Chapter 8

The books a man likes best are those with somebody in them like him. I don't say it isn't a pleasure to read about others, but if he too is there it's still better. And when he is the hero--ah! It's like living a whole extra life.

But there is no drawing back, once you put yourself into some character--you must do all that he does, no matter how you hate his mistakes. I remember once identifying myself with a dissolute Pole, in a novel, who led me a dance that I haven't forgotten yet. I ought never to have let myself fancy that I was that fellow. He was moody, excitable, he drank more brandy than I was prepared to; he talked most bombastically. He made the most pitiful jokes. But what took my eye in him was this: he was sincere with himself. He was only twenty-five years of age, but though young, he was honest. When he was in love with two women he never dodged facing it squarely. He deceived the two women, I grant you, but most heroes deceive themselves, too. They tell themselves some pretty story in dilemmas like that. This Pole always saw through _his_ stories. He questioned his heart, and listened with reasonable honesty to its responses.

Our capacity for analyzing and criticizing our natures is wonderful. When a man is without self-awareness, I feel toward him as I do toward animals.

I admire the animals. I am glad I am not one myself--life in the wilds must be awful--but animals are healthy and sound; and some are good, and intelligent. Men who can't analyze themselves may be good and intelligent also. But they are not advanced beings.

The test of a civilized person is first self-awareness, and then depth after depth of sincerity in self-confrontation. "Unhealthy?" Why, certainly! "Risky?" Yes; like all exploring. But unless you are capable of this kind of thinking, what are you? No matter how able or great, you are still with the animals.

Here and there is a person who achieves this in ways of his own. Not through brain-work alone, or most surely, can insight be won. A few have by nature a true yet instinctive self-knowledge. But that takes a pure soul. The tricks of self-deceiving are too many and ingenious for most of us....

Speaking of pure souls reminds me of the editor of the Outlook, good old Lyman Abbott, although his is unfortunately the kind that is tastelessly pure. He's as wholesome and good as oatmeal is, but the salt was left out. An excellent person but wingless; not stupid, but dull. Yet--there's something about him--he has an attractive integrity. He puts on no airs. He is simple, unpretentious, and he's so straightforward he makes me respect him.

Many people respect Lyman Abbott. Yet I was surprised to. Well, I had the Rollo books given to me, as a child; I had to read them on Sundays; and the author of those awful volumes was Lyman Abbott's father. He wrote books for the young. People who write books for the young are a tribe by themselves, and little did I suppose I should ever live to respect one.

Rollo was a Sunday-school boy. Lyman Abbott's a Sunday-school man. He combines in himself the excellencies and the colorlessness of the Sunday-school atmosphere. When it comes time to group us as sheep or as goats, I know this, there won't be any question that he is a regular sheep. No capers for him, except the most innocent capers. No tossing of that excellent head, no kicking up of his heels. There isn't the faintest suspicion of goatiness in him.

Yet it's strange he's so hopeless: he likes certain forms of adventure. He was a bill-collector once. And when Kansas was being settled so bloodily, in our slavery days, he felt wishful to go there. He once did some detective work too, and he greatly enjoyed it. But his tastes are all heavily flavored with moral intentions.

"My recreations," he says in his book, "I took rather seriously. I neither danced nor played cards, and after I joined the church very rarely went to the theater." He liked music, liked playing the organ. He implies that he played it however to add to his income. He was a lawyer when he first felt a call in his heart to the ministry. "Had my wife objected to the change I should have remained in the law." He has taken ale or porter at times, "under doctor's counsel," but in general he has been an "abstainer." ("From both fermented and distilled liquors," he adds.) He never has shaved, never smoked. On the other hand, he says, "I had no inclination to be a monk"; when not at work in the evening, "I was likely to be out, perhaps at a concert or a religious or political meeting, perhaps on a social call." His father kept a boarding school for girls, and that was where Lyman made most of his social calls, as a youth.

He never overdoes anything. "It is a wise hygienic rule to spend less strength than one can accumulate." (That seems like the perfect recipe for not being a genius.) A professional hypnotist once told him he was not a good subject. "I never have been," he writes: "I have passed through some exciting experiences ... but I have never been swept off my feet. I have never lost my consciousness of self or my self-mastery. I wonder why it is. I am not conscious of being either especially strong-willed or especially self-possessed."

He reads with assiduity, he says, but without avidity. He seems to live that way, too.

His sermons, his book tells us, have had merit, but have always lacked magnetism. (You can't sweep other people off their feet, if you can't be swept off your own.) He likes preaching, however. It comes easily to him.

We are all of us so busy with the small bits of life we can envisage, that we don't often think of how much we all fail to take in. Lyman Abbott has been kept busy being a purifying influence. Certain other phases of life, accordingly, simply do not exist for him. If romance tried approaching the Reverend Lyman Abbott, at night, it would stand no more chance than a rose would against disinfectants.

Suppose that a Board of Eugenics were in charge of this nation, what would they do with the species this man represents? They would see his good qualities--industry, poise, generosity. It would be too bad to exterminate Dr. Abbott; it is plain we need some of him. "But," they would reflect, "this species is apt to wax numerous. We must remember Australia and the rabbits. This type might overrun the whole country. We might even have to put up barbed-wire, or shoot the excess, for us to stay human."

My own recommendation is to cross a few specimens with Poles.

Lyman Abbott, calm and dry, With your conscientious eye, Can it possibly be true He who made the Poles made you?

In the forest, on the beach, You have pondered what to preach. Magic nights of piercing beauty, You have lectured us on duty.

In your admirable heart Lives a Yearning to Impart; In your veins an earnest flood Of listerine instead of blood.

Lyman, Lyman, do you think If you gambled, took to drink, Loved a Countess, lost your soul, You could _ever_ be a Pole?

Mrs. P's Side of It

_So Prometheus, the Titan, seeing the great need that man had of fire, risked all and set out for Olympus, and brought thence the flame._

_And warmth, comfort, art and inventions spread over the world._

_But as to Prometheus, he was seized by the gods, in their wrath, and chained to a rock in the Scythian wilds, by the sea. There no ear heard his cries. There he raged on alone, year by year, with his eyelids cut off, while cold-hearted vultures with great beaks like horns tore his flesh._

It is an interesting thing that Prometheus, who is a hero to us, should have been regarded so differently his contemporaries. Some thought of him as merely a sort of social settlement-worker, living among men to improve them, in a sleek, earnest spirit. Some thought him a common adventurer. Others a radical.

As a matter of fact, he was really very much like the rest of us.

The records seem to indicate he was a well-to-do prominent citizen, who was active in getting the world of his day straightened out. I imagine him going around town, in the real-estate business, a substantial, respected man, planning highways and harbor facilities. Then he gets this idea, about bringing down fire from heaven. At first he dismisses it. But he thinks about the advantages of fire, and begins to believe he could get it. He starts talking to others about it. Every one laughs. It is a little too absurd, you know--this talk about fire from heaven! His fellow businessmen call him a visionary. He of course resents that. He defends his plan, and tries to explain why it's perfectly practicable, but he does it so warmly they begin to lose some of their trust in him. The word goes around not to elect him to the Chamber of Commerce. The solid men of the community begin to avoid him. A famous university silently changes its plans, and decides not to give Mr. Prometheus that LL.D. degree. And finally one of his friends pays him a call, after dark, and bluntly and worriedly warns him he's queering himself.

Prometheus goes upstairs, indignant, to talk to his wife. He doesn't tell her anything about his friend, or the community's criticisms, but he describes all over again what a boon fire would be to mankind. After an hour of this he has reassured himself, and forgotten his friend. His eyes shine. He looks almost handsome. His wife is quite thrilled. She says he is wonderful, and no one ever had such a husband.

But she says it sounds awfully dangerous.

"Well," he owns, "there's _some_ risk, but we ought to look at it impersonally."

She says: "Looking at it quite impersonally, I think you had better not do it."

"_What?_" he shouts; "don't you realize what a tremendous help fire would--"

"Oh _yes_, dear," she says: "the plan's _perfect_. But _you_ shouldn't go. You have such important work to attend to, here at home, without that. Some younger, less valuable person--"

"Ah, my dear," Prometheus laughs, "you're like every one else. You want to see the world helped, and wars won, whatever the cost; but you don't want either me or you to pay any part of the price. You think all dangerous work should be done by some other woman's husband."

Mrs. Prometheus purses her lips and her face becomes obstinate. "I don't think _any_ married man has a right to take such risks," she observes.

"Well, you ought to hear what the single men say about that," he retorts. "It's pretty thick to expect _them_ to die, they say, for other men's wives."

Mrs. Prometheus shrugs at the shallowness of those silly bachelors, and doesn't bother even to comment on their point of view. Instead, she says tactfully that she sees Prometheus has set his heart upon going, and she wants him to feel perfectly free to do just what he likes. Only there are certain practical matters that one must consider. There's the mortgage, and the laundress--unless he'd like to have her do the washing herself, which she'd be glad to do only he never took those stones out of her way, in the brook--and there's the bill for that last set of bear-skins that she got for the windows; and she doesn't see exactly how she can keep the home up by herself, if he is to wander around neglecting his real-estate business.

He says he won't be chained by his business.

She reminds him that she has already explained he's perfectly free. But she just wants to know how he wishes her to arrange in his absence.

"Very well, then," he blazes out, "I will give up my plan: let it go! let men go to the devil! I'm a prisoner, that's what it comes to. Like all married men. There isn't a damn one of us that's allowed to do what the world needs, or anything fine and unselfish."

She says that's unjust. She'd _love_ to have him be a great hero, and she always has said so, but she doesn't see why he can't be one without leaving his wife.

Prometheus, with a groan at his bondage, walks out of the house, leaving her feeling injured and wondering at the hardness of men. And he stamps up and down the yard, working himself up into a state, and filling his mind with dark pictures. Must every married man sit at home with his wife in his arms, yearning for roving and achievement, but yearning in vain? Pegged down, with a baby as a peg, and a mortgage as jailer. Must every young fellow choose between a fiancée and adventure? Even when he does choose adventure, they won't let him alone. There will always be some girl at a window as he passes by, who will tempt him to stop and play dolls with her, and stay indoors for keeps, and wrestle with a mortgage for exercise, and give up the road. Prometheus swears. He tries to imagine what our epics would be like if wives wrote them: what heroes they'd sing. Tidy, amiable, hearthstone heroes, who'd always wind up the clock regularly, and never invent dangerous airplanes or seek the North Pole. Ulysses knitting sweaters by the fireside. George Washington feeding canaries....

Mrs. Prometheus sticks her head out of the window: "I'll say just one word. I had supposed we were partners, who had gone into the homemaking business."

He says what good are homes if they emasculate spirited men.

She says what good are spirited men if they make the world homeless.

"_I_ don't intend to make the world homeless."

"No, only your wife."

Well, Prometheus gives in, of course, and abandons his plan, as millions of others have done, after talks with their wives. But ah, there is another great force besides wives in the world.

It happened, as you know, that Prometheus didn't get on well with Zeus. They had different ideas as to how the world should be arranged. Prometheus had more experience, but Zeus had the power. Rivalry, combined with dislike,--that is the great force I speak of. Zeus didn't wish men to have fire. That was enough for Prometheus. He told himself how incompetent Zeus was to manage the world, how selfish he was, how indifferent to men's need of fire. And that was what braced him, at last, to escape from his wife, and bring down an ember from heaven, and bestow it upon men.

"General Rejoicing on Earth," said the newspapers, when the deed had been done. To get anything from heaven seemed as remarkable then as it would now. Prometheus having accomplished something was immediately ranked as a hero. The Chamber of Commerce still privately thought he had been rather wild, but after a debate on the subject they gave him a dinner. He was also presented with a loving cup and the keys of the city. (He had no use for either, but those primitive men thought them honors.) And after the public reception Prometheus went home, and had another reception behind closed doors from Mrs. Prometheus, who had had to sell preserves and take in sewing while he was away.

Meanwhile everybody was using this new-fangled thing, fire, except old folks who were set in their ways and who said it was dangerous. And presently men found it _was_ dangerous. It wasn't just a question of scorched fingers--it burned out two caves. It roasted the toes of a lady who went to sleep while cooking sliced elephant. And although Prometheus had warned them and warned them about being careless, and had shown them exactly how to use it, he was blamed for each burn.

Some citizens were sarcastic and wrote him elaborate letters, thanking him so much for the suffering he had caused them and wishing him lots of the same. Some were reasonable and patient, but said he ought to have perfected this thing, before exposing the lives of the community to a bungling device. Others were seriously angry. They wished him imprisoned. Why should a man who had caused so much damage walk about, free? They inquired where justice was, at that rate; and held a mass-meeting.

It was owing to this that the gods discovered what he had done. A volley of terrible thunder-claps at once shook the skies, and Zeus had Prometheus arrested. He was led off to Scythia--the Siberia of those times--without trial, and the police left him chained to a rock there, and hurried back home. And everybody sympathized greatly with Mrs. Prometheus, for having a husband who had wilfully disgraced his poor wife. And they tried to be nice to her, but of course she was under a cloud, and had to take in more sewing than ever, and was never asked out. And a year or two later some books were written, psychoanalyzing Prometheus; and a professor who had made a study of the economic interpretation of heroes wrote an interesting paper discussing his probable motives, pointing out that he must have had relatives who wished to sell fire-insurance.

So his great deed ended in confusion. Like other great deeds. All he got was a tumult of mixed praise and blame from the crowd; and in his dark moments he must have felt completely discouraged, and wished that he'd just lived along in comfort and minded his business.

His friend, who had warned him originally, thought of him at times. He used to sit at home and feel glad that for his part he'd kept out of it. Then he would stir up the fire in his grate and comfortably get into bed, and forget about Prometheus, facing the winds and the vulture.

The Death of Logan

Cockroaches, like the Wise Men, originally lived in the East. They were at first far from hardy--wretched travelers, hating changes of climate. But when England began trading with the Orient, the cockroach grew venturesome, and began putting to sea as a stowaway. It was thus he reached England.

He settled down at first in her seaports. Remained there for years. People inland heard of him, or saw him if they went to the coast, but supposed themselves immune from his visits. Now he owns the whole island. And wherever the Englishman has journeyed, or settled, or trafficked, except perhaps on the ice-floes of Labrador, we now find the cockroach.

We all know his habits. He prefers to live in kitchens and bakeries. Eats all kinds of food. Eats shoes and the bindings of books. Also eats his own relatives. Any relative that isn't good and lively is at once eaten up.

You can tell the sexes apart (if you want to) by this: The males don't drag their stomachs on the ground the way the females do, and they have better wings. Their wings are not good enough to use much, but still, they have little ones.

The most surprising thing about roaches is that they live several years. Scientists say maybe five. Owing to this they get to know all of a family's ways, and can't be caught napping; they have plenty of time to study roach powders and learn to digest them. They dislike castor oil, though, and keep away from where it has been rubbed.

Cockroaches are intelligent beings. Their natures are human. They are not like other insects, any more than dogs are like other animals. I wish some man of science and sympathy would interpret their lives.

That book that I dream of on roaches: will it ever be written? Brown Beauty, or Only a Cockroach, by Mary Gook Twillee--a book that little children would read with wet eyes Sunday evenings. No, that sounds like a pamphlet from the Society for the Prevention of Stepping on Cockroaches. We want nothing humanitarian. Still less, a Work on the subject. We want a poet to do for the cockroach what Maeterlinck has done for the Bee.

If nobody else will, I shall probably have to do it myself.

* * * * *

Since boyhood (I shall begin) I have felt the injustice of men to the roach. Or not men, no; but women. Men are in this matter more tolerant, more live-and-let-live in their ways. But women have condemned the roach not only unheard, but unjudged. Not one of them has ever tried petting a roach to gain his affection. Not one of them has studied him or encouraged him to show his good side. Some cockroaches, for instance, are exceedingly playful and gay, but what chance have they to show this, when being stepped on, or chased with a broom? Suppose we had treated dogs this way; scared them; made fugitives of them!

No, the human race, though kind to its favorites, is cruel to others. The pale little, lovable cockroach has been given no show. If a housewife would call to her roaches as she does to her hens, "Here chick-chick, here cock-cock, here roaches," how they would come scampering! They would eat from her hand and lay eggs for her--they do now, in fact.

"But the eggs are not legible--I mean edible," an excited reader objects. How do you know, my poor prejudiced reader? Have you ever tried them? And suppose they are not. Is that the fault of the cockroach or God?

We should learn that blind enmity is not the attitude to take toward strangers. The cockroach has journeyed from Asia to come to our shores; and because he looked queer, like most Asiatics, he has been condemned from the start. The charges are that he is dirty and that he eats the food we leave lying around. Well, well, well! Eats our food, does he? Is that a crime? Do not birds do the same? And as to his being dirty, have you ever kept dogs in your home? One dog will bring in more dust and mud and loose hairs in a day, than a colony, an empire, of cockroaches will in a year.

It is easy enough to drive cockroaches away if you wish. Not with powder or poison: this only arouses their obstinacy. The right way is to import other insects that prey upon roaches. The hawk-ticks exterminate them as readily as wimples do moles. The only thing to remember is that then you have the hawk-ticks on hand, and they float around the ceiling, and pounce down, and hide in your ears.

You may be sure that _some_ insects will live with you. It's only a question which kind.

I remember Mr. Burbank once denied this when we talked of the matter. Alluding to the fact that the cockroach likes to eat other roaches, he said why not breed a roach that wouldn't eat anything else? When one introduced these into the home they would first eat the old timers, and then quietly devour each other until all were gone.

But how could a home remain bare of insects? Nature abhors such a vacuum. Some men would like to cover the whole world with porcelain tiles, and make old Mother Earth, as we know her, disappear from our view. They would sterilize and scrub the whole planet, so as to make the place sanitary. Well, I too feel that way at times: we all have finicky moments. But in my robust hours I sympathize with Nature. A hygienic kitchen is unnatural. It should be swarming with life. (The way mine is.)

I see a great deal of the roach when I visit my kitchen. His habits, to be sure, are nocturnal. But, then, so are mine. However, with a little arranging, it is simple to prevent awkward clashes. I do not like cockroaches on my table at supper, for instance. Very well, I merely get me a table with carved spiral legs. The roach cannot climb up such legs. To hump himself over them bruises him, and injures his stomach. And if he tries to follow the spiral and goes round and round, he soon becomes dizzy and falls with plaintive cries to the floor. He can climb up my own legs, since they are not spiral, you say? Yes, but I rub castor oil on them before I enter the kitchen.