Chapter 2

"It was the same voice I seemed to hear when I received the letter of your secretary asking me to address this grange. As I left the smoke of the city behind me and looked up at your granite hills, I said, 'Here is where they make men!' As I have been partaking of the bountiful repast prepared by the ladies of the grange, your chairman has been telling me something about this community. It is a grand community to live in. Here are no swollen fortunes; here industry, frugality, and temperance reign. These are the qualities which have given New England its great place in the councils of the nation. I know there are those who say that it is the tariff that has given it that place; but they do not know New England. There are those at this table who can remember the time when eighty-two ruddy-cheeked boys and girls trooped merrily to the little red schoolhouse under the hill. In the light of such facts as these, who can be a pessimist?

"But I must not dwell upon the past; the Boy Scouts of America prepare for the future. I am reminded that I am not at this moment addressing the Boy Scouts of America,--they come to-morrow at the same hour,--but the principle is the same. Even as the Boy Scouts of America look only at the future, so do you. We must not linger fondly on the days when cows grazed on Boston Common. The purpose of this society is to save Boston Common. That the Common has been saved many times before is true; but is that any reason why we should falter now? 'New occasions teach new duties.' Let us not be satisfied with a supetficial view. While fresh loam is being scattered on the surface, commercial interests and the suburban greed to get home quick are striking at the vitals of the Common. Citizens of Boston, awake!

"Your pastor had expected to be with you this evening, but he has at the last moment discovered that he has two other engagements, each of them of long standing. He has therefore asked me to take his place in this interesting course of lectures on Church History. The subject of the lecture for the evening is--and if I am mistaken some one will please correct me--Ulphilas, or Christianity among the Goths. I cannot treat this subject from that wealth of historical information possessed by your pastor; but I can at least speak from the heart. I feel that it is well for us to turn aside from the questions of the day, for the quiet consideration of such a character as Ulphilas.

"Ulphilas seems to me to be one of those characters we ought all to know more about. I shall not weary you by discussing the theology of Ulphilas or the details of his career. It would seem more fitting that these things should be left for another occasion. I shall proceed at once to the main lesson of his life. As briefly as possible let me state the historical situation that confronted him. It is immaterial for us to inquire where the Goths were at that time, or what they were doing. It is sufficient for us to know that the Goths at that time were pagans, mere heathen. Under those circumstances what did Ulphilas do? He went to the Goths. That one act reveals his character. If in the remaining moments of this lecture I can enforce the lesson for us of that one act, I shall feel that my coming here has not been in vain.

"But some one who has followed my argument thus far may say, 'All that you have said is true, lamentably true; but what has it to do with the Advancement of Woman?' I answer, it _is_ the Advancement of Woman."

"How do you make that out?" I asked.

Bagster looked vaguely troubled. "There is no such thing as an isolated moral phenomenon," he said, as if he were repeating something from a former sermon; "when you attempt to remedy one evil you find it related to a whole moral series. But perhaps I did not make the connection plain. My address doesn't seem to be as closely reasoned as it did when I was delivering it. Does it seem to you to be cogent?"

"Cogent is not precisely the word I would use. But it seems earnest."

"Thank you," said Bagster. "I always try to be earnest. It's hard to be earnest about so many things. I am always afraid that I may not give to all an equal emphasis."

"And now that you have stopped for a moment," I suggested, "perhaps you would be willing to skip to the last page. When I read a story I am always anxious to get to the end. I should like to know how your address comes out,--if it does come out."

Bagster turned over a dozen pages and read in a more animated manner.

"Your chairman has the reputation of making the meetings over which he presides brisk and crisp. He has given me just a minute and a half in which to tell what the country expects of this Federation of Young People. I shall not take all the time. I ask you to remember two letters--E and N. _What_ does the country expect this Federation to do? E--everything. _When_ does the country expect you to do it? N--now. Remember these two letters--E and N. Young people, I thank you for your attention.

"The hour is late. You, my young brother, have listened to a charge in which your urgent duties have been fearlessly declared to you. When you have performed these duties, others will be presented to you. And now, in token of our confidence in you, I give you the right hand of fellowship.

"And do you know," said Bagster, "that when I reached to give him the right hand of fellowship, he wasn't there."

We sat in silence for some time. At last he asked, hesitatingly, "What do you think of it? In your judgment is it organic or functional?"

"I do not think it is organic. I am afraid that your conscience has been over-functioning of late, and needs a rest. I know a nook in the woods of New Hampshire, under the shadow of Mount Chocorua, where you might go for six months while your affairs are in the hands of a receiver. I can't say that you would find everything satisfactory, even there. The mountain is not what it used to be. It is decadent, geologically speaking, and it suffered a good deal during the last glacial period. But you can't do much about it in six months. You might take it just as it is,--some things have to be taken that way.

"You will start to-morrow morning and begin your life of temporary irresponsibility. You will have to give up your problems for six months, but you may rest assured that they will keep. You will go by Portsmouth, where you will have ten minutes for lunch. Take that occasion for a leisurely meal. A card will be handed to you assuring you that 'The bell will ring one minute before the departure of the train. You can't get left.' Hold that thought: you can't get left; the railroad authorities say so."

"Did you ever try it," asked Bagster.

"Once," I answered.

"And did you get left?"

"Portsmouth," I said, "is a beautiful old town. I had always wanted to see it. You can see a good deal of Portsmouth in an afternoon."

* * * * *

The predicament in which my friend Bagster finds himself is a very common one. It is no longer true that the good die young; they become prematurely middle-aged. In these days conscience doth make neurasthenics of us all. Now it will not do to flout conscience, and by shutting our eyes to the urgencies and complexities of life purchase for ourselves a selfish calm. Neither do we like the idea of neurasthenia.

My notion is that the twentieth-century man is morally solvent, though he is temporarily embarrassed. He will find himself if he is given sufficient time. In the mean time it is well for him to consider the nature of his embarrassment. He has discovered that the world is "so full of a number of things," and he is disappointed that he is not as "happy as kings"--that is, as kings in the fairy books. Perhaps "sure enough" kings are not as happy as the fairy-book royalties, and perhaps the modern man is only experiencing the anxieties that belong to his new sovereignty over the world.

There are tribes which become confused when they try to keep in mind more than three or four numbers. It is the same kind of confusion which comes when we try to look out for more than Number One. We mean well, but we have not the facilities for doing it easily. In fact, we are not so civilized as we sometimes think.

For example, we have never carried out to its full extent the most important invention that mankind has ever made--money. Money is a device for simplifying life by providing a means of measuring our desires, and gratifying a number of them without confusion.

Money is a measure, not of commodities, but of states of mind. The man in the street expresses a profound philosophy when he says, "I feel like thirty cents." That is all that "thirty cents" means. It is a certain amount of feeling.

You see an article marked "$1.50." You pass by unmoved. The next day you see it on the bargain counter marked "98 cents," and you say, "Come to my arms," and carry it home. You did not feel like a dollar and a half toward it, but you did feel exactly like ninety-eight cents.

It is because of this wonderful measure of value that we are able to deal with a multitude of diverse articles without mental confusion.

I am asked to stop at the department store and discover in that vast aggregation of goods a skein of silk of a specified shade, and having found it bring it safely home. Now, I am not fitted for such an adventure. Left to my own devices I should be helpless.

But the way is made easy for me. The floorwalker meets me graciously, and without chiding me for not buying the things I do not want, directs me to the one thing which would gratify my modest desire. I find myself in a little place devoted to silk thread, and with no other articles to molest me or make me afraid. The world of commodities is simplified to fit my understanding. I feel all the gratitude of the shorn lamb for the tempered wind.

At the silken shrine stands a Minerva who imparts her wisdom and guides my choice. The silk thread she tells me is equivalent to five cents. Now, I have not five cents, but only a five-dollar bill. She does not act on the principle of taking all that the traffic will bear. She sends the five-dollar bill through space, and in a minute or two she gives me the skein and four dollars and ninety-five cents, and I go out of the store a free man. I have no misgivings and no remorse because I did not buy all the things I might have bought. No one reproached me because I did not buy a four-hundred-dollar pianola. Thanks to the great invention, the transaction was complete in itself. Five cents represented one choice, and I had in my pocket ninety-nine choices which I might reserve for other occasions.

But there are some things which, as we say, money cannot buy. In all these things of the higher life we have no recognized medium of exchange. We are still in the stage of primitive barter. We must bring all our moral goods with us, and every transaction involves endless dickering. If we express an appreciation for one good thing, we are at once reproached by all the traffickers in similar articles for not taking over bodily their whole stock in trade.

For example, you have a desire for culture. You haven't the means to indulge in very much, but you would like a little. You are immediately beset by all the eager Matthew Arnolds who have heard of your desire, and they insist that you should at once devote yourself to the knowledge of the best that has been known and said in the world. All this is very fine, but you don't see how you can afford it. Isn't there a little of a cheaper quality that they could show you? Perhaps the second best would serve your purpose. At once you are covered with reproaches for your philistinism.

You had been living a rather prosaic life and would like to brighten it up with a little poetry. What you would really like would be a modest James Whitcomb Riley's worth of poetry. But the moment you express the desire the University Extension lecturer insists that what you should take is a course of lectures on Dante. No wonder that you conclude that a person in your circumstances will have to go without any poetry at all.

It is the same way with efforts at social righteousness. You find it difficult to engage in one transaction without being involved in others that you are not ready for. You are interested in a social reform that involves collective action. At once you are told that it is socialistic. You do not feel that it is any worse for that, and you are quite willing to go on. But at once your socialistic friends present you with the whole programme of their party. It is all or nothing. When it is presented in that way you are likely to become discouraged and fall back on nothing.

Now, if we had a circulating medium you would express the exact state of your desires somewhat in this way: "Here is my moral dollar. I think I will take a quarter's worth of Socialism, and twelve and a half cents' worth of old-time Republicanism, and twelve and a half cents of genuine Jeffersonian democracy, if there is any left, and a quarter's worth of miscellaneous insurgency. Let me see, I have a quarter left. Perhaps I may drop in to-morrow and see if you have anything more that I want."

The sad state of my good friend Bagster arises from the fact that he can't do one good thing without being confused by a dozen other things which are equally good. He feels that he is a miserable sinner because his moral dollar is not enough to pay the national debt.

But though we have not yet been able adequately to extend the notion of money to the affairs of the higher life, there have been those who have worked on the problem.

That was what Socrates had in mind. The Sophists talked eloquently about the Good, the True, and the Beautiful; but they dealt in these things in the bulk. They had no way of dividing them into sizable pieces for everyday use. Socrates set up in Athens as a broker in ideas. He dealt on the curb. He measured one thing in terms of another, and tried to supply a sufficient amount of change for those who were not ashamed to engage in retail trade.

Socrates draws the attention of Phædrus to the fact that when we talk of iron and silver the same objects are present to our minds, "but when any one speaks of justice and goodness, there is every sort of disagreement, and we are at odds with one another and with ourselves."

What we need to do he says is to have an idea that is big enough to include all the particular actions or facts. Then, in order to do business, we must be able to divide this so that it may serve our convenience. This is what Socrates called Philosophy.

"I am a great lover," he said, "of the processes of division and generalization; they help me to speak and think. And if I find any man who is able to see unity and plurality in nature, him I follow, and walk in his steps as if he were a god."

Even in the Forest of Arden life was not so simple as at first it seemed. The shepherd's life which "in respect of itself was a good life" was in other respects quite otherwise. Its unity seemed to break up into a confusing plurality. Honest Touchstone, in trying to reconcile the different points of view, blurted out the test question, "Hast any philosophy in thee, Shepherd?" After Bagster has communed with Chocorua for six months, I shall put that question to him.

THE CONTEMPORANEOUSNESS OF ROME

I

"You here, Bagster?" I exclaimed, as in the Sistine Chapel I saw an anxious face gazing down into a mirror in which were reflected the dimmed glories of the ceiling. There was an anxiety as of one who was seeking the Truth of Art at the bottom of the well.

One who is in the habit of giving unsolicited advice is likely to take for granted that his advice has been acted upon, even though experience should teach him that this is seldom the case. I had sagely counseled Bagster to go to the New Hampshire woods, in order to recuperate after his multifarious labors. I was therefore surprised to find him playing truant in Rome.

My salutation did not at first cause him to look up. He only made a mysterious sign with his hand. It was evidently a gesture which he had recently learned, and was practiced as a sort of exorcism.

"I am not going to sell you cameos or post cards," I explained.

When he recognized a familiar face, Bagster forgot all about the Last Judgment, and we were soon out-of-doors and he was telling me about himself.

"I meant to go to Chocorua as you suggested, but the congregation advised otherwise, so I came over here. It seemed the better thing to do. Up in New Hampshire you can't do much but rest, but here you can improve your taste and collect a good deal of homiletic material. So I've settled down in Rome. I want to have time to take it all in."

"Do you begin to feel rested?" I asked.

"Not yet. It's harder work than I thought it would be. There's so much to take in, and it's all so different. I don't know how to arrange my material. What I want to do, in the first place, is to have a realizing sense of being in Rome. What's the use of being here unless you are here in the spirit?

"What I mean is that I should like to feel as I did when I went to Mount Vernon. It was one of those dreamy autumn days when the leaves were just turning. There was the broad Potomac, and the hospitable Virginia mansion. I had the satisfying sense that I was in the home of Washington. Everything seemed to speak of Washington. He filled the whole scene. It was a great experience. Why can't I feel that way about the great events that happened down there?"

We were by this time on the height of the Janiculum near the statue of Garibaldi. Bagster made a vague gesture toward the city that lay beneath us. There seemed to be something in the scene that worried him. "I can't make it seem real," he said. "I have continually to say to myself, 'That is Rome, Italy, and not Rome, New York.' I can't make the connection between the place and the historical personages I have read about. I can't realize that the Epistle to the Romans was written to the people who lived down there. Just back of that new building is the very spot where Romulus would have lived if he had ever existed. On those very streets Scipio Africanus walked, and Cæsar and Cicero and Paul and Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus and Belisarius, and Hildebrand and Michelangelo, and at one time or another about every one you ever heard of. And how many people came to get emotions they couldn't get anywhere else! There was Goethe. How he felt! He took it all in. And there was Shelley writing poetry in the Baths of Caracalla. And there was Gibbon."

"But we can't all expect to be Shelleys or even Gibbons," I suggested.

"I know it," said Bagster, ruefully. "But if one has only a little vessel, he ought to fill it. But somehow the historical associations crowd each other out. When I left home I bought Hare's 'Walks in Rome.' I thought I would take a walk a day as long as they lasted. It seemed a pleasant way of combining physical and intellectual exercise. But do you know, I could not keep up those walks. They were too concentrated for my constitution. I wasn't equal to them. Out in California they used to make wagers with the stranger that he couldn't eat a broiled quail every day for ten days. I don't see why he couldn't, but it seemed that the thought of to-morrow's quail, and the feeling that it was compulsory, turned him against what otherwise might have been a pleasure. It's so with the 'Walks.' It's appalling to think that every morning you have to start out for a constitutional, and be confronted with the events of the last twenty-five centuries. The events are piled up one on another. There they are, and here you are, and what are you going to do about them?"

"I suppose that there isn't much that you can do about them," I remarked.

"But we ought to do what we can," said Bagster. "When I do have an emotion, something immediately turns up to contradict it. It's like wandering through a big hotel, looking for your room, when you are on the wrong floor. Here you are as likely as not to find yourself in the wrong century. In Rome everything turns out, on inquiry, to be something else. There's something impressive about a relic if it's the relic of one thing. But if it's the relic of a dozen different kinds of things it's hard to pick out the appropriate emotion. I find it hard to adjust my mind to these composite associations."

"Now just look at this," he said, opening his well-thumbed Baedeker: "'Santa Maria Sopra Minerva (Pl. D. 4), erected on the ruins of Domitian's temple of Minerva, the only mediæval Gothic church in Rome. Begun A.D., 1280; was restored and repainted in 1848-55. It contains several admirable works of art, in particular Michelangelo's Christ.'"

"It's that sort of thing that gets on my nerves. The Virgin and Minerva and Domitian and Michelangelo are all mixed together, and then everything is restored and repainted in 1848. And just round the corner from Santa Maria Sopra Minerva is the Pantheon. The inscription on the porch says that it was built by Agrippa, the son-in-law of Augustus. I try to take that in. But when I have partially done that, I learn that the building was struck by lightning and entirely rebuilt by the Emperor Hadrian.

"That information comes like the call of the conductor to change cars, just as one has comfortably settled down on the train. We must forget all about Agrippa and Augustus, and remember that this building was built by Hadrian. But it turns out that in 609 Boniface turned it into a Christian church. Which Boniface? The Pantheon was adorned with bronze columns. If you wish to see them you must go to St. Peter's, where they are a part of the high altar. So Baedeker says, but I'm told that isn't correct either. When you go inside you see that you must let by-gones be by-gones. You are confronted with the tomb of Victor Emmanuel and set to thinking on the recent glories of the House of Savoy. Really to appreciate the Pantheon you must be well-posted in nineteenth-century history. You keep up this train of thought till you happen to stumble on the tomb of Raphael. That, of course, is what you ought to have come to see in the first place.

"When you look at the column of Trajan you naturally think of Trajan, you follow the spiral which celebrates his victories, till you come to the top of the column; and there stands St. Peter as if it were _his_ monument. You meditate on the column of Marcus Aurelius, and look up and see St. Paul in the place of honor.

"I must confess that I have had difficulty about the ruins. Brick, particularly in this climate, doesn't show its age. I find it hard to distinguish between a ruin and a building in the course of construction. When I got out of the station I saw a huge brick building across the street, which had been left unfinished as if the workmen had gone on strike. I learned that it was the remains of the Baths of Diocletian. Opening a door I found myself in a huge church, which had a long history I ought to have known something about, but didn't.

"Now read this, and try to take it in: 'Returning to the Cancelleria, we proceed to the Piazza Campo de' Fiori, where the vegetable market is held in the morning, and where criminals were formerly executed. The bronze statue of the philosopher Giordano Bruno, who was burned here as a heretic in 1600, was erected in 1889. To the east once lay the Theatre of Pompey. Behind it lay the Porticus of Pompey where Cæsar was murdered, B.C. 44.'