Chapter I: Part 1

By Samuel M. Crothers

THE PARDONER’S WALLET. 12mo, $1.25, _net_. Postage extra.

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THE PARDONER’S WALLET

The Pardoner’s
Wallet

BY SAMUEL McCHORD CROTHERS

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

The Riverside Press, Cambridge

1905

COPYRIGHT 1905 BY SAMUEL McCHORD CROTHERS

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

_Published November 1905_

TO KATHARINE

WITH WHOM THESE THINGS HAVE
BEEN TALKED OVER

PREFACE

There is a well-grounded prejudice against a volume which exhibits no marks of design and which turns out to be only a fortuitous collection of essays. It is felt that the chapters brought together under the cover of a single book should have something in common. When one sees a number of subjects, each standing aloof from the others, he predicts infelicity. It suggests incompatibility of temper.

The essays brought together in “the Pardoner’s Wallet” have at least a certain community of interest. They treat of aspects of human nature which, while open to friendly criticism, are excusable. If the author sometimes touches upon the foibles of his betters, he at least has the grace to know that they are his betters.

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE PARDONER 1

UNSEASONABLE VIRTUES 23

AN HOUR WITH OUR PREJUDICES 46

HOW TO KNOW THE FALLACIES 82

THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE PEACEMAKERS 119

THE LAND OF THE LARGE AND CHARITABLE
AIR 140

A COMMUNITY OF HUMORISTS 176

A SAINT RECANONIZED 199

AS HE SEES HIMSELF 221

A MAN UNDER ENCHANTMENT 249

THE CRUELTY OF GOOD PEOPLE 267

THE PARDONER

With him ther rood a gentil Pardoner
Of Rouncival, his freend and his compeer,
That streight was comen fro the Court of Rome.

* * * * *

A vernicle hadde he sowed on his cappe
His walet lay biforn him in his lappe
Bretful of pardoun.

I have no plea to make for this fourteenth-century pardoner. He was an impudent vagabond, trafficking in damaged goods. One did not need to be a Lollard in order to see that he was a reprehensible character. Discerning persons in need of relics would go to responsible dealers where they could be assured of getting their money’s worth. This glib-tongued fellow peddling religious articles from door to door lived on the credulity of untraveled country people. He took advantage of their weaknesses. Many a good wife would purchase a pardon she had no need of, simply because he offered it as a bargain. This was all wrong. We all know how the business of indulgence-selling was overdone. There was a general loss of confidence on the part of the purchasing public; and at last in the days of the too enterprising Tetzel there came a disastrous slump. There was no market for pardons, even of the gilt-edged varieties. Since then very little has been doing in this line, at least among the northern nations.

The pardoner richly deserved his fate. And yet there are times when one would give something to see the merry knave coming down the road.

I suppose that the nature of each individual has its point of moral saturation. When this point is reached, it is of no use to continue exhortation or rebuke or any kind of didactic effort. Even the finest quality of righteous indignation will no longer soak in. With me the point of moral saturation comes when I attend successively more meetings of a reformatory and denunciatory character than nature intended me to profit by. If they are well distributed in point of time, I can take in a considerable number of good causes and earnestly reprobate an equal number of crying evils. But there is a certain monotony of rebuke which I am sure is not beneficial to persons of my disposition. That some things are wrong I admit, but when I am peremptorily ordered to believe that everything is wrong, it arouses in me a certain obstinacy of contradiction. I might be led to such a belief, but I will not be driven to it. I rebel against those censors of manners and morals who treat all human imperfectnesses with equal rigor. To relax even for an instant the righteous frown over the things that are going wrong, into an indulgent smile at the things that are not nearly so bad as they seem, is in their eyes nothing less than compounding a felony. If they would allow proper intervals between protests, so that the conscience could cool down, all would be well. But this is just what they will not allow. The wheels must go round without intermission until progress is stopped by the disagreeable accident of “a hot box.”

You remember after Mrs. Proudie had given her guests a severe lesson in social ethics, the Signora asked in her hearing,--

“‘Is she always like this?’

“‘Yes--always--madam,’ said Mrs. Proudie, returning; ‘always the same--always equally adverse to impropriety of conduct of every description.’”

Mrs. Proudie was an excellent woman according to her light, yet Barchester would have been a happier place to live in had her light been less constant. A little flicker now and then, a momentary relief from the glare, would have been appreciated.

It is when the note of personal responsibility has been forced beyond my ability that I feel beneath my inherited Puritanism the stirring of a vague Papistry. Instead of joining another protesting society beginning with that feverish particle “anti,” how delightful it would be to go out and dicker with a well-conditioned pardoner

Streight comen fro the Court of Rome!

Wearied with diatribes and resolutions, one falls back upon the guileless bargainings of Simple Simon.

“Let me taste your ware,” say I.

“Show me first your penny,” says the pardoner.

There is a renewal of one’s youth in this immortal repartee.

There is no greater relief than to go out and buy something, especially if one can buy it cheap. A great part of the attractiveness of the mediæval indulgences lay in the fact that you could buy them. They would not have seemed the same if they had been given away, or if you had to work them out like a road tax. To go out and buy a little heart’s ease was an enticement.

Then again, the natural man, when he has to do with an institution, is in a passive rather than in an active mood. If it is instituted for his betterment, he says, “Let it better me.” It seems too bad that in the end it should throw all the responsibility back upon himself.

A delightful old English traveler criticises the methods of transportation he found in vogue in parts of Germany. He says that on the Rhine it was customary to make the passengers do the rowing. “Their custome is that the passengers must exercise themselves with oares and rowing, _alternis vicibus_, a couple together. So that the master of the boate (who methinks in honestie ought either to do it himself or to procure some others to do it for him) never roweth but when his turne commeth. This exercise both for recreation and health sake is I confesse very convenient for man. But to be tied unto it by way of strict necessitie when one payeth well for his passage was a thing that did not a little distaste my humour.”

This is the trouble which many of us find in the modern methods of doing good. There are all sorts of organizations which promise well. But no sooner have we embarked on a worthy undertaking than we find that we are expected to work our passage. The officers of the boat disclaim all further responsibility, leaving that to private judgment. It is the true Protestant way and it works excellently well, when it works at all. It offers a fine challenge to disinterested virtue. But there are occasions when the natural man rebels. To have so much put upon him doth “not a little distaste his humour.” He longs for the good old times when there were thinkers who were not above their business, and who when he was at his wit’s end would do his thinking for him. It’s the same way with being excused for his shortcomings. Of course on a pinch he can excuse himself, but he generally makes a pretty poor job of it. It would be much more satisfactory to have a duly authorized person who, for a consideration, would assume the whole responsibility. Of course if he had done something that was really unpardonable, that would be another matter. The law would have to take its course. But there are a great many venial transgressions. What he wants is some one who can assure him that they are venial.

Let no good Protestant take offense at the finding of a Pardoner’s Wallet in this twentieth century. It is only a wallet containing tentative suggestions concerning things pardonable. Nothing is authoritatively signed and sealed.

Of one thing let the good Protestant take notice. I would have my pardoner know his place. He must not meddle with things too high for him. He has no right to deal with the graver sins or to speak for a higher power. He must not speak even in the name of the Church, which has worthier spokesmen than he. In a book on indulgences the author says, “On the subject of elongated, centenary, and millenary pardons, it would take too much space to enlarge.” I should rule out all such ambitious plans, not only from lack of space but on conscientious grounds.

My pardoner should confine himself to a more modest task. He should be the spokesman not of any ecclesiastical power, but only of ordinary and errant human nature. There are sins against eternal law that must at all times be taken seriously. The trouble with us poor mortals is that, even in our remorse, we do not take very long views. The judgment that seems most terrible to us is that of the people who live next door. The transgressions which loom largest are offenses against social conventions and against our own sensitive vanity. The pangs of remorse for an act of remembered awkwardness are likely to be more poignant than those which come as retribution for an acknowledged crime.

Here is ample room for a present-day pardoner. I should like to hear him make the cheery proclamation of his trade.

“Good friends: You are not what you would like to be. You are not what you think you are. You are not what your neighbors think you are,--or rather, you are not what you think your neighbors think you are. Your foibles, your peccadillos, your fallacies, and your prejudices are more numerous than you imagine. But take heart of grace, good people. These things are not unpardonable. We indulgencers have learned to make allowances for human nature. Let’s see what’s in my wallet! No crowding! Each will be served in his turn.”

* * * * *

If I were a duly licensed pardoner, I should have a number of nicely engraved indulgences for what are called sins of omission. Not that I should attempt to extenuate the graver sort. I should not hold out false hopes to thankless sons or indifferent husbands. To be followed by such riff-raff would spoil my trade with the better classes. I should not have anything in my wallet for the acrimonious critic, who brings a railing accusation against his neighbor, and omits to sign his name. Some omissions are unpardonable.

I should, at the beginning, confine my traffic to those sins which easily beset conscientious persons about half past two in the morning. We have warrant for thinking that the sleep of the just is refreshing. This is doubtless true of the completely just; but with the just man in the making it is frequently otherwise. There is a stage in his strenuous moral career which is conducive to insomnia.

Having gone to sleep because he was tired, he presently awakes for the same reason. He is, however, only half awake. Those kindly comforters, Common-sense, Humor, and Self-esteem, whose function it is to keep him on reasonably good terms with himself while he is doing his necessary work, are still dozing.

Then Conscience appears,--a terrible apparition. There is a vague menace in her glance. The poor wretch cowers beneath it. Then is unrolled the lengthening list of the things left undone which ought to have been done. Every unwritten letter and uncalled call and unattended committee meeting and unread report emerges from the vasty deep and adds its burden of unutterable guilt. The Thing That Was Not Worth Doing arises and demands with insatiate energy that it be done at once. The Thing Half-done, because there was no time to finish it, appears with wan face accusing him of its untimely taking off. The Stitch not Taken in Time appears with its pitiful ninefold progeny all doomed because of a moment’s inattention. It seems that his moral raiment, instead of being put together with an eye to permanency, has been stitched on a single-thread machine and the end of the seam never properly fastened. Now he is pulling at the thread, and he sees the whole fabric unraveling before his eyes.

His past existence looms before him as a battlefield with a perpetual conflict of duties,--each duty cruelly slain by its brother duty. While the wailing of these poor ghosts is in his ears he cannot rest. And yet he knows full well that at half past two in the morning the one inexorable duty is that he should go to sleep. Conscience points to this as another duty left undone. Then begins a new cycle of self-reproach.

At such times the sight of an indulgence neatly framed hanging upon the bedroom wall would be worth more than it would cost. It would save doctor’s bills.

Even in our waking hours there is a tendency for the sins of omission and the sorrows of omission to pile up in monstrous fashion. There is a curious ingenuity which some persons have in loading themselves with burdens which do not belong to them, and in extracting melancholy reflections out of their good fortune. They will not frankly accept a blessing in its own proper form,--it must come to them in a mournful disguise. Poets seem particularly subject to these inversions of feeling. Here are some lines entitled “Two Sorrows:”--

Before Love came my eyes were dim with tears
Because I had not known her gentle face.
Softly I said, “But when across the years
Her smile illumes the darkness of my place,
All grief from my poor heart she will efface.”

Now Love is mine--she walks with me for aye
Down paths of primrose and blue violet,
But on my heart at every close of day
A grief more keen than my old grief is set.
I weep for those who have not found Love yet.

There is a fine altruism about this sentiment that one cannot but respect; yet I should hate to live with a person who felt that way. One would not venture on any little kindness for fear of opening a new floodgate of tears.

I should feel like urging another point of view. It is true that you are happy, happier than you deserve. But don’t get morbid about it; take it cheerfully. It’s not your fault. It seems selfish, you say, to enjoy your blessings when there aren’t enough to go round among all your fellow beings. Why, my dear fellow, that’s the only way to make them go around. What if, theoretically, it is a little selfish? We will readily pardon that for the sake of the satisfaction we get out of seeing you have a good time. We much prefer that you should allow us to sympathize with you in your happiness, rather than that you should inflict upon us too much sympathy for our deprivations.

* * * * *

There is opportunity for a thriving trade in indulgences for necessarily slighted work. I emphasize the idea of necessity, for I am aware of the danger of gross abuse if poets and painters should get the notion that they may find easy absolution for the sin of offering to the public something less than their best. Their best is none too good. We must not, through misdirected charity, lower the standards of self-respecting artists.

But some of us are not artists. The ordinary man is compelled to spend most of his time on pot-boilers of one kind or another. When the pot is merrily boiling, and all the odds and ends are being mingled in a savory stew, I would allow the ordinary man some satisfaction. As fingers were made before forks, so mediocrity was made before genius. Has mediocrity no right to enjoy its own work, just because it is not the very best?

We of the commonalty who are fitted to live happily in the comparative degree, allow ourselves to be bullied by the superlative. There are uneasy spirits who trouble Israel. They continually quote the maxim that whatever is worth doing is worth doing well. It is a good maxim in its way, and causes no particular hardship until our eyes are opened and we see what it means to do anything superlatively well. When we are shown by example the technical excellence which is possible in the simplest forms of activity, and the extent to which we fall short, we are appalled. It is a wonder that we keep going at all when we consider the slovenly way we breathe. And yet breathing, though it well might engage all our attention, is only one of the things we have to do.

I attribute a good deal of the sense of stress in modern life to the new standards of excellence that are set in regard to the multifarious activities which make up our daily lives. We have to do a hundred different things. This is not particularly trying so long as it is merely touch and go. In our amateurish way we rather enjoy the variety. But when a hundred experts beset us, each one of whom has made a life study of a particular act, we are bowed in contrition. There is no good in us but good intentions, and they cannot save us. Our life story is summed up like that of the unfortunate sparrow in the tragical history of Cock Robin:

His aim then he took
But he took it not right.

Our capacity for imperfectness seems absolutely unlimited. The effort taken to achieve success in one direction is from another point of view a dissipation of energy. It is so much power withdrawn from another possible achievement. The most versatile men do not do all things equally well, and while the world calls them successful they are inwardly conscious of their manifold failures. Mr. Balfour as Prime Minister of the British Empire has had much to gratify his ambition, but he takes the public into his confidence and confesses that he is a bitterly disappointed man. For, in addition to other accomplishments, he plays golf, a game that develops a conscience of its own. He plays well, but his conscience tells him that he does not play as well as he might. “I belong,” he says, “to that unhappy class of beings forever pursued by remorse, who are conscious that they threw away in youth opportunities that were open to them of beginning golf at a time of life when alone the muscles can be attuned to the full perfection required by the most difficult game that perhaps exists.”

Surely there must be a way by which such vain regrets may be stilled. Life has its inevitable compromises. We cannot always be at our best. Take such a simple matter as that of masticating our food. Before I had given much thought to it, I should have said that it was something worth doing and worth doing well. When I learned that Mr. Gladstone was accustomed to chew each morsel of food thirty-two times, I thought it greatly to his credit. For a man who had so many other things to do, that seemed enough.

But when I read a book of some three hundred pages containing the whole duty of man in regard to chewing, I was disheartened. Mr. Gladstone appeared to be a mere tyro guilty of bolting his food. “The author has found that one fifth of the midway section of the garden young onion, sometimes called shallot, has required seven hundred and twenty-two mastications before disappearing through involuntary swallowing.”

The author evidently did his whole duty by that young onion, and yet I should have pardoned him if he had done something less. That doctrine of his about involuntary swallowing being the only kind that is morally justifiable, seems to me to be too austere. If we have to swallow in the end, why not show a cheerful willingness?

* * * * *

Not only do those need comfort who do less than is expected of them, those who do more are often in an equally sorry plight. Their excellences make them obnoxious to their neighbors, and are treated as unpardonable offenses. I would have a special line of indulgences for that class of people known as the “unco guid.” I know no persons more in need of charity, and who get so little of it. Every man’s hand is against them, especially every hand that wields the pen of a ready writer. They seem predestinated to literary reprobation, and that without regard to their genuinely good works or to their continuance in the same. And yet the whole extent of their crime is that, being in some respects better than their neighbors, they are painfully aware of the fact. It is because they have tasted of the forbidden knowledge of their own moral superiority that their fall is deemed irremediable.

I confess that, in spite of all that has been said against them, I have a tender feeling for them. They are persecuted for self-righteousness without the benefit of any beatitude. Why should we consider it unpardonable to be fully cognizant of one’s undoubted virtues? Of course unconscious virtue is the more paradisiacal, while conscious virtue often rubs one the wrong way. But while there are so many worse things in the world, why should we mind a little thing like that?

We listen to Dumas’ swashbuckling heroes recounting their transgressions. We know that they are not so bad as they would have us believe, but we think no worse of them for that. But let a thoroughly respectable man draw attention to his own fine qualities, and we treat every deviation from exact fact as a crime. When he indulges in some exaggeration and pictures himself as rather better than he is, we cry, “Hypocrite!” If he claims possession of some single virtue which does not, in our judgment, harmonize with some of his other characteristics, we treat him as if he had stolen it. And yet, poor fellow! he may have come honestly by this bit of finery, though he has not been able to get other things to match it. All this is unkind.

Whatever one may think of the “unco guid,” every right-minded person must agree with me that something ought to be done for the peace of mind of the quiet, respectable, good people who bear the heat and burden of the day. I have in mind the people who pay taxes, and build homes, and support churches and schools and hospitals, and now and then go to the theatre. They are as likely as not to be moderately well to do, and if they are not, nobody knows it. When times are hard with them, they keep their own counsels and go about with head erect and the best foot forward. You may see multitudes of these people every day.

As a class, these people are sadly put upon. They are criticised not only for their own shortcomings, but for those of all their irresponsible fellow citizens. If anything goes wrong they are sure to hear about it, for they listen to sermons, and read the newspapers, and attend meetings. No reformer can be truly eloquent who does not point his finger at his hearer, and say, “Thou art the man!” Now, unfortunately, the real delinquents are usually absent, and the right-minded, conscientious hearer of the word, who is doing all he can for social regeneration, even to the verge of nervous prostration, has to act as substitute. He has been so often assured that he is the guilty man that, by and by, he comes to believe it.

He walks to church with his family only to be told that it is his fault, and the fault of those like him, that other people have gone off in their automobiles. Perhaps, if he had walked differently, he might have made church-going more attractive to them. The evils of intemperance are laid at his door. It is not worth while to blame the drunkard or the saloon-keeper; they are not within ear-shot. As to pauperism and vice, every one knows that they arise from social conditions; and pray who is responsible for these conditions unless it be the meek man who sits in the pew,--at least, he is the only one who can readily be made to assume the responsibility.

There is something wholesome in all this if it be not overdone. I, myself, like to have my fling at the man who is trying to do his duty, and to twit him occasionally for not doing more. It keeps him from self-righteousness. But sometimes it is carried too far, and the poor man staggers under a load of vicarious guilt.

I especially hate to see the man who is trying to do his duty given over to the censures of those who do not try. There is something very harsh in the judgment of the ne’er-do-well upon his well-to-do brother. His attitude is the extreme of phariseeism, as he contrasts his own generous and care-free nature with the pickayunish prudence which he scorns. To be sure, his brother in the end pays his debts for him, but he does it with a narrow scrutiny which robs the act of its natural charm. His acts of helpfulness are marred by a tendency to didacticism. All these things are laid up against him.

But allowance should be made for the difference in condition. Ne’er-do-wellness is an expansive state. There are no natural limits to it. It develops broad views, and its peculiar virtues have a free field. It is different with well-to-doness, which is a precarious condition with a very narrow margin of safety. The ne’er-do-well can afford to be generous, seeing that his generosity costs him nothing. He is free from all belittling calculations necessary to those who are compelled to adjust means to ends,--he is indifferent to ends and he has no means.

When the morally responsible person finds himself too much put upon, I would grant him a generous indulgence. After all, I would tell him, the prudential virtues are not so bad. It is a good deal of an achievement to make both ends meet. I am not disposed to be too hard on those who accomplish this, even though I may think a little fullness in their moral garments might be more becoming.

I should also make provision for the pardon of those good people who are harshly judged because their virtues are unseasonable. But their case involves delicate considerations that can best be treated in another chapter.

UNSEASONABLE VIRTUES

There are certain philosophers who have fallen into the habit of speaking slightingly of Time and Space. Time, they say, is only a poor concept of ours corresponding to no ultimate reality, and Space is little better. They are merely mental receptacles into which we put our sensations. We are assured that could we get at the right point of view we should see that real existence is timeless. Of course we cannot get at the right point of view, but that does not matter.

It is easy to understand how philosophers can talk in that way, for familiarity with great subjects breeds contempt; but we of the laity cannot dismiss either Time or Space so cavalierly. Having once acquired the time-habit, it is difficult to see how we could live without it. We are accustomed to use the minutes and hours as stepping-stones, and we pick our way from one to another. If it were not for them, we should find ourselves at once beyond our depth. It is the succession of events which makes them interesting. There is a delightful transitoriness about everything, and yet the sense that there is more where it all comes from. To the unsophisticated mind Eternity is not the negation of Time; it is having all the time one wants. And why may not the unsophisticated mind be as nearly right in such matters as any other?

In a timeless existence there would be no distinction between now and then, before and after. Yesterdays and to-days would be merged in one featureless Forever. When we met one another it would be impertinent to ask, “How do you do?” The chilling answer would be: “I do not do; I am.” There would be nothing more to say to one who had reduced his being to such bare metaphysical first principles.

I much prefer living in Time, where there are circumstances and incidents to give variety to existence. There is a dramatic instinct in all of us that must be satisfied. We watch with keen interest for what is coming next. We would rather have long waits than to have no shifting of the scenes, and all the actors on the stage at once, doing nothing.

An open-minded editor prints the following question from an anxious reader in regard to a serial story appearing in his paper: “Does it make any difference in reading the serial whether I begin with Saturday’s chapter and read backward toward Monday, or should the tale be read as the chapters appear?”

The editor assures his subscriber that the story is of such uniform excellence that it would read well in either direction. In practical affairs our dramatic instinct will not allow us this latitude. We insist upon certain sequences. There is an expectancy that one thing will lead up to another. We do not take kindly to an anti-climax or to an anachronism. The Hebrew sage declares, “He hath made everything beautiful in his time.” That is in the right time, but alas for the beautiful thing that falls upon the wrong time! It is bewitched beyond all recognition by the old necromancer who has power to make “ancient good uncouth.”

It is just here that charity requires that we should discriminate. There is a situation that demands the services of a kind-hearted indulgencer. Ethics has to do with two kinds of offenses: one is against the eternal and unchanging standards of right and wrong, and the other against the perpetually varying conditions of the passing day. We are continually confusing the two. We visit upon the ancient uncouth good which comes honestly stumbling on its belated journey toward the perfect, all the condemnation that properly belongs to willful evil. It is lucky if it gets off so easily as that, for we are likely to add the pains and penalties which belong to hypocritical pretense. As for a premature kind of goodness coming before there is time properly to classify it, that must expect martyrdom. Something of the old feeling about strangers still survives in us. We think it safer to treat the stranger as an enemy. If he survives our attacks we may make friends with him.

Those good people who, in their devotion to their own ideals, have ignored all considerations of timeliness, have usually passed through sore tribulations. They have been the victims of cruel misunderstandings. Such, for example, was Saint Cerbonius. Cerbonius is one of the October saints. October is a good month for saints. The ecclesiastical calendar gives us a sense of spiritual mellowness and fruitfulness. The virtues celebrated are without the acidity which belongs to some other seasons: witness Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Teresa, Saint Luke, the beloved physician, Saint John Capistran, of whom it is written, “he had a singular talent for reconciling inveterate enemies and inducing them to love one another.” Cerbonius has a modest place in this autumnal brotherhood; indeed, in some Lives of the Saints, he is not even mentioned, and yet he had the true October spirit. Nevertheless, his good was evil spoken of, and he came near to excommunication, and all because of his divergence from popular custom in the matter of time.

It seems that he lived towards the end of the sixth century, and that he was bishop of Piombino. Very soon a great scandal arose, for it was declared that the bishop was neglecting his duties. At the accustomed hour the citizens came to the cathedral for their devotions, only to find the chancel devoid of clergy. Cerbonius and his priests were at that moment comfortably seated at breakfast. Each succeeding morning witnessed the same scene. The bishop was evidently an infidel scoffing at the rites of religion. Appeal was made to Rome, and legates were appointed who confirmed the astounding rumors. At last Cerbonius went to Rome to plead his cause; but only by a special miracle was his character cleared. The miracle induced the authorities to look into the matter more carefully, and it was found that Cerbonius, instead of neglecting his duties, had been carried away by holy zeal. While the people of Piombino were still in their beds, Cerbonius and his clergy would be celebrating mass. As for breakfast, that was quite late in the day.

It is easy to be wise after the event, and now that the matter has been cleared up it is evident that all the religion was not on one side. Taking a large view of the subject, we see that in the course of the twenty-four hours the bishop spent as much time in the church as the most scrupulous parishioner could ask. But it was just this large view that they were unwilling to take. With them it was now or never. They judged his character by the cross-section which they took at one particular hour.

I suppose that, had I lived in Piombino, I should have been a moderate anti-Cerbonian. Cerbonius was in error, but not in mortal sin. He was guilty of a heresy that disturbed the peace of the church,--that of early rising. So long as early rising is held only as a creed for substance of doctrine and set forth as a counsel of perfection, it may be tolerated, but when the creed becomes a deed it awakens fanatical opposition. This breeds schism. A person cannot be popular who gets the reputation of being a human alarm clock. The primitive instinct in regard to an alarm clock is to stop it. If Cerbonius had possessed the tact necessary to a man in his position, he would not only have done his duty, but he would have done it at the time most convenient to the greatest number. His virtue was unseasonable; but between a man of unseasonable virtue and an abandoned character who has no virtue at all, there is a great difference. It is just this difference which the majority of people will not see. They make no distinction between one who deliberately offends against the eternal verities and one who accidentally tramples upon a temporary verity that he didn’t know was there.

Most of our quarrels do not concern absolute right and wrong; they arise from disputes about the time of day. Two persons may have the same qualities and convictions and yet never agree. An ironical fate sets them at cross purposes and they never meet without irritating contradictions. It is all because their moods do not synchronize. One is always a little too slow, the other a little too fast. When one is in fine fettle the other is just beginning to get tired. They are equally serious, but never on the same occasion, and so each accuses the other of heartless frivolity. They have an equal appreciation of a pleasantry, but they never see it at the same instant. One gives it an uproarious welcome when the other is speeding the parting guest.

Two quick-tempered people may live together very comfortably so long as they lose their tempers simultaneously; they are then ready to make up at the same time. They get on like an automobile, by a series of small explosions accurately timed. But when a quick-tempered person is unequally yoked with one who is slow to wrath, the case is difficult. The slowness causes continual apprehension. The fuse burns so deliberately that it seems to have gone out and then the explosion comes. In such cases there can be no adequate explanation. The offender would apologize if he could remember what the offense was, and he doesn’t dare to ask.

Said one theologian to another: “The difference between us is that your God is my Devil.” This involved more than the mere matter of nomenclature. It upset the spiritual time-table and caused disastrous collisions. When one good man set forth valiantly to fight the Devil, the other would charge him with disturbing his worship.

The fact that one man’s work is another man’s play is equally fruitful in misunderstandings. The proverbial irritability of the literary and artistic tribes arises in part from this cause. They feel that they are never taken seriously. When we go to a good play we find it so easy to be amused that we do not realize what hard work it is for those whose business it is to be amusing. The better the work, the more effortless it seems to us. On a summer afternoon we take up a novel in a mood which to the conscientious novelist seems sacrilege. He has thrown all the earnestness of his nature into it, and he wants his message to be received in the same spirit. We have earnestness of nature too, but we have expended it in other directions. Having finished our work, we take our rest by reading his. It is a pleasant way to pass the time. This enrages the novelist, and he writes essays to rebuke us. He calls us Philistines and other hard names, and says that we are incapable of appreciating literary art.

But what is our offense? We have used his work for our own purpose, which was to rest our minds. We got out of it what at the time we needed. Does he not act in very much the same way? Did we not see him at the town-meeting when a very serious question concerning the management of the town poor-house was to be settled? It was a time when every good citizen should have shown his interest by speaking an earnest word. Unmindful of all this, he sat through the meeting with the air of an amused outsider. He paid little attention to the weighty arguments of the selectmen, but noted down all their slips in grammar. He confessed unblushingly that he attended the meeting simply to get a little local color. What is to become of the country when a tax-payer will take the duties of citizenship so lightly?

These recriminations go on endlessly. Because we do not see certain qualities in action, we deny their existence. The owl has a reputation for sedentary habits and unpractical wisdom, simply because he keeps different business hours from those to which we are accustomed. Could we look in on him during the rush time, we would find him a hustling fellow. He has no time to waste on unremunerative meditation. This is his busy night. How ridiculous is the sleepiness of the greater part of the animal world! There is the lark nodding for hours on his perch. They say he never really wakes up--at least, nobody has seen him awake.

* * * * *

There is a pedagogical theory according to which each individual in his early life repeats quite accurately the history of mankind up to date. He passes through all the successive stages in the history of the race, with a few extra flourishes now and then to indicate the surprises which the future may have in store for us. The history of civilization becomes, for the initiated, the rehearsal of the intensely interesting drama of the nursery and the schoolroom. It lacks the delicacy of the finished performance, but it presents the argument clearly enough and suggests the necessary stage business. The young lady who attempts to guide a group of reluctant young cave-dwellers from one period in human culture to another is not surprised at any of their tantrums. Her only anxiety is lest some form of barbarism appropriate to their condition may have been skipped. Her chief function is like that of the chorus in the Greek tragedy, to explain to the audience each dramatic situation as it unfolds.

I should not like to take the responsibility of running such an excellent theory into the ground, yet it does seem to me that it might be carried further. Granted that childhood is innocent savagery and that adolescence is gloriously barbaric, what is the matter with mature life? Does it not have any remnants of primitiveness? Does not Tennyson write of “the gray barbarian”?

The transitions from primitive savagery to civilization which took the race centuries to accomplish are repeated by the individual, not once but many times. After we get the knack of it, we can run over the alphabet of human progress backwards as well as forwards.

Exit Troglodyte. Enter Philosopher discoursing on disinterested virtue. Reënter Troglodyte. Such dramatic transformations may be expected by merely changing the subject of the conversation.

I remember sitting, one Sunday afternoon, on a vine-covered piazza reading to a thoughtful and irascible friend. The book was Martineau’s “Endeavors after the Christian Life.” In the middle of the second discourse my friend’s dog rushed into the street to attack the dog of a passer-by. It was one of those sudden and unpredictable antipathies to which the members of the canine race are subject. My friend, instead of preserving a dignified neutrality, rushed into the fray in the spirit of offensive partisanship, and instantly became involved in an altercation with the gentleman on the sidewalk. Canes were brandished, fierce threats were exchanged, and only by the greatest efforts were the Homeric heroes separated. Returning to his chair, my friend handed me the book, saying, “Now let us go on with our religion.” The religion went on as placidly as aforetime. There was no sense of confusion. The wrath of Achilles did not disturb the calm spirituality of Martineau. Each held the centre of the stage for his own moment, and there was no troublesome attempt to harmonize them. Why should there be? Martineau was not talking about dogs.

I know no greater luxury than that of thinking well of my fellow-men. It is a luxury which a person in narrow circumstances, who is compelled to live within the limits of strict veracity, sometimes feels to be beyond his means. Yet I think it no harm to indulge in a little extravagance in this direction. The best device for seeing all sorts and conditions of men to advantage is to arrange them in their proper chronological order.

For years it was the custom to speak disparagingly of the “poor whites” of our Southern mountains. Shut off from the main currents of modern life, they seemed unpardonably unprogressive. They were treated as mere degenerates. At last, however, a keener and kindlier observer hit upon a happy phrase. These isolated mountaineers, he said, have retained the characteristic habits of a former generation. They are our “contemporary ancestors.” Instantly everything was put in a more favorable light; for we all are disposed to see the good points in our ancestors. After all, the whole offense with which these mountain people are charged is that they are behind the times. In our bona-fide contemporaries this is a grave fault, but in our ancestors it is pardonable. We do not expect them to live up to our standards, and so we give them credit for living up to their own.

In this case we agree to consider fifty miles of mountain roads, if they be sufficiently bad, as the equivalent of rather more than a hundred years of time. Behind the barrier the twentieth century does not yet exist. Many things may still be winked at for which the later generation may be sternly called to repentance. Then, too, the end of the eighteenth century has some good points of its own. These contemporary ancestors of ours are of good old English stock, and we begin to look upon them with a good deal of family pride.

But when we once accept poor roads as the equivalent of the passage of time, putting people at the other end into another generation, there is no knowing what we may come to in our charitable interpretations. For there are other equally effective non-conductors of thought. By the simple device of not knowing how to read, a man cuts off some thousands of culture years and saves himself from no end of intellectual distractions. He becomes the contemporary of “earth’s vigorous, primitive sons.” If to his illiteracy he adds native talent and imagination, there is a chance for him to make for himself some of those fine old discoveries which we lose because we got the answer from some blabbing book before we had come to the point of asking the question. Of course the danger is that if he has native talent and imagination he will learn to read, and it must be confessed that for this reason we do not get such a high order of illiterates as formerly.

I once made the acquaintance of an ancient Philosopher. His talents were for cosmogony, and his equipment would have been deemed ample in the days when cosmogony was the fashion. He had meditated much on the genesis of things and had read nothing, so that his speculations were uncontaminated by the investigations of others. He was just the man to construct a perfectly simple and logical theory of the universe, and he did it. His universe was not like that of which our sciences give us imperfect glimpses, but it was very satisfactory to him. He was very fair in dealing with facts; he explained all that could be explained by his system. As the only criterion of a fact which he recognized was that it agreed with his system, there was none left over to trouble him. His manner of thought was so foreign to that of our time that his intellectual ability was not widely appreciated; yet had his birth not been so long delayed, he might have been the founder of a school and have had books written about him. For so far as I could learn, his views of the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water, were very much like those of the early Greek physicists. Had I taken him as a fellow American, I should have dismissed him as not up to date; but considering him in the light of an ancient sage, I found much in him to admire.

Once upon the coast of Maine I came upon a huge wooden cylinder. Within it was a smaller one, and in the centre, seated upon a swinging platform, was the owner of the curious contrivance. He was a mild-eyed, pleasant-spoken man, whom it was a pleasure to meet. He explained that this was “The Amphibious Vehicle,” and that it would move equally well on land or sea.

“You know,” said he, “what the prophet Ezekiel said about the ‘wheel in the middle of a wheel’?”

“Yes,” I answered.

“Well, this is it.”

There was something convincing in this matter-of-fact statement. The “wheel within a wheel” had been to me little more than a figure of speech, but here it was made out of good pine lumber, with a plank in the middle for the living creature to sit on. It was as if I had fallen through a trap door into another age. Here was a literal-minded contemporary of Ezekiel, who, having heard of the wheel within a wheel, had proceeded at once to make one. I ascended into the precarious seat, and we conversed upon the spiritual and temporal possibilities of the vehicle. I found that on the scriptural argument he was clearly ahead of me, being able to quote chapter and verse with precision, while my references were rather vague. In the field of mechanics he was also my superior. I could not have made the vehicle, having not yet emerged beyond the stone age. As we talked I forgot that we were at the mouth of the Penobscot. We were on the “river of Chebar,” and there was no knowing what might happen.

* * * * *

The belated philosophers and inventors, who think the thoughts of the ancient worthies after them, live peaceful lives. What matters it that they are separated by a millennium or two from the society in which they were fitted to shine? They are self-sufficing, and there are few who care to contradict them. It is not so with one who is morally belated. There is something pathetic in the condition of one who cherishes the ambition of being a good man, but who has not informed himself of the present “state of the art.”

Now and then an ethical revolution takes place. New ideals are proclaimed, and in their light all things are judged. The public conscience becomes sensitive in regard to courses of conduct which heretofore had been unchallenged. Every such advance involves a waste in established reputations. There are always excellent men who are not aware of what has been going on. They keep on conforming scrupulously to the old standards, being good in the familiar ways that were commended in their youth. After a time they find themselves in an alien world, and in that world they are no longer counted among the best people. The tides of moral enthusiasm are all against them. The good man feels his solid ground of goodness slipping away from under him. Time has played false with his moral conventionalities. He is like a polar bear on a fast-diminishing iceberg, growling at the Gulf Stream.

When a great evil has been recognized by the world, there is a revision of all our judgments. A new principle of classification is introduced, by which we differentiate the goats from the sheep. It is hard after that to revive the old admirations. The temperance agitation of the last century has not abolished drunkenness, but it has made the conception of a pious, respectable drunkard seem grotesque. It has also reduced the business of liquor-selling to a decidedly lower place in the esteem of the community. When we read to-day of the horrors of the slave trade, we reconstruct in our imagination the character of the slave trader,--and a brutal wretch he is. But in his day the Guinea captain held his own with the best. He was a good husband and father, a kind neighbor, a generous benefactor. President Ezra Stiles of Yale College, in his “Literary Diary,” describes such a beautiful character. It was when Dr. Stiles was yet a parish minister in Newport that one of his parishioners died, of whom he wrote: “God had blessed him with a good Estate and he and his Family have been eminent for Hospitality to all and Charity to the poor and afflicted. At his death he recommended Religion to his Children and told them that the world was nothing. The only external blemish on his Character was that he was a little addicted to the marvelous in stories of what he had seen in his Voyages and Travels. But in his Dealings he was punctual, upright, and honest, and (except as to the Flie in the Oynment, the disposition to tell marvelous Stories of Dangers, Travels, &c.), in all other Things he was of a sober and good moral character, respected and beloved of all, so as to be almost without enemies. He was forward in all the concerns of the Church and Congregation, consulting its Benefit and peaceably falling in with the general sense without exciting quarrels, parties, &c., and even when he differed from his Brethren he so differed from them that they loved him amidst the differences. He was a peaceable man and promoted Peace.”