Chapter 6

The man who quits in disgust when ordered to perform a task which he considers menial or unjust may be a pretty good fellow, but in the wrong environment, but the malcontent who takes your order with a smile and then secretly disobeys, is a dangerous proposition. To pretend to obey, and yet carry in your heart the spirit of revolt is to do half-hearted, slipshod work. If revolt and obedience are equal in power, your engine will then stop on the center and you benefit no one, not even yourself.

The spirit of obedience is the controlling impulse that dominates the receptive mind and the hospitable heart. There are boats that mind the helm and there are boats that do not. Those that do not, get holes knocked in them sooner or later.

To keep off the rocks, obey the rudder.

Obedience is not to slavishly obey this man or that, but it is that cheerful mental state which responds to the necessity of the case, and does the thing without any back talk--unuttered or expressed.

Obedience to the institution--loyalty! The man who has not learned to obey has trouble ahead of him every step of the way. The world has it in for him continually, because he has it in for the world.

The man who does not know how to receive orders is not fit to issue them to others. But the individual who knows how to execute the orders given him is preparing the way to issue orders, and better still--to have them obeyed.

Society's Saviors

All adown the ages society has made the mistake of nailing its Saviors to the cross between thieves.

That is to say, society has recognized in the Savior a very dangerous quality--something about him akin to a thief, and his career has been suddenly cut short.

We have telephones and trolly cars, yet we have not traveled far into the realm of spirit, and our X-ray has given us no insight into the heart of things.

Society is so dull and dense, so lacking in spiritual vision, so dumb and so beast-like that it does not know the difference between a thief and the only Begotten Son. In a frantic effort to forget its hollowness it takes to ping-pong, parchesi and progressive euchre, and seeks to lose itself and find solace and consolation in tiddle-dy-winks.

We are told in glaring head-lines and accurate photographic reproductions of a conference held by leaders in society to settle a matter of grave import. Was it to build technical schools and provide a means for practical and useful education? Was it a plan of building modern tenement houses along scientific and sanitary lines? Was it called to provide funds for scientific research of various kinds that would add to human knowledge and prove a benefit to mankind? No, it was none of these. This body met to determine whether the crook in a certain bulldog's tail was natural or had been produced artificially.

Should the Savior come to-day and preach the same gospel that He taught before, society would see that His experience was repeated. Now and then it blinks stupidly and cries, "Away with Him!" or it stops its game long enough to pass gall and vinegar on a spear to One it has thrust beyond the pale.

For the woman who has loved much society has but one verdict: crucify her! The best and the worst are hanged on one tree.

In the abandon of a great love there exists a godlike quality which places a woman very close to the holy of holies, yet such a one, not having complied with the edicts of society, is thrust unceremoniously forth, and society, Pilate-like, washes its hands in innocency.

Preparing for Old Age

Socrates was once asked by a pupil, this question: "What kind of people shall we be when we reach Elysium?"

And the answer was this: "We shall be the same kind of people that we were here."

If there is a life after this, we are preparing for it now, just as I am to-day preparing for my life to-morrow.

What kind of a man shall I be to-morrow? Oh, about the same kind of a man that I am now. The kind of a man that I shall be next month depends upon the kind of a man that I have been this month.

If I am miserable to-day, it is not within the round of probabilities that I shall be supremely happy to-morrow. Heaven is a habit. And if we are going to Heaven we would better be getting used to it.

Life is a preparation for the future; and the best preparation for the future is to live as if there were none.

We are preparing all the time for old age. The two things that make old age beautiful are resignation and a just consideration for the rights of others.

In the play of _Ivan the Terrible_, the interest centers around one man, the Czar Ivan. If anybody but Richard Mansfield played the part, there would be nothing in it. We simply get a glimpse into the life of a tyrant who has run the full gamut of goosedom, grumpiness, selfishness and grouch. Incidentally this man had the power to put other men to death, and this he does and has done as his whim and temper might dictate. He has been vindictive, cruel, quarrelsome, tyrannical and terrible. Now that he feels the approach of death, he would make his peace with God. But he has delayed that matter too long. He didn't realize in youth and middle life that he was then preparing for old age.

Man is the result of cause and effect, and the causes are to a degree in our hands. Life is a fluid, and well has it been called the stream of life--we are going, flowing somewhere. Strip _Ivan_ of his robes and crown, and he might be an old farmer and live in Ebenezer. Every town and village has its Ivan. To be an Ivan, just turn your temper loose and practise cruelty on any person or thing within your reach, and the result will be a sure preparation for a querulous, quarrelsome, pickety, snipity, fussy and foolish old age, accented with many outbursts of wrath that are terrible in their futility and ineffectiveness.

Babyhood has no monopoly on the tantrum. The characters of _King Lear_ and _Ivan the Terrible_ have much in common. One might almost believe that the writer of _Ivan_ had felt the incompleteness of _Lear_, and had seen the absurdity of making a melodramatic bid for sympathy in behalf of this old man thrust out by his daughters.

Lear, the troublesome, Lear to whose limber tongue there was constantly leaping words unprintable and names of tar, deserves no soft pity at our hands. All his life he had been training his three daughters for exactly the treatment he was to receive. All his life Lear had been lubricating the chute that was to give him a quick ride out into that black midnight storm.

"Oh, how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child," he cries.

There is something quite as bad as a thankless child, and that is a thankless parent--an irate, irascible parent who possesses an underground vocabulary and a disposition to use it.

The false note in _Lear_ lies in giving to him a daughter like _Cordelia_. Tolstoy and Mansfield ring true, and _Ivan the Terrible_ is what he is without apology, excuse or explanation. Take it or leave it--if you do not like plays of this kind, go to see Vaudeville.

Mansfield's _Ivan_ is terrible. The Czar is not old in years--not over seventy--but you can see that Death is sniffing close upon his track. _Ivan_ has lost the power of repose. He cannot listen, weigh and decide--he has no thought or consideration for any man or thing--this is his habit of life. His bony hands are never still--the fingers open and shut, and pick at things eternally. He fumbles the cross on his breast, adjusts his jewels, scratches his cosmos, plays the devil's tattoo, gets up nervously and looks behind the throne, holds his breath to listen. When people address him, he damns them savagely if they kneel, and if they stand upright he accuses them of lack of respect. He asks that he be relieved from the cares of state, and then trembles for fear his people will take him at his word. When asked to remain ruler of Russia he proceeds to curse his councilors and accuses them of loading him with burdens that they themselves would not endeavor to bear.

He is a victim of amor senilis, and right here if Mansfield took one step more his realism would be appalling, but he stops in time and suggests what he dares not express. This tottering, doddering, slobbering, sniffling old man is in love--he is about to wed a young, beautiful girl. He selects jewels for her--he makes remarks about what would become her beauty, jeers and laughs in cracked falsetto. In the animality of youth there is something pleasing--it is natural--but the vices of an old man, when they have become only mental, are most revolting.

The people about _Ivan_ are in mortal terror of him, for he is still the absolute monarch--he has the power to promote or disgrace, to take their lives or let them go free. They laugh when he laughs, cry when he does, and watch his fleeting moods with thumping hearts.

He is intensely religious and affects the robe and cowl of a priest. Around his neck hangs the crucifix. His fear is that he will die with no opportunity of confession and absolution. He prays to High Heaven every moment, kisses the cross, and his toothless old mouth interjects prayers to God and curses on man in the same breath.

If any one is talking to him he looks the other way, slips down until his shoulders occupy the throne, scratches his leg, and keeps up a running comment of insult--"Aye," "Oh," "Of course," "Certainly," "Ugh," "Listen to him now!" There is a comedy side to all this which relieves the tragedy and keeps the play from becoming disgusting.

Glimpses of _Ivan's_ past are given in his jerky confessions--he is the most miserable and unhappy of men, and you behold that he is reaping as he has sown.

All his life he has been preparing for this. Each day has been a preparation for the next. _Ivan_ dies in a fit of wrath, hurling curses on his family and court--dies in a fit of wrath into which he has been purposely taunted by a man who knows that the outburst is certain to kill the weakened monarch.

Where does _Ivan the Terrible_ go when Death closes his eyes?

I know not. But this I believe: No confessional can absolve him--no priest benefit him--no God forgive him. He has damned himself, and he began the work in youth. He was getting ready all his life for this old age, and this old age was getting ready for the fifth act.

The playwright does not say so, Mansfield does not say so, but this is the lesson: Hate is a poison--wrath is a toxin--sensuality leads to death--clutching selfishness is a lighting of the fires of hell. It is all a preparation--cause and effect.

If you are ever absolved, you must absolve yourself, for no one else can. And the sooner you begin, the better.

We often hear of the beauties of old age, but the only old age that is beautiful is the one the man has long been preparing for by living a beautiful life. Every one of us are right now preparing for old age.

There may be a substitute somewhere in the world for Good Nature, but I do not know where it can be found.

The secret of salvation is this: Keep Sweet.

An Alliance with Nature

My father is a doctor who has practised medicine for sixty-five years, and is still practising.

I am a doctor myself.

I am fifty years old; my father is eighty-five. We live in the same house, and daily we ride horseback together or tramp thru the fields and woods. To-day we did our little jaunt of five miles and back 'cross country.

I have never been ill a day--never consulted a physician in a professional way, and in fact, never missed a meal through inability to eat. As for the author of the author of _A Message to Garcia_, he holds, esoterically, to the idea that the hot pedaluvia and small doses of hop tea will cure most ailments that are curable, and so far all of his own ails have been curable--a point he can prove.

The value of the pedaluvia lies in the fact that it tends to equalize circulation, not to mention the little matter of sanitation; and the efficacy of the hops lies largely in the fact that they are bitter and disagreeable to take.

Both of these prescriptions give the patient the soothing thought that something is being done for him, and at the very worst can never do him serious harm.

My father and I are not fully agreed on all of life's themes, so existence for us never resolves itself into a dull, neutral gray. He is a Baptist and I am a Vegetarian. Occasionally he refers to me as "callow," and we have daily resorts to logic to prove prejudices, and history is searched to bolster the preconceived, but on the following important points we stand together, solid as one man:

First. Ninety-nine people out of a hundred who go to a physician have no organic disease, but are merely suffering from some symptom of their own indiscretion.

Second. Individuals who have diseases, nine times out of ten, are suffering only from the accumulated evil effects of medication.

Third. Hence we get the proposition: Most diseases are the result of medication which has been prescribed to relieve and take away a beneficent and warning symptom on the part of wise Nature.

Most of the work of doctors in the past has been to prescribe for symptoms; the difference between actual disease and a symptom being something that the average man does not even yet know.

And the curious part is that on these points all physicians, among themselves, are fully agreed. What I say here being merely truism, triteness and commonplace.

Last week, in talking with an eminent surgeon in Buffalo, he said, "I have performed over a thousand operations of laparotomy, and my records show that in every instance, excepting in cases of accident, the individual was given to what you call the 'Beecham Habit.'"

The people you see waiting in the lobbies of doctors' offices are, in a vast majority of cases, suffering thru poisoning caused by an excess of food. Coupled with this goes the bad results of imperfect breathing, irregular sleep, lack of exercise, and improper use of stimulants, or holding the thought of fear, jealousy and hate. All of these things, or any one of them, will, in very many persons, cause fever, chills, cold feet, congestion and faulty elimination.

To administer drugs to a man suffering from malnutrition caused by a desire to "get even," and a lack of fresh air, is simply to compound his troubles, shuffle his maladies, and get him ripe for the ether-cone and scalpel.

Nature is forever trying to keep people well, and most so-called "disease," which word means merely lack of ease, is self-limiting, and tends to cure itself. If you have appetite, do not eat too much. If you have no appetite, do not eat at all. Be moderate in the use of all things, save fresh air and sunshine.

The one theme of _Ecclesiastes_ is moderation. Buddha wrote it down that the greatest word in any language is Equanimity. William Morris said that the finest blessing of life was systematic, useful work. Saint Paul declared that the greatest thing in the world was love. Moderation, Equanimity, Work and Love--you need no other physician.

In so stating I lay down a proposition agreed to by all physicians; which was expressed by Hippocrates, the father of medicine, and then repeated in better phrase by Epictetus, the slave, to his pupil, the great Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, and which has been known to every thinking man and woman since: Moderation, Equanimity, Work and Love!

The Ex. Question

Words sometimes become tainted and fall into bad repute, and are discarded. Until the day of Elizabeth Fry, on the official records in England appeared the word "mad-house." Then it was wiped out and the word "asylum" substituted. Within twenty years' time in several states in America we have discarded the word "asylum" and have substituted the word "hospital."

In Jeffersonville, Indiana, there is located a "Reformatory" which some years ago was known as a penitentiary. The word "prison" had a depressing effect, and "penitentiary" throws a theological shadow, and so the words will have to go. As our ideas of the criminal change, we change our vocabulary.

A few years ago we talked about asylums for the deaf and dumb--the word "dumb" has now been stricken from every official document in every state in the Union, because we have discovered, with the assistance of Gardner G. Hubbard, that deaf people are not dumb, and not being defectives, they certainly do not need an asylum. They need schools, however, and so everywhere we have established schools for the deaf.

Deaf people are just as capable, are just as competent, just as well able to earn an honest living as is the average man who can hear.

The "indeterminate sentence" is one of the wisest expedients ever brought to bear in penology. And it is to this generation alone that the honor of first using it must be given. The offender is sentenced for, say from one to eight years. This means that if the prisoner behaves himself, obeying the rules, showing a desire to be useful, he will be paroled and given his freedom at the end of one year.

If he misbehaves and does not prove his fitness for freedom he will be kept two or three years, and he may possibly have to serve the whole eight years. "How long are you in for?" I asked a convict at Jeffersonville, who was caring for the flowers in front of the walls. "Me? Oh, I'm in for two years, with the privilege of fourteen," was the man's answer, given with a grin.

The old plan of "short time," allowing two or three months off from every year for good behavior was a move in the right direction, but the indeterminate sentence will soon be the rule everywhere for first offenders.

The indeterminate sentence throws upon the man himself the responsibility for the length of his confinement and tends to relieve prison life of its horror, by holding out hope. The man has the short time constantly in mind, and usually is very careful not to do anything to imperil it. Insurrection and an attempt to escape may mean that every day of the whole long sentence will have to be served.

So even the dullest of minds and the most calloused realize that it pays to do what is right--the lesson being pressed home upon them in a way it has never been before.

The old-time prejudice of business men against the man who had "done time" was chiefly on account of his incompetence, and not his record. The prison methods that turned out a hateful, depressed and frightened man who had been suppressed by the silent system and deformed by the lock-step, calloused by brutal treatment and the constant thought held over him that he was a criminal, was a bad thing for the prisoner, for the keeper and for society. Even an upright man would be undone by such treatment, and in a year be transformed into a sly, secretive and morally sick man. The men just out of prison were unable to do anything--they needed constant supervision and attention, and so of course we did not care to hire them.

The Ex. now is a totally different man from the Ex. just out of his striped suit in the seventies, thanks to that much defamed man, Brockway, and a few others.

We may have to restrain men for the good of themselves and the good of society, but we do not punish. The restraint is punishment enough; we believe men are punished by their sins, not for them.

When men are sent to reform schools now, the endeavor and the hope is to give back to society a better man than we took.

Judge Lindsey sends boys to the reform school without officer or guard. The boys go of their own accord, carrying their own commitment papers. They pound on the gate demanding admittance in the name of the law. The boy believes that Judge Lindsey is his friend, and that the reason he is sent to the reform school is that he may reap a betterment which his full freedom cannot possibly offer. When he takes his commitment papers he is no longer at war with society and the keepers of the law. He believes that what is being done for him is done for the best, and so he goes to prison, which is really not a prison at the last, for it is a school where the lad is taught to economize both time and money and to make himself useful.

Other people work for us, and we must work for them. This is the supreme lesson that the boy learns. You can only help yourself by helping others.

Now here is a proposition: If a boy or a man takes his commitment papers, goes to prison alone and unattended, is it necessary that he should be there locked up, enclosed in a corral and be looked after by guards armed with death-dealing implements?

Superintendent Whittaker, of the institution at Jeffersonville, Indiana, says, "No." He believes that within ten years' time we will do away with the high wall, and will keep our loaded guns out of sight; to a great degree also we will take the bars from the windows of the prisons, just as we have taken them away from the windows of the hospitals for the insane.

At the reform school it may be necessary to have a guard-house for some years to come, but the high wall must go, just as we have sent the lock-step and the silent system and the striped suit of disgrace into the ragbag of time--lost in the memory of things that were.

Four men out of five in the reformatory at Jeffersonville need no coercion, they would not run away if the walls were razed and the doors left unlocked. One young man I saw there refused the offered parole--he wanted to stay until he learned his trade. He was not the only one with a like mental attitude.

The quality of men in the average prison is about the same as that of the men who are in the United States Army. The man who enlists is a prisoner; for him to run away is a very serious offense, and yet he is not locked up at night, nor is he surrounded by a high wall.

The George Junior Republic is simply a farm, unfenced and unpatroled, excepting by the boys who are in the Republic, and yet it is a penal institution. The prison of the future will not be unlike a young ladies' boarding school, where even yet the practice prevails of taking the inmates out all together, with a guard, and allowing no one to leave without a written permit.

As society changes, so changes the so-called criminal. In any event, I know this--that Max Nordau did not make out his case.

There is no criminal class.

Or for that matter we are all criminals. "I have in me the capacity for every crime," said Emerson.

The man or woman who goes wrong is a victim of unkind environment. Booker Washington says that when the negro has something that we want, or can perform a task that we want done, we waive the color line, and the race problem then ceases to be a problem. So it is with the Ex. Question. When the ex-convict is able to show that he is useful to the world, the world will cease to shun him. When Superintendent Whittaker graduates a man it is pretty good evidence that the man is able and willing to render a service to society.

The only places where the ex-convicts get the icy mitt are pink teas and prayer meetings. An ex-convict should work all day and then spend his evenings at the library, feeding his mind--then he is safe.