things, to make living easier and cheaper. The members of the colony themselves would support all these institutions. For there would be different light industries for the ones who wished to work and earn their own living.

There would be lectures, music, dancing, and classes in science, sociology, politics, psychology, literature, languages, and the arts. Everyone would be given the chance and encouraged to take up any kind of creative work in which he might feel himself capable of qualifying.

Well, Ben Hutchins read this article, and it struck instant fire in him. He didn’t even wait to write. Instead he telegraphed:-

“Youthland colony good scheme. California right place to start one. Am writing my lawyer to sell printing-plant. You come out here.”