Part 10
Excepting the human being, we know of no such active or intelligent creature as the ant--the ant who lives in total darkness. Yet does he not build his cities and fight his battles as wisely as we do our own? I sometimes wonder if the possession of the power of sight is not a hindrance, rather than a help, in labor? The ant, who can not see at all, goes straight to his object. He is never distracted by the sight of things along the way. The fly, on the contrary, is possessed of a great many eyes; his head, in fact, is practically _all eyes_. Yet what is the fly but a parasite, a nuisance, a very vagabond of insects? Attracted hither and thither by everything that meets his gaze, he lights first upon one object and then upon another, without rhyme or reason save his overweening curiosity, until he finally falls into a trap and dies an ignoble death in a spider’s web, or caught fast upon a sticky paper. The fly has no social organization, no family life, no mating in any proper sense of the word. He pollutes all that he touches. His entire life is a life of destruction, as opposed to the ant’s, which is a life of construction.
According to the Grecian mythology, the largest race of men the world has ever known, the _Cyclops_, had but a single eye, and that in the middle of the forehead. The stupidest of all characters of the Grecian myths was _Argus_, who, though he had more eyes than all the gods and heroes together, yet allowed _Hermes_ to pipe him to sleep and so cut off his head. In the tail of _Hera’s_ peacock, his eyes were of as much use to him as in his own head. _Eros_, the god of love, was blind; yet he was of all the gods the most joyful. And in this, our own day, is not _Justice_ blind?
Is there, in all this, no significance? Is there no hint of an understanding of the secret that, as he who would save his soul must first lose it, so he who would see must first be blind?
Men see, as we say, with the mind as well as with the eye. Men also see with the spirit. Saul never could see the truth and beauty of Christianity until he was stricken blind upon the road to Damascus. But _while_ he was blind, he _saw_, and so became Paul. Would Homer have been the giant of poets had he had his sight? I doubt it. Would Milton have attained his heights of inspiration, had he retained his vision? I can not believe it. For the man who has physical sight looks upon the earth and the works of men; but he who has only the spiritual sight, lifts up his eyes to God and His angels.
The shepherd lad who has never traveled beyond his native valley dreams a beautiful dream of the world that lies beyond the hills that hem him in. But the tourist lives a life of constant disillusion, for he finds in distant lands, where he had thought to find the abiding-place of Romance, the same humdrum life of the commonplace that he left at home.
We who are blind, Mr. _Idler_, are the shepherd boys of this life. Enclosed in our valley of darkness by the everlasting shadow of our endless night, we dream of the world that lies beyond as a place of beauty and happiness. For us there is no sad disillusion. For us there is no rude awakening from the delights of fancy. For us the sky is always fair and the earth is always sweet. For us the woods are thronged with nymphs and the grasses with the little people of fairyland. We do not know the gloom of age or the horror of decay. We do not know the sight of death.
Do not imagine, Sir, that because we can not see, we can not create images. We can, we do. We dream of the earth as fair as other men may dream of heaven. Because we have never seen beauty, to us all things are beautiful. When I walk in the garden, the scent of the rose rises to my nostrils with a sweetness which is but intensified because I can not see the blossom whence it springs. I finger its fragile petals, and I rejoice in its beauty of form, for you must know that one can _feel_ beauty as well as see it. I lean my head against the friendly and sturdy oak and I hear the beating of his heart. For to me all these things _live_. What does it signify that they can not see, or hear, or speak? _I_ can not see; am I the less a man for that? I learn that nowadays it is possible to communicate with people who are born not only blind, but deaf and dumb as well. That it is possible to teach them to read and to speak, even as I was taught to read and speak. Is it not possible, then, that some day, if we will only try, we may be able to break through the long silence that has separated us from our brothers and sisters of the woods and fields? Already, we who are blind can almost understand the whispered syllables of the rustling leaves and the waving grass. May not some other, one perhaps more closely shut in with God than we, reach downward as well as upward, and bring about the _universal_ understanding? I hope it may be so.
My wife, who had the sweetest voice of any girl I ever knew, is as fair to me to-day as upon the day when I first fell in love. Her voice, if anything, has grown more pleasant as she has grown older. She, too, is blind, and together we enjoy a state of happiness which comes as near to being perpetual youth as it is possible for mortals to attain. How infinitely better this seems to me, than to be compelled, day after day, to watch the fading of that flower of my early love! To observe anxiously the lines of care creeping into that dearly beloved countenance; to see the snow of many winters slowly whiten her soft smooth hair! What a kindness of the good God is this, that she remains forever young to me, as I do to her, and that our passion knows nothing of the insidious poison of departing comeliness!
Curiously enough, our only child, the dearly beloved son who was the fruit of our attachment, has a perfect vision. And this, Mr. _Idler_, odd as it may seem to you who are accustomed to look upon this matter from a different point of view, is the one worry of my life. Many a night have I lain awake, listening to the gentle breathing of my wife at my side, and turned over and over in my mind the dangers which he must face because of his condition. Often have I prayed God that He might watch over him and turn aside his eyes from the ugliness, the sin and the temptation, which his mother and I have mercifully been spared! It is hard, in any case, to have the child grow up and go out into the world. But it is infinitely more hard to know that he is almost as though he were of another race of beings, and that he must endure the sight of pain, of misery, of squalor, of poverty and of age! That he must be subject to temptations for which I can not prepare him, having never met with them myself.
I once read a story of a man who became mysteriously possessed of the power to read the thoughts of all those with whom he came in contact. At first he was transported into the seventh heaven of delight, reveling in the sense of his new-found power. But soon he came to realize what a curse had fallen upon him. Turn where he would, he found the minds of men filled with envy, malice and evil. The fairest faces served to hide from others, but not from him, the most ignoble minds. Beneath the frankest and most friendly manner he often read the secret hatred and jealousy. Confronted upon all sides with the evidence of the wickedness and baseness of his fellows, he was at last driven to despair, and by one desperate act destroyed both his power and his life.
Mr. _Idler_, were I suddenly to be granted the gift of sight, I think that I should feel like that. It is hard enough to read of some things. I should not care to look upon them.
There have been those who, hearing me speak so of sight, have answered, “That is because you have never been able to see. You do not know what a blessing sight is, because you have never enjoyed it!” Sometimes I comfort myself with the thought that it is like that with our son. He can see, but he was born that way and he will never know the difference. Gradually he will grow used to looking upon things which I could not endure to behold. God has chosen to give him the harder part; may He grant him the strength to bear it!
I am, Sir, your sincere friend, NOEL NIGHTSHADE.
A TALE OF A MAD POET’S WIFE
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: I have long been an interested reader of your interesting periodical, though I have not hitherto presumed to address you, either personally or in your character as editor. I have ever had an aversion for that type of person who is constantly rushing into print to air personal troubles and casting upon the shoulders of the public the burdens which should rightly be borne upon his own. I have observed, however, that a great many of your readers do not scruple to address you in this respect and are quite in the habit of writing you for advice upon their personal affairs, and, since you do not appear to find this burdensome, I have determined to make known to you my own pitiable plight, in the hope that you, or some of your readers, may be able to suggest some method of relief; for, indeed, I am deep in trouble, from which I seem utterly unable to extricate myself by my own devices. Lest I weary you, I shall tell my sad story in the fewest possible words.
While yet a very young woman I fell in love with a poet. In this there was nothing especially noteworthy, since, I suppose, all women go through this experience at some time of life. The unfortunate feature of my own affair was that it ended quite as I wished it to end--in my marriage. I soon learned that the qualities which make the poet so satisfactory a suitor do not always appear in so favorable a light when he has become a husband. I found it very sweet and charming during our courtship that my lover should be concerned with my spiritual welfare and that his thoughts should never descend to the common affairs of life. It would have seemed almost like sacrilege to ask him to consider with me the sordid problems which are commonly inflicted upon young men of grosser clay when they have proposed marriage to a young woman. So certain was I that any mention of such trivialities would mortally offend my fiancé that I would permit neither my father nor my brothers to question him upon the subject of his financial condition. For this sentimental whim I very nearly paid with my happiness, for I found soon after we had been wed that these questions must inevitably be considered sooner or later, and whereas it had formerly been only a question of the expediency of my marriage, it was now become a matter of vital importance.
Fortunately, I have always been of an excellent _wheedling_ disposition, so much so that my father used to say I could coax a Scotchman into extravagance or a politician into honesty by merely smiling upon him. I turned this natural gift to account in the case of my husband by inducing him to constitute me his business agent. I then went about among the editors selling his verse, and in this I was so successful that he was soon supplying _no less than a third_ of the current verse which was printed in the six or seven leading monthly magazines published in this city. No doubt you have often heard poets express surprise at the amount of rather mediocre poetry which finds its way into the columns of standard publications. You may understand this more readily when I tell you that several other writers of magazine poetry, learning of our own arrangement, immediately set about acquiring handsome and attractive wives, to whom they turned over their output, never appearing at the offices of the editors in person but always sending their wives as their representatives.
In this way we managed very well for several years, though latterly I have encountered one or two editors who were apparently either very near-sighted or peculiarly unsusceptible. We were doing very well, however, and my husband had acquired a wide reputation, so that he was often invited to lecture before associations of one sort or another and to give readings at entertainments in private dwellings. This added to our income, but both of us by now being under the necessity of always appearing dressed in the very neatest and most attractive fashion, we soon found that whatever sum we had left over from current living expenses went for keeping up appearances; so that we were able to live very well but were by no means enabled to lay by a competence for the future.
It was at this stage of our career, which is to say some three years gone, when we were doing better than we ever had before, that the sad blow fell upon us which has cast a shadow over our household, and which has left me, at the age of forty, a widow in all but name and a pauper in anticipation, if not already one in fact. My husband had been invited to speak before a certain literary club or society, and as was always his custom, had accepted without hesitation. Little did he realize, when he carelessly mentioned this appointment to me, that it would be his last public appearance for a long time to come--perhaps forever! Little did I know when he left our apartment that evening, looking so debonair and engaging in his faultless evening attire, that I should next behold him a pitiful wreck--a driveling idiot! Yet, Mr. _Idler_, this was, alas! what befell your wretched correspondent. He came back to me from that reading a man without understanding, a mental incompetent, a man who, despite his stalwart frame and glowing health of body, exhibited all the symptoms of senile decay! A man who could scarcely scrawl his own name in legible fashion, to say nothing of inditing sonnets, quatrains and ballads.
And what, Mr. _Idler_, do you suppose those heartless wretches who composed that literary society had done to my innocent and harmless husband? Not content with having him read his verses, _they had insisted that he explain them_! And he, poor weak man that he was, yielded to the unhappy vanity which is the birthright of all poets, and had attempted to comply with their request. The result you already know. His mind was completely overturned. He has spent the time since that dreadful evening in dictating to an imaginary stenographer a critical appreciation of each rhyme in _Mother Goose_. Only once has he attempted anything in the way of original poetry, which I hastened to jot down in shorthand, and which was so puerile, so empty of all meaning, that I could not forbear to weep heartbrokenly as I transcribed my notes.
Now, Mr. _Idler_, what redress have I against those inhuman creatures, those compassionless brutes, who brought my husband to this pass? Can I sue them in a court of law? Or must I bear without compensation the dreadful sorrow which has befallen me? I beg of you, advise me at once, as I do not know which way to turn.
I am, Sir, distractedly yours, BEDELIA BARDLET.
P. S.--All is come right after all, Mr. _Idler_. After writing you the above, yesterday morning, I determined to make one more desperate trial. I took around to an editor the one original poem, of which I spoke, which my husband had dictated in his madness. That editor has just called me on the telephone to say that the poem will be printed in the next number of his magazine, and that he finds it by far the best that my husband has ever submitted. And so, please God, it may turn out that his misfortune will prove to be a blessing in disguise.
THE LOCK-STEP
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: Thackeray once said: “Every one knows what harm the bad may do, but who knows the mischief done by the good?” It appears to me that there is a valuable suggestion in this query which merits the consideration of all men who live under a civilized government, and especially the attention of young men who are about to enter upon the serious business of life. Young people, being by nature somewhat lacking in logic, are prone to consider everything that is good _per se_ as a thing which must necessarily be good in its effect, and similarly to class all thing which are bad in themselves as bad in their effects. Nothing could be more erroneous than this assumption. There is no man who will maintain that a beating is a thing which is good in itself; yet I am old-fashioned enough to believe that many a beating has been very salutary in its effect. Early in life, I fell into this common error of confusing the inherent quality of an act with the quality of its effect, and it is in the hope that I may save some worthy young man the miseries resulting from such an error that I am writing this letter.
As Mr. James Coolidge Carter points out in his book, _Law: Its Origin, Growth and Function_, and as Blackstone and others pointed out before him, all law originates in custom. As a custom becomes general--so general as to be termed the common custom among a given people--it is usually enacted as law. And even where such legislative sanction is wanting, a general custom takes on the force of law and operates as law, as is the case with the great body of the common law of England. Thus, a custom, which in the beginning all are free to adopt or to reject as they may see fit, eventually acquires the force of a rule to which all are obliged to conform, whether from strict legal necessity or merely by force of public opinion.
The law, theoretically at least and actually in most cases, is merely the expression of a public sentiment. It is the constant tendency of all uniform and generally prevalent customs and opinions to take on the form of law. The general disapproval of profanity, for instance, results in laws providing penalties for the use of profane language in public places. Practically all ordinances may be traced to the same source of public sentiment. Not all laws, however, represent the will of the majority. Certain of our laws are representative of the general opinion of all mankind, others of the sentiments of a majority of mankind, and still others of the ideas and prejudices of an active minority. To the extent that such habits, ideas, customs, opinions and prejudices become crystallized into law, the members of a community become enslaved to those habits, ideas, customs, opinions and prejudices; since a departure from them is followed by penalties and punishments. And there are some customs which, while not actually laws, exert quite as strong an influence upon the average citizen as the duly enacted statutes. The fear of social ostracism is often quite as effective a check upon the inclinations of an individual as the fear of legal punishment.
Now, as every man is the slave of general laws and customs, so, in a lesser sense, is he the slave of his own personal habits. And oddly enough this is more often true of good habits than of bad ones. Should the town drunkard make a sudden resolution to reform, the town may laugh, but nobody will condemn his resolution to mend his ways; nobody will be scandalized at his change of habits. But should the leader of the local prohibitionists suddenly resolve to test the joys of inebriety, what a protest would go up on all sides! Even the town drunkard would sneer and despise him as a man who had fallen from his high estate. Much as the inebriate may dislike the sincere teetotaler, he dislikes the ex-teetotaler even more. No, every man is a slave to his good habits and he can not hope to change them without exciting the animosity of all who know him.
I recall reading not long ago a story of an eastern governor who was caught in the act of smoking a cigarette. Now, there was nothing especially horrifying about the fact that he smoked cigarettes except for the fact that he was the vice-president of an anti-cigarette society. Under the circumstances this governor, who is in all probability a capable and fairly honest executive, has endangered, if he has not destroyed, his political future--and all for the matter of a cigarette! While it may seem an injustice to him that he be made to suffer a political eclipse for so slight a lapse, there is hardly a smoker who will not heartily agree with the idly busy people who make up the anti-cigarette league, that the governor deserves all the punishment his outraged associates may choose to inflict upon him. He has been a double renegade; for he has betrayed his fellow smokers by publicly indorsing the aims of the society, and he has betrayed his fellow members of the society by privately indulging in the very habit which the society condemns.
And the general public may very justly condemn him not because he smokes cigarettes--but because he has played the hypocrite. This statesman is evidently one of those foolish men who believe that it pays to appear better than one really is, and that an undeserved reputation for abstinence and virtue is better than none. And of all the possible attitudes that he might have assumed in this connection, the one which he did assume was the worst, for it was the most hypocritical and insincere. And what monumental folly! For the sake of a cigarette he has jeopardized his career--by such a slender thread is the Damoclean sword of public opprobrium suspended!
But I am digressing. I did not intend to write you a dissertation upon the follies of politicians, but to set forth, in some sort, the results of my own stupidity in failing to discover early in life the tyranny of custom and habit.
I am, as you may possibly have conjectured, a member of the legal profession; which profession I have followed with some degree of success for the last thirty years. I think I may say without boasting that I have attained an enviable reputation among my colleagues of the bar as an able advocate and a man possessed of a logical mind and a rather extensive knowledge of the “delightful fictions of the law.” I have no complaint to make upon the score of my professional career. If it has not led me to eminence, it has at least preserved me from want. My practise, while general and not so profitable as that of some legal specialists of my acquaintance, is yet sufficiently lucrative to enable me to maintain a comfortable establishment at home and to pay without pinching the expenses of my son’s collegiate and my daughter’s “finishing school” education. I have a comfortable home, a healthy and happy family, a prosperous business, a large number of congenial friends and a hale and hearty constitution. Doubtless you will say that I am blessed beyond the majority of mankind. Doubtless I am, and doubtless, too, beyond my deserts. But for all these blessings, which are obviously much to be desired, there is, so to speak, a fly in the ointment of my contentment. And that is just this--_I have too good a reputation_! In me, Sir, you may behold a man who has become an abject slave to good Reputation. Totally unknown to the great majority of my millions of fellow countrymen, and having but a modest degree of celebrity among the members of my own profession, I am yet compelled to be as careful of my speech and as circumspect in my actions as if I were the Czar of all the Russias! I am bound hand, foot and tongue by the ties of a lifetime; I am manacled at the cart-tail of Respectability; I am pilloried in the pillory of Dignified Demeanor! If you will bear with me a bit longer, I shall endeavor to explain my present situation.