Part 7

This is my bachelor reverie. But high noon approaches, and my metamorphosis is at hand. Now the sun has struck the fire-place with a lance of light, and I, that other I, must rise, dress and out into the world!

*Cartomania*

With something of the excitement Alice felt when she crawled through the looking-glass, I used to pore over my atlas. Geography was for me a pastime rather than a study. There was one page in the book where the huge bulging expanse of the United States lay, and there, on the extreme left hand of the vari-coloured patchwork of States and territories, was the abode of romance and adventure--a long and narrow patch tinted pink, curving with the Pacific Ocean, and ribbed with the fuzzy haschures of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This was the Ultima Thule of my dreams, beyond which my sober-minded hopes dared not stray.

Further on in the book I saw Europe, irregular with ragged peninsulas and bays, Asia, vast and shapeless, with the great blue stretch of Siberia atop, and the clumsy barren yellow triangle of Africa. But these foreign countries were, to my young imagination, as inaccessible as Fairyland; they did not properly come into the world of possibility. They were as unreal as ghosts, remote as the Feudal Ages, and I put them by with a sigh as hopeless. The world is a big place to the eyes of a child, and all beyond his ken but names. How could I know that the end of the century was even then whirling me toward wonders that even my Arabian Magi would not have thought possible? But today, in this far Western town, then but a semi-barbarous camp of gold miners, I have seen an airship half-completed upon the stocks, and this morning, in my own room, I rang up Celestine and talked with her over the wire a hundred miles away!

Maps were my favourite playgrounds, and so real were they that it almost seemed that, with a sufficiently powerful microscope, I might see the very inhabitants living their strangely costumed customs. There was a black dot on my fascinating pink patch marked San Francisco, and now, that dream come true, I try to see this city with the eyes of my childhood, and wonder that I am really here. To get the strangeness of the chance I have to think back and back till I see that map stretched out before the boy, and follow his finger across the tiers of States that run from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Everyone who has not travelled much must feel the excitement that maps give when intently studied. No one has been everywhere, and for each some unvisited spot must charm him with its romantic possibilities. But there are certain cities almost universally enticing to the imagination--the world's great meeting-places, where, if one but waits long enough, one can find anybody. London, Cairo, Bombay, Hongkong, San Francisco, New York--these are the jewels upon the girdle that surrounds the globe. To know these places is to have lived to the full limit of Anglo-Saxon privilege.

But the true cartomaniac is not content with ready-made countries; he must build his own lands. How many kingdoms and empires have I not drawn from the tip of my pencil! Now, the achievement of a plausible state is not so easy as it might appear. There is nothing so difficult as to create, out of hand, an interesting coast line. Try and invent an irregular shore that shall be convincing, and you will see how much more cleverly Nature works than you. Here is where accident surpasses design. Spill a puddle of coloured water on a sheet of paper and pound it with your fist, and lo, an outline is produced which you could not excel in a day's hard work with your pencil!

The establishment of a boundary line, too, requires much thought in order that your frontier interlocks well with your neighbours'. Your rivers must be well studied, your mountains planned, and your cities located according to the requirements of the game. You must name your places, you must calculate your distances, and you must erase and correct many times before you can rival the picturesque possibilities of such a land as India, for instance, which, from the point of view of the sentimental cartographer, is one of the most interesting of states.

If such an effort is too difficult for the beginner, one might begin with a country of which something is known, yet which never has been charted. "Gulliver's Travels," for instance, contains information of many lands that should be drawn to scale. Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the land of horses would alone make a very interesting atlas. The geography of Fairyland affords charming opportunities for the draughtsman. For myself, I prefer the magical territory of the Arthurian legends, and I have platted Sir Launcelot's Isle, with Joyous Gard at the northern end, high over the sea. There is a pleasaunce, a wood, a maze, and a wharf jutting out into a shallow, smiling water, while the lists occupy a promontory to the south.

Oh, the opportunities are many for the cartomaniac! Who has mapped Utopia, Atlantis, Alice's Wonderland, or the countries of the Faerie Queene? Who has reconstructed the plans of Troy? And there are other allegorical lands, too, that should be mapped. I have had a try myself at the modern "Bohemia," and have taken the liberty of shewing within its much-maligned borders Arcady and the Forest of Arden. I have even planned Millamours, the city of a thousand loves, and I am now attempting to draw a map of the State of Literature in the year 1902.

There are many celebrated edifices, too, that might be trifled with. I have a friend, an architect, who has completed the Castle of Zenda, and he is now occupied with Circe's palace, with a fine eye to the decorative effect of the pig-pens. Think of laying out the gardens, grottoes, and palaces of the Arabian Nights! Why has the Castle of Otranto been neglected--and Udolpho, and Castle Dangerous, and the Moated Grange?

Many novelists, and, I think, most writers of pure romance, have played this game. Stevenson, dreaming in his father's office, drew the map of Treasure Island, and from that chart came forth, hint by hint, the suggestions for his masterpiece. Maurice Hewlett drew a plat of the ancient marches and forests where the Forest Lovers wandered, and it is a pity he did not publish it in more detail. This is one of the graphical solutions of story writing, a queer, anomalous method whereby the symbol suggests the concept. The cheaper magazines often use old cuts, and request some hack to write a story to fit the illustration. But the map is an abstraction; its revelations are cabalistic, not definite. A good map is a stage set for romantic fiction, ready for anybody who can write or dream the play.

*The Science of Flattery*

Time was when people were less sophisticated and almost everybody could be flattered. A compliment was the pinch of salt that could be placed upon any bird's tail. But such game is scarcer now, and to capture one's quarry one has to practice all the arts of modern social warfare. We have, for instance, been taught to believe, time out of mind, that women are especially susceptible to this saccharine process; that one had but to make a pretty speech, and her conquest was assured. But what lady nowadays can take a compliment without bridling? It is as much as a man's reputation is worth to make a plain, straightforward statement of approbation. He must veil his meaning so that it can be discovered only by a roundabout reflection. Whether it be true or not, he is held offensively responsible for the blush with which it is received.

So, to be successful, one must be politic and tactful; one must adopt the indirect method, and, above all, one must escape the obvious. To say what has been said many times before defeats the very purpose, whether it be good or evil, for which we flatter. The artist discards the hackneyed compliment, and endeavours to place his arrow in a spot that has never been hit before. He will compliment a poet upon his drawings and a painter upon his verses. If a woman ordinarily plainly dressed, has a single effective garment, does he compliment her upon that particular costume? By no means. Subtilty demands that he flatter her by pointing out some interesting feature in one of her common frocks, without hinting that it is surprising to see her particularly well clad. Such compliments have the flavour of novelty, and are treasured up by the recipient, to be quoted long after the donor has forgotten them.

The tribute of unexpected praise is more grateful to a person than the reward for which he works hardest and is most confident. It discovers to him new and pleasing attributes. It has all the zest and relish that the particular always has more than the general. And, besides, for the person who happens to light upon some little favourite trick of individuality, and to notice and to comment upon it, the reward is great. Such a flatterer is, in the heart of the flattered one, throned with the authority of discernment; he is considered forever after as a critic of the first importance. Everyone has a hobby, an idiosyncrasy, visible or invisible; it is the art of the flatterer to discover it, and his science to use it to his own ends.

Flattery is, however, an edged tool, and must be used with care. It is not everyone who has the tact to decide at a glance just how much his victim will stand. He may know enough, perhaps, to praise the author of a successful book for some other one of his works which has not attained a popular vogue; he may have the discretion to banter men about their success with the opposite sex, and to accuse women of cleverness; but for all that he may often misjudge his object, and give embarrassment if not actual affront. For all such the safest weapon is the written word.

This is the ambush from which your prey cannot escape. If a letter of praise, of compliment, or even of deliberate flattery, is made decently interesting, if it is not too grossly cloying even for private perusal, it cannot fail to count. It has to be paid for by no blush, no awkward moment, no painful conspicuous self-consciousness, no hypocritical denial. It strikes an undefending victim, and brings him down without a struggle. Such tributes of praise can be read and reread without mortification. It is a sweet-smelling incense that burns perpetually before the shrine of vanity. One compliment written down in black and white is worth any number of spoken words, and the trouble that has been taken to commit such praise to paper gives the offering an added interest and importance. Anything that can be said can be written, from the eulogy of a lady's slipper to the appreciation of a solo on the harp. You may be sure that any unconventionality of manner will be atoned for by the seduction of a honeyed manner. Stevenson, in his playful "Decalogue for Gentlemen," set down as his first canon, "Thou shalt not write an anonymous letter," but it cannot be doubted that he would have excepted an unsigned note of admiration.

The element of time, in flattery, too, is often disregarded. Few would-be flatterers understand the increased influence of a compliment deferred. It is again the same case of the misuse of the obvious. When your friend's book appears, or his picture is displayed, there are enough to compliment him on the spot, but your own sympathetic endorsement, delayed a few months, or even iterated, comes to him when he is least expecting the compliment. He is off his guard, and the shot goes home. When I give Celestine a present she thanks me immediately, of course, but that is not the last of it. In every third letter or so I am reminded of her gratitude and my kindness.

There is, however, a flattery of manner as well as one of matter. Celestine, to whose wise counsels I am indebted for many a short cut in the making of friends, once laid down for me the following rules for dealing with women:

First, be intellectual with pretty women.

Second, be frivolous with intellectual women.

Third, be serious and _empresse_ with young girls.

Fourth, be saucy and impudent with old ladies. Call them by their first names, if necessary.

It goes without saying that such audacious methods require boldness and sureness of touch, especially in the application of the fourth rule. But even that, when attempted with spirit and assurance, has given miraculous results. In a case where a woman's age is in question, action speaks far louder than words.

Perhaps the most successful method of flattery is that of the person who makes the fewest compliments. To gain a name for brusqueness and frankness is, in a way, to attain a reputation for sincerity. Whether this is just or not, it is undoubtedly true that the occasional unlooked for praise of such a person acquires an exaggerated importance and worth. This system is similar to that of the billiard-player who goes through the first half of his game wretchedly in order to surprise his opponent with the dexterity of his shots later on. But it is an amateurish ruse, and is soon discovered and discounted at its true value. Yet in a way, too, it is justifiable, since unpleasant comments are usually accepted as candid, while pleasant ones alone are suspected.

There is a kind of conscious vanity to which flattery comes welcomely, however patent the hyperboles may appear. To such persons, and there are many, a certain amount of adulation oils the mental machine. They do not believe all that is said, but prefer, on the whole, to be surrounded by pleasant fictions rather than by unpleasant facts. They prefer harmony to honesty, and, though the oil on the troubled waters of life does not dispel the storm, it makes easier sailing. To others, especially if they be creators in any art, compliments stimulate and impel to their best endeavour. Many a man has achieved a masterpiece chiefly because a woman declared him capable of it.

The question of the object for which flattery is employed is here beside the mark. It may be used or misused; it may be true or false of itself, although, to be sure, the word flattery has attained an evil significance and has come to stand for counterfeit approval. All that has been said, however, applies to one as well as to the other. Even when praise has the least foundation in fact, it may prove beneficial to the person flattered, arousing a pride which creates the admired quality that was wholly lacking. Thus I have known a man notorious for his vulgarity stimulated to a very creditable politeness by the most undeserved and insincere compliment upon his table manners.

I have used the three testimonials of admiration as synonymous, but Celestine says that praise is a rightful fee, a compliment is a tip, and that flattery is bribery.

*Romance En Route*

How tired I am of the question, "How do you like London?" and "How do you like New York?" "Would you rather live in San Francisco or Paris?" Why, indeed, should I not like London, Kalamazoo, Patagonia, Bombay, or any other place where live men and women walk the streets, eat, drink, and are merry? How can I say whether El Dorado is better than Arcady, or a square room more convenient than an oblong one? Every living place has its own fascination, its mysteries, its characteristic delights. Ask me, rather, if I can understand London, if I can catch the point of view of the French _concierge_, if I comprehend the slang and bustle of Chicago? Like them? Show me the town I cannot like! Know them? Ah, that is different!

This is the charm of travel--to keep up the feeling of strangeness to the end, never to take things for granted or let them grow stale, to see them always as though one had never seen them before. Then, and only then, can we see things as they really are. When I become cosmopolitan, world-old, _blase_, when I think and speak in all languages, I shall fly to some deserted island to study the last, most impenetrable enigma--myself.

But meanwhile, I can purchase romance retail, at the mere cost of a railway ticket. I can close my eyes in one city, and wake next morning in its mental antipode. Romance requires only a new point of view; it is the art of getting fresh glimpses of the commonplace. One need not be transported to the days of chivalry, one need not even travel; one need only begin life anew every morning, and look out upon the world unfamiliarly as the child does. One must be born a discoverer. Thus one may keep youth, for the sport never loses colour. One game won or lost, the next has an equal interest, though we use the same counters and the same board. The combinations are always fresh.

Still, though one may find this fountain of perpetual youth in one's breakfast glass, the obvious conventional method is to go forth for the adventure, and get this famed elixir at some foreign and well-advertised spring. For this purpose tourists travel, taking part in a pilgrimage of whose meaning and proper method they are wholly ignorant. In their boxes and portmanteaus they pack, not hopes of mystery, faith in the compelling marvels of the world, nor the wonder of strange sights; but instead, fault-finding comparisons, and prejudice against all manners not their own. They do not see, in the omnibus of London, the automobile of Paris, the electric trolley of New York and the cable car of San Francisco, the pregnant evidence of several points of view on life, art and commerce, but they perceive only grotesque contrasts with their own particular means of locomotion. They do not delight in the incomprehensible hurly-burly of civilization that has produced the City Man, the Bounder, the Coster, the Hoodlum, Hooligan and Sundowner, nor do they attempt to solve the mystery or get the meat from such strange shells. Instead, they see only the clerk at the lunch-counter bolting his chops and half-pint, the incredible waistcoat of the pretentious _blagueur_, or the buttons and "moke" of the ruffling D'Artagnan of the Old Kent-road.

So the tourist travels with his eyes shut, while the true traveller has a lookout on life, keen for new sensations. To do things in Rome as the Romans do, that is his motto. He must eat spaghetti with his fingers, his rice and chopped suey with chop-sticks, or he fails of their subtle relish. He calls no Western town crude or uncivilized, but he tries to cultivate a taste for cocktails, that he may imbibe the native fire of occidental enthusiasm. In the East he is an Oriental; he changes his mind, his costume and his spectacles wherever he goes, and underneath the little peculiarities of custom and environment, he finds the essential realities of life.

To taste all this fine, crisp flavour of living--not to write about it or fit it to sociological theories, but to live it, understand it, be it--this is the art of travel, the art of romance, the art of youth. But there is no Baedeker to guide such a sentimental tourist through such experiences as these. It takes a lively glance to recognize a man disguised in a frock coat, and to find him blood brother to the Esquimau!

Well, there is a place in Utah on the Central Pacific Railroad called Monotony. The settlement consists of a station, a water-tank, and a corrugated iron bunk-house. The level horizon swings round a full circle, enclosing a flat, arid waste, bisected by an unfenced line of rails, straight as a stretched string. The population consists of a telegraph operator, a foreman, and six section hands. Yet I dare say I would like to stay there awhile, on the way, and perhaps I would taste some charm that London never gave. I am not so sure that but that before I took wing again I might not like it, in some respects, better even than Paris.

*The Edge of the World*

To find the colonial or the provincial more cultured, better educated in life and keenlier cognizant of the world's progress than the ordinary metropolitan, is a common enough paradox. Class for class, the outlander has more energy, greater sapience and a truer zest of intellect than the citizen at the capital. By the outlander is not meant, however, the mere suburban or rural inhabitant, but the dweller at the outpost of civilization, the picket on the edge of the world.

Let us grant that, in the gross, every new community must be crude--it takes time to grow ivy over the walls, to soften the primary colours into harmonious tones, to smooth off the rough edges,--but let us also grant that, at all the back doorways of empire, in far-away corners of the earth, are assembled little coteries of men and women who, by reason of their very isolation, rather than despite it, have made themselves cosmopolitan, catholic, eclectic, and stand ever ready to welcome, each in his own polite dialect and idiom, the astonished traveller who thinks he has left all that is great and good behind.

This compensation is, indeed, a natural law. If we cut back half the shoots of a shrub, the surviving sprouts will be more vigorous. The deprivation of one sense renders the others more acute. Make it hard for an ambitious lad to obtain an education, and, working alone by candle-light, he will outstrip the student with greater advantages. So it is with the colonial who realizes his poverty of artistic and intellectual resources. He must, in self-defense and to compensate for his isolation, make friends with the world at large, and his mental vision, accustomed to long ranges of sight, becomes sharp and subtile. To avoid the reproach of provincialism he studies the great centers of thought and watches eagerly for the first signs of new growths in fads, fashions, art and politics. It is for this reason that the British colonial is more British than the Englishman at home.

Plunged in the midst of the turmoil of every-day excitements, the dwellers in great cities lose much of the true and fine significance of things. A thousand enterprises are beginning, and amidst a myriad essays the headway of yesterday's novelty is lost in the struggle of today's agonists. The little, temporary, local success seems big with import, and the slower development of more serious and permanent virtues is ignored. Things are seen so closely that they are out of true proportion, and they are seen through media of personality that diffract and magnify.

But the provincial, far from this complicated aspect of intellectual life, gains greatly in perspective. Separated by great space, he is, in a way, separated by time also, and he sees what another generation will perhaps see in the history of today. For he watches not only literary London, that tiniest and most garrulous of gossiping villages, but a dozen other hives of thought as well, and from his very distance can the more easily discern the first signs of pre-eminence. His ears are not ringing with a myriad petty clamours, but he can hear, rising above the multitudinous hum, the voice of those who sing clearest. The connoisseur in art views a painting from across the hall--the lover of music does not sit too close to the orchestra--and so the intelligent looker-on at life does not come too often in familiar touch with the aspirants for fame. Living, as one might say, upon a hill, the stranger thus gets the range, volume and trend of human activities, and sees their movements, like those of armies marching below him, though they seem as ants, so far away. He can trace the direction of waves of emotion that follow round the earth like tides of the sea.