Part 9

Understand, I am not one of those who are always longing to be rich. I do very well, ordinarily, in the shadow of prosperity, though there comes upon me periodically the lust for gold, at which times the desire to rush down-town and spend money indiscreetly must be obeyed. It is a common symptom, paupers tell me, and carries with it its own remedy, giving much the same relief that blood-letting did of old, if so be the practice does not lead to a dangerous hemorrhage. I have my ups and downs, like most unsalaried Bohemians, thin purse, thick purse, at erratic intervals, but my spendthrift appetite is curiously independent of these financial fluctuations. In fact, a miserly restraint is most likely to seize me when my pocket is full, and I usually grow reckless when it has no silver lining.

There are few paupers among us who do not conceit themselves to be artists at spending money, and believe the fit intelligence is most wanting in those who have the means. I confess that I share their convictions, having wasted much time in a study of the situation. Like those planning a foreign tour, I have mapped out the golden road of Opportunity, and know the itinerary by heart. And, without trespassing the science of Economy, of which I am criminally ignorant (having been somewhat prepossessed during my Sophomore courses), I submit there are active and passive categories into which coupon-cutters may be relegated. The symbol of your monied man is the cigar, involving a destructive process, whether applied to food, raiment or ministry to the senses. The greed of the collector is of the same flavour. It is the difference between spending the money to see and to stage the play that I mean.

For why should an access of wealth so dull the brain that the battle between the kings of hearts and spades seems more interesting than the game with human knights and pawns? I have often been minded to write an "Open Letter to Millionaires," and offer myself as a Master of their Sports, to guide them through fields of untried sensation and novel enterprises. I have my offers tabulated from an hundred dollars upward, each involving the inception of activities whose ramifications would provide diversion for years. There are twenty young men I know of in this town who are waiting for such a chance. Why should I not be elected to captain them? I promise you the rise and fall of stocks shall not be more exciting than our rivalries. Indeed, brains are for sale at absurd bargains today. Why not play them off against each other in a game of Life?

But these are dreams never to be realized. I am no promoter, and must play the beggar's part. Yet I have often wondered how I would be affected if these hopes came true, and if some capitalist, touched by my appeal, seeing this good seed cast upon barren ground, opening his heart and purse-strings, should present me with a modest fortune without conditions. Could I assume the responsibility of gratitude and fly with the load of obligation that I myself would assume? By all rules of fiction, no! Yet if my conscience were seduced I might frame my mind to accept debonairly and do my best. Tempt me not, millionaires, for this is my week of longing, and my brain boils with adventurous desires.

Yet, had I the ear of the benefactor, another mood would impel my renunciation; for, against my will and interest, I am forced to acknowledge that others are better fitted to be rich than I, who have been a pauper all my life, and am not so unhappy in my misery. I know some to whom wealth should come as a right, as has their beauty, and who play an inconsistent part upon the stage of poverty. There is Dianeme, who knows the names of all the roses, and can tell one etching from another. She is so instinct with tact and taste that I feel quite unworthy of affluence until she has been served. And there, too, is Little Sister, who is in worse case, having once ridden on high wheels and nestled against the padded comforts of life, now charioted by street cars, with a motorman for a driver and a conductor for a footman. And though it was her reverses that gave me chance to be her friend and discover her worth, yet I fear I would put back my opportunity ten years to give her the little luxuries she craves. She has acquired a relish for the flesh-pots, poor Little Sister, and somehow the weakness becomes her, as the habit of weeping fitted the eighteenth century ideals of women. Two more pairs of silk stockings would reinstate her as a lady complete. Not that anybody but Little Sister and her laundress would ever see them, but they would give her a nourishing satisfaction that is of itself worth while.

Yet, again I wonder--if Little Sister grew rich, what would become of me? I am told that the first pangs of the birth of Fortune are felt in the unpleasant acquisition of new claimants to friendship, but I do not believe this is so. I should myself fear to intrude, I am sure. There would be so many new relations and obligations that I could not take the friendship simply and naturally. I could make love to her by letter, perhaps, but not in her carriage. I would miss the ungloved hand of familiarity and enclose myself in starched formality, though I know the pain in so doing would be mutual. For the pride of riches is as nothing to the pride of poverty, and I am very, very poor! But surely Little Sister must be rich again, even if I have to wait for the second table.

And so I gracefully resign my claims to fortune, where I am so outclassed, and make off into the open fields towards the Hills of Fame, where the brougham of Opulence may not follow me, though I fare afoot. For we do not get rich in my family; there is no uncle in Patagonia whose death could benefit us, and the bag of diamonds, the hope of whose discovery sustained my immature youth, no longer haunts my dreams. For a long time yet I must deny myself the title of gentleman, forced as I am to carry parcels "over three inches square," which I hear is the test of fashionable caste. This is my last gasp. I shall be a man again tomorrow, and if any millionaire is tempted by this appeal, he must make haste. But I shall not be rung up from sleep tonight. It is the law of society that Spend helps Save, and Save helps Scrimp, and Scrimp helps Starve.

*A Young Man's Fancy*

Undoubtedly the most logical, though perhaps the least interesting, method of opening the discussion of a thesis, is that employed by the skillful carver who dissects his duck according to the natural divisions of the subject and proceeds therewith analytically. This is the system encouraged in academic courses and is said to enable any one to write upon any subject. But such an essay is mighty hard reading; unless a writer is so hungry for his theme that he forgets his manners and falls to without ceremony the chances are that his efforts will receive scant attention. And so I shyly speak of love.

So few essayists write with a good appetite! And yet, see how I restrain myself, and perforce adopt the conventional procedure, as one too proud to betray his ravening hunger! I must be calm, I must be polite--and you shall know only by my forgetfulness of the salt and my attention to the bones of thought, how the game interests me. In speaking of love, I must let my head guard my heart, too, for it is in the endeavour to misunderstand women that we pass our most delightful moments. They will not permit men to be too sure of them, and what you learn from one, you must hide carefully from the next. So I begin my fencing with a great feint of awkwardness, like a master with a beginner, knowing well enough how likely to get into trouble is any one who pretends innocence.

For a long time I believed it all a conspiracy of the novelists, and that love, so ideally depicted, was but a myth, kept alive by the craft, to furnish a backbone for literary sensation. But there are undoubtedly many bigoted believers in the theory of love. The women, however, who admit that it is a lost art, complain piteously of the ineptitude of the other sex. I confess that few men can satisfactorily acquit themselves of the ordeal of courtship without some tuition, but, once having acquired the rudiments of the profession, it seems inconsistent to taunt them with the experiments of their apprenticeship. It is too much to require a man to make a gallant wooing and then twit him with the "promiscuousness" by which he won his facility. Yet, some, doubtless, have learned also to defend themselves against this last accusation; it is the test of the Passed Master. For the other, poor dolts, who never see the opportunity for action, however adroitly presented, who speak when they should hold tongue and leave undone all those things that they ought to have done--the girls marry them, to be sure, but most of the love-making is on the wrong side. There are more yawns than kisses; the brutal question satisfies the yop, and he bungles through the engagement, breaking doggedly through the crust of the acquaintance, witless of the delightful perils of thin ice.

And yet I think the subject might be mastered in four lessons with a good teacher, so that a man of ordinary capacity could make good way for himself. This is by no means a new theory; it is the foundation of many a comedy of errors, this of Love with a Tutor. But go not to school of a maid, for she will fool you to the top of your bent, nor to a married woman either, but to a man like my younger brother here, no Lothario, but one who can keep two steps ahead of any affair he enters.

If a man be agile and daring, with sufficient ardour to assume the offensive, having an audacious tongue and a wary eye with a fine sense of congruity and tact, withal, if he can make love with a laugh and a rhyme, as Cyrano fought, then 'tis a different matter, and he needs no pilot to take his sweetheart over the bar and into the port. He must be bold, but not too bold, carry a big spread of canvas, luff, reef and tack her with no shuffling, cast the lead on the run, keeping in soundings, and never lose headway when she comes about into a new mood. He must bear a sensitive hand at the tiller, keep her close up to the wind with no tremble in the leach of the sail, and gain advantage from every tide and cross-current. Better dash against the reef than run high and dry upon the shoal!

It is a pity, is it not, to dissect love in such a fashion? I should have my hero quite at the mercy of the gale of passion, and be swept forward, he knows not how and cares not where; he should lose his wits and take a mad delight in the fury of the storm, seeing no spot upon his horizon. And yet I dare not be warmer, for sometime I may decide to fall in love myself, and I would not have my chances wrecked by any genuine confession of faith, set in type, to which She might refer, with a beautiful taunt. No! it is better to phrase and verbalize; the subject is too dear, and near done to its death already. I would but suggest the cross-references, and, under a mien of the most atrocious conceit, throw my female readers off their guard, leaving my fellow men to read between the lines.

For I hear that men do fall in love with women, and women fall in love with loving. So be it. I have known girls, too, to take both vanilla and strawberry in their soda-water, which proves them to be not altogether simple in their tastes. The best of them will talk volubly upon love in the abstract, while the average man (to which category I hope I have the honour of not belonging) keeps his mouth closed on the matter, with his tongue in his cheek, and his ideas, if he have any, well hidden behind his words.

So, if I avail myself of the feminine franchise, it must be done cautiously, for many are the difficulties of the young man who would love a girl today, and only a precious few of the old school of beaux would understand the twentieth century's subtleties, even if all could be explained. Many are the misfortunes in the Lover's Litany, from which the modern maiden sighs, "Good Lord, deliver us!" A man must take her in earnest, but he must by no means take himself too seriously; it is proper to treat your passion cavalierly--indeed, he jests at scars who has felt the most amorous darts, nowadays--but he must never make himself or her ridiculous. He may take whimsical amusement in his own conquest, but must beware "the little broken laugh that spoils a kiss." And above all, mind you the _mise-en-scene_,--the stage must be set so and so; the sun must not see what the moon sees. Sometimes you must have your heart in your mouth, and sometimes on your sleeve, and oftener she must have it herself. 'Tis very perplexing!

The best a man can do, in this practical age, is to mean business, while he is about it, and hold over as much for the next day as will not interfere with his commerce elsewhere. The woman may take her romance to bed, or keep it warm in the oven against his return, but he must be out and down-town to earn his living as well as his loving, amongst dollars and pounds and cent per cent, while she enjoys the traffic in pure abstractions. And both must hide and manage as if it were a sin, lest Mrs. Grundy undo them; they must snatch their kisses, as it were, on horseback. Such are the victims of supercivilization!

There was a time, the poets tell, when it was not so difficult, and a man might wear a lady's scarf on his sleeve, and be proud of the badge. It takes much more complicated machinery than that simple love to make the world go round, nowadays--perhaps because it goes so much faster. There was a time when an elopement might be picturesque and not necessarily followed by divorce; but where now shall I find the hard-hearted parent who shall justify the adventure? The modern mother is too easy. She is like Mrs. Brown in the _Bab Ballads_--"a foolish, weak but amiable old thing." She reposes a trust in her daughter that does more credit to her affection than to her knowledge of human nature.

But whoa! I believe I have forgotten my manners! I have insulted my fellows, guyed the girls, and here I am on the high road to disqualifying myself with the more respectable generation. So I shall cease, but I will not apologize, for though I came to scoff, I shall not remain to prey. I believe I am not more than half wrong after all. There is love, and there is loving, and if you have followed me, you know which is which. It was Rosalind who said, "Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps!" How she would smile and sneer at this verbiage! She knew a lover from a philanderer, she had her opinion of the laggard and the butterfly rover, and she would no doubt say: "Cupid hath clapped him on the shoulder, but I'll warrant him heart-whole!"

*Where is Bohemia?*

The name "Bohemian" was first used to describe the gypsies of that nationality who appeared in France in the thirteenth century, but to us the term has come to carry with it a wider significance than any dependent upon that little kingdom in the north of Austria, and only a few characteristic traits of those wandering vagabonds survive in those who bear, whether in reproach or praise, the appellation "Bohemian."

To take the world as one finds it, the bad with the good, making the best of the present moment--to laugh at Fortune alike whether she be generous or unkind--to spend freely when one has money, and to hope gaily when one has none--to fleet the time carelessly, living for love and art--this is the temper and spirit of the modern Bohemian in his outward and visible aspect. It is a light and graceful philosophy, but it is the Gospel of the Moment, this exoteric phase of the Bohemian religion; and if, in some noble natures, it rises to a bold simplicity and naturalness, it may also lend its butterfly precepts to some very pretty vices and lovable faults, for in Bohemia one may find almost every sin save that of Hypocrisy.

Yet, if we were able without casuistry to divide misdeeds into two categories, those subjective and objective in their direct effects--separating those sins which hurt only the sinner from those which act upon his fellows--the Bohemian would, perhaps, be found to have fewer than most of this harsher, crueller sort. His faults are more commonly those of self-indulgence, thoughtlessness, vanity and procrastination, and these usually go hand-in-hand with generosity, love and charity; for it is not enough to be one's self in Bohemia, one must allow others to be themselves, as well.

So much for the common definition of this much-used name. But no English word can stand for long in its primary meaning. It must change insensibly, growing from day to day, till it embraces the spirit as well as the letter of the fact it expresses. The word "gentleman" has thus grown with a secondary, spiritual significance; so has the word "prayer" by the interpretation of a more liberal, far-reaching thought. So with the name "Bohemian"--it has ranged beyond the vagrom, inconstant, happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care, hand-to-mouth follower after pleasure, and now under its banner may be found more serious enthusiasts who are not afraid to offend smug respectability, and are in more or less open revolt against convention, bigotry and prejudice. It is their bond that they have forsworn allegiance to Mrs. Grundy. They dare be themselves without pretentious, they make and keep their friends without compromise.

What, then, is it that makes this mythical empire of Bohemia unique, and what is the charm of its mental fairyland? It is this: there are no roads in all Bohemia! One must choose and find one's own path, be one's own self, live one's own life. Whether one makes for the larger freedom of the hills, or loses one's self in the sacred stillness of the forest, the way is open to endeavour wherever one wills. Yet, though there is no beaten track, there are still signs in the wilderness showing where master minds have passed. Here is a broken jug beneath the bough, snowed under with drifting rose petals, where one frail-souled dreamer loitered on the way, and, with his Beloved, filled the cup that clears Today of past regrets and future fears, singing out his heart in lovely plaint. And here, along a higher trail, a few blazings in the forest mark where another great Bohemian in this life exempt from public haunt found tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones and good in everything.

Within Bohemia are many lesser states, and these I have roughly charted on my travels, so that, though I may have left some precincts unexplored, I know at least that these territories lying on my map are veritable provinces of this land of freedom and sincerity. On the shore of the magic Sea of Dreams, beyond whose horizon dances the Adventurous Main, lies the Pays de la Jeunesse, the country of Youth and Romance, a joyous plaisaunce free from care or caution, whose green, wide fields lie bathed in glamorous sunshine. To the eastward lie the pleasant groves of Arcady, the dreamland, home of love and poetry. Here in this Greek paradise of rustic simplicity and joyous innocence and hope, has lived every poet who has ever sung the lyric note, and here have visited, for some brief space, all who have dreamed, all who have longed, all who have loved. Here is the old joy of life made manifest and abundant; here Mother Nature speaks most clearly to her children. For the most, however, it is but a holiday country, and they who discover it often pass, never to return, forgetting its glories and its mysteries as they forget that lost country of their youth, counting it all illusion. Yet some few come back to the Port of Peace to lose the world again, renewing the immemorial enchantment.

To the south, over the long procession of the hills, lies Vagabondia, home of the gypsy and wanderer, who claims a wilder freedom beneath the stars--outlawed or voluntary exile from all restraint. This country is rocky and precipitate, full of dangers, a land of feverish unrest.

One other district lies hidden and remote, locked in the central fastnesses of Bohemia. Here is the Forest of Arden, whose greenwood holds a noble fellowship, bound in truth and human simplicity. It is a little golden world apart, and though it is the most secret, it is the most accessible of refugees, so that there are never too many there, and never too few. Here is spoken a universal language, Nature's own speech, the native dialect of the heart. Men come and go from this bright country, but once having been free of the wood, you are of the Brotherhood and recognize your fellows by instinct, and know them, as they know you, for what you are.

Now, as Bohemia, unfortunately, is not an island, it has its neighbours and its frontiers. To the west lies Philistia, arid, dry and flat, the abode of shams, dogmas and sluggish creeds. Here stands Vanitas, overlooking a great desert, walled in by custom, guarded by false pride. It is but a step over the border, however, from Bohemia the true to that false Debatable Ground whose affectations are more insincere even than the shams of the real Philistia, and the youngster, questing the hero-haunted country of his youth, chasing his phantoms, may go wide of his reckoning, misled by the mockery of life made by these disguised Philistines. In the City of Shams, hypocrites are content to assume the virtues they have not, but here on the borders of Bohemia their vices are all pretense as well!

On the further boundary of Bohemia, also, hangs an unsavoury neighbour. Here is a madder and more terrible domain, the land of lust and cruelty, lawless and loveless, dwelling in endless war. To this fierce country Vagabondia lies perilously near, and many a wanderer has crossed the frontier to find himself, before he knew, within that evil land, where freedom has become licence, and tolerance grown into Anarchy.

Wide across all three empires stretch the Hills of Fame. In Philistia men must be born great; there is no other distinction possible save that of riches or inherited power. In Bohemia men achieve greatness, working onward and upward, bringing their own great dreams to fulfillment; while in Licentia, those only become great who have an infamous notoriety thrust upon them by their own high crimes.

We cannot all mount those heights from whose crest one may look over the Sea of Care, past the Isle of Idleness to the Adventurous Main, but there is joy enough on the lowland. Happy indeed is he who, in his journey of life, has escaped the perils of that false Bohemia, crouching on the frontier, and has found his way to the happy forest, met his own people and drunk of the Fountain of Immortal Youth; for there is the warm, beating, human heart of the True Bohemia!

*The Bachelor's Advantage*

There are enough who think "a young man married is a young man marred" to cause the bachelor to hesitate before renouncing his liberties, and to fight shy of entanglement as long as possible. If he writes down the "pros" and "cons," like Robinson Crusoe, he will find he has many advantages in his single state that must inevitably be forfeited when he weds.