

It is a fine thing to be serious, to draw one's self up to a formal task of explaining a machine or analyzing an idea or criticizing a novel; and it is just as fine, and often more pleasurable, to banish the grim seriousness of business and take on pliancy, smile at Life—even though there be tears—and chuckle at Care. Life is more than mere toil; there are the days of high feast and carnival, the days of excursion, and then the calm quiet days of peaceful meditation, sometimes even the days of gray sadness shot through with the crimson thread of sacrifice and sorrow. Often in the least noisy days we see most clearly, with most balance, and with the keenest humor, the finest courage. Like an athlete who cannot be forever in the life of stern rigor but must stray at times into the ways of the drawing-room and the library, so we at times take our ways into the realm of whim and sparkle and laughter, of brooding contemplation, of warm peace of soul. "I want a little breathing-space to muse on indifferent matters," says Hazlitt, and, "Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner—and then to thinking!" In such moods we look for a good friend to talk with, and when the friend is not at hand—why, we may write informal essays to make record of our thoughts and feelings. For the Informal Essay is the transcript of a personal reaction to some phase or fact of life, personal because the author does not regard life with the cold eye of the scientific thinker, and because he does not, on the other hand, insist, as does the reformer, that others than himself accept the views he sets forth. He will not force his belief upon others, will not even hold it too feverishly himself, but, if we cannot accept, will even smile urbanely—though he may think we are quite wrong—and bow, and go his own way.
The greatest charm of the informal essay is its personal nature. There is little, if indeed anything, personal about the analysis of problems or situations, slight revelation of the author in a treatise on dietetics or party politics or bridge building. This kind of writing is essentially the writing of our business. "But what need of ceremony among friends?" Lamb asks, and hits the heart of the informal essay. We are with friends, and with them, if the mood is on us, we chat about the delights of munching apples on snappy October mornings, or the humor of the scramble for public office, or the romance of spanning a stream in the hills, or, at times, the mysteries of life and death. And then the chat is thoroughly personal, we feel no grim duty, but only the quiet pleasure of uttering whatever we may think or feel, about things in which we find our personal interests aroused. It is as the counterpart in literature of such talk in living that the informal essay reveals the personal note, is really the lyric of prose. For the informal essay does not affirm, "This must be done!" or, "I will defend this with my life!" or, "This is undeniable truth!" Rather it says, "This is how I feel about things to-day," and if the essayist be aware that he has not always felt thus, that he may even feel differently again, he is unabashed. He will make you his confidant, will tell you what he thinks and how he feels, will banish the cold front of business, and will not be secretive and niggardly of himself, but only duly reticent.
As soon as we turn to informal essays we find this personal note. Here is Cowley's essay "Of Myself," frankly telling of his life. Our eye falls upon Hazlitt's words, "I never was in a better place or humor than I am at present for writing on this subject. I have a partridge getting ready for my supper, my fire is blazing on the hearth, the air is mild for the season of the year, I have had but a slight fit of indigestion to-day (the only thing that makes me abhor myself), I have three hours good before me, and therefore I will attempt it." Such intimacy, such personal contact is to be found only in the informal essay. Only in a form of writing that we frankly acknowledge as familiar would Samuel Johnson write "The Scholar's Complaint of His Own Bashfulness." And once in the writing, the author cannot keep himself out. Steele, not Addison, wrote the words, "He is said to be the first that made Love by squeezing the Hand"—honest, jovial, garrulous Dick Steele, thinking, perhaps, of his "Darling Prue."
If, then, you have some random ideas that interest you, if the memory of your kite-flying days comes strong upon you, or of your early ambitions to be a sailor or a prima donna, if you can see the humor of rushing for trains or eluding taxes, or reciting without study, if you feel keenly the joy of climbing mountains, or canoeing, or gardening, or fussing with engines, or making things with hammer and nails or flour and sugar, if you see the beauty in powerful machinery or in the deep woods and streams and flowers, or the patient heroism—modest heroism—of the men in "Information" booths at railway stations, if you find pathos in the world, or humor, or any personal significance, and are able to understand without being oppressed with seriousness or poignant reality, even of humor,—if you remember or see or feel such things, and wish to talk quite openly about them as they appeal to you, write an informal essay.
Now you can write a personal essay that will be enjoyable only if your personality is attractive. And you cannot draw a reader to you unless you have a keen reaction to the facts of life. Writing informal essays is impossible for the man whose life is neutral, who goes unseeing, unhearing through the world; it is most natural to the man who touches life at many points and touches with pleasure. Those magic initials, R. L. S., which the world, especially the young world, loves, mean to us a personality that reveled in playing with lead soldiers, in hacking a way through the tropical forests of Samoa, in pursuing streams to their sources, in cleaning "crystal," in talking with all living men, in reading all living books, in whiling the hours with his flageolet. "I have," says Lamb, "an almost feminine partiality for old china." We think, perhaps, of Bacon as a cold austere figure, until we know him, but is he cold when, writing of wild thyme and water mints he says, "Therefore you are to set whole alleys of them, to have the pleasure when you walk or tread" of sniffing their sweet fragrance? And is a man uninterested who writes, "I grant there is one subject on which it is pleasant to talk on a journey; and that is what one shall have for supper when we get to our inn at night"? When we consider the loves of that bright flower of English young manhood, Rupert Brooke, we can the more keenly feel the loss that the essay, as well as poetry, had in his untimely death.
Lamb's young Bo-bo was in the right of it, the right frame of mind, when he cried, "O, father, the pig, the pig, do come and taste how nice the burnt pig eats!" The true writer of informal essays can see that Card Catalogues are humorous, that The Feel of Leather Covered Books is sufficiently interesting to deserve treatment, that Shaving, and Going to Bed Last, and Wondering if the Other Man Knows More, and Manners, and Politeness, and The Effect of Office-holding upon Personality, and Intellectual Deviltry, and The Humility of Sinners, and The Arrogance of Saints, and The Joys of Calling Names, and City Chimney-pots, and The "Woman's Page," and Keeping Up, and The Pleasures of Having a Besetting Sin, and The Absurdities of Education, and When Shakespeare Nods, and thousands of other subjects are all waiting to have their essays. Can there be any possible interest in a carpet layer? Mr. Dallas Lore Sharp, as we have seen,[83] finds it quite wonderful. Is he not to be envied that his reaction was too keen to leave the tool lifeless? An informal essayist would even, we think, find taste in the white of an egg. And without this delight in life his essays will not be read, for they will not present a pleasing personality, and the life of the essay is its personal note.
A personality that is quite alive and thoroughly interested in all sorts of things almost necessarily sees the concrete. Most informal essays are full of individual instances, of anecdotes and scraps from life. The author of "The Privileges of Age" in the Atlantic Monthly does not vaguely talk about age in general. She begins, "I have always longed for the privileges of age—since the days when it seemed to me that the elderly people ate all the hearts out of the watermelons," and she continues with the misfortunes of being young, "In coaching, our place was always between the two fattest! O Isabella is thin! She can sit there!" In sheer delight at the memory Hazlitt writes, "It was on the tenth of April, 1798, that I sat down to a volume of the New Eloise, at the inn of Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken." So Addison, when he will tell us of Sir Roger de Coverley, confides to us his habit of standing up in church service, even in prayer time, to look round him and see if all his tenants are there, or shows him calling out lustily to John Matthews, "to mind what he was about and not disturb the congregation" when John was kicking his heels for diversion. Concrete again, is Sir Roger's remark at the theater, "And let me tell you ... though he speaks but little, I like the old Fellow in Whiskers as well as any of them." All such detailed bits of life the essayist relishes, and in turn they enrich his personality and make him able to give the personal note that is the heart of the informal essay.
This mood of human interest is illustrated, of course, by other writers than the informal essayists. The historian Parkman filled his volumes with the intimate details of personal experience that keep them warm and forever alive. As distinct from the dry-as-dust chroniclers, who eschew all of the throbbing incidents of life, he was eager to include whenever inclusion would help the reader's true imagination, such details as that, back in colonial times, the thunderous praying of a member of the General Court of Massachusetts, who had retired to his room for Heavenly counsel, revealed the secret of the proposed attack upon the fortress of Louisbourg to a landlady—and hence to all the world. Nor does he fail to mention that when the Grand Battery at Louisbourg was captured, William Tufts, of Medford, a lad of eighteen, climbed the flagstaff with his red coat in his teeth and made it fast to the pole for a flag. As we read Parkman's words, we can feel his heart glow with the joy of the climbing lad, we know that in the historian there was beating the throb of human love such as would have made him an admirable essayist had he turned his hand to the form.
If, then, you feel like confidential writing, what may your subjects be? Essayists have written about three main classes of subjects: first always, people, their glory, their pathos, their sadness, and their whims; second, nature as it appeals to the writers in a personal way, reflecting their joys and sorrows, or contributing to their sense of pleasure, beauty, and companionship in the world; and third, matters of science, industry, art, literature, as the essayists think these affect the emotions of humanity. If you are in wonderment and desire to speak of the bravery of men fighting the battle of life, you may write with Stevenson the somber but inspiring "Pulvis et Umbra." If you are tempted to smile at the tendency of people to announce beliefs militantly, you may write with Mr. Crothers "On Being a Doctrinaire." If man's ceaseless quest of the perfect appeals, you may write with Mr. Sharp "The Dustless Duster." The interesting old custom of having an awesome "spare chamber," the hurly-burly and humor of moving, the fascinating process of shaving that Grandfather performs on Sunday, the ways in which some people make themselves lovable, others hateful, others pitiful, and still others ridiculous—these are your rightful field if you but care to use them. The informal essayist loves humanity not blindly but wisely. "There is something about a boy that I like," Charles Dudley Warner wrote, and thereby proved himself worthy to write such essays. Lamb, thinking of chimney-sweeps, cries out, "I have a kindly yearning toward these dim specks—poor blots—innocent blacknesses." Nor is the essayist restricted to the lives of others; the true informal essayist never forgets his own boyhood. The swimming and fishing larks, the tramp for the early chestnuts, the machines that you built at ten years, the tricks you played on friends and enemies, human and four-footed—these await your essay. Especially your grown-up self offers a fertile meadowland of essays. What are your hobbies—and have you any follies? If you can but poke fun at yourself, we will listen. Finally, if you have an interesting acquaintance, a rosy corner grocer, or a maiden aunt of the old school, or a benignant grandfather, or a quaint laundress, or "hired man," or anybody who is worth the words—and who is not?—and who really interests you, you may make a character sketch. Thus Stevenson in "A Scotch Gardener," Leigh Hunt in "The Old Lady," "The Old Gentleman," "The Maidservant," and John Brown in "Jeems the Doorkeeper." Remember only one thing—you must, for some reason, see attractiveness in the character, even the paradoxical attractiveness of repulsion. Remember that Hazlitt wrote an essay on "The Pleasures of Hating."
When people do not offer subjects, turn to nature, as Mr. Burroughs and Mr. Sharp and John Muir have turned in our day, and as others have turned at times ever since there was an essay. Do you admire the cool deep woods, the songs of the thrushes, the clouds that roll into queer shapes, the endlessly talking brooks, the bugs that strive and fight and achieve, the queer hunted live things that you see everywhere? There is your essay. Mr. Warner wrote a delightful series about gardening in which he makes fun—partly of himself, partly of nature. Richard Jefferies found a subject in "July Grass." Mr. Belloc gives the spirit of the primeval currents of air that bore the ships of our forefathers in his essay, "On a Great Wind." California sequoias, red-eyed vireos, the pig in his pen, the silly hens in their yard, friendly dogs, a group of willows, a view from a mountain-top, trees that rush past as you skim the road in your car, there's hardly a phase of nature that does not offer an essay, have you but the eyes to see and the heart to warm. One caution must be given. This kind of essay will try to lure you into words that seem poetic but really lie; beware that you tell the truth, for a sunset, glorious though it is, is still a sunset. For the higher imaginative flights we reserve our verse. On the other hand, scientific analysis is not for the essay; it is too impersonal. Nature, as seen in the informal essay, is the nature of emotion that keeps its balance through humor and sanity. Do not, then, write an essay about nature unless you are sure of your balance, unless you are sure that you can tell the truth.
But the essayist does not stop with the creations in nature; he goes on to the works of man. He sees the exquisite beauty of a deftly guided mathematical problem, the answer marshaled to its post in order, he feels the exultation of a majestic pumping station, he knows the wonder of the inspiration of artists. As you pass the steel skeleton of the skyscraper, or see the liner gliding up the harbor, or thrill to the locomotive that paws off across the miles, or stand in awe and watch the uncanny linotype machine at its weird mysteries, you may find your subject all ready for the expression. Mr. Joseph Husband finds the romance of these.[84] Books, too, chats with your favorite authors, trips through art galleries, listening to concerts, finding the wonders of the surgeon,—all these, as they appeal to you, as you react to them, as they disclose a meaning, are fit subjects for your essay. Thus Mr. Crothers writes in "The Hundred Worst Books."
Men, nature, things, all are at your beck if you but keenly feel their appeal, if you have an honest thought about them. As you treat them do not hesitate to use the word "I"; in the essay we expect the word, we look for it, we miss it when it eludes us, for the great charm of the informal essay is its personal note, its revelation of the heart of the writer.
Since the essay is urbanely personal, it does not take itself too seriously. Our definition declared that the essayist will not try to force his views upon his reader nor hold them too feverishly himself. If you are militant about a subject, you should write, not an informal essay, but a treatise or an argument in which full play will be given to your cudgels. If you violently believe in woman-suffrage—as you well may—so that you can be only dead-serious about it, do not write an informal essay. For the essay aims at the spirit as well as the intellect, hopes to create a glow in the reader as well as to convince him of a truth. You should write an informal essay when you are in the mood of Sir Roger de Coverley as he remarked, "There is much to be said on both sides." This does not mean that you should write spinelessly—not in the least; it means only that you should be an artist rather than a blind reformer. Sometimes the mind wishes to go upon excursion, to give play to the "wanton heed and giddy cunning" that are in the heart. The essay, says Richard Middleton, "should have the apparent aimlessness of life, and, like life, its secret purpose." It may be mere "exuberant capering round a discovered truth," to borrow Mr. Chesterton's phrase. Again, it may feel the length of the shadows, the cold breath of the mists of the still, unpierced places. The essay does not deny the shadows; it rather believes in riding up to the guns with a smile and the gesture of courtesy. It sees the truth always, but it also prefers not to be a pest in declaring the truth disagreeably. "Therefore we choose to dally with visions." Many an informal essay has been written on "Death," but not in the mood of the theologian. The essay has about it the exquisite flavor of personality such as we find in the cavalier lads who rode to feasting or to death with equal grace and charm. The real essay ought not to leave its reader uncomfortable; it leaves to the militant writers to work such mischief.
Do not, therefore, ever allow your essay to become a sermon, for to the sermon there is only one side. And do not try to wrench a moral from everything. If you do, the moral will be anÆmic and thin. Do not, after watching brooks, be seized with a desire to have your reader "content as they are." Nor, after the locomotive has melted into the distance shall you buttonhole your reader and bid him, like the engine, be up and doing! Better is it to play pranks with respectability and logic. Stevenson's ability to write charming essays came partly from the fact that, as Barrie has said of him, "He was the spirit of boyhood tugging at the skirts of this old world of ours and compelling it to come back and play." Mr. Chesterton often inspires us to do some really new thinking by his ridiculous contentions. Where but in the essay could a man uphold the belief that Faith is Nonsense and perhaps Nonsense is Faith?
In fact, humor is always present in the informal essay. It may be grave or even sad, it is never really boisterous, it is best subtle and quiet, but of whatever kind it should be present. Meredith said "humor is the ability to detect ridicule of those we love without loving them the less." Note, in the light of these words, John Brown's description of his friend Jeems: "Jeems's face was so extensive, and met you so formidably and at once, that it mainly composed his whole; and such a face! Sydney Smith used to say of a certain quarrelsome man, 'His very face is a breach of the peace.' Had he seen our friend's he would have said that he was the imperative mood on two (very small) legs, out on business in a blue greatcoat." Lamb had the gentle humor in exquisite degree, kindly and shrewd. When the little chimney-sweep laughed at him for falling in the street Lamb thought, "there he stood ... with such a maximum of glee and minimum of mischief, in his mirth—for the grin of a genuine sweep hath absolutely no malice in it—that I could have been content, if the honor of a gentleman might endure it, to have remained his butt and mockery till midnight." The humor is often ironic, frequently dry and lurking, but kindly still, for the essayist loves his fellow man.
Since the essay is not super-serious, it need not be too conscientiously thorough and exhaustive. It must, to be sure, have some point, some core of thought, must meditate, but it need not reach a final conclusion. It often believes, with Stevenson, that "to travel hopefully is better than to arrive," and it spends its time on the pleasant way. It takes conclusions about as seriously as we take them when we sit with pipe and slippers by the fireside and chat. Its view of the subject is limited also. It is not a piece of research, it need not cover the whole ground with all the minutiÆ. The essayist, first of all, will admit that he does not say all that might be said. Very likely he will declare that he is merely making suggestions rather than giving a treatment. Think how endless a real treatise on old china would be, and then how brief and sketchy Lamb's essay is. The beauty of writing an informal essay is that you can stop when you please, you do not feel the dread command of the subject.
Just as the conclusion may be dodged, so the strict laws of rhetoric may be winked at. De Quincey remarks, "Here I pause for a moment to exhort the reader ... etc.," and for a whole page talks about a different subject! But we do not mind, for, as has been said of him—and the remark is equally true of many essayists—he is like a good sheep dog, he makes many detours, may even disappear behind a knoll, but finally he will come eagerly and bravely back with his flock and guide the sheep home. Digressions are allowable, so long as safe return is made. The formlessness of the essay is to be held by an invisible web that is none the less binding, like the bonds of the Fenris wolf. We may go round the subject or stand off and gaze at it, may introduce anecdotes, bits of conversation, illustrations of various sorts, may even cast the essay largely in narrative form, so long as at the heart of it there is our idea. "You may tack and drift, only so you tack and drift round the buoy." Hazlitt, in "On Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen," uses much conversation. Thackeray, in "Tunbridge Toys," clings to the narrative medium.
Mr. Richard Burton, in the foreword to his Little Essays in Literature and Life, sums up the informal essay thus:
The way of the familiar essay is one, of the formal essay another. The latter is informational, it defines, proves; the former, seeking for friendlier and more personal relations with the reader, aims at suggestion, stimulation. The familiar essay can be an impressionistic reflection of the author's experience in the mighty issues of living, or it may be the frank expression of a mere whim. It should touch many a deep thing in a way to quicken the sense of the charm, wonder, and terror of the earth. The essayist can fly high, if he but have wings, and he can dive deeper than any plummet line of the intellect, should it happen that the spirit move him.
It is thus the ambition of the familiar essayist to speak wisdom albeit debonairly, to be thought-provoking without heaviness, and helpful without didacticism. Keenly does he feel the lachrymÆ rerum, but, sensible to the laughing incongruities of human expression, he has a safeguard against the merely solemn and can smile at himself or others, preserving his sense of humor as a precious gift of the high gods. And most of all, he loves his fellow men, and would come into fellowship with them through thought that is made mellow by feeling....[85]
And so we return to our definition: the essay is the transcript of personal reaction to some phase or fact of life, not weighted with an over-solemn feeling of responsibility, charged with never-failing balance and humor and liberty to wander without necessarily arriving, frankly individual in its treatment of life, life as it seems to the writer, whether the essay be about people or things or nature.
Of the length of the essay we may not be too definite. It may be only a page in duration; it may cover fifty. When the writer has said what he wishes to say, he blithely ceases, and leaves the work to the reader. In style all the graces, all the lightness, the daintiness, the neatness that he can command the author uses. He loves words for their sound, their suggestiveness, their color. And since he is frequently expressing a mood, he will, so far as he can, adapt the style to the mood. So Lamb, in the exquisite reverie, "Dream Children," casts his vision into the dreamy cadence that lures us into his very mood. So, finally, Mr. Belloc, describing the wind, says:
When a great wind comes roaring over the eastern flats toward the North Sea, driving over the Fens and the Wingland, it is like something of this island that must go out and wrestle with the water, or play with it in a game or battle; and when, upon the western shores, the clouds come bowling up from the horizon, messengers, out-riders, or comrades of the gale, it is something of the sea determined to possess the land. The rising and falling of such power, its hesitations, its renewed violence, its fatigue and final repose—all these are symbols of a mind; but more than all the rest, its exultation! It is the shouting and hurrahing of the wind that suits a man.[86]
THE PRIVILEGES OF AGE[87]
I have always longed for the privileges of age,—since the days when it seemed to me that the elderly people ate all the hearts out of the watermelons. Now it suddenly occurs to me that I am at last entitled to claim them. Surely the shadow on the dial has moved around it, the good time has come, and the accumulated interest of my years shall be mine to spend. Have you not had the same experience? For many years, as you may have noticed, the majority of the inhabitants of the earth were old. Even those persons over whom we were nominally supposed to exercise a little brief authority were older than we, and we approached the dragons of our kitchen with a deprecating eye. But now the majority has moved behind us; most people, even some really quite distinguished people, are younger than we. No longer can we pretend that our lack of distinction is due to immaturity. No longer can we privately assure ourselves that some day we, too, shall do something, and that it is only the becoming modesty of youth which prevents our doing it at once.
One thing, willy-nilly, we have done,—or rather nature has done it for us. She is like von Moltke. "Without haste, without rest," is her motto, and knowing our tendency to dally, she quietly takes matters into her own hands. Suddenly, unconscious of the effort, we awake one morning and find ourselves old. If we can only succeed in being old enough, we shall also be famous, like old Parr, who never did anything, so far as I am aware, but live to the age of one hundred and forty-five.
In order properly to appreciate our present privileges, let us consider the days of old and the years that are past. It was in the time before motors, and we rode backwards in the carriage. We did not like to ride backwards. In traveling, we were always allotted the upper berths. There was no question about it. We couldn't expect our venerable aunt, or our delicate cousin, or our dignified grandmother to swing up into an upper berth, could we? And in those days they cost just as much as lower ones and we paid our own traveling expenses. How expert we grew at swinging up and swinging down! Naturally the best rooms at the hotels went to the elder members of the party. In coaching, our place was always between the two fattest! "O Isabella is thin! she can sit there!"
And what did we ask in return for these many unnoticed renunciations? Only the privilege of getting up at five to go trout-fishing, or the delight of riding all morning cross-saddle to eat a crumby luncheon in a buggy forest at noon. We wondered what the others meant when they said that the beds were not comfortable, and we marveled why the whole machinery of heaven and earth should be out of gear unless, at certain occult and punctually recurring hours, they had a cup of tea. And why was it necessary to make us unhappy if they didn't have a cup of tea?
Young people are supposed to be mannerly, at least they were in my day, but old people may be as rude as they please, and no one reproves them. If they do not like a thing, they promptly announce the fact. The privilege of self-expression they share with the very young. Which reminds me, I detest puddings. Henceforth I shall decline to eat them, even in the house of my friends. Mine is the prerogative no longer to dissemble, for hypocrisy is abhorrent to the members of the favored class to which I now belong. They are like a dear and honored servitor of mine who used, on occasion, to go about her duties with the countenance of a thunderstorm. "Elizabeth," said I, once, reprovingly, "you should not look so cross." "But Miss Isabella," she remarked with reason, "if you don't look cross when you are cross, how is any one to know you are cross?"
Speaking of thunderstorms, I am afraid of them. I have always been afraid since the days when I used to hide under the nursery table when I felt one coming. But was I allowed to stay under the table? Certainly not. All these years have I maintained a righteous and excruciating self-control. But old ladies are afraid and unashamed. I have heard of one who used to get into the middle of a featherbed. I shall not insist on the featherbed, but I shall close the shutters and turn on the lights and be as cowardly as I please.
The two ends of life, infancy and age, are indulged in their little fancies. For a baby, we get up in the night to heat bottles, and there are certain elderly clergymen whose womenkind always arise at four in the morning to make coffee for them. That is not being addicted to stimulants. But the middle span of life is like a cantilever bridge: if it can bear its own weight it is expected to bear anything that can possibly be put upon it. "Old age deferred" has no attractions for me. I decline to be middle-aged. I much prefer to be old.
Youth is haunted by misgivings, by hesitancies, by a persistent idea that, if only we dislike a thing enough, there must be some merit in our disliking it. Not so untrammeled age. From now on, I practice the philosophy of Montesquieu and pursue the general good by doing that which I like best. Absolutely and unequivocally, that which I like best. For there is no longer any doubt about it: I have arrived. I do not have to announce the fact. Others realize it. My friends' daughters give me the most comfortable chair. They surround me with charming, thoughtful, delicate little attentions. Mine is the best seat in the motor, mine the host's arm at the feast, mine the casting vote in any little discussion.
O rare Old Age! How hast thou been maligned! O blessed land of privilege! True paradise for the disciples of Nietzsche, where at last we dare appear as selfish as we are!
A BREATH OF APRIL[88]
These still, hazy, brooding mid-April mornings, when the farmer first starts afield with his plow, when his boys gather the buckets in the sugar-bush, when the high-hole calls long and loud through the hazy distance, when the meadow-lark sends up her clear, silvery shaft of sound from the meadow, when the bush sparrow trills in the orchard, when the soft maples look red against the wood, or their fallen bloom flecks the drying mud in the road,—such mornings are about the most exciting and suggestive of the whole year. How good the fields look, how good the freshly turned earth looks!—one could almost eat it as does the horse;—the stable manure just being drawn out and scattered looks good and smells good; every farmer's house and barn looks inviting; the children on the way to school with their dinner-pails in their hands—how they open a door into the past for you! Sometimes they have sprays of arbutus in their button-holes, or bunches of hepatica. The partridge is drumming in the woods, and the woodpeckers are drumming on dry limbs.
The day is veiled, but we catch such glimpses through the veil. The bees are getting pollen from the pussy-willows and soft maples, and the first honey from the arbutus.
It is at this time that the fruit and seed catalogues are interesting reading, and that the cuts of farm implements have a new fascination. The soil calls to one. All over the country, people are responding to the call, and are buying farms and moving upon them. My father and mother moved upon their farm in the spring of 1828; I moved here upon mine in March, 1874.
I see the farmers, now going along their stone fences and replacing the stones that the frost or the sheep and cattle have thrown off, and here and there laying up a bit of wall that has tumbled down.
There is a rare music now in the unmusical call of the phoebe-bird—it is so suggestive.
The drying road appeals to one as it never does at any other season. When I was a farm-boy, it was about this time that I used to get out of my boots for half an hour and let my bare feet feel the ground beneath them once more. There was a smooth, dry, level place in the road near home, and along this I used to run, and exult in that sense of light-footedness which is so keen at such times. What a feeling of freedom, of emancipation, and of joy in the returning spring I used to experience in those warm April twilights!
I think every man whose youth was spent on the farm, whatever his life since, must have moments at this season when he longs to go back to the soil. How its sounds, its odors, its occupations, its associations, come back to him! Would he not like to return again to help rake up the litter of straw and stalks about the barn, or about the stack on the hill where the grass is starting? Would he not like to help pick the stone from the meadow, or mend the brush fence on the mountain where the sheep roam, or hunt up old Brindle's calf in the woods, or gather oven-wood for his mother to start again the big brick oven with its dozen loaves of rye bread, or see the plow crowding the lingering snowbanks on the side-hill, or help his father break and swingle and hatchel the flax in the barnyard?
When I see a farm advertised for rent or for sale in the spring, I want to go at once and look it over. All the particulars interest me,—so many acres of meadow-land, so many of woodland, so many of pasture—the garden, the orchard, the outbuildings, the springs, the creek—I see them all, and am already half in possession.
Even Thoreau felt this attraction, and recorded in his Journal: "I know of no more pleasing employment than to ride about the country with a companion very early in the spring, looking at farms with a view to purchasing, if not paying for them."
Blessed is the man who loves the soil!
THE AMATEUR CHESSMAN[89]
I used to envy chess-players. Now I play. My method of learning the game was unprincipled. I learned the moves from the encyclopÆdia, the traditions from "Morphy, On Chess," and the practice from playing with another novice as audacious as I. Later, finding some people who could really play, I clove to them until they taught me all that I could grasp. My ultimate ambition is, I suppose, the masterly playing of the game. Its austere antiquity rebukes the mildest amateur into admiration. I therefore strive, and wistfully aspire. Meanwhile, however, I am enjoying the gay excitement of the unskilled player.
There is nobody like the hardy apprentice for getting pleasure out of chess. We find certain delights which no past-master can know; pleasures exclusively for the novice. Give me an opponent not too haughty for my unworthy steel, one who may perhaps forget to capture an exposed bishop of mine, an opponent who, like me, will know the early poetry of mad adventure and the quiet fatalism of unexpected defeat. With this opponent I will engage to enjoy three things which, to Mr. Morphy, immortality itself shall not restore—three things: a fresh delight in the whimsical personality of the various chessmen; the recklessness of uncertainty and of unforeseen adventure; the unprecedented thrill of checkmating my opponent by accident.
Mr. Morphy, I admit, may perhaps have retained through life a personal appreciation of the characters of the pieces: the conservative habits of the king; the politic, sidelong bishop; the stout little roundhead pawns. But since his forgotten apprenticeship he has not known their many-sided natures. To Mr. Morphy they long since became subject—invariably calculable. With a novice, the men and women of the chess-board regain their individuality and their Old World caprices, their mediÆval greatness of heart. Like Aragon and the Plantagenets, they have magnificent leisure for the purposeless and aimless quest. The stiff, kind, circular eyes of my simple boxwood knight stare casually about him as he goes. Irresponsibly he twists among his enemies, now drawing rein in the cross-country path of an angry bishop, now blowing his horn at the very drawbridge of the king. And it is no cheap impunity that he faces in his errant hardihood. My opponent seldom lapses. My knights often die in harness, all unshriven. That risk lends unfailing zest. Most of all, I love my gentle horsemen.
My opponent, too, has her loyalties, quixotic and unshaken. Blindly, one evening, I imperiled my queen. Only the opposing bishop needed to be sacrificed to capture her. The spectators were breathless at her certain fate. But my opponent sets high value upon her stately bishop. Rather this man saved for defense than risked for such a captive, feminist though she be, and queen. With ecclesiastical dignity the bishop withdrew, and my queen went on her tranquil way.
Of all the men, the king reveals himself least readily. A noncommittal monarch at best. At times imperial and menacing, my king may conquer, with goodly backing from his yeomen and his chivalry. Sometimes, again, like Lear, he is no longer terrible in arms, his royal guard cut down. And at his death he loves always to send urgently for his bishop, who is solacing, though powerless to save.
All this is typical of our second pleasure, the exhilaration of incautious and unpremeditated moves. Inexplicable, for example, this pious return of the outbound bishop at the last battle-cry of the king. At times, however, a move may well be wasted to the end that all may happen decently and in order. My opponent shares with me this respect for ceremony. Together we lament the ruins when a lordly castle falls. Our atrocities are never heartless; we never recriminate.
My opening moves, in general, are characterized by no mean regard for consequences. Let my men rush forth to the edge of the hostile country. Once there, there will be time enough to peer about and reconnoitre and see what we shall see. Meanwhile, the enemy is battering gloriously at my postern-gate, but at least the fight is on! Part of our recklessness in these opening moves consists in our confidential revelations to each other of all our plans and disquieting problems.
"This needn't worry you at present," I remark, planting my castle on an irrational crag. "I'm only putting it there in case."
That saves much time. My opponent might otherwise have found it necessary to waste long minutes in trying to fathom the unknowable of my scheme. Without this companionable interchange chess is the most lonely of human experiences. There you sit, a being solitary and unsignaled—a point of thought, a mere center of calculation. You have no partner. All the world is canceled for the time, except, perched opposite you, another hermit intellect implacably estranged and sinister. Oh, no! As yet we discuss our plots.
Poor journeymen players of the royal game! Strange clues to character appear around the friendly chess-board. There is the supposedly neutral observer of the game, who must murmur warnings or lament the ill-judged moves; without him, how would life and chess be simplified? There is the stout-hearted player who refuses to resign though his defeat is demonstrably certain, but continues to jog about the board, eluding actual capture; in life would he resign? There is the player who gives little shrieks at unexpected attacks; the player who explains his mistakes and what he had intended to do instead; the player who makes no sign whether of gloating or of despair. Most striking of all is the behavior of all these when they face the necessity of playing against the handicap of past mistakes; a wrong move may never be retracted by the thoroughbred. No apology, no retracting of the path; we must go on as if the consequences were part of our plan. It lures to allegory, this checkered board, these jousts and far crusades.
Then, on to checkmate, the most perfect type of utter finality, clear-cut and absolute. Shah-mat! Checkmate! The king is dead. In most conclusions there is something left ragged; something still in abeyance, in reserve. Here, however, is no shading, no balancing of the scales. We win, not by majority, as in cards; success or failure is unanimous. There was one ballot, and that is cast. No matter how ragged the playing that went before, the end of a game of chess is always perfect. It satisfies the spirit. Always at last comes contentment of soul, though it be our king that dies.
The following subjects are suggested as suitable for treatment in informal essays. They can, in many cases, be changed to suit individual experience, can be made either broader or more restricted. Perhaps they will suggest other somewhat similar but more usable subjects.
PEOPLE
- The Pleasures of Selfishness.
- Wondering if the Other Person Knows More.
- Pipe and Slippers and Dreams.
- Middle-aged Kittens.
- Being "Tough."
- Early Rising.
- Scientific Eating.
- The Joys of the Straphanger.
- Vicarious Possessions in Shop Windows.
- Shopping with the Bargain Hunter.
- New Year's Resolutions.
- The Gossip of the Waiting-Room (of a Railroad Station, Doctor's Office, etc.).
- The Stimulation of Closet Skeletons.
- Planning Houses.
- Keeping an Expense Book.
- The Millinery of the Choir.
- The Joys of Being Profane before the Consciously Pious.
- "Darius Greens."
- Tellers of Dreams.
- Making the Most of Misfortunes.
- The Moral Value of Carrying a Cane.
- Souvenir Hunting.
- The Person Who Has Always Had "The Same Experience Myself."
- Prayer-meeting Courtships.
- The Exhaustion of Repose.
- "See the Birdie, Darling!"
- Politeness to Rich Relatives.
- "It must be so; I Read it in a Book!"
- "Anyway," as Stevenson said, "I did my darndest."
- The Moral Rigor of the Nightly Setting-up Exercises.
- "Hooking Rides."
- A Society to Forbid Learning to Play the Trombone (or Cornet or Piano or anything else).
- A Sophomore for Life.
- Country Auctions.
- The Virtues of Enviousness.
- The Melancholy of Old Bachelors.
- Village "Cut-ups."
- Early Assurances of Doleful Dying.
- Failing, to make Money, through Failure to make Money.
- People who never Did Wrong as Children.
- "Just Wait till I'm Grown-up!"
- Philosophers' Toothaches.
- The Morality of Stubbing One's Toe in the Dark.
- The Dolefulness of Celebrations.
- What to Do with Bores.
- The Young and the Still-young Woman.
- The Satisfaction of Intolerance.
- The Struggle to be an "Intellectual."
- Church Socials.
- The Revelations of Food Sales.
- White-haired Enthusiasm.
- "I have It in my Card Index."
- The Rigors of Shaving.
- The Right to a "Beauty Box."
- "Hopelessly Sane."
- The "Job" After Graduation.
- The Stupidity of Heaven.
- The Boon Companions of Hell.
- People Who Remember When You Were "Only So High!"
- Being a Gentleman though Rich.
- Great Men One Might Wish to Have Thrashed.
- The Awful Servant.
- Morality When the Thermometer Reads 95°.
- The Technique of Teas.
- Dangers of Criticism.
- Starvation or a New Cook?
- Superior Profanity.
- The Logic of the Movies.
- The "Woman's Page."
- The Neatness of Men.
- On Taking Off One's Hat.
- Fashions in Slang.
- Ambitions at Thirteen.
- The Joys of Whittling.
- Learning, without Education.
THINGS
- Individuality in Shoes.
- Alarm Clocks.
- Rail Fences.
- Chimney Pots.
- Illuminated Mottoes.
- "Fresh Paint."
- Social Caste of Tombstones.
- The Lure of Banks.
- The Witchery of Seed Catalogues.
- Colonial Windows.
- Fishing Tackle in the Attic in January.
- The Invitation of the Label.
- Stolen Umbrellas.
- The Dolefuless of the Comic Supplement.
- The Humorousness of Card Catalogues.
- The Sweets and Dregs of Tin Roofs.
- The Tyranny of Remembered Melodies.
- Friendly Old Clothes.
- The Age of the Pennant.
- The Upper Berth.
- Bills in Dining Cars.
- Pound Cake.
- The Toothsome Drumstick.
- Cravats One Might Wish to Have Worn.
- Spite Fences.
- Personality of Teapots.
- "All You Have to Do Is—"
- Smoke on the Skyline.
- The First Long Trousers.
- The New Pipe.
- The Old Springboard.
- Drinking Fountains.
- The Work-savers—now in the Attic.
- Candlesticks.
- The Cantankerousness of Gas Engines.
- Weeds.
- The Pride of Uniforms.
- Leather-covered Books.
- The Pursuit of Oriental Rugs.
- Wedding Presents.
- Bird Baths.
- The Charm of Oil-Heaters.
- The Coquetry of Gift Shops.
- The Passing of the Hitching Post.
- Names One Might Wish to Have Had.
- Hall Bedrooms.
- The Lure of Historic Tablets.
- The Futility of Diaries.
- Squeaking Boards at Midnight.
- The Caste of Letter Heads.
NATURE
- Walking in the Rain.
- Skylines.
- The Personified Trees of Childhood.
- Coffee in the Woods.
- The Psychology of Hens.
- The Humanity of Barnyards.
- The Smell of Spring.
- The Perfume of Bonfires.
- The Sounds of Running Water.
- Tracks in the Snow.
- The Spectrum of Autumn.
- The Mellowness of Gardens.
- The Clamor of the Silent Stretches.
- The Innocent Joy of Not Knowing the Birds.
- The Rigors of the Sleeping Porch.
- Inspiration of Mountain-tops.
- Noises on Cold Winter Nights.
- Cherries or Robins?
- The Airedale Pal.
- Snakes I Have Never Met.
- The Exhilaration of Winds.
- Spring Fever.
- The Philosophy of Campfires.
- Birds in a City Yard.
- The Majesty of Thunderstorms.
- The Music of Snow Water.
- Hedges.
- Mountain Springs.
- The Deep Woods.
- Summer Clouds.
- The Companionable Birds.
- The Dignity of Crows.
- Trout Pools.
- Muskrat Trails.
- The First Flowers of Spring.
- The Squirrels in the Park.
- The Dry Sounds in Nature.
- The Honk of the Flying Wedge.
- The Pageant of the Warblers.
- The Challenge of Crags and Ledges.
- The White-birch Country.
- Apple Blossom Time.
- The Majesty of Rivers.
- Old Orchards.
- Dried Herbs.
- Friendly Roadside Bushes.
- The Exultant Leap of Waterfalls.
- The Wind in Hemlock, Pine, and Spruce.
- Tree Houses.
- The Collection of Pressed Flowers.