Chapter IV: The Good Man and Cupid 256 (7)

“Surely,” said the tree conceitedly. “They tried to get me, but I was too clever for them.”

“But don’t you want to be a mast,” they said, “and hold up the sails of a beautiful ship, and swim grandly all about the seas of the world, and lie in strange harbours, and hear strange voices?”

“No,” said the tree, “I don’t. I dislike the sea. It is monotonous. I want to assist in influencing the world. I want to be important.”

“Don’t be so silly,” said the swallows.

And then the tree had his wish, for one day some more wood-cutters came; but, instead of picking out the tallest and straightest trees, as they had been used to, they cut down hundreds just as they came to them.

“Look out,” said the swallows. “You’ll be cut down now whether you want it or not.”

“I want it,” said the tree. “I want to begin to influence the world.”

“Very well,” said a wood-cutter, “you shall,” and he gave the trunk a great blow with his axe, and then another and another, until down it fell.

“You won’t be a mast,” he added, “never fear. Nothing so useful! You’re going to make paper, my friend.”

“What is paper?” asked the tree of the swallows as they darted to and fro over its branches.

“We don’t know,” they said, “but we’ll ask the sparrows.”

The sparrows, who knew, told the tree. “Paper,” they said, “is the white stuff that men read from. It used to be made from rags; but it’s made from trees now because it’s cheaper.”

“Then will people read me?” asked the tree.

“Yes,” said the sparrows.

The tree nearly fainted with rapture.

“But only for a few minutes,” added the sparrows. “You’re going to be newspaper paper, not book paper.”

“All the same,” said the tree, “I might have something worth reading on me, mightn’t I? Something beautiful or grand.”

“You might,” said the sparrows, “but it isn’t very likely.”

Then the men came to haul the tree away. Poor tree, what a time it had! It was sawed into logs, and pushed, with thousands of others, into a pulping machine, and the sap oozed out of it, and it screamed with agony; and then by a dozen different processes, all extremely painful, it was made into paper.

Oh, how it wished it was still growing on the hillside with the sun and the rain, and the children at its foot, and the birds and squirrels in its branches. “I never thought the world would be like this,” it said. And the other trees in the paper all around it agreed that the world was an overrated place.

And the tree went to sleep and dreamed it was a mast, and woke up crying.

Then it was rolled into a long roll five miles long and put down into the hold of a ship, and there it lay all forlorn and sea-sick for a week. A dreadful storm raged overhead--the same wind that had once tried its strength on the hillside--and as they heard it all the trees in the paper groaned as they thought of the life of the forest and the brave days that were gone.

The worst of it was that the roll in which our tree lay was close by the foot of the mast, which came through the hold just here, and he found that they were old friends. The mast said he could think of no life so pleasant as that of a mast. “One has the sun all day,” he said, “and the stars all night; one carries men and merchandise about the world; one lies in strange harbours and sees strange and entertaining sights. One is influencing the world all the time.”

At these words the tree wept again. But he made an effort to be comforted. “You wouldn’t suggest,” he inquired timidly, “that a mast was as important, say, as a newspaper?”

The mast laughed till he shook. “Well, I like that,” he said. “Why, a newspaper--a newspaper only lasts a day, and everything in it is contradicted and corrected the day after! A mast goes on for years. And another thing,” he added, “which I forgot: sometimes the captain leans against it. The captain! Think of that.”

But the tree was too miserable.

In the harbour it was taken out of the ship and flung on the wharf, and then it was carried to the warehouse, below a newspaper office in London. What a difference from Newfoundland, where there was air and light. Here it was dark and stuffy, and the rolls talked to each other with tears in their voices.

And then one night the roll in which our poor tree found himself was carried to the printing-rooms and fixed in the press, and down came the heavy, messy type on it, all black and suffocating, and when the tree came to itself in the light again it was covered with words.

But, alas! the sparrows were right, for they were not beautiful words or grand words, but such words as, “Society Divorce Case,” and “Double Suicide at Margate,” and “Will it be fine to-morrow?” and “Breach of Promise: Comic Letters,” and “The Progress of the Strike,” and “Terrible Accident near Paris,” and “Grisly Discovery at Leeds,” and “Bankruptcy of Peer’s Cousin,” and “Burglary at Potter’s Bar,” and “More Government Lies”; and there were offers of a thousand pounds and smaller sums to cottagers for the best bunch of Sweet Williams, bringing to myriad simple homes in England, where flowers had been loved for their own sake, the alloy of avarice.

“Oh, dear,” sighed the tree as it realized what it was bearing on its surface, “how I wish I had gone to sea as I was meant to do!” And he vowed that if ever he got out of this dreadful life he would never be headstrong again. But alas!--

Then, cut and folded, it was, with others like it, carried away in the cold, grey morning to a railway station bookstall, and a man bought it for a halfpenny and read it all through, and said there was nothing in it, and threw it under the seat, and later another man found it and read it, and blew choking tobacco over it, and then wrapped up some fish in it, and took it home to his family. All that night it lay scrunched up on the floor of a squalid house, feeling very faint from the smell of fish, and longing for Newfoundland and the sun and the rain, and the children and the birds.

And the next morning an untidy woman lit the fire with it. It was an unimportant fire, and went out directly.

The Life Spherical

It was a beautiful September day, and they floated softly over green Surrey.

“And this is England!” said the foreigner. “I am indeed glad to be here at last, and to come in such a way.”

“You could not,” the other replied, “have chosen a more novel or entertaining means of seeing the country for the first time.”

They leaned over the edge of the basket and looked down. The earth was spread out like a map: they could see the shape of every meadow, penetrate every chimney.

“How beautiful,” said the foreigner. “How orderly and precise. No wonder you conquered the world, you English. How unresting you must be! But what,” he went on, “is the employment of those men there, on that great space? Are they practising warfare? See how they walk in couples, followed by small boys bent beneath some burden. One stops. The boy gives him a stick. He seems to be addressing himself to the performance of a delicate rite. See how he waves his hands. He has struck something. See how they all move on together; what purpose in their stride! It is the same all over the place--men in pairs, pursuing or striking, and small bent boys following. Tell me what they are doing. Are they tacticians?”

“No,” said the other, “they are merely playing golf. That plain is called a golf links. There are thousands like that in England. It is a game, a recreation. These men are resting, recreating. You cannot see it because it is so small, but there is a little white ball which they hit.”

“The pursuit has no other purpose?” asked the foreigner. “It teaches nothing? It does not lead to military skill?”

“No.”

“But don’t the boys play too?”

“Oh, no. They only carry.”

The foreigner was silent for a while, and then he pointed again. “See,” he said, “that field with the white figures. I have noticed so many. What are they doing? One man runs to a spot and waves his arm; another, some distance away, waves a club at something. Then he runs and another runs. They cross. They cross again. Some of the other figures run too. What does that mean? That surely is practice for warfare?”

“No,” said the other, “that is cricket. Cricket is also a game. There are tens of thousands of fields like that all over England. They are merely playing for amusement. The man who waved his arm bowled a ball; the man who waved his club hit it. You cannot see the ball, but it is there.”

The stranger was silent again. A little later he drew attention to another field. “What is that?” he said. “There are men and girls with clubs all running among each other. Surely that is war. See how they smite! What Amazons! No wonder England leads the way!”

“No,” said the other, “that is hockey. Another game.”

“And is there a ball there too?” he asked.

“Yes,” was the reply, “a ball.”

“But see the garden of that house,” he remarked; “that is not hockey. There are only four, but two are women. They also leap about and run and wave their arms. Is there a ball there?”

“Yes,” was the reply, “there is a ball there. That is lawn tennis.”

“But the white lines,” he said. “Is not that, perhaps, out-door mathematics? That surely may help to serious things?”

“No,” the other replied, “only another game. There are millions of such gardens in England with similar lines.”

“Yes,” he said, for they were then over Surbiton, “I see them at this moment by the hundred.”

They passed on to London. It was at that time of September when football and cricket overlap, and there was not only a crowded cricket match at the Oval but an even more crowded football match at Blackheath.

The foreigner caught sight of the Oval first. “Ah,” he said, “you deceived me. For here is your cricket again, played amid a vast concourse. How can you call it a game? These crowds would not come to see a game played, but would play one themselves. It must be more than you said; it must be a form of tactics that can help to retain England’s supremacy, and these men are here to learn.”

“No,” said the other, “no. It is just a game. In England we not only like to play games, but to see them played.”

It was then that the stranger noticed Blackheath. “Ah, now I have you!” he cried. “Here is another field and another crowd; but this is surely a battle. See how they dash at each other. And yes, look, one of them has had his head cut off and the other kicks it. Splendid!”

“No,” said the other, “that is no head, that is a ball. Just a ball. It is a game, like the others.”

He groaned. “Then I cannot see,” he said at last, “how England won her victories and became supreme.”

“Ah,” said the other, “at the time that England was winning her victories and climbing into supremacy, the ball was not her master.”

Four Fables

I.--THE STOPPED CLOCK

Once upon a time there was a discredited politician whose nostrums no longer took any one in. And being thrown out of office he wandered about, seeking, like many men before him, for comfort and consolation among his inferiors. These, however, failing him, he passed on to the lower animals, and from them to the inanimate, until he came one day to a clock which, the works having been removed, consisted only of a case, a face, and two hands.

“Ha,” said the politician, as he stood before it, “at last I have found something beyond question and argument more useless than myself. For you, my friend, are done. I, at any rate, still have life and movement. I can speak and act; I have a function still to perform in the world; whereas you are a mockery and a sham.”

“Kindly,” the clock replied, “refrain from associating me with yourself. I decline the comparison. Lifeless I may be, but not useless. For two separate moments every day I am absolutely right, and for some minutes approximately right; whereas you, sir, are, have been, and will be, consistently wrong.”

II.--TRUTH AND ANOTHER

She came towards me rather dubiously, as though not sure of her reception.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Truth,” she said.

I apologized for not having realized it.

“Never mind,” she said wearily, “hardly anyone knows me. I’m always having to explain who I am, and lots of people don’t understand then.”

A little later I met her again.

“Well I shan’t make any mistake this time,” I said. “How are you, Miss Truth?”

“You are misinformed,” she replied coldly; “my name is Libel.”

“But you’re exactly like Truth,” I exclaimed--“exactly!”

“Hush!” she said.

III.--THE EXEMPLAR

Once upon a time there was a little boy who had a fit of naughtiness. He refused to obey his nurse and was, as she said afterwards, that obstreperous that her life for about half an hour was a burden. At last, just as she was in despair, a robin fluttered to the window-sill of the nursery and perched on it, peeping in.

“There,” said the nurse, “look at that dear little birdie come to see what all the trouble’s about. He’s never refused to have his face washed and made clean, I know. I’d be ashamed to cry and scream before a little pretty innocent like that, that I would.”

Now this robin, as it happened, was a poisonously wicked little bird. He was greedy and jealous and spiteful. He continually fought other and weaker birds and took away their food; he pecked sparrows and tyrannized over tits. He habitually ate too much; and quite early in life he had assisted his brothers and sisters in putting both their parents to death.

None the less the spectacle of his pretty red breast and bright eye shamed and soothed the little boy so that he became quite good again.

IV.--THE GOOD MAN AND CUPID

There was once a good and worthy man, a minister of the gospel and an altruist of intense activity, who was grievously distressed by the unhappy marriages in his neighbourhood. He saw young men who ought (as he thought) to marry Jane and Eliza leading to the altar Violet and Ermyntrude; and young women fitted to be wise helpmates to John and Richard setting their caps at Reginald and Hughie; the result being the usual bickerings and dissatisfactions of the ill-matched.

The matter troubled him so seriously that he joined a toxophilite club and took lessons in archery until he could hit the gold at five hundred yards twenty times in succession; and having reached this state of proficiency he called on Dan Cupid and expressed to that mischievous and uncovered boy his disapproval of the happy-go-lucky way in which he pulled his bow-string and directed his arrows, almost without looking. He then offered himself to shoot in Cupid’s stead.

“There may be something in what you say,” Cupid replied; “at any rate you seem to be older and graver and possibly wiser than I, and you certainly wear more clothes. Take the bow and try.”

The good man did so, and the next day or so he was very busy conscientiously transfixing the hearts of his parishioners. Such was the accuracy of his aim that he made only one slip, and that was when, in his endeavours to unite by puncture the cardiac penumbras of pretty little Lizzie Porter and Mr. Godfrey Bloom, his eye faltered, and instead Mr. Godfrey Bloom was paired with the exceedingly unprepossessing Dorothea Atkins, who happened to be standing close by.

The good man did all that was possible to repair the mischief which he felt his lapse has caused; but it was in vain, and Miss Lizzie Porter never regained her chance.

“Well,” said Cupid, as he strolled into the good man’s garden a few years after, “how has your shooting turned out? Perfectly, I suppose.”

“No,” the good man replied with a sigh, “I am afraid not. As a matter of fact the only happy brace in the whole bag are Godfrey and Dorothea.”

“Quite so,” said the little fellow. “I expected it. I always felt those archery lessons were a mistake.”

“Then what is to be done?” asked the good man. “What is to be done if neither taking aim nor shooting at random avails?”

“Nothing,” said Cupid as he fitted an arrow to the string. “Nothing. One just goes on shooting and hopes for the best.”

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Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.

Chapter headings were followed by a varying number of small, decorative leaves. Those leaves are not indicated in the Plain Text version of this eBook, and are shown in different ways in the HTML and ereader versions.

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