The Pleasures of an Absentee Landlord

I

IN the troubled history of Ireland the villain was the Absentee Landlord. Nothing good was ever said of him. He was a parasite for whom no apology could be made. The sum of his iniquities was that he enjoyed property without assuming any of the responsibilities that belonged to it.

In England he might be an excellent member of society, conscious of the duties of a citizen and neighbor. But his occasional visits to his estates across St. George’s Channel were not even for the purpose of collecting his rents — that he left to his agents. With some careless companions he would spend a rollicking fortnight or two among his tenantry, receive their ‘God bless you’s,’ for nothing at all, and then return to the serious business of life.

All this was very reprehensible, and justifies the reproaches which have been visited on absentee landlordism. The pleasures of the absentee landlord were wicked pleasures, because they were gained at the expense of others. But this is not to deny that they were real pleasures. Property plus responsibility is a serious matter. Irresponsible ownership is a rose without a thorn. If we can come by it honestly and without any detriment to others, we are to be congratulated.

The most innocent form in which this unmoral pleasure can be enjoyed is in the ownership of an abandoned farm. Of course one must satisfy his social conscience by making sure that the agricultural derelict was abandoned for good cause, and that the former owner bettered his condition by moving away. In the mountain regions of New England it is not difficult to find such places. At the gate of the hill farm the genuine farmer stands aside and says to the summer resident, ‘After you.’

To one who possesses a bit of such land, the charm lies in the sense of irresponsibility. One can without compunction do what he will with his own, with the comfortable assurance that no one could do much better. This is particularly consoling when one proposes to do nothing but let it alone.

When as an absentee landlord I run up to my ragged, unkempt acres on a New Hampshire hilltop, I love to read the book of Proverbs with their insistence on sleepless industry.

‘I went by the field of the slothful . . . and lo! it was all grown over with thorns; and nettles had covered the face thereof and the stone wall thereof was broken down.’

What a perfect description of my estate!

‘Then I saw and considered it well. I looked upon it and received instruction . . .’

The sluggard saith, ‘Yet a little sleep and a little slumber, a little folding of the hands in sleep. So shall poverty come as one that travelleth.’

I say, How true! If I had to make my living by farming, these words would stir me to agricultural effort. But as it is, they have a soothing sound. If my neighbor does n’t like the wild blackberries, that is his misery, not mine. I prefer the picturesque, broken-down wall to his spick-and-span one.

If he asks why, I will not reason with him; for does not the proverb say, ‘The sluggard is wiser in his own conceit than seven men that can render a reason.’

That is the way I feel. I propose for several weeks in the year to be a sluggard with all the rights and privileges appertaining thereto.

‘The sluggard will not plough by reason of the cold, therefore in harvest he shall have nothing.’

My experience confirms this. But then I did not expect to have anything.

‘By much slothfulness the building decayeth.’

This also I observe, not without a certain measure of quiet satisfaction. The house is not what it used to be. How much less stiff and formal everything is under the mellowing influence of time. Nature corrects our tendency to deal too exclusively in straight lines. What an improvement has come with that slight sag in the roof. How much more lovable the shingles are than in their self-assertive youth. What an artist the weather is in the matter of staining. If is an Old Master retouching the work of the village painter. Nature is toning down the mistakes of man. A little sleep and a little slumber, and the house will cease to be a blot on the landscape.

I should not like to feel that way all the year, for I am a great believer in the industrial virtues when they keep their place. When I observe people who feel that way all the time, I feel like remonstrating with them. When I observe people who never feel that way, I do not remonstrate with them — it would do no good. But I like now and then to escape from their company.

II

All this leads naturally, I hope, to the consideration of the question which I should like to present to the openminded reader — namely, the use of history for a person who does not aspire to be a professional historian.

A recent congress of historians was congratulated on the progress that had been made ‘since history ceased to be a pleasant branch of literature and had become the work of eager and conscientious specialists.’

Over the painstaking work of these scientific specialists we may rejoice just as we rejoice over the advance in intensive agriculture. And yet I should be sorry to think that history as a pleasant branch of literature is to be altogether prohibited in the interest of intellectual industrialism.

I suppose the eager specialists would not approve of Thomas Fuller’s account of the way in which he approached History.

‘We read of King Ahasuerus that, having his head troubled with much business and finding himself so indisposed that he could not sleep, he caused the records to be brought in to him, hoping thereby to deceive the tediousness of the time, and that the pleasant passages in the Chronicles would either invite slumber or enable him to endure waking with less molestation. We live in a troublesome and tumultuous age, and he needs to have a soft bed who can sleep soundly nowadays amidst so much loud noise and many impetuous rumors. Wherefore it seemeth to me both a safe and cheap receipt to procure quiet and repose to the mind which complains of want of rest, to prescribe the reading of History. Great is the pleasure and the profit thereof.’

Let not this Ahasuerus theory of History offend the scientific historian. There is no more real conflict than there is between the scientific farmer and the city worker who finds his recreation in an abandoned farm.

Conduct, said Matthew Arnold more than once, is three fourths of life. Let us be in a generous mood and not haggle over fractions. Let us say that conduct is nine tenths of life; the other tenth consists in having a good time. In like manner, let us admit that nine tenths of history is a serious study; the other tenth is pure recreation. Then let us follow the example of the oldtime clergyman and not allow ourselves to be cheated out of our tithe.

Our work-a-day life is lived among our contemporaries. All our actions are consciously related to them, — unless one happens to be a very young author who is writing a masterpiece for the admiration of Posterity. Now, among our contemporaries, matters are so arranged that one thing always leads to another thing. Not only every act but every thought involves responsibility, and our contemporaries are always reminding us of these relations.

If you manifest an interest in a philanthropic movement, the next, thing that happens is that some one presents you with a subscription paper. You are expected to ‘make good.’

That phrase is disconcerting. It indicates that nothing stands alone. We are involved in an endless chain. A good word is not its own excuse for being. It is a promise to pay, and it is possible that when it comes due we may not be prepared to meet our obligations.

After a while we are in danger of becoming Malthusians. It seems as if the population of duties increased faster than the means of moral subsistence. It is all very well to say, ‘Look out and not in.’ But when we do so we must expect to hear the next admonition, ‘Lend a hand.’ When both hands are full, looking out ceases to be a pleasure.

It is in the attempt at self-protection that the danger to our intellectual and emotional spontaneity comes. The man who finds it increasingly difficult to make both ends meet, morally speaking, begins to economize in his thinking and feeling. He does not wish to make the acquaintance of new thoughts that might involve new expenditures. He will not intrude himself on ideals that are above his station in life.

In the hand-to-mouth struggle for existence he cuts off all luxuries and develops a standardized intelligence. This makes him safe but uninteresting. That does not matter to him, so long as he is young, for then he is at least interesting to himself. But after a time even that solace fails him. His state is that indicated in the familiar reports of the stock market, — ‘Narrow, Dull and Firm.’

III

When one is in danger of falling into such a habit of mind, it needs no skilled physician to advise a complete change. Geographical change is not sufficient, for the traveler is likely to carry his sense of responsibility with him. What he needs is to get away from his contemporaries, so that he can exercise freely faculties which he has seldom used. In his own generation he cannot avoid responsibility for ‘doing something’ about everything he sees to be true. Let him then for his soul’s health get now and then into a period of time where there is nothing for him to do but to see what is going on. He can thus entertain ideas with a carefree mind.

Several years ago I was pleased to see a proposal of a minister in a Pennsylvania valley for utilizing the rotation of the earth for reducing the cost of travel. His notion of the law of gravitation seemed more simple than that of most men of science in these days. His idea seemed to be that a few miles above the earth it is a negligible factor, and that rising in a balloon one could be at rest while the globe whirled round beneath him. All the traveler had to do was to adopt a policy of watchful waiting. When Pekin or Samarcand came into view, he would descend and make himself at home.

In travel through space there may be an objection to this plan on the score of practicability. But it expresses precisely the way in which we may make excursions into the past. All we have to do is to detach ourselves from the present, and there we are. We may drop down into any century which attracts our attention. We find interesting people who are doing interesting things. We may listen to their talk and share their enthusiasms.

In order to get the full measure of enjoyment, we should have acquaintances at various places with whom we are on visiting terms, or, better still, have a little place of our own to which we can retire. A person who is living all the time in the twentieth century cannot get on sympathetic terms with bandits and bigots and other interesting characters whom he would like to know. Either he disapproves of them or they disapprove of him. But when we drop into a past generation, such things do not matter.

I remember how in the Excelsior Society we used to debate the question, ‘Was the execution of Mary Queen of Scots justifiable?’ Sometimes we thought it was, and sometimes we thought if was n’t. We changed sides in the most shameless fashion. We knew that she had been executed long ago, and that no mistakes which we might make would do any harm.

And there was the question, ‘Was the career of Napoleon Bonaparte beneficial to Europe?’ I reveled in the contradictory facts that we could discover. Nothing Napoleonic was alien to us of the Excelsior Society. It gave us something to talk about. But had I been living in France in the time of Napoleon, I should not have had these fine and stimulating pleasures. There would have been only one side to this interesting question. To argue that the career of Napoleon Bonaparte was not beneficial to Europe would not have been beneficial to me.

The pleasures of the absentee landlord are those to which the ordinary historian is often indifferent. He is like the man with the megaphone in the ‘Seeing New York’ motor bus. He tells us what we ought to see, and keeps moving. He is interested in the sequence of events. Now, we may find much more pleasure in getting acquainted with people whom we meet in their own homes. In such a case it is better to get off the bus and find our own way about.

Indeed a history may be so written as not to take us away from our own time at all. It may be simply the projection of familiar contemporary ideas upon the past.

I have a book published in the early didactic period of the nineteenth century which illustrates a certain way of imparting historical information. It was written with the laudable intention of making history interesting to people who did n’t want to venture into the Unfamiliar. The author thought that if the patriarchs were conceived of as New England selectmen, their lives could be made as interesting as if they were New England selectmen. And I am not sure but that he succeeded. The book is divided into two parts: a conversation with Adam covering the space of 930 years, and an interview with Noah giving an account of the Deluge and the other events with which he was familiar. They are represented as nice old gentlemen rather formal in their language and strictly orthodox in their opinions. Adam speaks hopefully of Methuselah, who, he says, ‘ must be now about fifty-seven years old and is a discreet and wellprincipled youth.’ He was very much disturbed over the radical views of the Tubal-Cains. There is nothing in the book that would indicate that either Adam or Noah had been out of Connecticut.

IV

A similar criticism may be made in regard to many historical monographs. Some particular thing with which we are perhaps too well acquainted is treated historically. It is shown to be the same in all ages. This may be perfectly true, but it does not serve to transport us into the realms of gold. That is the way I felt about The History of Influenza, which I have not read thoroughly. The author, it is needless to say, was a physician, who, instead of giving an account of the influenzas he had known, treated his subject historically. After one has followed influenza from the Greeks and Romans, through the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, and the Protestant Reformation, human history seems one prolonged sneeze.

The same effect is produced on my mind when a historian, starting with a modern political or economic theory, attempts to explain everything that has happened in past ages by his formula. I may be interested in the facts which he chooses to illustrate his thesis; but I cannot help thinking of the facts which he leaves out because they do not fit into his scheme. They were very much alive once. My heart yearns for these non-elect infants.

When one turns from the inevitable sequences and fore-ordained uniformities of the historian with one idea, to the experience of a single day, there is a sense of intellectual confusion and of emotional exhilaration. All sorts of things are happening at the same time. We are dealing with

In ordinary life we have to shut our eyes to these millioned accidents lest, we be distracted from our proper work. We have to simplify the universe to an absurd degree. We cannot indulge in the Shakespearean hospitality of thought, and we warn off irrelevant ideas with the notice, ‘No admission except on business.’

We are like passengers on a street car when the car collides with a butcher’s cart. They resent having to put their names in a little book in order to be haled into court as witnesses. It was not their butcher’s cart.

But in our excursions into the past there is no necessity for such economy of attention. We are in holiday mood and are resolved to do no manner of work. Having no axe to grind and no appointments to keep, we can indulge our idle curiosity. We mingle freely with the crowd, ready to see whatever is going on. And we are willing to see it as the crowd sees it, and not as the responsible tax-payer allows himself to scrutinize current events, anxious to know who is to pay for the damage. In order to get into sympathetic relations with men of another generation we must share their prejudices and their ignorance of what is to happen next. Only thus do we live their lives.

Suppose you were to meet Columbus on his return from his second voyage, and were to say, ‘Admiral, I am proud to meet the discoverer of America.’ This would be a tactless way of beginning the conversation. He would reply stiffly, ‘Sir, you have the advantage of me.’

It would be a mean advantage to take of a simple-minded sailor. You know what he has discovered, and he does n’t. Your mind is full of the Pilgrim Fathers and George Washington and the Louisiana Purchase and the Monroe Doctrine and all sorts of matters which were alien to his intention. You relate his voyage to posthumous history in which he had no interest, while you refuse to enter into his enthusiasms about the Crusades and the Holy Sepulchre and the marvelous shores of Cipango. Nor would you be able to share his disappointment at not being able to deliver in person his letter of introduction to the Grand Khan.

If you wish to become acquainted with John Calvin it would be a mistake to take for granted that he was a Calvinist, for the chances are that the only Calvinists with whom you are acquainted are of Scotch or ScotchIrish extraction. Their national traits obscure the figure of the youthful French jurist who, while he was still in his twenties, published a radical book called The Institutes of the Christian Religion.

Take up the book as it comes fresh from the press. You learn what you can about him. They say he was a very precocious lad, and in his thirteenth year got an appointment as chaplain to a bishop. But by the time he was twenty he had become skeptical, had entered the profession of law, and had made a reputation among jurists. A little later he distinguished himself by publishing a commentary on Seneca. Now he has turned to religious subjects. It’s a way these clever young fellows have. They advance revolutionary opinions of their own at a time when they should be listening to their elders.

If you are an Englishman of the moderate school you will find the young man’s way of putting things is quite ‘frenchy.’ These Frenchmen are brilliant but not safe; they have a way of carrying their arguments to logical conclusions which it may not be expedient for us to reach.

If you can read Calvin’s Institutes with some thrill of fear lest you be carried away by dangerous novelties, it is a sign that you have dropped into the year 1536.

Our pleasure in observing the changing fashions of our own day is marred by the feeling that we are in some degree responsible for them. If they are absurd we cannot smile genially upon them for fear that this should be interpreted as approval. On the other hand, if we criticize the latest fashion in dress or in thought it only proves that we are not so young as we once were. It is a a great relief to get where we may be spectators of the comedy.

When I go to an exhibition of pictures which purports to be the last word of the new art, I am not free in my judgment. I am told that the artist is not portraying any outward scene, but is only painting the state of his own mind. I hasten away for fear that my mind may get into that state also. It is an ignoble fear of contagion.

Then I take up the Sentimental Magazine for 1773-74. The editor feels that pure sentimentality is to be the final thing in literature. It must have an organ of its own. He guarantees that every number of the new magazine will force the tears of sensibility from the reader’s eyes.

I have no responsibility for this literary force-pump. I only want to see how it works. If, after sufficient priming, the tears of sensibility come, it will be well. If they do not come, I shall feel no self-reproach. At least I shall enjoy thinking of the tears which other people have shed over these pages. I do not have to keep up with the fashion in sentimentality.

V

To one who lives among his contemporaries all the time there is something irritating in the perpetual opposition of special interest to moral progress. The monotonous answer to every appeal for relief from an ancient wrong is that the agitation is ‘bad for business.’ Now, it is evident that no change is ever possible without disturbing somebody’s business.

I find satisfaction in dropping into the year 1675 and taking up a little pamphlet. The Discovery of Witches, by Mathew Hopkins, witch-finder, for the benefit of the whole kingdom. I can read Mathew Hopkins’s plea for the restoration of his business without any irritation. I can really get his point of view. Mathew Hopkins was not a fanatic or a theorist. He was a businesslike person who had taken up the trade of witch-finding as another man might be a plumber. He was not an extremist. He utterly denied that the confession of a witch was of any validity, if it was drawn from her by torture or violence. It is the practical side of witchcraft that interests him. When he took up the business of witch-finding it was on a sound basis and offered a living for an industrious and frugal practitioner. But now the business is in a bad way. Whatever people may think, there is no money in it.

How pathetic is the statement of present-day conditions. Mr. Hopkins ‘demands but twenty shillings a town, and doth sometimes ride twenty miles for that, and hath no more for his charges thither and back again (and it may be stayes a weeke there) and finds there three or four witches, or it may be but one. Cheap enough! And this is the greate sum he takes to maintain his companie, with three horses!’

That touch of honest sarcasm makes me understand Mathew Hopkins. He is so sure that something is wrong, and so impervious to any considerations not connected with shillings and pence. That the business depression was connected with a great intellectual revolution did not occur to him. How pale all rationalistic arguments must have seemed to a man with three horses eating their heads off in his stables!

That which gives the sense of reality to our daily living is the multitude of little events which make up the day. We are not absorbed in the contemplation of one great public event. There are chance acquaintances, casual happenings, changing points of view. We meet people who know people whom we have known. If the meeting-place be far from home we are agreeably surprised, and greet one another as if we had been long-lost friends. We compare our impressions and indulge in reminiscences. We perhaps indulge in a little myth-making. As we recall half-forgotten incidents they assume an endearing familiarity. Most of our conversation consists of the comparisons of one half view with another half view.

The sense of really living in another age comes in the same homely way. A chance allusion does more than a labored description. We must begin with ‘small talk’ before we can feel at home. The volumes of the Nicene, Ante-Nicene, and Post-Nicene Fathers are not attractive reading to one who looks at them in the mass. But if you are fortunate enough to stumble upon a letter written by St. Basil the Great to his friend Antipater, the Governor of Cappadocia, you will at once feel that a Church father, even though a saint, is quite human. Basil is writing, not about heresies but about pickled cabbage, which his friend Antipater had recommended for its health-giving qualities. He has heretofore been prejudiced against it as a vulgar vegetable, but now that it has worked such wonders with his friend he will esteem it equal to the ambrosia of the gods — whatever that may be. This is an excellent introduction to St. Basil. Starting the conversation with pickled cabbage, we can easily lead up to more serious subjects.

If it happens that we can make any little discovery of our own and find it confirmed by somebody in a previous generation, it puts us at our ease and forms a natural means of approach. It is always wise to provide for such introductions to strangers. Thus, though I am not a smoker I like to carry matches in my pocket. One is always liable to be accosted on the street by some one in need of a light. To be able to give a match is a great luxury. It forms the basis for a momentary friendship.

One is often able to have that same feeling toward some one who would otherwise be a mere historical personage. My acquaintance with Lord Chesterfield came about in that way. Several years ago I wrote an essay for the Atlantic Monthly on ‘ The Hundred Worst Books.’ For a place in the list I selected a book in my library entitled Poems on Several Occasions, published in 1749, by one Jones, a poet whose name was unknown to me till I perused his verse. The pages were so fresh that I cherished the belief that I was the only reader in a century and a half. I had the pride of possession in Jones.

It was some time after that I came across, in Walpole’s letters, an allusion to my esteemed poet. It seems that Colley Cibber, when he thought he was dying, wrote to the Prime Minister ‘recommending the bearer, Mr. Henry Jones, for the vacant laurel. Lord Chesterfield will tell you more of him.’

I was never more astonished in my life than when I visualized the situation, and saw my friend Jones ‘the bearer’ of a demand for the reversion to the laureateship.

It seemed that Walpole was equally surprised, and when he next met Lord Chesterfield the eager question was, Who is Jones, and why should he be recommended for the position of poet laureate? Lord Chesterfield answered, ‘A better poet would not take the post and a worse ought not to have it.’ It appears that Jones was an Irish bricklayer and had made it his custom to work a certain number of hours according to an undeviating rule. He would lay a layer of brick and then compose a line of poetry, and so on till his day’s task was over. This accounts for the marvelous evenness of his verse.

This was but a small discovery but it gave a real pleasure, for should I meet my Lord Chesterfield he and I would at once have a common interest. We both had discovered Jones, and quite independently.

VI

Let no one think that these little irresponsible excursions into the past are recommended as a substitute for the painstaking and systematic work of the historian. They are not. But they have a value of their own, and may possibly induce a state of mind that is salutary. For there are times when the historian gets beyond his depth and finds it impossible to reduce his material to an orderly and consistent narrative. The best historian is sometimes in the plight of the author of the Book of Mormon, when he tried to disentangle the history of his vague tribes. For page after page he pursues his theme, but it becomes more and more complicated.

‘Now there were many records kept of the proceedings of this people, by many of this people which are particular and very large concerning them. But behold a hundredth part of the proceedings of this people, yea the account of the Lamanites and of the Nephites and their wars and contentions and dissensions and their preaching, and their prophecies and their building of ships and building of temples and synagogues, and their sanctuaries and their righteousness and their wickedness and their robbings and plunderings and all manner of abominations, cannot be contained in this work. But behold there are many books, and many records of every kind, and they have been chiefly kept by the Nephites.’

There you have the real difficulty in writing a history of the Lamanites. There may be plenty of material, but so long as it was collected by the Nephites it is impossible to get the Lamanitist point of view. For myself I confess that I could spare the generalized accounts of these tribal wars, if I could come in contact with a single Lamanite, even of low degree, and find out what he was thinking about. A personal acquaintance with a particular individual would make ‘the proceedings of this people’ seem more real.

The civil wars of England seem real to us because we can become acquainted with the people who fought one another. We see the feud between Puritan and Cavalier at its beginnings, and can watch its growth. Even in the time of Queen Bess we see that all is not affection. We enter a church and hear the preacher allude to the Queen as ‘that untamed heifer.’ As we go out we say, ‘That will make trouble.’ And so it did. Not very long after, we hear a Presbyterian zealot, when he is asked if certain great persons are not pillars of the church, reply, ‘Yes, caterpillars.’ That is not the kind of answer that turneth away wrath. It is the multiplication of exasperating speeches and actions which at last brings the parties to blows. There are things which cannot be arbitrated, chiefly because there are so many of them.

When we take up the book of Judges and read of heroes like Samson and Gideon, we seem to be peering into dim far-away times. But there is a short story that welcomes us into the domestic life of the day. It begins at the beginning, or rather in the midst, of a family misunderstanding. ‘There was a man of Mount Ephraim, whose name was Micah. And he said unto his mother, The eleven hundred shekels of silver . . . about which thou cursedst and spakest of also in mine ears, behold, the silver is with me, I took it. And his mother said, Blessed be thou of the Lord, my Son.’ The mother in her first excitement felt that she had wholly dedicated the eleven hundred shekels unto the Lord for a graven image and a molten image. But no comment is made on the fact that she actually took two hundred shekels of the restored silver and gave them to the founder who made thereof a graven image and a molten image, which were perfectly satisfactory. Somehow that bit of thrift opens the way to a pleasant acquaintance with the good man of Mount Ephraim. We are interested in the family economics. When, a while after, he is able to set up a private chaplain, we rejoice. A young Levite from Beth-lehem-judah passes by and Micah bargains with him.

‘And Micah said unto him, whence conrest thou? And he said unto him, I am a Levite of Beth-lehem-judah and I go to sojourn where I may find a place. And Micah said unto him, Dwell with me and be unto me a father and a priest, and I will give thee ten shekels of silver by the year and a suit of apparel and thy victuals.’

We feel sure that the ten shekels were a part of the saving of nine hundred shekels, owing to the unexpected reduction in graven images and molten images. We rejoice with Micah when he exclaims, ‘Now know I that the Lord will do me good, seeing I have a Levite to my priest.’ And we share his indignation when the children of Dan tempt the Levite by a call to a larger sphere of usefulness, and he takes with him the precious images.

‘The children of Dan said unto Micah, What aileth thee?

‘And he said, Ye have taken away my gods, which I made, and the priest, and ye are gone away: and what have I more. And what is this that ye say unto me, What aileth thee?’

‘And the children of Dan said unto him. Let not thy voice be heard among us lest angry fellows run upon thee and thou lose thy life with the lives of thy household. And the children of Dan went their way, and when Micah saw that they were too strong for him he turned and went back unto his own house.’

Micah was not a great person at all. He was only an average man. But he can be vividly realized. In the dim ages before there was a king in Israel there was a great deal of human nature there. It is a pleasure to drop into the house in the hill country of Ephraim and talk about ephods and teraphim, and the price of graven images, and the salary of young Levites, and the iniquities of the children of Dan. When our interest in these topics of conversation is exhausted we can come back at once to the current events of the twentieth century.

After all, the test of a vacation is the renewed zest with which we take up our work on our return. The person who lives among his contemporaries all the time has no idea what interesting people they are. They appear even romantic when one returns to them from a short trip abroad. There is a moment before we begin again to do things, when we have leisure to see things.

Of course we must take up our responsibilities again. Our serious business with our contemporaries is to improve their conditions, their morals, and their manners. We do not have too much time for this work. But before we begin again the attempt to make them what they ought to be, we may enjoy the moment when we have enough freshness of vision to see them as they are.