Part 3

For in sober truth, as one reads the reputed wisdom of Solomon on this topic, fatherhood seems to be in a state of evolution and to have advanced materially since he was a father. "He that spareth his rod," said Solomon in the complacent, dogmatic way that seems to have charmed the Queen of Sheba more than it would charm me, "hateth his son: But he that loveth him, chasteneth him betimes." And again, "The rod and the reproof giveth wisdom." We know better nowadays: the rod has become a figure of speech, the occasions that even appear to excuse its use are fewer and fewer, and when they happen, the modern practice may be described quite simply as a laying-on of the hand. Here, however, is something objective for a father to do--an occasion when Mother pulls in the string, and Father, mercifully hanging back on his red wheels, comes up in a hurry, and what has to be done is done. But the procedure, over the centuries, has compelled thought; the idea has ripened slowly in the paternal mind that it is an unwise waste of strength and emotion to attempt at one end what may be better accomplished at the other; and in this revolutionary discovery there must have been pioneers whose success as fathers was measured by the affection and respect of worthy sons. Hamlet's father, I believe, rarely, if ever, spanked young Hamlet, and never in such mood and manner as to make the little Prince of Denmark smart at the injustice of the high-handed proceeding. Mr. Todd can do no better than follow the elder Hamlet's example; and in so doing he will show himself wiser than Solomon, with his old-fashioned insistence on proverbs and a stout stick. "He that, being often reproved, hardeneth his neck," said Solomon (and here perhaps is the origin of the phrase to "get it in the neck"), "shall suddenly be broken, and that beyond remedy"; which is an attitude of mind that the best thought certainly no longer considers conducive to the best fatherly results. The book for Mr. Todd to read is not Solomon's Book of Proverbs but Theodore Roosevelt's Letters to his Children.

If Solomon had been right, fatherhood would be easy; but the simple fact that even you or I, gentle Reader, being often reproved, will harden our necks, reveals the widespread tendency to ossification that has gradually discredited the didactic and strong-arm system. If I may compose a proverb myself--

The wise man maketh no enemy of his neighbor; And the wise father maketh a friend of his son.

But it is easier to compose a proverb than to apply it, and friendship, which can be built only on a good foundation of common understanding and truthful speech, is here especially difficult. "To speak truth," says Stevenson, "there must be a moral equality or else no respect; and hence between parent and child intercourse is apt to degenerate into a verbal fencing bout, and misapprehensions to become ingrained. And there is another side to this; for the parent begins with an imperfect notion of the child's character, formed in early years or during the equinoctial gales of youth; to this he adheres, noting only the facts that suit with his preconceptions; and wherever a person fancies himself unjustly judged, he at once and finally gives up the effort to speak truth."

Somehow or other our Mr. Todd, if he wishes to make the best of his paternity, must overcome the handicap imposed by his wider mental experience and his acquired moral distinctions between rightness and wrongness; somehow or other he must create in Harvey, Jr., an affectionate regard for his jolly old father that shall make it a line of least resistance for the little fellow to follow and imitate his jolly old father's opinions and wishes. Often, indeed, if he is wise, Mr. Todd will dare to seem foolish. "Foolishness," said Solomon, "is bound up in the heart of the child"--and there he stopped, after adding his usual suggestion about the rod as a remedy. But it is bound up also, O Solomon, in every heart that beats, and is one thing at least that Mr. Todd and little Harvey have in common to start with.

And so the father plays his unapplauded part--"tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited," as Polonius might enumerate. He wants no applause. He wants no "Father's Day." He wants no statue. He wants no advice. Yet it seems to me that a figure and character has lately been perpetuated in statuary of various kinds that answers all practical purposes, though most of us think of the original as a Great American rather than as a Great Father.

V

ON BEING A LANDLORD

_In an informal, but practical way, a landlord is, and must be, a Justice of the Domestic Peace. If one tenant murders another tenant, the case passes beyond his jurisdiction: he has no power of the black cap. But if one tenant annoys another (which may eventually lead to homicide more or less justifiable), the case comes to his court: he is both jury and judge, and can in extremity pronounce sentence of eviction. But so many and subtile are the ways in which tenants annoy each other that to be a perfectly just landlord would demand a wisdom greater than Solomon's._--APARTMENTS TO LET.

On my consciousness are impressed the names of fourteen married women and one (so far as I know) unmarried man: Mrs. Murphy, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Cawkins, Mrs. Trolley, Mrs. Karsen, Mrs. Le Maire, Mrs. Barber, Mrs. Sibley, Mrs. Carrot, Mrs. Mahoney, Mrs. Hopp, Mrs. Ranee, Mrs. Button, and Charlie Wah Loo. Their husbands I hardly know at all; indeed, if Mrs. Carrot should introduce Mr. Hopp to me by that dear title,--as, for example, 'my husband, Mr. Hopp,'--I should hastily readjust my ideas and decide that Mrs. Carrot was really Mrs. Hopp, and Mrs. Hopp really Mrs. Carrot. Charlie Wah Loo _may_ be married; he devotes his days to the washtub and ironing-board, and his nights (I like to think) to what Mr. Sax Rohmer, author of "The Yellow Claw," mysteriously mentions as "ancient, unnamable evils." In feudal times, however, I should have known them all better. Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! that brave little company--

BUTTON HOPP CARROT BARBER KARSEN CAWKINS SMITH RANEE MAHONEY SIBLEY LE MAIRE TROLLEY BROWN MURPHY

--would have marched sturdily under my banner, each in his stout leathern jerkin, manfully carrying his trusty pike, halberd, long bow, short bow, or arbalest; and with them Charlie Wah Loo would have trotted along by himself as an interesting human curiosity--or, perhaps, in a cage. Each in his time would have done me fealty, saying, "Know ye this, my lord, that I will be faithful and true unto you, and faith to you will bear for the tenements which I claim to hold of you; and that I will lawfully do to you the customs and services which I ought to do at the terms assigned. So help me God and his saints."

Those, in retrospect, were pleasant days for the landlord, when rent was paid in loyal service and a few dozen eggs, or what not. But all that now remains of the ancient custom is that they continue, vicariously, through the agency of their beloved helpmates, to pay me rent. In this sense, Charlie Wah Loo, with his washtub and irons, is his own beloved helpmate.

Briefly, I am a landlord. But do not hate me, gentle reader, for I am of that mild, reticent, and reluctant kind to whom even collecting the rent, to say nothing of raising it, is more a pain than a pleasure. There are such landlords, products of evolution, inheritance, and a civilization necessarily based on barter. Our anxious desire is to exact no more than a "fair rent"; at our weakest, when a tenant gets in arrears and, evidently enough, cannot catch up, our line of least resistance would be to go quietly away and leave that tenement to the tenant, his heirs and assigns forever. It is unpleasant, and becomes more so every time, to remind him that he owes us money. Only the inexorable harshness of our own overlords compels us, hating ourselves the while, to be strict.

I have seen it stated as a scientific deduction that "in the beginning man probably dwelt in trees after the fashion of his ape-like ancestors. He lived on nuts, fruits, roots, wild honey, and perhaps even bird's eggs, grubs from rotten wood, and insects." And my own experience leads me to feel that there was much to be said for this way of life, though I draw the line at birds' eggs, grubs from rotten wood, and insects, at which items of an earlier menu even the scientific mind seems to baulk. But it may well have happened that some strong fellow presently got possession of an especially desirable tree, and allowed others to share its branches only if they kept him supplied with provisions. Thus may landlordry have been established.

Millions of years have passed since then,--a mere flicker in the great movie of eternity,--and we are still, many of us, living in trees; but the trees have been cut down and made into houses, of which at present there are not enough to go round. We have outgrown our simple arboreal diet, developed and perfected the hen (no small achievement in itself), invented underwear, and in countless other cunning ways have created a complex civilization. Century by century, generation by generation, we have acquired tastes and conventions that prevent us from returning to the simple, happy, uncomplicated life of our ape-like ancestors. And in this civilization that we have made, the figure of the landlord bulks large and overshadowing, and might, indeed, be likened to Rodin's Thinker, thinking, in this instance, about how much more he shall raise the rent. One must assume, of course, that he is thinking about it just before taking his morning bath.

It is not my purpose to dwell upon those disgraceful landlords who profiteer. I am concerned rather with the character of the Perfect Landlord, a just man, respected, if not loved (within reason), by fourteen married women and a Charlie Wah Loo. But this admirable ideal seems impracticable. I know a landlord who speaks with pleasure of the social aspect of collecting his rents; but his is a selected tenantry, for he lets apartments only to what he calls "nice people," whose society he feels reasonably certain he will enjoy on rent-day, and whose financial status, he also feels reasonably certain, is and will remain such that no painful embarrassment on this sordid but necessary side of their relations will ever cast a gloom over his visit. Yet even so, I gather that there are sometimes breaks in the golden chain, when the nice tenant chats with a too feverish interest about life and things in general, and the sordid aspect cannot be glossed over by a casual "Ah, yes, the rent." Such breaks in the golden chain are the test of landlordry.

I am reminded of a little one-act play which I have just written entitled

THE RENT

CHARACTERS: MRS. BUTTON, a tenant.

I, a landlord.

SCENE: _A tenement, owned by_ I, _but referred to as_ MRS. BUTTON'S, _which is perhaps more correct._ MRS. BUTTON _is washing dishes. The room steams. Slow creaks outside as of a reluctant man coming upstairs._ MRS. BUTTON _smiles enigmatically. A knocking at the door, as in "Macbeth."_

MRS. BUTTON. Come in. (I _enters._)

I _(laughing with affected lightness)._ Ah, _good-_morning, Mrs. Button. I've come for the rent.

MRS. BUTTON _(weeping)._ It's not me, as ye know, sir, that likes to be behind with th' rint. I'm proud.

I _(touched in spite of himself by the sight of a strong woman in tears)._ I know _that._ But you've been here seven months, Mrs. Button, without--

MRS. BUTTON _(wiping her eyes)._ Yis, I'm an old tenant, and 't would break me heart to go. An' me goin' to begin payin' reg'lar only nixt week, sir. It's th' only home I've got, an' it's cruel harrd to leave it.

I (_sternly_). Very well. Very well. I shall _expect_ the money next week. Good-day, Mrs. Button.

MRS. BUTTON. Good-day, sir.

I _exits_. MRS. BUTTON _resumes washing dishes, smiling enigmatically. The room steams, and steps are heard going hastily downstairs, fainter and fainter_.

(CURTAIN)

It is a grave responsibility--this power to dispossess other human beings of their little home--to say nothing of the recurrent task of making them behave themselves in it. Perhaps, on some other and happier plane of being, all landlords will be just and all tenants reasonable of disposition and stable of income. Then, indeed, the landlord need have nothing in common with a well-known walrus, of whom it is told that, in dealing with certain oysters, "with sobs and tears he sorted out those of the largest size." But something might even now be done by compulsory psychopathic--I had nearly said psychopathetic--treatment; for thus the effort to solve the rent problem would go to the soil in which it is rooted, and no complicated laws would be needed. Landlords and tenants, in fact everybody, would have to take the treatment,--including, of course, the psychopathic practitioners, who would treat each other,--but it would be a fine thing for the world if it worked.

One sees in imagination the profiteering landlord, after looking long and intently at a bright object, say a five-dollar gold-piece, dropping peacefully asleep; one hears the voice of the scientist repeating, firmly and monotonously, "When you wake up you will never want anything more than a just rent--a just rent--a just rent--a just rent."

One sees this profiteering landlord, once more wide awake, busy at his desk with pencil and paper, scowling conscientiously as he endeavors to figure out exactly what a just rent will be. Investment, so much; taxes; insurance; repairs; laths and plaster here, wall-paper there; water, light, putty, paint, janitor, Policeman's Annual Ball, postman at Christmas, wear and tear on landlord's shoes, etc., etc., etc., etc.--now, if ever, there is a tired business man.

Or,--to take another aspect of this great reform,--there is the sad case of Mrs. Murphy, who can no longer endure the children of Mrs. Trolley, who lives in the flat above her. They run and play, run and play; they produce in Mrs. Murphy a conviction that presently the floor will give way, and the children, still running and playing, will come right through on her poor head. Yet it is the nature of children to run and play, run and play: the landlord cannot, try as he may, persuade Mrs. Trolley to chain her offspring. So away, away to the Public Psychopathic Ward with poor Mrs. Murphy. "Madam, when you awake, the sound of running feet over your poor head will suggest the joys of innocent childhood, and you will be very happy when they run and play, run and play--happy all day--run and play--run and play--happy all day--run and play."

But alas, so far even psychopathic treatment cannot promise to stabilize incomes. There must still be times when the just landlord must say to his tenant, "All is over between us; we must part forever--and at once." To which, judging by the tenor of some of the laws that have lately been suggested, the tenant may presently answer, "All right, you Old Devil. This is the tenth of the month, and I'll shake the dust of your disgraceful premises off my feet two years and six months from to-morrow."

It's a puzzling time for us landlords. Not long ago I felt compelled to raise the rent of fourteen married women and one (so far as I know) unmarried Chinaman. And then, overcome by conscience, I sat down and figured out a just rent. And when I had finished I came upon a distressing discovery. I had raised the rent of neither Mrs. Murphy, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Cawkins, Mrs. Trolley, Mrs. Karsen, Mrs. Le Maire, Mrs. Barber, Mrs. Sibley, Mrs. Carrot, Mrs. Mahoney, Mrs. Hopp, Mrs. Ranee, Mrs. Button, nor Charlie Wah Loo, anything like enough.

VI

OLD FLIES AND OLD MEN

_To-day, my dear, I greatly astonished my grandson by standing on my head, and by entering the kitchen by turning a back-somersault through the door--exercises which I frequently practise for the benefit of my digestion, but not often in public. His bewilderment at seeing a man of my years perform such acrobatics was most comical. But there, there, one must amuse one's self with the young sometimes. I have thought more or less seriously of advising these exercises for general use; but few men have had the advantage of being brought up in a circus, and what seems easy to me would no doubt present insuperable obstacles to most. The main thing, after all, is not to grow old before your time, because the silly younger generation likes to flatter itself by thinking you antediluvian._--LETTERS OF FATHER WILLIAM.

Few men read Shakespeare, and so, fortunately enough, few think of themselves as being some day a pantaloon--lean and slippered (as Shakespeare described this sixth age of man), with spectacles on nose, his youthful hose, well-saved, a world too wide for his shrunk shank, and his big, manly voice, turning again to childish treble, operating like a penny whistle when he tries to converse. But the Bard made a bogey: at any rate, there are fewer pantaloons visible than there probably were in Elizabethan England; and the sixth age of man appears more logically to offer a kind of Indian summer that is well worth living for. Shakespeare, it seems to me, slipped a cog in his sequence; and I prefer to think of Cornaro, the Italian centenarian, who began at forty to restrict his diet (though this I care less for), and wrote of himself at eighty-three: "I enjoy a happy state of body and mind. I can mount my horse without assistance; I climb steep hills; and I have lately written a play abounding in innocent wit and humor. And I am a stranger to those peevish and morose humors which fall so often to the lot of old age."

Granting some other choice of mental employment,--for writing that kind of a play seems nowadays too useless an occupation even for an old man's leisure,--this is the kind of an old man I should like to be.

In the light of recent scientific research with flies, Cornaro probably inherited his longevity from long-lived ancestors, and would have done about as well on a less restricted diet: he might reasonably have lasted as long if not as comfortably. Ideas have changed since Pope asked himself,--

Why has not man a microscopic eye?--

and promptly answered,--

For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly. Say what the use, were finer optics giv'n, T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n?

Man since then has provided himself with a remarkably good microscopic eye. He has inspected the mite, and discovered resemblances between this innocently disgusting little insect and himself, which make it desirable, in some cases, to suspend the swatter, and study instead of assassinate. Granting that the proper study of mankind is Man, the proper study of mankind is Flies; for the days of a fly present an entertaining and instructive parallel to the years of a man: a seventy-year-old man and a seventy-day-old fly are contemporaries; other things being equal, they might almost be called twins. Confined in glass bottles and observed impartially from birth to burial, each baby fly, it appears, inherits a maximum number of days on this perplexing planet, and lives fewer according to the activity with which he expends his inheritance. If flies had copybooks one might compose a maxim for little flies to copy,--

Do not fly too much or fast, And you will much longer last.

Thus one scientific gentleman has watched, godlike, the lives of 5836 flies--3216 fair flies (if I may so call them), and 2620 of their natural, and only, admirers--from their separate birth-minutes till each in turn paid his or her little debt to nature, and passed away. It is an odd thing to contemplate--this self-election of a man to the positions of guardian, health officer, divine providence, nursemaid, matchmaker, clergyman, physician, undertaker, and sexton to 5836 flies. Yet it redounds to his credit, and is another proof of the poet's contention that we men are superior: for what fly would ever think of studying us to find out anything about himself? And, by deduction, I, like the little fly, inherit my span of life, although either accident or a germ may get me if I don't watch out.

But even if man, like the fly, inherits his individual length of life, he will, again like the fly, go on living it with little concern as to whatever invisible string may be fastened to his inheritance. He will think hopefully that any ancestor he has had who died by violence or a germ might otherwise have lived to be as hale and hearty as Father William, that lively sage whose habit was to stand on his head at intervals, and to enter a door by turning a back-somersault. Heredity is still a mystery; the ancestry of free men is much more complicated than that of flies in bottles; and any of us, if he anxiously carried his genealogical research far enough back, would find a goodly number of forbears, prematurely carried off, from whom he might reasonably have inherited quite a lot of what the scientific mind calls the "hypothetical substance or substances which normally prevent old age and natural death." Flies growing gracefully old in glass bottles therefore need not worry us, and every ancestor who has been hanged is a reason for optimism.

And there is another reason even more valuable than a pendent ancestor. You and I, gentle Reader, have souls (though there may be times of discouragement when we wish we hadn't), and old age is a mere trivial incident in our jolly eternal lives. Willy-nilly, we begin growing older, by the conventional measurement of time, with our first breath; but who can prove that we are not in reality very much older than we look in the beginning, and very much younger than we look in the end? I get these sober thoughts from the laboratory rather than the pulpit, from evolution rather than dogma. O aged fly, to whom your seventy days are a long life and your glass bottle a perfectly natural and normal world in which to have lived it! O aged man, to whom your seventy years are a long life, and who may also have lived it, for all you know, in a kind of glass bottle, big enough to contain comfortably this little planet and all the visible stars! Whoever respects age for its own sake must impartially salute you both.