The Contributors' Column

A. Edward Newton was well brought up. (He ought to have turned out better, but his friends are fairly satisfied with him as he is.) Aunt Till did the job. She nursed him when he was ill, taught him to read and to love books. Gratefully remembering the debt, the nephew at sixty-five recalls the verses with which Aunt Till celebrated his thirty-seventh birthday. There may be more affection than poetry in them, but they are none the worse for that.

AUNT TILL — 1901

Twenty-eight years later Carolyn Wells caps the verse: —

To every Harvard man Dean Briggs seems the natural link between John Harvard’s time and ours. President Eliot he knew in ways no other man now living can recall. Count Hermann Keyseriing, philosopher and critic, has unmatched views of his own. The Reverend Herbert Parrish, after a long and singularly successful ministry to the oldest and principal parish in New Jersey, has retired to live under the shadow of his ancient college. Sir Rabindranath Tagore transcribes these suggestive fragments from the commonplace book in which he jots his daily thoughts. Nahum Sabsay is a talented Russian student who not long since completed his course at Harvard. E. Lyman is in active business in Chicago. James Truslow Adams is spending a year in England working on a history of the Adamses, from our second President to the present Secretary of the Navy. Huntington Cairns conducts his investigations at Johns Hopkins University. Lest our more censorious readers think this fascinating account of mescal the wanton advertisement of a baneful drug, we quote from a letter by a first-rate authority to whom we applied for information: —

The alkaloid of mescal is not on the market and can, to my knowledge, be obtained only from certain pharmaceutical firms for research purposes. According to Rouhier and others, mescal is not habit-forming. No case of addiction among white people has been reported. It does not produce euphoria, and often is accompanied by disagreeable sensations, especially in the gastrointestinal sphere.
F. T. WERTHAM

JOHNS HOPKINS HOSPITAL
Mrs. Brown, chronicler of her mother-in law, lives in Washington. Bernard Darwin, of the London Times, applies inherited genius to golf. Jean Kenyon Mackenzie is now in California. Nancy Byrd Turner is a Southern poet, now living in Boston. Robert Dean Frisbie shuns the publicity of his atoll and has betaken himself to one of the remoter islands of the Southern Pacific. Stanley Casson is an Oxford don whose archæological studies have given him a deserved reputation. Δ Two novels by Maurice Bedel have made a recent appearance in English. One, Jerome, or the Latitude of Love, received the distinguished Goncourt prize in his own country. ‘A Frenchman Looks at Fascism’ was drawn from a small book and skillfully translated for the Atlantic by Marshall A. Best. William Henry Chamberlin has just completed the first adequate history of Soviet Russia, soon to be issued.

Much interesting personal comment has followed in the wake of the recent Atlantic paper on ‘Fear.’ Here is a thriller!

NEW YORK, N. Y.
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
The article on ’Fear,’ in your August number, which I read with interest, reminded me of an incident that occurred when I was between thirteen and fourteen years old.
I was going to school in Wilkes-Barre, and living with a cousin and her niece. One night they went out, leaving me alone in the house. I was reading Poe’s stories and that night started on ‘The Black Cat.’ Hardly had I finished it when the house seemed very cold and I thought the furnace needed attention, so I went down to the cellar to shake it. There, lying in front of the furnace, its throat cut from ear to ear, lay a black cat! I did not shake the furnace!
The cat did not belong to us, and how it got there or who cut its throat, we never knew.
Yours very truly,
OGDEN BROWER

The following letter will awaken kindred memories in many readers.

DAYTON, OHIO
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
I read in the August Atlantic with a great deal of interest an article entitled ‘Fear.’ On several occasions I have experienced this psychic fear, but the most striking instance occurred on the morning of Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, and my note made at that time is verbatim as follows: —
‘Nov. 11, 1918, 7 A.M. — I wish to record the peculiar experience I had this morning while it is fresh in my memory. I awoke early, as I usually do, and was lying seemingly in the borderland between sleep and waking, when the feeling came to me that I was asking why, although I locked the door of my room last night, it was standing wide open this morning. Then I became conscious that there was some Presence in the room with me — something or someone, I know not what. Every faculty was frozen. I could not move, although I was, or seemed to be, wide awake. I fought with all the power of my will to move, and seemed to hear a confused murmur of voices, among which I recognized N—’s. With a supreme effort of will, I moved my frozen muscles and sat up in bed. The door was shut, everything was as usual, and it was 4,45 o’clock. What was it? Was it a peculiar mental condition caused by some physical irregularity, or — ?’
It will be noted that I left the question unanswered. The most striking feature of these experiences is that at the time I am absolutely frozen with fear and horror, unable to move a muscle, and can break the spell of immobility only by bringing all the force of my will to bear upon it. It will also be noted that the time of this experience of mine corresponded very closely with that of the author of ‘Fear,’ — i.e., very nearly five o’clock, — and such experiences have always occurred in the early morning hours. Unlike this author, however, I have always been immediately convinced of the subjectivity of the visions (in my ease they might more accurately be called auditions, as the sense of hearing bears the brunt of the fear impulse). In his case, the experience was repeated merely because he expected it; just as I often hear the alarm clock several times before it actually rings, when a special time for arising has been set, and my mind is on the alert for it.
I have given the question some thought, and have reached the conclusion that the person who has an experience of this sort is not actually awake, although the impression is very strong that he is, and only sees or hears subjectively the matter that occasions his feeling of fear, He is not awake until he has shaken off the shackles of immobility and roused himself to the point of action.
Although having some points in common with what are ordinarily called nightmares, this feeling of mental fear shows some discrepancies, both in time of occurrence and in present and after effect. As a child I often had the familiar nightmare of being pursued by a savage wild animal, being unable to escape, or with movements so slow as to be entirely ineffectual. But for an absolute and overwhelming feeling of horror, the quasi-waking fear vision is infinitely worse than an ordinary nightmare.
Yours very truly,
P. E. WIGGLE

A quite extraordinary number of letters have contributed to our discussion of ‘Shull I Retire?’ It is a question dormant or active in the American man of fifty. Mr. Hilton, of Ginn and Company, pertinently suggests that the subject was never more fruitfully treated than by Charles Lamb in ‘The Superannuated Man,’ to which we recommend our readers. The following trenchant communication, to which the writer does not wish to add his name, introduces new and fundamental questions.

‘Shall I retire?’ The business man who hires these partially interested employees reads their meditations in the Atlantic and ponders.
Without offense, clearly these are minor executives who after twenty years receive salaries of $6000.
What quid do they give for their quo? Value delivered in labor, $25 per week; value for judgments rendered, $1000 (above the judgment of the $25 man); good-will or respectability value — the interest, say, on $25,000 of invested capital, $1500. Total value, $3800. Overpayment, $2200.
A mild judgment, thinks the executive. Softheartedness, soft-headedness, the executive devil. He ponders further.
Year after year these eminently estimable gentlemen have remained on the rolls, collecting increasing toll for ‘loyalty.’ Year alter year (the executive brain is now functioning efficiently on the problem) these loyal barnacles drag at the water as the engines of interested men and active capital drive through storm and calm against the resistance of Overhead, Collections and Sales, of Loans and Inventories, Advertising and Production, Shipping and Personnel — at best, reënforcers of the hull; at average, outsiders; at worst, parasites. Never are their brains taxed to know which way to turn. Their manner is placid, their manners agreeable. ‘Good men,’ pace-setters to the rank and file, insidiously slowing the pace of ambitious underlings. Tomorrow men. ‘All’s right with the world’ to them; but not to Napoleon or Christ, to Leif Ericson or Lincoln — or to the head of the business.
(The executive becomes heated from the fires with which he vainly tries to warm these lay figures into life.)
Men who are not interested in business — men so unimaginative that they never see beyond the column of figures which is the first slight incline on the business road — such should retire, not at forty-five or fifty-five, but at twenty-five. The sooner the better for business.
I am the head of a business burdened with the problem of finding men interested in business. Yet all the periodicals, including the European, tell me Americans are absorbed in the fascinating game of business. ‘Pull, pull together with your bodies between your knees.’ False picture, tragically false to the head of the business.

Our business is young; we cannot afford the luxury of barnacles.
From the Executive Service Bureau flows an intermittent stream of ‘the executive type’ into and through my office. Some remain a month, some a year, while others are not found out for several years. Nearly all are Romantics — wishers for Success delivered on a breakfast tray. Interested in business?
The last four who passed on were interested — (1) a charming ‘business woman’ of thirty, keen supersalesman — in husband; (2) a man of twenty-five, well trained as a private secretary — in tennis and necking; (3) a man of twentyeight, good salesman and manager of men — in being considered a fine fellow; (4) a man of thirtyeight, sales manager, graduate of the same New England college as 3 (now dishwasher on a tramp steamer) — in drinking.
These retired. Shall I retire?
Before I die I should like to draw one breath of air unmixed with soot, to hear one lark greet the sun and understand his song, to think thoughts wider than an accountant’s page. But not yet. I am held by an obligation that did not pass with the Crusades, to put the thing through to the ultimate goal for stockholders who gave confidence and for employees who gave unstinted service because they too believed.
My present secretary is a steady man of thirty as interested in our success as I myself, if application to the job has meaning. His first novel is in the publisher’s hands. Our business is not related to publishing or writing.
Americans are interested in business — but not much.

And here is a remarkable personal experience.

PITTSBURGH, PA.
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
I am writing this letter to the author of ‘I Shall Retire.’ There is dynamite in his sentence, ’I shall start a business of my own to keep myself occupied when I want to work,’ and I make haste to sound a warning before he explodes the charge. Here is a chapter from experience in retiring, written because I feel a friendly pull on my heartstrings over every man with the courage to quit work.
I was born with a yearning for dinners of herbs and Contentment. (I follow your lead in the use of the capital.) As an employee I never earned over $12,000 a year, and we spent it. However, I started life early and while I was still in my thirties my four children had all grown old enough to get away to school. My wife and I decided to dispose of our establishment (‘home’ is the word of song and story), take a three-room apartment, retrench on every possible expense, pursue (both of us) those well-known, so-called gainful occupations, save fifty thousand in five years — and retire. Those five years were a little interlude of perfect success. Or, say, 99.44 per cent perfect! We had a long new honeymoon. We saved the fifty. We retired. Yes, oh yes — and I started a business of my own to keep myself occupied when I wanted to work.
It was a little business, but my own. I devoted myself. What I planted, Apollos must have watered. It grew. It leaped from city to city. I made $125,000 in a year. I made $175,000. I made $240,000. I accumulated three fourths of a million. I was no longer living on a farm; I was maintaining a country club. In the place of a cottage I created an art gallery with sleeping apartments and six baths. The only advantage that Kublai Khan had over me was that where he merely decreed, I signed a whole checkbook, and liked it. We had three more children. We could surely afford it. The others bought automobiles. Dad had got rich! I decided to make an even million and once more show my force of character and retire. I put the business on a firm basis. I entered into long leases and contracts. I began to count off the days on the calendar. I got out old manuscripts and scrapbooks, to be all ready to enjoy my second retirement — with no little business of my own.
I got a bigger job for my right-hand man, so that he should not suffer when I quit. Then it began to show that everything that he had handled was honeycombed with obligations and prospective losses. No dishonesty. Just abysmal incompetence, with a blind confidence on my own part. It took a year’s work and a quarter of a million to offset his deeds. I blame only myself. It was I who had started the little business of my own. Followed at once a series of business failures on the part of men and concerns owing me substantial sums. The first loss was $40,000. The second $70,000. There were seven in six months, and the aggregate losses to me, plus the various costs that these losses entailed, amounted to $228,000. My own assets became frozen. I was under a load of debts and obligations. I performed prodigies of effort, if not of results. My wife stepped back into harness at my side. We were able to pull in the loose ends, escape bankruptcy, and reduce the business to obligations of a mere $30,000 a year that will run for twenty years, if our creditors are patient. We must work that long anyway to bring up the three small children. We have cut our own immediate expenses to a third, but so difficult is it to be born again, to get back to small beginnings, that we cannot cut below three domestic helpers. Also, it seems impossible to put aside the obligations we assumed for support of all the ancient in-laws and maiden aunts and invalid sisters. If we are to avoid bankruptcy in law and in self-respect, we must produce $50,000 a year. We are both back at earning money. The years have enlarged our capacity. I can make $35,000 now, and my wife by dint of carrying four jobs is earning the other $15,000.
Can we at fifty stand the long years ahead that at thirty-five we were already seeking to avoid? Shall we be able to pay the price of that little business of our own? I realize the danger that I shall start again. I encourage my resistance with this letter. Next time I should probably make millions, and be forever slave to Mammon. If we can hold out as we are, we shall be free at seventy, and again we shall retire, and I shall get out my old notes and write ‘The Gospel according to Thoreau.’ We shall not start any little business of our own.
WALTER J. WILLIAMSON

The Atlantic’s contribution, ‘Prison Music,’ suggests a new and happier approach to a problem, difficult and without parallel, in our modern life. The letter which follows comes to us from a musical director of European reputation. Herr Walter has conducted the Mozart Festivals at Salzburg for many years. He was for twelve years director of the Berlin Royal Opera Company, and for an almost equal period led the Royal Opera at Vienna.

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
DEAR ATLANTIC, —
Mr. Homer Henley’s article, ‘Prison Music,’ in the Atlantic Monthly of July, made a deep impression on me. I expressed to Mr. Henley my regret that so encouraging an experience as his activity described in his article has remained a single case without consequences, I told him that every real musician would be inclined to believe in the moral influence which he attributed to music. Music is without doubt — for the criminal’s mentality — far less open to suspicion as a bridge to the world beyond and its moral influences than anything that can be taught to them by words. Its message (may I recall the famous word of Richard Wagner: ’Ich kann den Geist der Musik nur in der Liebe fassen’?) goes directly to the unconscious depths of their souls, if they are not — or not yet — perfectly immovable, and of course if there is some ’musicality’ in them. But these two conditions will certainly be found in the majority of the cases; and thinking of the immense social importance of the question, and considering that we have here a new field which we are just beginning to cultivate, I certainly believe every promising and hopeful step should be taken and supported. Therefore it seems advisable that Mr. Henley’s experiment should be repeated, but of course only by men who have, like him, the musical as well as the moral qualities for this task.
Yours very faithfully,
BRUNO WALTER

By way of personal testimony we must add this from Mrs. R. C. Augur: —

One of the hottest days on record this summer, I picked up the July number of the Atlantic Monthly. Feeling sure I had read all the articles it contained, I was idly turning the pages when I came to ‘Prison Music,’ by Homer Henley. Knowing I had read it, and thinking it worth a second reading, I proceeded to do so, and, as during the first reading, I was carried back over forty-five years with the echoes which ‘Prison Music’ sent singing through my heart.
While in my teens I was studying music in a well-known conservatory of music in the Middle West. Finding my Sunday afternoons rather lonely, I strayed into a mission Sunday School in a poor part of the city. This happened to be the Sunday the pianist was absent. The Superintendent asked me if I could play and as a student I could not very well refuse. This privilege was mine for several months. I was then invited to take the class of an absent teacher whose wife was very ill. It was explained to me that the class consisted of seven very tough boys ranging in ages from fifteen to nineteen years — and that my only effort need be to keep them from disturbing the rest of the school.
They arrived, tardy, caps still on their heads, no collars or ties, the toughest-looking boys I had ever seen. One a wizened, shrimp-like chit weighing about ninety pounds. One a real bulldog weighing at least one hundred and eighty pounds. The rest somewhere between. When they found themselves, after a noisy entrance, facing a slender girl of eighteen, they settled down to go just as far as they dared. (An officer had been called in on former occasions to quiet them.) I will pass over the lesson period. When I went to the piano for the closing hymn, the boys made just as noisy an exit as entrance. I went home and went to bed exhausted each succeeding Sunday for three weeks.
When I remembered the homes these boys came from and my own Christian home I was ashamed. I knew there was some way to reach the best in those boys. Then I found they were roaming the streets most of the night, usually getting into trouble of some kind. I had gone to the court on one occasion to get one of the boys free by promising to be responsible for him.
My home at that time consisted of a large room in a private house, and as I had a piano for my conservatory work it occurred to me that perhaps I could reach their better selves through music. So with the consent of my landlady I invited them to my room — I could at least keep them off the streets a few hours.
The first thing I taught them was the simple song, ‘Whistle and Hoe.’ Of course they loved the jolly, rollicking swing of the song, and all could whistle. I then taught them how to form the notes, how to place them in the measure, and where to find them on the keyboard. Each one quickly learned to play the simple air on the piano. It was not very long before they brought me copies of music and words written in their homes from memory.
The time came when I had to tell the superintendent that I could not go on with the class, He said, ‘I am sorry to hear you say that; they never fail now to take off their caps on entering the room, they all wear collars and ties, and they sing with understanding hearts — not just improve the chance while others are singing for rowdyism.’
I wash I could know what the last forty-five years have meant to the lives of those seven boys. I feel sure they were never bad boys again. I just lived ‘Prison Music’ all through with the author.

Concerning Count Keyserling’s papers our correspondence is so copious — and so tumultuous — that were we to take it up we should have no space for topics less divisive.

Other deaths, it seems, were exaggerated before Mark Twain’s. The vice president of the Mobile Register sends us the following anecdote of a once famous man of science: —

Richard A. Proctor, the astronomer, preceded Mark Twain in the exercise of the gentle art of ‘spoofing’ the report of his untimely departure from the land of the living. Twain treated the subject as a humorist; Proctor as a scientist, saying: ‘I cannot but think that this is a mistake. A scientist must be extremely cautious in matters of fact; but, as far as my own observation extends, I find reason to believe that I am alive. My friends also seem to think me so. You must not think me dogmatic if — failing stronger evidence than yet possessed to the contrary — I decline to accept unhesitatingly the theory that I am no longer living.’