The Contributors' Club

THERE has recently sprung up a little custom which threatens shortly to become a large nuisance. I refer to those annual calls made on the householder by the letter-carrier, the policeman, and the fireman of the district or precinct in which the householder chances to have domicile. Each of these persons appears on your doorstep at the close of the year with a request that you contribute to his finances : either directly, by setting your name against a certain sum in a subscription book ; or indirectly, by purchasing tickets for some ball, fair, or other entertainment which nobody in the world expects you to attend.

The letter-carrier you can deny — if you have the nerve to do it in the face of the tradition that his pay is light and his work heavy. If he is dissatisfied with either or with both, he should lay the matter before the post-office department, and not appeal to private charity. The letter-carrier, I say, can be disposed of; but the man whose vigilance keeps the thieves from your silver-plate, and the man who stands ready to pour water on your roof-tree in case of conflagration,— what are you to do about them? They are adequately paid by the respective departments under which they serve; indeed, you pay the men yourself in taxes that every year grow more onerous ; yet when these gentlemen present themselves with their little subscription papers, you do not quite dare not to subscribe. What if the fireman should be lukewarm about putting out your fire some night, or the policeman should discreetly close his off-eye on buglarious operations in connection with your rear basement-window ! With a vague, elusive sense of being softly blackmailed, you plank down your fivedollar bill, though you would rather give it to the Home for Little Wanderers, or to the poor widow round the corner whose son was run over last week. As the fireman and the policeman walk away, you wonder why the Prometheus who lights the city lamps, and the ingenious Hercules who doesn’t clean the streets, and the smart Phaeton who drives the U. S. Mail cart, — you wonder, I repeat, why all these public functionaries do not drop in on you with their little December assessment. They have precisely the same lien on your pocket-book that the letter-carrier, the policeman, and the fireman have.

When these three first began their levy on the householder there was a certain modesty about it; they made their requests doubtfully, and received the gratuity, if any were bestowed, with courteous thanks. Now the letter-carrier unblushingly hands in his book as a matter of course, and the ball tickets are left at your door by the policeman or the fireman with the information that he will call for the money in the evening — when you are at dinner.

All this is delightful, but it would be more delightful if the heads of the various departments were to forbid their employes collecting funds in this humiliating fashion.

Every person in comfortable circumstances cheerfully recognizes many claims on his purse and sympathy. No one, even if he possess but a moderately soft heart, can live in a great city without being touched at every turn by the misery he sees around him. To relieve this misery so far as he may is a human instinct. There are few deeper pleasures than result from lending a helping hand to some deserving fellow-creature. But one likes to have the privilege of selecting the fellow-creature.

— After a series of drives in one of the smaller New England cities, I feel inclined to deplore in public the choice of shade trees with which the unvarying citizens have adorned their pleasant streets. Surely, because maples and horse-chestnuts are fast growers, and soon make their sheltering presence felt, it is not worth while to disregard the claims of many other American trees which are easily persuaded to flourish and take kindly to town life. Indeed, many of the more delicate ones are thankful for the care and shelter But by the time the maples are old and wise enough to put their heads together, they become harmful enemies of their wouldbe protectors, and keep the sunlight from the lower rooms of the houses, besides making the ground sodden and damp. I am not learned in forestry, but I have been imagining with great delight the beauty of long double lines of birches, with their white bark and glistening leaves; of silver-leaved poplars and mountain ashes gay with their brilliant fruit. There are many varieties of maples with most delightful characteristics, and it would possibly not offend the taste of many persons if, where a street is bordered with a row of Queen Anne houses, a prim procession of poplars was planted to match. Other trees than maples and horse-chestnuts may require more care as to protection and suitable soil, but we ought to be willing to take the trouble for the sake of the pleasure, and the great addition to the beauty of our fast-lengthening streets. Surely where a new highway is laid out the trees ought not to be thought of last, and provision should be made for their successful growth and well-being. We associate certain trees with town life, but that may be more from habit and custom than from any necessity. In foreign countries there are wayfarers’ orchards along the great avenues and narrower by-paths of travel; but it is to be feared that if a fruit-tree proved itself commendable it would find itself at the mercy of the predatory small boy, who impatiently risks life and happiness to eat his apple while it is yet green. Or we can think of some New England farmers, who, with an excess of thrift, would loop in the prize with their nearest unstable line of fence. It may be urged that town trees are depended upon more for shade than for decoration, but there are few that will overarch the streets, at any rate, and there is no reason why we should not try some experiments. Then the Willow Streets and Pine Streets and Chestnut Streets would deserve their names.

— The labor of reading — which, it is true, is of the kind that “ physics pain ” — might, I am sure, be made lighter by a little attention, on the part of writers, to some of the much-neglected notes and observations of that ancient worthy, Goold Brown, as found in his Grammar of the English Language. One of those notes, standing under the rule for adjectives, is on this wise: “ When the definitive words, the one, the other, are used, the former [one] must refer to the second of the antecedent terms, and the latter [other] to the antecedent term which was used first.” (I quote from memory, — the not very recent memory of the school-room, — and I know that my recitation is not, as the children say, “ in the words of the book.") This is certainly a simple rule and a reasonable. When, having mentioned two things, we refer to them without repeating their names, we point with the mental index-finger to that thing lying nearest us, which is the one last named, and motion with a broader sweep of gesture to that which lies farther from us, the thing first mentioned, the other.

Is the following sentence, taken from an article on Music and Music Lovers, in an old number of the Atlantic, correct when judged by this rule ? “ The connoisseur and the boor enjoy it [wine] in very different ways. The one delights in the wine itself, the other in its effect.” If I can speak with authority of the tastes of connoisseur and boor, it is the one who delights in the effect of the wine, and the, other who delights in the wine itself.

Again, this remark of Sterling’s, quoted in Miss Fox’s Memories of Old Friends, is certainly misleading in its use of the “definitive words:” “ Wordsworth’s calmness of spirit contrasted with Byron’s passionate emotion : one, like moonlight on snow ; the other, like torchlight in a cavern.” I think any careful reader would have to go over that sentence a second time in order to fit the similes in their proper places.

As a crowning example of this faulty use let me give an extract from an early letter of Emerson’s, lately published in one of the magazines : “ The next books in order upon my table are Hume and Gibbon’s Miscellanies. . . . I cannot help admiring the genius and novelty of the one, and the greatness and profound learning of the other. . . . If you read Hume you have to think ; and Gibbon wakes you up from slumber, to wish yourself a scholar, and resolve to be one.” The closing sentence of the quotation, of course, sets right any misconception as to which author possesses the “ genius and novelty,” and which the “greatness and profound learning,” if the reader should lack the knowledge of their characteristics necessary to settle the doubt without its help. But why, in the name of simplicity and comfort, could not all this doubtfulness of meaning have been avoided by adherence to a plain rule; and why, since that rule exists, should it not be made — to borrow a phrase from John Stuart Mill — “ eternally binding ” ?