Part 5

A phrase-book is not necessary. The English language is used on both the Sixth and Ninth Avenue lines, and being equally incomprehensible, cannot be looked up in a dictionary. Only legal currency of the United States is accepted at the ticket-offices, but change is frequently given in Canadian dimes. It is convenient, but not essential, to supply one's self with reading matter at the beginning of the trip. Newspapers are always to be had for the picking on the floor of the cars. The question of fresh air, a topic of constant unpleasant controversy between American travellers and Europeans on the Continent, need not concern the traveller here. The matter is regulated by the company management which keeps the windows closed in summer and open in winter. Passengers of an independent turn of mind will be wary of opening windows on their own account. The sudden entrance of air following upon the heavy perspiration induced by the effort has been known to lead to pneumonia.

With these few general considerations in mind, we may proceed to give a rapid sketch of the route the tourist traverses. As we have said, down to Fifty-third Street the passenger on the Sixth Avenue and on the Ninth Avenue will pass through the same landscape. As the train makes the magnificent curve through One Hundred and Tenth Street he will have before him on the right the towering mass of the Cathedral of St. John, which a kindly neighbour will tell him is Columbia University, and on the left the lovely, wooded heights of Central Park, their base skirted by a low line of garages and French dyeing establishments. At Ninety-eighth Street, on the right, is a water tower of red brick, which probably has the distinction of being the tallest water tower on Ninety-eighth Street. At Seventy-seventh Street to the left is the Museum of Natural History, which the same kindly informant to whom we have referred will describe as the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On every cross street to the right one may catch a glimpse of the beautiful Riverside Drive with the smoke from the New York Central's freight engines rising above the trees.

At Fifty-third Street the Sixth Avenue trains diverge to the left for a short distance and then, turning south once more, carry the traveller through a region heavily overgrown with skeleton advertising signs of woman's apparel and table waters. If the Ninth Avenue route is selected the vista is one of tenement houses and factories. At Thirty-third Street is the new Pennsylvania Station, the cost of which the same kindly neighbour will exaggerate by several hundred millions of dollars.

Ten blocks further down are the buildings of the General Theological Seminary, so beautiful in line and colour that no resident of New York ever alludes to them. A few minutes further down the train rounds a curve and the traveller, if he goes in the early morning, as every visitor to Prospect Park South must, catches a glimpse of the fairy land of steeples and battlements of lower New York, a Camelot wreathed with wisps of steam. For the lover of scenery the Ninth Avenue is to be unhesitatingly recommended, whereas the Sixth Avenue route will give pleasure to the citizen who takes pride in the development of our garment industries.

I have no space to describe the interesting views to be had while crossing Brooklyn Bridge. I can only mention the harbour with the sunlight upon it, a spectacle of loveliness for which New York will be forgiven much. Straight under the span of the bridge is the pier from which Colonel Roosevelt set sail for South America. On the left, close to the edge of the river, is the beetling mass of sugar refineries famous the world over as the scene of an epoch-making experiment in modifying the law of gravitation, when the sugar company succeeded in weighing in three thousand pounds of sugar to the ton and paying duty on the smaller amount to the United States Government.

Of the trip through Brooklyn to Prospect Park South I will not attempt to give any description. For that matter I will not pretend that on any of our journeys I have carried away a definite idea of Brooklyn. For that a lifetime is necessary.

XIII

UNREVISED SCHEDULES

Life's ironies beset us whichever way we turn. The very day that Woodrow Wilson signed the tariff bill, I discovered that Emmeline is a Protectionist.

Thrice in the course of the evening I alluded, with pretended calm, to the signing of the bill, without awakening the least response in Emmeline. The tariff apparently had no meaning to her. Thereupon I reproached her openly.

"It is characteristic of your sex," I said, "not to betray the slightest interest in a matter that comes so intimately home to you. Here is a bill which is bound to affect the problem of high prices. Every woman who carries a market basket, every woman who shops, every woman who has the management of a household on her hands, is directly concerned in the question of lower tariff duties. Yet I dare say you haven't read two lines on the subject in your newspaper."

"What have we been paying duties on?" she said.

"On everything," I replied with spirit. "Anchors, for instance. We have been paying one cent a pound on them. That means twenty dollars a ton. You know what the average anchor weighs, so you can figure out for yourself what we have been paying out all these years for this commodity alone. We have been paying 85 per cent. on bunion plasters, 10 per cent. on animals' claws, and 85 per cent. on teazels."

"But we hardly ever use any of these things," she said.

"I was simply illustrating the iniquitous extremes to which our tariff advocates were prepared to go," I said. "It may seem natural to put a duty on beef, and shoes, and cotton goods. But the tariff barons were not content. Insatiable greed demanded that a tax be put on teazels."

"What is a teazel?" she said.

"I am not sure that I know," I replied. "But that just illustrates one of the favourite methods of the tariff plunderers. It consisted in slapping a stiff duty on articles people did not know the meaning of and so would pay without protest. I say teazels, but, of course, I mean meat, and sugar, and cotton, and woollen goods, all of which things will soon be within the reach of all. I should imagine that women would be grateful for what has been done to make the living problem so much easier."

"Under the new tariff bill," she said, "will there still be only twenty-four hours to the day?"

"The new tariff doesn't repeal the laws of astronomy," I replied.

"That is what I was thinking when you spoke of the living problem being made easier for us," she said. "Putting twelve more hours into the day would be a help. Did the old tariff have a big duty on hanging up pictures?"

"I don't know what you are driving at," I said, but in my heart I thought I knew.

"I mean," she said, "around moving time. I have always thought there must be a very heavy tax on every picture that a man hangs up; or rugs--"

I decided that frivolity was the best way out of a situation that had suddenly become menacing. "Usually we don't hang up rugs," I said.

"That may be an oversight on our part," she replied. "Perhaps, if we hung up rugs and put pictures on the floor it might appeal to your passion for romance. You might even find it exhilarating."

The idea seemed to fascinate her.

"There are a great many things," she went on, "that I should like to see on the free list. Seats in the Subway, for instance. I stood up all the way from Twenty-third Street this afternoon, but I suppose the duty on a man's giving up his seat to a woman is prohibitive. Then there's Mrs. Flanagan who comes in by the day. She has a baby who is teething and cries all night. I wish there was a lower duty on babies' teeth, so that they came easier; and on sleep for mothers who have to go out by the day. I also wish there was a lower duty on the whisky that her husband consumes. She could possibly afford to stay at home more than she does."

"He'd only drink himself to death," I said.

But she was not paying attention. "There might be a lower duty on efficient domestic help. It would be a relief."

"Foreign household help are not under the tariff law at all," I said. "They come in free."

"That's what the girl said yesterday when she decided to quit, an hour before dinner. And from the way she spoke to me I imagine that her language also came in free. The more I think of it the fewer advantages I can see for us women under your new tariff bill." And then the bitter truth came out. "I think that on the whole I am in favour of a high tariff on most things."

"You are in favour of Protection," I stammered, hardly believing my senses.

"I am in favour of protecting domestic industry," said Emmeline, and I saw that she had been reading the newspapers more carefully than I imagined.

The protective system which Emmeline outlined to me that evening would have made Senator Penrose sob for joy. One of the first things she demanded was a heavy duty on tobacco. She said she would be satisfied with a flat rate of 100 per cent. on the nasty article, with a super tax of 100 per cent. on all half-smoked cigars left lying around the house, and another 100 per cent. on cigar ashes and half-burnt matches. Alcoholic spirits should be totally excluded. She wanted a pretty heavy duty on raincoats left lying on chairs when they should be hung up on the proper hook. She was also in favour of a prohibitive tax on all arguments tending to prove that woman's natural sphere is the home. Lodge dues, club dues, and the practice of reading newspapers at the breakfast table should be heavily taxed. There were a great many other schedules she proposed, carrying a minimum duty of seventy-five per cent. I cannot pretend to remember all, but my impression is that plays dealing with the social evil and eugenics were among them.

By this time it will be apparent that Emmeline's views on tariff legislation were somewhat confused. She evidently made no distinction between import duties, internal revenue taxes, and the police power of the State. Before continuing our discussion I therefore insisted that we restrict debate to the specific question of import duties and the cost of living. The simple fact was that we had now changed from a high-tariff nation to a low-tariff nation. How would this affect ourselves and our neighbours?

Thereupon I was subjected to a severe examination as to tariffs and prices in other countries. My answers were, in a general fashion, correct, though possibly I may have confused the British tariff system with that of Germany.

"From your statements, so far as I can make head or tail out of them," said Emmeline, "I gather that in protection countries the cost of food and clothing and rent is always just a little ahead of wages and salaries."

"You have followed me perfectly," I said.

"Whereas in low-tariff countries people's wages and salaries are always just a little behind the cost of food, clothing, and shelter.

"That is due to quite a different set of causes," I said.

"I imagined," she said, "that the causes must be other than those you mentioned. But the fact remains that the choice which confronts most of us is between having a little less than we need, or needing a little more than we have. If that is so, it seems to me rather a waste of time to spend--did you say seventy-five years?--in revising the tariff. I prefer my own kind of tariff."

"And the cost of living?" I said.

"My kind of tariff gets much nearer to solving that problem," she said.

"But then, why Mrs. Pankhurst?" I said. "If the making of laws has nothing to do with the comfort of life, why do you want to vote?"

"Because we want to assert our equality by sharing your illusions. Besides, we can use the vote to bring about a state of things when voting won't be necessary."

On further thought, Emmeline is not a Protectionist; she is an Anarchist.

XIV

SOMEWHAT CONFUSED

He said:

"Last night my wife took me to a lecture on Eugenics and the Future. The night before, we went to a lecture on the Social Implications of the Tango. I enjoyed them both immensely. Of course, after a long day in the office, I am rather tired in the evening. If I dozed off on either occasion it must have been just for a moment. I followed the arguments perfectly."

"Are you converted?" I said.

He pushed his derby further back on his head.

"Quite. I am not a mule. I know a good argument when I see one. Now, isn't it true, as the speaker contended last night, that the human animal, taking him by and large, is not a beautiful object? When he isn't bow-legged, he is knock-kneed. There are too many men prematurely bald. There are too many women prematurely wrinkled--and fat. We are nothing but a shambling, stoop-shouldered race, in a permanent state of ill-health. In summer we get sun-struck. In winter we get colds in the head. Look at the ancient Greeks. Is there any reason why we cannot produce a race as healthy, as beautiful, as graceful in the free play of muscle and limb? An erect, supple, free-stepping race, breathing deeply of life, looking the world full in the face, daring everything, afraid of nothing. Our bodies are divine, as much so as our souls. To go on being a race of physical degenerates, a snuffling, wheezing, perspiring race that is always running to the doctor, is mortal sin; especially when the remedy is close at hand."

"You mean eugenics?" I said.

"No," he said, "I refer to the tango. The speaker last night--or was it the night before?--was absolutely convincing on the point. I am sure you will agree."

To make sure that I would agree he interrupted me just as I opened my mouth to frame an objection. He continued rapidly:

"Take this matter of old age. There's no reason why people should let themselves grow old, is there now? And a properly constituted race would see to it that old age was postponed indefinitely. After all, when a man says he is eighty years old or ninety years old, it is only a figure of speech. Look at Napoleon winning the battle of Leipzig when he was seventy-eight years old."

"I never heard that before," I said. "I thought Napoleon lost the battle of Leipzig, and when he died--"

"It may have been Hannibal," he said. "At that point I may possibly have dozed off. But the principle of the thing is the same. Only a race of weaklings will succumb to the ravages of time without making a fight for it. There is really nothing beautiful in old age. You sit out the long winter nights by the fire. Your eyes are too weak for the fine print in the evening paper, and when you ask your son to tell you about the new Currency Law he grows cross and scolds the baby. When you stop to buy a ticket in the Subway, people grow impatient and murmur something about an old ladies' home. It's all as plain as daylight. There is no reason why people, as soon as they get to be sixty, should reconcile themselves to the idea of debility, warm gruel, and chest protectors, when they might go on being young, alert, graceful, full of the joy of life, if they would only recognise the way of going about it."

"You mean the tango?" I said.

"No," he said. "I was alluding to eugenics."

He spoke with assurance, but from the corner of his eye he threw me a wistful, fugitive glance, as if to make sure from my bearing that this was really what he meant. I did not contradict him. I was thinking of his wife. For the first time in my experience my sympathies were with the tired business man. It is good for the tired business man that his wife shall be alive to the things that count; but two nights in succession is rather hard. His wife, I knew, was alive to every phase of our intense modern existence, and in rapid succession. She did not precisely burn with that hard, gemlike flame which Mr. Pater recommended. Sometimes I thought she burned with a sixty-four-candle power carbon glow. It was a bit trying on the eyes.

"Or take the question of sex," he said. "What is there in sex emotion to be ashamed of? It is the most primordial of feelings. It comes before the law of gravitation, as the speaker showed last night."

"Does it though?" I said.

"Well," he said, "perhaps it was the night before last. Around this universal urge, of which we ought to be proud, as the most powerful force in Evolution (the speaker last night was sure there could be no doubt on the subject), we have built up an elaborate structure of reticence and hypocrisy. All art, all literature, is of significance only as it emphasises sex. If the Bible has impressed itself on the imagination of humanity for two thousand years, it is because it contains the most beautiful love songs in all literature. It is the force which drives the sun in its course, as the Italian poet has said. It has been the inspiration of all great deeds. If we searched deeply enough, we should find that sex was the inspiration behind the discovery of America, the invention of printing, and the building of the Roman aqueducts. Only the most benighted ignorance will permit our prudish sentiments on the subject to stand in the way of a movement which is sweeping the world like wildfire."

"Referring to eugenics?" I said.

"No," he said, "I mean the tango."

He looked out of the window and pondered.

"Yes," he said, "that was night before last. What the speaker dwelt upon last night was the subject of democracy. At present we know nothing of true democracy, of true equality. Society is divided into classes with separate codes of morals and standards of conduct. There are rich and poor; workers and idlers; meat eaters and vegetarians; the old and the young; the literate, the illiterate, and the advocates of simplified spelling. It isn't a world at all; it is chaos. In the end it all resolves itself into this: humanity is divided into the strong and the weak. The surest way to do away with inequality is to produce a race in which every member is strong."

"You mean--" I said.

"Pardon me," he said. "I haven't finished. Let me sum up the speaker's concluding sentence as I recall it. As we look around us to-day there is unmistakably one force which works for the elimination of that inequality which is the source of all our troubles; a force which wipes out all distinction of class, of age, and of education, and produces a world in which everybody is engaged in doing the same thing as everybody else."

"Oh, I see," I said. "You are now speaking of the tango."

"Not at all," he said, "I am referring to eugenics. But perhaps you do not agree with me?"

I hesitated. He was watching me eagerly, pushing his derby back until it stood upright on its tail like a trained seal.

"I have done my best to agree with you," I said, "but you have made it rather difficult for me. Nevertheless I do agree with you. What I am thinking of now is something which the speaker last night omitted to mention--or was it the night before last? And it is this. Under the conditions which you describe, how beautifully complex the art of thinking will become. At present we can hardly be said to think at all. We are cowards. We crawl along from one truth to another. We timidly look back to our premises before jumping at the conclusion. We are horrified by inconsistencies. We are enslaved by facts--facts of nature, facts of human nature, facts of experience. How different it will all be when we can sidestep facts, when we can dip over inconsistencies, when we can hug boldly an apparent contradiction and make it our own; when thinking, in short, will not be a timid regulated process, but a succession of dips, twists, gallops, slides, bends, hurdles, sprints, and pole vaults."

"You are thinking of the tango?" he said.

"No," I replied. "I had eugenics in mind."

XV

HAROLD'S SOUL, II

You, mothers and fathers [said this particular advertising folder which I found in my morning's mail], do you know what goes on in the soul of your child?

I, for one, know very little of what goes on inside of Harold. My information on the subject would hardly furnish material for a single university extension lecture on child psychology. It is an imperfect, unsystematised knowledge based on accidental glimpses into Harold's soul, odd flashes of self-revelation, and occasional questions the boy will put to me. I don't know whether Harold is more reticent than the average boy in the second elementary grade, but in his case it does no good to cross-examine. He grows confused, suspicious, and afraid. He resents the intrusion of my rough fingers into his sensitive world of ideas. So I do not insist on detailed accounts of how the boy passes his time in class or at play; for what are time and space and grammatical sequence to the child? I am content to wait, and now and then I make discoveries.

Harold and I were discussing one day the rather important question, raised by himself, from what height a man must fall down in order to be killed. It began, I think, with umbrellas and how they behave in a high wind. From that we passed on to parachutes and balloons and the loftier mountain tops. We dwelt for some time upon the difficulties and dangers of mountaineering.

"Once there was a man," said Harold, "who used to drive six mules up a mountain."

"Six mules," I said. "How do you know?"

"A bishop told me," he said.

The sense of utter helplessness before the closed temple of Harold's private life oppressed me. Let alone his soul, I found that I did not even know how the boy was spending his time and who his associates were. Fortunately, in this case it was a bishop; but it might have been some one much worse.

And why had Harold never spoken of his friend the bishop until our talk of parachutes and mountain climbing brought forth his perfectly matter-of-fact statement? Was it indifference on Harold's part? Was it studied reticence? I thought with a pang of self-accusation how I would have behaved, after meeting a bishop; how I would have turned the conversation at the dinner-table to the declining influence of the Church; how I would have found a way of comparing the Woolworth Building with ecclesiastical architecture; how I might have steered a course from golf to bridge and from bridge to chess; always ending with a careless allusion to what the bishop said when we met.

There was, as it turned out, a simple explanation for Harold's statement. A notable conclave of bishops and laymen had been in session for some days in our neighbourhood, and one of the visiting dignitaries had addressed the school children at the opening exercises one morning. I say the explanation is simple, though it is largely my own hypothesis based on Harold's words as I have given them above; but I believe my supposition to be true. With regard to the six mules up a steep mountain I am not so sure; but probably it was a missionary bishop who entertained the children with an account of his experiences in Montana or British Columbia. What else the bishop told them Harold could not say. He admitted, regretfully, that the bishop used long words.

But I am not at all certain that other bits of information from that ecclesiastical speech have not lodged in Harold's memory, to be brought forward on some utterly unexpected but quite appropriate occasion. In the meanwhile I can only think that it must be a very fine sort of bishop, indeed, who could find time for an audience of school children and was not afraid to use long words in their presence. As I can testify, the encounter thus brought about did Harold good; and I am inclined to think that it did the bishop good.

We finally decided that no man could fall from a height over one hundred and fifty feet and reasonably expect to live.

You, mothers and fathers [this advertising folder petulantly insists], can you appease the wonder that looks out of the eyes of your child?