The Contributors' Club

MANY years ago, I was one day journeying from Brattleboro to Boston, alone. As the train went on from station to station, it gradually filled, until there was no seat left unoccupied in the car excepting the one by my side. At Concord, the door of the car opened, and Mr. Emerson entered. He advanced a few steps into the car, looked down the aisle, turned, and was about to go out, believing the car to be entirely full. With one of those sudden impulses which are acted upon almost before they are consciously realized, I sprang up, and said, “ Oh, Mr. Emerson, here is a seat! ”

As he came towards me, with his serene smile slowly spreading over his face, my courage faltered. I saw that he expected to meet in me an acquaintance, and as he looked inquiringly and hesitatingly in my face I made haste to say, “ You do not know me, Mr. Emerson. I never had the pleasure of seeing you before. But I know your face, and I could not resist the temptation of the opportunity to speak with you. You know that so many people, who are strangers to you, know you very well.”

“ Perhaps there should not be the word stranger in any language,” he answered slowly, in a tone and with a kindly look which at once set my timidity at ease. “ I do not know any good reason for it.”

In a short time, with that rare faculty which he had for drawing out of each his inmost thought, he had led me into speaking to him, with half-familiar freedom, of my own personal history, and of my experience as a mother. Hardly by question so much as by tone and expression, he made me feel at liberty to confide to him some of the many perplexities and doubts with which every young mother’s heart is burdened.

His replies were more in the form of suggestions than of solutions to the doubts, or direct meeting of the perplexities. He told me much of his own theories, somewhat of his own experience. Many of his words remained vividly present with me for years, and more than once recurred to my mind in situations when they bore the weight and came in with the appropriateness of specific advice, in immediate emergencies.

One point I recollect as most earnestly dwelt upon was the unspeakable value of simplicity of life and surroundings as an agency in the formation of character. Of this he spoke at length, and with great fervor. He said that the children of rich men were born at such disadvantage in this respect that it was a question if all their other advantages, such as educational facilities, travel, etc., could make up for it.

“ This is the true meaning,” he said, half humorously, “ of a scripture which is much misquoted, — that it is easier for the camel to go through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. It does not mean that the rich man must necessarily find it harder not to sin than another man ; on the contrary, he is removed from some of the deadliest forms of temptation to sin. But the kingdom of heaven which the creative worker knows is shut against him. Into that heaven we have to be driven, either by need, or by the narrowing of the ministering horizons of our lives.”

One sentence which he spoke in connection with this was said with such lingering emphasis that it stamped itself indelibly upon my memory. He said, “ When I think how I am sparing my boy all that made me, — the barefooted chambers and the stern denials of poverty, — I know I am making a mistake. But,” he added, after a pause, “I cannot help it.”

In later years I had the privilege and pleasure of seeing Mr. Emerson frequently. At one time I spent a few days with him in a friend’s house at Newport, Rhode Island. There was something in the dreamy serenity of the bay, upon which my friend’s house stood, that greatly charmed Mr. Emerson, and his remark on first looking out over the water was a characteristic one. It was from the dining-room windows that he looked. We had given him a seat from which he could see the bay. As we took our places for breakfast, he gazed across the shining silver surface, and said half dreamily, “ And there are clocks in Newport ? ”

It was some minutes before any one perceived the precise drift of this question ; and during the brief interval of our bewilderment the smile on Mr. Emerson’s face deepened and spread, until his whole countenance beamed with humorous enjoyment of our perplexity.

How precious is every memory of those days ! The tender yet beneficent way in which Mr. Emerson listened for replies to the searching questions he sometimes put had in it a certain expression of unconscious royalty, that no words could convey ; and it kindled in one’s breast that mingled sentiment of affection and incentive to all possible effort for which allegiance is the only fitting name. As time goes on it will be more and more sure that he is the one truest representative our republic has borne, his thought and his words the truest rendering of the republic’s idea, and his life and character the truest fulfilling of the republic’s ideal.

— In reading No. V. of Studies in the South, I noted under the head The Talk of Crowds mention of a lack of interest in politics among the most intelligent and public-spirited citizens, and of their conviction that the true course for the Southern people would be to let national politics alone in great measure, and give their strength to work, education, and the improvement of the laboring classes. The fact thus stated is patent to any observer, and naturally occasions comment at the North, where it is often reported, I think, with some misapprehension of its meaning. And because of this misapprehension, I have a few words to say about the significance of this apparent indifference. It seems to me that the successful shaping of our national life depends so much upon mutual understanding between different parts of the country that even a very slight contribution to such an understanding may have some value. A woman unconnected with people of political influence, coming from the North with the sole object of finding a healthful wintering place among cultivated and agreeable people; an interested observer, though an entire stranger, of the current of thought and feeling in this community for nearly a year, I should have learned something. The persons whom I meet are from all parts of the South, drawn hither by the advantages of a university town. The University of the South is situated here, an institution controlled by the Protestant Episcopal church of the ten Southern States. It is a conservative, cultivated community, where are represented the Barnwells, Elliotts, Prestons, Hugers, and other historic families of the South. In general conversation national politics are almost ignored, though state politics awaken a lively interest. There may underlie this indifference to national affairs a certain scornful despair of the republic, a feeling which does not seem strange to one who sees for the first time the ruinous effects of the years of mismanagement. which followed the close of the war, more disastrous than the war itself. But this apparent indifference is not apathy. A Nashville, Tennessee, paper gives a hint of its explanation. “ Too intense devotion to the dead past. That was well for a time, — perhaps not for too long a time. The time has passed. Let us have no more of it till the necessity for it again arises, as it will, doubtless.”

The South is as ambitious of power, and as determined to have it, now as it was in its palmiest days, when it gave presidents to the republic, and dictated to the country at large. Why, then, does it withhold its best men from an arena where, in former years, Southern men were first in eager conflict, and carried off trophies and spoils ? People like these cannot be indifferent to political contests. The Southern mind is fond of theories of government, and ardent in support of them. While impetuous with all the flush and fervor of youth, Southerners begin to think and act on matters which, among us, are left to the calmer judgment of older men. These young men know far more of the causes which led to the late war, the claims sought to be enforced by it, the logic of the struggle, than Northern youth do. There are reasons for this. The marks of those terrible years are not yet effaced here, as they are at the North. In such ways as have no parallel in Northern experiences, the preciousness of a cause for which suffering and loss — whose consequences are still constantly felt — were gladly endured is impressed Upon them. Privation of the social and educational advantages which were possessed almost as an inheritance by their families for generations is keenly felt. So long as we continue to suffer for an idea, we continue to find it dear. The very family names, once famous, are reminders of a vanished power and influence, which those who bear them naturally long to see again exercised in the affairs of state. And there is a strong, though rarely expressed, determination that they shall be, though it may be at a distant day.

This, then, I take to be the meaning of Southern indifference to general politics. “ We bide our time. We failed once, because we were starving. Next time we shall not fail. For the present, we devote ourselves rather to the development of our resources than to political effort. By and by, we shall grow our own cereals, raise our own food supplies, have our own manufactures, and we shall be in a position to enforce, without war, our demand for place and power in the government.” It is not an ignoble ambition. A worse thing might happen to the country than to have power placed for a season — the continuous power of any section is to be deprecated — in the hands of people who, by the time they can attain it, will have gone through a discipline of such suffering and waiting, such labor and perseverance, as will make them more fit to exercise it than ever before. If only, in the mean time, fairness and consideration of Southern interests on the part of those who control affairs can have won these people to an attachment to the whole country, and to a conviction that the welfare of the whole is the welfare of each part, it will not be unwisely or injuriously exercised.

I do not fancy that the South contemplates, at any future day, a second appeal to arms. She seeks power in the Union,—not independently of it. The great, sensible majority of people, North and South, agree, I think, in the feeling that there must never be another civil war, whatever may be the braggart bluster of third-rate politicians, who hope to find their own account in stirring up strife.

I do think the South means to obtain possession of the government. Not, however, more positively, nor by any other means, than the North, the West or the East purposes to keep or to obtain such possession. No one section, in a country so immense as ours, can hold control in its own hands constantly. The wheel may have a vast circumference, but its lowest point comes highest, at last. In the success of each section in attaining the material prosperity which gives it influence, the entire country is benefited.

If only this strife between East and West, North and South, for the control of the government can be recognized as a necessary accompaniment of healthful life in all parts of the country, it need not be alarming, nor need the success of either section be disastrous. Politicians and their newspaper “ organs ” still keep brethren alienated by falsehood and misrepresentation, but their devices are becoming too well known, both North and South, to be much longer successful.

When the wonderful prosperity which is a certain future for this magnificent region of our country is attained, in the development of its marvelous resources, and the people can afford to take refuge from summer heats in our homes, as we now do from winter snows in theirs, we shall value each other more justly; for I think we are always at our best beneath our own roof tree. It will be a good thing for the country when North and South learn each other. If the Southern people are unfair to us, their unfairness has an excuse which ours has not,— the pain of disappointed hope, and of the loss which we count gain. Not till we have been among them do we realize the noble and quiet patience and courage with which they accept the inevitable ; and it may be, too, that we have not yet learned to judge them by the truest of rules, — that of putting one’s self in another’s place.

— What right have I, a coward by confession, to treat of courage, a virtue so far removed from my experience and claim ? Such encouragement as I have for my presumption is derived from the fact that the most accomplished connoisseurs are seldom practically versed in the art over which they exercise the judicial authority ; indeed, the most astute and fine-grained critics with whom the painter and poet have to deal are often those who never handled a brush, never pleaded guilty to the iniquity of verse-making. A confessed coward, I enter into no jealous and derisive competition with professional courage. On the contrary, I am its most hearty and grateful reverencer. I like to see it carry off the popular prizes at all the wrestling and racing matches. I would have a temple erected to Courage (the Spartans had one to Fear), and keep incense continually burning upon its altar, and hire the Muses for its choir. Courage easily gets the votes of the whole world ; has a Mercury-like faculty for making itself acceptable to the highest and the lowest. He who possesses it has an ample mantle with which to cover a multitude of his own failings and frailties. Both the savage and the man of “ ultimate ” culture, the desperado and the lofty idealist, admire and exalt courage, each after his fashion. The breathless admiration with which we regard obvious instances of pluck and daring might be construed as arguing the general desideratum of these qualities. Were we all born cowards, that courage should be so anomalous and phenomenal in our eyes ? Perhaps courage, like heat, is of two kinds, free and latent; if so, there may be in the habitually timorous a generous allowance of latent courage, requiring only the spark of an intense occasion to set it visibly on fire. There is a volunteer courage, such as goes with a robust organization and a hot vitality, a skirmishing and buccaneering article, that follows up the war from mere love of hazard and turbulent sensation. This is best known and most admired. There is another courage, drafted by duty, that is sober and circumspect in its conduct ; mindful that the lawgivers punish as severely those who throw away their shields as those who abandon their swords and spears. Another kind of courage is that which is rooted in fear, — a desperate, fearful courage. As a coward, I am always aware that my position is a signally unsafe one ; theoretically, at least, I would much rather take my chances with the courageous of the vanguard than lag in the rear with the craven-minded. Our ancient friend of the poised scales, open-hearted, frank-spoken Monsieur de Montaigne, may not have been remarkable for personal intrepidity, but he made a brave speech when he declared, “ The thing in this world I am most afraid of is fear.”

It is humanly comforting to us of small prowess to recall the naïve confession of that old French warrior, whose soul was so calm and uninfected by the terror of battle, but whose wretched body so trembled and longed to betake itself from the field ! We flatter ourselves that our spirits would be brave enough, if the body did not communicate its panic. It is the chinkiness and general insecurity of this clay garrison that so embarrasses our fighting courage. Lodge the spirit behind a spiritual rampart, and see how redoubtable it becomes! It is significant that, in acknowledging our lack of physical courage, we are always pleased to have it inferred that we possess a compensating degree of another and more excellent kind of courage, — moral courage ; as though the two were in some way opposed and irreconcilable ! In the best specimens of the hero, they are no doubt exactly balanced. “ I am courageous enough in principle, and can do anything for it; but I am all fear in imagination, — I may add, all sympathy.” Plainly, the trembling body comes in for a larger share of blame than it actually merits; after all, it is the mind’s prompt presentment of danger that so demoralizes our valor, and unscrews it from the sticking point. Imagination does make cowards of us all. But he is not necessarily mean-spirited whose acute nerve and prophetic sense give him a vivid foretaste of danger; nor is he more courageous whose thicker skin and duller nervous papillœ allow him to advance, cool and impervious, to the very edge of battle. Among all the glowing qualities referred to the human heart, is this the most powerful and inclusive, that the most generic word was chosen to express it ? How would it do to put the equation marks between heart and courage ?

— It might not be unedifying to ascertain how the word “ mother ” came to have the unreverential and reproachful signification with which one may often hear it used in country neighborhoods. Every such neighborhood has its “Old Mother So-and-So,” never spoken of without a peculiar and stigmatizing emphasis. We shall find her either a shrew or a gossip, or, more likely, a flagitious blending of the two. She is not, necessarily, of advanced years ; the adjective “ old ” being used purely in malam partem, as thought to indicate a certain seniority in evilmindedness. Now, “ Old Aunt What’s her name ” is quite another manner of person. We may not have an acquaintance with her, but we have received, through frequent neighborly mention, the most agreeable impression of her many virtues. She is proverbial for benevolence and practical sympathy. In the rustic bestowal of the title “ aunt ” there is no implied disrespect; on the contrary, compliment and endearment are expressed. It is the nearer and dearer word, strangely enough, that is forced to do slurring and sarcastic service.

— I should like well to have some philologist, who has leisure for such a thing, trace the history of the expression nem. con. We all know it to be an abbreviation of nemine contradicente ; but this expression happens not to be Latin, — at least, not good Latin. Evidently, it should be nullo contradicente. It would be interesting to know how the generally tabooed ablative of nemo has worked itself into favor in the former phrase. I was surprised, the other day, to find a usually exact writer like Schopenhauer using the expression nemine dissentiente, the relationship of which to our common nem. con. is pretty plain. Another would-be foreign expression, in very general use both in England and this country, is nom de plume. One would like to know what Englishman first made use of this phrase, under the impression that it was French. The French themselves do not use it, but say nom de guerre.

— I have never wished that I had been born in some other century than the nineteenth. Our age, if not a picturesque one, — and I think it has its picturesque aspects, — is without doubt the most comfortable to live in, take it on the whole, the world has yet known. It seems to me that persons of rational mind and humane disposition cannot be too thankful to belong to it, for it is hard to see how such persons could ever have enjoyed life in earlier times as we of the latest days can. The world has certainly gone forward, and the feature of its progress that I chiefly rejoice in is its advance in humanity. The elder world — the world but a very little elder than our own — was such a terribly cruel one !

The only objection to living in the present time that I know of is the increased quantity of things one must know, or would like to know. Eighteenth-century people did n’t have to read Lecky’s history of their times in four volumes, or a hundred thousand other books it now seems obligatory upon all cultivated persons to acquaint themselves with. Nowadays one is required to read a small library every year, if one would have even a smattering of knowledge on the various subjects that invite an intelligent man’s interest. The specialists, in the abundance of whom we glory, carry investigation so far forward, each in his own line, that the general reader cannot hope to do more than accept a number of things at second hand, or be content to have no understanding of them at all. It is hard to resign one’s self to ignorance of so many interesting matters, and yet that is what one seems driven to. One finds that the first thing to learn is 11 how much need not be known,” which is perhaps a sort of sourgrapes wisdom, but apparently the only wisdom attainable. What is the use of expecting to know anything worth speaking of in history, philosophy, philology, ethnology, and all those kindred and mutually illuminating branches of study, and of natural science, the arts, and the languages, at the same time ? We fancy that we have a small store of ideas on some subject, — let us say architecture; and it happens that we take up Mr. Freeman’s Historical and Architectural Sketches, and by the time we have put it down our modest acquisition seems to have dwindled into nothingness, beside the writer’s extensive and minute knowledge of his subject. Or it may be that a love of poetry has led us to cultivate not only an intimacy with a few of the poets, but a certain general acquaintance with the whole brotherhood ; and some day we find the author of a little volume, the biography of one English poet, showing such a close familiarity with the French and English poetry of the last five hundred years that we cannot help beginning straightway to envy him the possession of his delightful knowledge. Of course it may he asked, Why envy him ? Why should we care to know so much of everything, or even of any one thing ? But there are people who cannot get rid of a desire not merely to be thought to know, but really to know for the simple sake of knowing ; and the having of the desire is their answer to the question why. And so the multitude of things that cannot be known remains to them a distress. The only practical thing to do is to make choice of what we will read, and what we will leave alone ; and here it is well to allow our natural tastes to be the guide. One solace lies in the reflection that a slight acquaintance with some subjects is often better than none at all, and it need not be despised as mere smattering. One may gain a real insight into the principles of a given subject, when a thorough familiarity with detail is impossible. Even small knowledge, that is in any real sense knowledge, on a variety of subjects is always worth the getting, for the sake of the enlarging of our mental vision ; the world of thought is so magnificently vast that the more windows we can open, the broader and more inspiring will be the outlook.

One torment that we make for ourselves is certainly very unnecessary ; it comes of the notion that we must read for other people, not for ourselves. Mr. Howells has expressed the truth about this so exactly that I cannot refrain from quoting him: “ We all read in such a literary way, now ; we don’t read simply for the joy or profit of it, but to say how it’s this or that, and I’ve no doubt that we are sub-consciously harassed all the time with an automatic process of criticism. We don’t read with the sense of those old days when people read in private, not in public.”