(With apologies to Mr. Galsworthy)

He knew himself for a democrat. He might be with a crowd of what he called “real people” and if he happened to pass a waiter who had served him or a barber who had shaved him he would speak to them. He would do it without the least embarrassment or condescension; anything else he would have considered low. His friends knew him to be essentially democratic; they would assure you of this quality in him as something that only the morally courageous possess.

To have explained that his attitude was a matter of common sense rather than democracy would have left him bewildered. Surely every one recognized that there were certain barriers that had to be maintained; it was not a question of snobbishness, but simply of natural law. The man who had pushed ahead and made something of himself was more entitled to the respect of his fellows than the waiter who was content to spend his life serving other people. Take himself, for example. He might have been a bricklayer if he had not worked hard enough to be a power on the Board of Trade. He had done it all himself and he knew the difficulties of the struggle. He could remember the time when he would hire a taxi and dash all over town to find the special brand of cigarettes he liked. Of course he realized now that that was an extravagant and foolish thing to do; but after all a boy must have his taste of “sporting.” And then, of course, there was nothing harmful in chasing around town for cigarettes in a taxi. He might have been doing something really wrong instead—such as marrying a chorus girl or becoming one of those revolutionists who worries his friends to death by fighting for the proletariat and getting into jail as a consequence. No, thank heaven, he had had his little flings, but he had always kept his head. He had never really done anything to disgrace himself or his friends. But it was a hard struggle, and he respected anyone who had come through it successfully. That was the reason of his insistence on natural barriers. That was the reason he felt it an honor to shake the hand of a great man—the man who had made a million by his skilful corner of the wheat market, for instance. He had a real respect for brains, for power, for achievement, for all the things that keep a man from being a weakling.

Not that he worshipped power or made a god of success. On the contrary, he was something of an idealist himself—though not the sort literary people talk about. He always made it a point to state that he had no use for literary “ideas.” Those people didn’t really know what they were talking about. They were so impractical; they wanted to change the face of the earth and they seemed to think that ideas would do it. But even for that sort of thing he had a certain tolerance: he remembered how he had planned long ago to be a missionary—to go to the ends of the world and help people. He did not remember just what he wanted to help them to, but it was a sort of plan to ease his conscience when he felt he wasn’t doing any good in the world. However, he had got over that in the same way he had given up his vision of the brown-stone mansion with which he had planned at eighteen to delight the woman he married.

He was very human, too; but he did demand certain standards of conduct. There was nothing he hated like snobbishness—he would always speak to anybody, no matter what he had done; but beyond that he respected himself and his friends too much to venture. When the men at his club pointed out, with their knowing winks, that a certain woman was “outside”—well, that was enough for him. He would never do anything to push her further down, but he could at least warn his friends. And he had an infinite disgust, a pitying contempt for those who suggested that circumstances may have had something to do with it. As though it were not the prime business of every human being to fight circumstances; as though he himself might not have been a regular Mark Lennan if he had let himself go. Every man had these things in him. That was the trouble with such writers as Galsworthy:—they helped people to tolerate weakness, even to see a certain beauty in it. It had got to be the fashion, especially among “literary” circles, to break away from standardizations. The persons who did so were given credit for living a fuller Life. How he hated their talk—what rot it was to suppose that any life could be full or rich unless it were a good life. And if there was anything in the world, in these hysterical times, to which a man could anchor, it was the fact that good was good and bad was bad, and even a child knew which was which. There was no arguing about it.

But people seldom argued with him because he disarmed them beforehand by declaring that it didn’t matter what any one thought: all these things had been settled for us long ago; they were the very bulwark of our progress, our prosperity, our whole civilization. It was strange that the people who most enjoyed the benefits of that civilization should be the ones to abuse it. If one must know outcasts (and one might of course be able to help them) let him confine the acquaintanceship to his office or some place where he would not run the risk of influencing other people. He remembered with horror a woman he had once known who could never understand these distinctions. He had not tried to dissuade her from knowing any one in the world she wanted to know; but he had begged her to be discreet about it, at least—to remember her responsibilities in the matter on account of her friends, and to be sure that “those people” were made to feel the inevitable barrier between. “Good God!” he had said, “I’m democratic and all that; but you can’t let people of that sort feel they’re your equals!” Eventually he stopped worrying about the woman—after she told him that she would be proud to be as big and fine as those friends of hers. What was the use? She must have been a little insane all the time; because he knew that she was a good woman, and those “friends” of hers were the sort who believed in free love and that kind of thing—some of them had even been in jail for preaching anarchism.

He had solved such problems in his own case much in the same way he had solved the question of his family relationships. He had been brought up in a home where card-playing, smoking, theatre-going, etc., were forbidden. His life as a man had of course included all these evils. But whenever he visited the old home he reverted to the old order. He would no more think of smoking a cigarette in his mother’s presence than he would think of telling her how vital a part of his life the theatre had become. He had too much respect for her. He knew it would hurt her, and his love and reverence for her were too deep to allow of that.

Something of the same simplicity and clarity colored his ideas of property. Let each man work for his little plot of ground, own it, and live on it. That would do away with all this fuss and competition. He knew there were people who talked vaguely about property being robbery; but what was there to keep the ambition in a man, make a good citizen of him, if it were not his struggle for possession of something he might call his own? If he had not had his little plot to look forward to, and the thought of the woman who was to share it with him, he would long ago have stopped working and started off to the South Sea Islands, wandering about the earth aimlessly without any incentive. Incidentally, his idea of the woman who was to share the plot was very interesting. He was not one to talk bromidioms about woman’s place being in the home, or to discredit the achievements of the new woman. But the fact remained that the new woman knew too much to be a comfortable companion. He refused to be tyrannized; he would marry one of those sweet feminine women who didn’t know anything and live in peace and freedom.

Sometimes he got rather sick of life and found himself in that “what’s the use?” mood. It worried him a little. In the same manner that he had driven around in a taxi for cigarettes he now lounged about in hotel corridors or at his club, watching the people, speculating about life. It seemed a waste of time, rather; yet it harmed no one and it kept him from a good many worse things. His conscience was clear—which was more than most men could say. He knew men. The only thing that really weighed upon him seriously was the fact that he was getting a little too fat. He would have to try to eat less.

True to his creed, his faith was in the people—the great mass of people whose instincts always led them to the right thing. It was a safe rule to go by—that of mistrusting the personality who did not measure up to the decent average. It was the way to keep sane and healthful. Socialists and anarchists and syndicalists and radicals in general—what were they but abnormalities? He would never be guilty of the narrow attitude that they ought to be hanged; they would quite naturally fritter themselves out; for what they were all trying to achieve was individualism pure and simple—and that would never buy bread for the working-man or lift him to happiness. He might not be right about these things, of course; but he had thought them out. Yes, he believed in the people; he believed in their rights; and he believed in being kind to them. There was no telling how much good a cheery smile might do, and so he smiled constantly. A great man had once told him that he made it a point to cultivate friendships only among those people who could help him; and this seemed very sensible to the democrat. He practiced it assiduously, with the result that he never lost that satisfying glow which comes in with shaking a hand that belongs with a full dress shirt.

M. C. A.