Chapter 2

The late Lafcadio Hearn was one of the great prose-poets of the time. The glimpse into his intimate mind which the _Critic_ affords by printing a sheaf of his letters to H.E. Krehbiel, the music critic, will be appreciated by all who followed his literary wanderings up to the time of his settlement in Japan. The letters were written many years ago, when Hearn was still in his early prime. When he learned of the death of Mr. Krehbiel's child he wrote this exquisite expression of sympathy:

Your letter rises before me as I write like a tablet of white stone bearing a dead name. I see you standing beside me. I look into your eyes and press your hand and say nothing.

Hearn was ever an artist, and he ever knew what art meant. In advising his friend to break away from the exhausting routine of daily journalism, he gave a typical expression of his philosophy of life:

Under the levity of Henri Mürger's picturesque Bohemianism there is a serious philosophy apparent which elevates the characters of his romance to heroism. They followed one principle faithfully--so faithfully that only the strong survived the ordeal--never to abandon the pursuit of an artistic vocation for any other occupation, however lucrative; not even when she remained apparently deaf and blind to her worshipers.

The conditions pictured by Mürger have passed away in Paris as elsewhere; the old barriers to ambition have been broken down. But I think the moral remains.

So long as one can live and pursue his natural vocation in art, it is a duty with him never to abandon it if he believes that he has within him the elements of final success. Every time he labors at aught that is not of art he robs the divinity of what belongs to her.

Do you never reflect that within a few years you will no longer be the YOUNG MAN--and that, like Vesta's fires, the enthusiasm of youth for an art-idea must be well fed with the sacred branches to keep it from dying out?

I think you ought really to devote all your time and energies and ability to the cultivation of one subject, so as to make that subject alone repay you for all your pains.

And I do not believe that art is altogether ungrateful in these days; she will repay fidelity to her, and recompense sacrifices. I don't think you have any more right to play reporter than a great sculptor to model fifty-cent plaster figures of idiotic saints for Catholic processions, or certain painters to letter steamboats at so much a letter. In one sense, too, art is exacting. To acquire real eminence in any one branch of any art, one must study nothing else for a lifetime. A very wide general knowledge may be acquired only at the expense of depth.

PURSUIT OF A HUSBAND BY THE MODERN WOMAN.

After All, Says the New York "Times," It Is Doubtless Better for Man to Be Chosen Than for Him to Choose.

Taking up a discussion inaugurated by the _St. James Gazette_, of London, the New York _Times_ says what it has to say on the subject of choosing wives.

The English paper said frankly that the title would better be "The Choice of a Husband," inasmuch as the male, though unaware of the fact, is generally not the pursuer, but the pursued. This condition, however, is by no means to the discredit of woman.

As the _Times_ remarks, "A young woman whose intentions are both serious and honorable has nothing at all to be ashamed of in endeavoring by all womanly means to acquire the man whom she believes she can make happy and knows that she means to try to."

In America and England there is objection to the man who marries for any other reason than being in love. Yet the _mariage de convenance_ is not altogether without legitimate recommendations. To quote the _Times_:

If one is really bent on making a marriage of reason instead of waiting for a "call," excellent recipes may be given him.

A wise man once advised his son, who had shown some disposition to choose instead of waiting to be chosen, to "look for a good woman's daughter." It would be hard to find any better basis for a happy union.

In general, of course, mixed marriages, whether the mixture be of religion or of country, would be viewed by a wise adviser with apprehension, although Lord Curzon's experience is only one of very many as to the possible happiness of marriages between persons of different nationalities, much more alike as are the nationalities of Lord and Lady Curzon than any other two nationalities.

Dr. Johnson's famous saying that marriages would be happier if they were arranged by the Lord Chancellor, due regard being paid to the ages and conditions of the parties, has never been accepted as a working rule in his own country. In France, again, there is the wholly "reasonable" and extremely circumspect Count Boni Castellane, whose marriage of reason has so lately been shown to be so far from a success.

There are quite enough more failures of the same kind to offset the unhappy marriages of romance. It is of these, of course, that Burton declares that matches are made in heaven, though matches of the sulfurous kind, of which all of us know some instances, suggest a very different place of manufacture.

The Marriage of Reason.

Swift's saying that the reason why so few marriages are happy is that "young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages," is doubly outrageous. In the first place, it is an outrageous begging of the question. The testimony of less cynical observers in our day and country is that most marriages are entitled to be called happy.

In the second place, it outrageously puts the whole blame for unhappy marriages on the female partner, contrary alike to probability and to fact. But at least as many of the marriages are failures in which men "choose" their wives, or think they do, as in cases in which men become the prey of their own imaginations.

And there is this to be said from the point of view of reason in favor of marriages with which reason has nothing to do. In the first months of married life there are necessarily very many differences to be adjusted and small incompatibilities of ways of thinking and feeling to be reconciled. That, as all experienced spouses know, is the trying period.

Marriage is like life in that it is a school wherein whoso does not learn must suffer. Now, to diminish the friction of this trying time no better lubricant could possibly be provided than the romantic love, which cannot be expected to last forever, but which may very probably outlast this greatest necessity for it of the early connubial period.

When the glamour of the romance "fades into the light of common day," and a real man and a real woman take the places of the creatures of each other's fancy, and passion cools into at best the tenderest of friendships, both parties are better off, and will acknowledge themselves to be better off because the romance has been.

EVERY MAN MASTER OF HIS OWN STOMACH.

Instinct Best Determines What You Should Eat, So Eat What Your Normal Instinct Tells You To.

In that series of compromises which we call life there is no compromise more perplexing than the compromise with the stomach. No problem requires more earnest thought than the food problem. It is the stomach that makes men work. There would be no produce exchange were it not for the stomach--no yellow fields of wheat and corn, no grazing herds of cattle, no fleets of white-sailed fishing-vessels. Clothing and shelter are secondary demands. The stomach is master; and, as is ever likely to be the case with autocrats, it is selfish--wherefore we humor it--we hold out crutches to it--we offer it tempting inducements to be lenient with us.

A sense of relief, therefore, is produced by reading Dr. Woods Hutchinson's article, "Some Diet Delusions," in the April _McClure's_; for therein is advanced the doctrine of "intelligent omnivorousness." Says Dr. Hutchinson:

Every imaginable experiment upon what would and what would not support life must have been tried thousands of years ago, and yet our most striking proofs of how highly men value their "precious right of private haziness," as George Eliot shrewdly terms it, are to be found in the realm of dietetics. The "light that never was on sea or land" still survives for the most matter-of-fact of us in the memory of "the pies that mother used to make," and nowhere else do we find preferences so widely accepted as evidence, and prejudices as matters of fact, as in this arena. In fact, if we were merely to listen to what is said, and still more to read what is printed, we would come to the conclusion that the human race had established absolutely nothing beyond possibility of dispute in this realm.

When the Doctors Disagree.

Every would-be diet-reformer, and we doctors are almost as bad as any of them, is absolutely certain that what nine-tenths of humanity find to be their food is a deadly poison. One philosopher is sure that animal food of every description, especially the kind that involves the shedding of blood, is not only absolutely unfit for human food, but is the cause of half the suffering and wickedness in the world. Another gravely declares that the only thing which, above all things, is injurious is salt. Another takes up his parable against pork. Still another is convinced that half the misery of the world is due to the use of spices; and one dietetic Rousseau proclaims a return to very first principles by the abolition of cooking.

Another attacks the harmless and blushing tomato, and lays at its door the modern increase of cancer, insanity, and a hundred kindred evils; while Mrs. Rohrer has gently but firmly to be restrained whenever she hears the mild-eyed potato mentioned.

There is almost an equally astonishing Babel when one comes to listen to the various opinions as to the amount of food required. Eighteen grave and reverend doctors assure us that overeating is the prevalent dietetic sin of the century, while the remainder of the two dozen are equally positive that the vast majority of their patients are underfed. One man preaches the gospel of dignified simplicity on one meal a day and one clean collar a week, while the lean and learned Fletcher declares that if we only keep on masticating our one mouthful of food long enough we shall delude the stomach into magnifying it into ten, and can dine sumptuously on a menu-card and a biscuit.

Fortunately, when it comes to practise, philosophers, reformers, and doctors alike have about as much influence here as they have over conduct in other realms--and that is next to none at all. The man in the street follows his God-given instincts and plods peacefully along to his three square meals a day, consisting of anything he can find in the market, and just as much of it as he can afford, with special preference for rich meats, fats, and sugars.

Instinct Far Superior to Reason.

Here, as everywhere, instinct is far superior to reason, and a breakfast diet of sausage and buckwheat cakes with maple syrup and strong coffee has carried the white man half around the world; while one of salads and cereals, washed down with a post-prandial subterfuge, would leave him stranded, gasping, in the first ditch he came to.

All the basal problems of dietetics were, by the mercy of Heaven, settled long ago in the farmhouse kitchen, in the commissary department of the army in the field, in the cook's galley amidships, and in the laboratory.

There is little more room for difference of opinion upon them than there is about the coaling of engines. Simply a matter of size of boiler and fire-box, the difference in heating power and ash between Welsh and Australian, and the amount of work to be got out of the machine, multiplied by the time in which it is to be accomplished.

Dr. Hutchinson proceeds to give reasons why spices do _not_ heat the blood, why pork is a most excellent food, why fish is no better for the brain than other things, why vegetarianism is a mistake, and so on. His principal caution is not to eat in a hurry; his principal advice is, virtually, to eat whatever seems to agree with you.

All of which brings to mind the story of the old dyspeptic who, after a long term of misery, one day apostrophized his stomach thus:

"I have humored you for many years. I have coaxed you, coddled you, petted you. I have gone hungry to please you. I have swallowed bad-tasting medicines on your account. I have been your servant--but now I am through. From this time I will eat what I please and drink what I please. If you protest, I shall ignore you. Hereafter you are the servant, I am the master. Now make the best of that!"

This brave man's stomach, we are told, was so thoroughly cowed by the words that it never again demanded a milk diet.

THE EXPOSURE OF EXPOSURE.

Things That Are Being Said About the "Journalism of Conscience" by Critics, Passionate and Dispassionate.

When fire is discovered in a house it sometimes happens that the tenants, in their excitement, hurl fragile bric-à-brac from the windows and with much effort carry the feather beds down-stairs and out to safety. Suppose that the incongruity of such action suddenly becomes apparent. The alarmed tenants may reverse the process. Better still, they may endeavor to put out the fire. But to cease all effort because they stand convicted of excited folly would be absurd.

The inevitable reaction from recent wild exposures in finance and politics has lately shown itself. Prominent men and leading journals have convicted the "yellow" newspapers and magazines, and the people influenced by them, of excited folly. Senator Lodge has said in the Senate, concerning sensational contributors to the magazines:

Writers of that type come and go. They seize upon the excitement of the moment and presently rise like a flock of shore birds and whirl away to another spot where they think they can find a fresh feeding ground. These modern imitators of Titus Oates will pass away as he passed away. They will bring no innocent heads to the block as he did, although they may here and there cause distress. They will not end in the pillory as he did, because the pillory has been abolished, but they will go out of fashion just as he did into silence and contempt.

District Attorney William T. Jerome, speaking at a banquet in New York, referred to magazine articles which have described the Senate as treasonable.

Treason is an ugly word. It is punishable by death. We have got so used to superlatives that our own racy tongue has become debauched and we have no superlatives left. The Senate of the United States--is it a treasonable body? A body that holds a man like Murray Crane, of Massachusetts? Because some men are there who ought not to be there--some who bought the position--shall we say that the governors of our body politic are guilty of treason? Base men are there, but when in the bright, breezy sentiments of modern newspaper life you assert there is treason, you either lie or misconceive the meaning of the English language.

On the other side, Norman Hapgood says, in _Collier's_:

Who is doing most to make railroad and beef trust facts and problems understood? Who but the same magazine which has printed the history of Standard Oil and explained to the people the needed changes in State and city government. What a farce to speak of _McClure's Magazine_ as yellow; what a dull, injurious farce, unless by yellow we mean every movement of benefit to our kind! Did Mr. Steffens's printing of the news about Philadelphia do any harm to the inhabitants of that town? Did it, or did it not, act as a battle-cry which spurred the good citizens and the newspapers of that town to action? When original, living, and conscientious journalism speaks, the routine newspapers are sometimes forced to echo bold words which receive the public's approving seal.

So the balance of expressed opinion on the subject shifts up and down. In all the confusion we sometimes hear an opinion like that, uttered by Herbert S. Hadley, attorney-general of Missouri:

There is no reason to question the efficacy of existing laws so long as they are supported by public sentiment, for law is, in fact, merely the reflection of the moral sense of the country. What I mean by that statement may be illustrated by the fact that while a vast majority of lawyers, as well as laymen, will to-day agree that corporations are amenable to laws from which an individual might be exempt, the same proposition would have met with violent refutation hardly more than two years ago by most lawyers and many laymen.

But the public is now practically agreed, and the courts have sustained this view, that corporations are not above the laws of the State which made their existence possible. An officer of a company may to-day refuse to answer questions on the ground that he would himself be incriminated by replying, but he cannot refuse to answer on the ground that his company would be incriminated. In other words, corporations are no longer considered to have the same rights as individuals and cannot evade investigation and prosecution by maintaining a policy of silence.

Such is the moral sense of the country and such is the law as determined by the highest courts, and with such a condition of public sentiment and law it is no longer possible for public officials to plead that they cannot get at the facts whenever there is a suspicion that any corporation has failed to comply with the laws of the State which created it.

LEGITIMATE SCOPE OF DRAMATIC ART.

Waxworks May Deceive for a Moment, But They Do Not Leave the Lasting Impression of Michelangelo's Moses.

Otis Skinner, the actor, recently made a plea for the teaching of dramatic art in our public schools and colleges. In that way, he urged, public taste can be improved to the point where a better quality of plays and acting will be required to fill the theaters. He was speaking before the Ethical Culture Society, in New York. In beginning he explained at some length what he considered art, drawing his distinctions very carefully:

The purpose of the play is to hold a mirror up to nature, although such things as horror, meanness, lust, or crime must not be shown for their sake alone, merely to display accurate dramatic photographs. They must be utilized toward a definite end. The stage has many detractors, and among them are the ones that say the stage does not represent real life always. Nor should it. I will give you a definition of art which I got from Dr. Adler. It explains what I mean: "Art is the pattern, and not so many ells cut from the fabric of life."

Some years ago in London I went to Mme. Tussaud's waxworks. Curious to identify the figures, I turned to a lady and asked her where I might obtain a program. There was no answer. I became embarrassed and a little angry when I saw I was the subject of amusement for the crowd. I looked closer. The lady was made of wax. Well, I don't remember how she looked, but I do remember every line of the beauties of the Venus of Milo, which I saw in the Louvre, and of Michelangelo's Moses. I did not consider them figures or real persons, yet they live with me.

The charge that the theater gives too much attention to vice was discussed by Mr. Skinner. When used on the stage to heighten the dramatic effect, the simulation of drunkenness, he said, is ethically right. "Mrs. Warren's Profession," he declared flatly, was quite properly suppressed, since there was no reason for it except the exhibition of vice. False and namby-pamby melodrama, on the other hand, is fully as detrimental to dramatic art.

He outlined the plot of a play in which a poor young man, after rescuing the daughter of a multimillionaire by a feat of virtually impossible agility and strength, is promptly provided for by the thankful parent, and marries the girl.

The story, as he told it, was glaringly untrue to life--wherefore he denounced it as immoral. It represented the extreme of romantic falsity, just as "Mrs. Warren's Profession" represented the extreme of disgustingly literal reality.

In art no extreme is acceptable--a lesson which the Greeks, with their supreme intuition of artistic fitness, taught the world once and for all.

WOMAN HAS ALWAYS EARNED HER LIVING.

The New York "Sun" Disposes of the Old Notion That She is the Mere "Beneficiary of Man."

The Rev. John L. Scudder, of Jersey City, recently preached a sermon on the subject, "Business Women--Do They Reduce the Number of Marriages, and Do They Make Good Wives?" He said, among other things, that if the business woman marries, she marries "as an equal and not as a dependent"; that, therefore, we must expect fewer marriages in proportion to the population. But he added:

The business woman of to-day refuses to be a moon revolving around a masculine earth--she will be a twin star or nothing. I believe her industrial training will make her a better wife, for she will know the value of a dollar and be able to sympathize with her husband in his daily toil.

She will apply business methods to domestic economy. Should her husband attempt to maltreat her, she has courage enough to separate from him and return to self-support. What she has done once she can do again. Being fearless and decided, she will be respected and well treated. The broader outlook she has acquired in the business world will make her a superior wife and a more capable mother.

The era of feminine imbecility and cowardice is passing away, and in its place we see about us a new age of well-rounded, exalted womanhood.

An Equal Partnership.

The New York _Sun_ does not agree with Mr. Scudder. In the course of an editorial on the subject it says:

It may be remarked that nobody who enters into a partnership of any sort can expect to retain absolute personal freedom. The rule is equally true in business and marriage. The attempt to exercise absolute personal freedom by one or both partners is pretty sure to result in disaster to any enterprise of any description.

But this is not the main point. Mr. Scudder's most serious fallacy lies in the notion that in any healthy marriage relation the woman is non-self-supporting and the mere "beneficiary of man." The proposition is as absurd as it would be to say that the member of a law firm who pleads in the courts is a mere tender, a mere appendage, a mere beneficiary of the gentleman who sits in the office, sees the clients, and collects the bills, or that the expert engineer at the head of a steel plant is a mere tender to the man who manages the finances of the concern.