Front matter (continued 2)

Poor Mr. Fearing. We all have been made uncomfortable by him. But we love Bunyan for that touch about the lions, for we know it is true. Easy things go hard with Mr. Fearing; but give him something difficult, like going up San Juan hill in the face of a withering fire, and Mr. Fearing can keep up with the best Rough Rider of them all. It takes Mr. Great Heart to do justice to Mr. Fearing.

It is the mission of a kindly humor to take a person full of foibles and weaknesses and suddenly to reveal his unsuspected nobleness. And there is considerable room for this kind of treatment; for there are a great many lovable people whose virtues are not chronic, but sporadic. These virtues grow up, one knows not how, without visible means of support in the general character, and in defiance of moral science; and yet it is a real pleasure to see them.

There are two very different kinds of humor. One we naturally describe as a flavor, the other as an atmosphere. We speak of the flavor of the essays of Charles Lamb. It is a discovery we make very much as Bobo made the discovery of roast pig. The mind of Charles Lamb was like a capacious kettle hanging from the crane in the fireplace; all sorts of savory ingredients were thrown into it, and the whole was kept gently simmering, but never allowed to come to the boil.

Lamb says, "C. declares that a man cannot have a good conscience who refuses apple dumpling, and I confess that I am of the same opinion." I am inclined to pass that kind of judgment on the person who does not have a comfortable feeling of satisfaction in reading for the twentieth time The Complaint on the Decay of Beggars, and the Praise of Chimney Sweepers.

Charles Lamb is not jocose. He likes to theorize. Now, your prosaic theorist has a very laborious task. He tries to get all the facts under one formula. This is very ticklish business. It is like the game of Pigs in Clover. He gets all the facts but one into the inner circle. By a dexterous thrust he gets that one in, and the rest are out.

Lamb is a philosopher who does not have this trouble. He does not try to fit all the facts to one theory. That seems to him too economical, when theories are so cheap. With large-hearted generosity he provides a theory for every fact. He clothes the ragged exception with all the decent habiliments of a universal law. He picks up a little ragamuffin of a fact, and warms its heart and points out its great relations. He is not afraid of generalizing from insufficient data; he has the art of making a delightful summer out of a single swallow. When we turn to the essay on the Melancholy of Tailors, we do not think of asking for statistics. If one tailor was melancholy, that was enough to justify the generalization. When we find a tailor who is not melancholy, it will be time to make another theory to fit his case.

This is the charm of Lamb's letter to the gentleman who inquired "whether a person at the age of sixty-three, with no more proficiency than a tolerable knowledge of most of the characters of the English alphabet amounts to, by dint of persevering application and good masters, may hope to arrive within a presumable number of years at that degree of attainment that would entitle the possessor to the character of a learned man." The answer is candid, serious, and exhaustive. No false hopes are encouraged. The difficulties are plainly set forth. "However," it is said, "where all cannot be compassed, much may be accomplished; but I must not, in fairness, conceal from you that you have much to do." The question is thoroughly discussed as to whether it would be well for him to enter a primary school. "You say that you stand in need of emulation; that this incitement is nowhere to be had but in the public school. But have you considered the nature of the emulation belonging to those of tender years which you would come in competition with?"

Do you think these dissertations a waste of time? If you do, it is sufficient evidence that you sadly need them; for they are the antitoxin to counteract the bacillus of pedantry. Were I appointed by the school board to consider the applicants for teachers' certificates, after they had passed the examination in the arts and sciences, I should subject them to a more rigid test. I should hand each candidate Lamb's essays on The Old and New Schoolmaster and on Imperfect Sympathies. I should make him read them to himself, while I sat by and watched. If his countenance never relaxed, as if he were inwardly saying, "That's so," I should withhold the certificate. I should not consider him a fit person to have charge of innocent youth.

Just as we naturally speak of the flavor of Charles Lamb, so we speak of the atmosphere of Cervantes or of Fielding. We are out of doors in the sunshine. All sorts of people are doing all sorts of things in all sorts of ways; and we are glad that we are there to see them. It is one of the

"charmèd days

When the Genius of God doth flow;

The wind may alter twenty ways

But a tempest cannot blow."

On such days it doesn't matter what happens. We are not "under the weather," but consciously superior to it. We are in no mood to grumble over mishaps,—the more the merrier. The master of the revels has made the brave announcement that his programme shall be carried out "rain or shine," and henceforth we have no anxieties.

This diffused good-humor can only come from a mind which is free from any taint of morbidness. It is that merry-heartedness that "doth good like medicine." It is an overflowing friendliness, which brings a laughter that is without scorn.

This kind of humor is possible only among persons who are thoroughly congenial, and who take mutual good-will for granted. It is for this reason that it is so difficult to translate it or to carry it from one community to another. It is customary for every nation to bring the accusation against foreigners that they are destitute of the sense of humor. Even peoples so near akin as the English and Americans cherish such suspicions. The American is likely to feel that his English friends do not receive his pleasantries with that punctuality which is the politeness of kings. They are conscientious enough and eventually do the right thing; but procrastination is the thief of wit as well as of time. But we, on our side, are equally slow, and Mr. Punch often causes anxious thoughts.

The real difficulty is not in understanding what is said but in appreciating that which should be taken for granted. The stranger does not see the serious background of sober thought and genuine admiration, into which the amusing figures suddenly intrude. The frontiersman would see no point in a story that might delight a common room in Oxford. What if a bishop did act in an undignified manner or commit a blunder? Why shouldn't he—like the rest of us? To enjoy his foibles one must first have a realizing sense of what a great man a bishop is, and how surprising it is that, now and then, he should step down from his pedestal.

On the other hand, the real humor of the frontier is missed by one who has not learned to take seriously the frontiersman's life and who has not entered into his habitual point of view.

Dickens is an example of the way in which a man's humor is limited to the sphere of his sympathies. How genial is the atmosphere which surrounds Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Sam Weller! Whatever they do, they can never go wrong. But when we turn to the "American Notes" or to the American part of "Martin Chuzzlewit," we are conscious of a difference. There is no atmosphere to relieve the dreariness. Mr. Jefferson Brick is not amusing; he is odious. The people on the Ohio River steamer do not make us smile by their absurdities. Dickens lets us see how he despises them all. He is fretful and peevish. He fails utterly to catch the humor of the frontier. He is unable to follow out the hint which Mark Tapley gave when, looking over the dreary waste of Eden on the Mississippi, he said apologetically, "Eden ain't all built yet."

To an Englishman that does not mean much, but to an American it is wonderfully appealing. Martin Chuzzlewit saw only the ignominious contrast between the prospectus and the present reality. Eden was a vulgar fraud, and that was the whole of it. The American, with invincible optimism, looking upon the same scene, sees something more! He smiles, perhaps, a little cynically at the incongruity between the prospectus and the present development, and then his fancy chuckles at what his fancy sees in the future. "Eden ain't all built yet,"—that's a fact. But just think what Eden will be when it is all built!

By the way, there is one particularly good thing about the atmosphere; it prevents our being hit by meteors. The meteor, when it strikes the upper air, usually ignites, and that is the end of it. There are some minds that have not enough atmosphere to protect them. They are pelted continually; whatever is unpleasant comes to them in solid chunks. There are others more fortunately surrounded, who escape this impact. All that is seen is a flash in the upper air. They are none the worse for passing through a meteoric shower of petty misfortunes.

The mind that is surrounded by an atmosphere of humorous suggestiveness is also favored in its outlook upon the shortcomings of mankind. Their angularities are softened and become less uniformly unpleasing. That fine old English divine, Dr. South, has a sermon in which he defends the thesis that it is a greater guilt to enjoy the contemplation of our neighbor's sins than to commit the same offences in our proper persons. That seems to me to be very hard doctrine. I am inclined to make a distinction. There are some faults which ought to be taken seriously at all times, but there are others which the neighbors should be allowed to enjoy, if they can.

Indeed, it is the genuine reformer who is seeking to right great wrongs who most needs the capacity to distinguish between grave evils and peccadillos. A measure of good-humored tolerance for human weakness is a part of his equipment for effective work. Lacking in this, he is doomed to perpetual irritation and disappointment. He mistakes friends for foes and wages a losing battle. He is likely to be the victim of a moral egoism which distorts the facts of experience and confuses his personal whims with his disinterested purposes. His great ideal is lost sight of in some petty strife. Above all, he loses the power of endurance in the time of partial failure.

The contest of wits between the inventors of projectiles and the makers of armor plate seemed at one time settled by Harvey's process for rendering the surface of the resisting steel so hard that the missiles hurled against it were shattered. The answer of the gun-makers was made by attaching a tip of softer metal to the shell. The soft tip received the first shock of the impact, and it was found that the penetrating power of the shell was increased enormously. The scientific explanation I have forgotten. I may, however, hazard an anthropomorphic explanation. If there is any human nature in the atoms of steel, I can see a great advantage in having the softer particles go before the hard, to have a momentary yielding before the inevitable crash. When they are hurtling through the air, tense and strained by the initial velocity till it seems that they must fly apart, it is a great thing to have a group of good-humored, happy-go-lucky atoms in the front, who call out cheerily: "Come along, boys! Don't take it too hard; we're in for it." And sure enough, before they have time to fall apart they are in. Those whose thoughts and purposes have most penetrated the hard prejudices of their time have learned this lesson.

Your unhumorous reformer, with painful intensity of moral self-consciousness, cries out:—

"The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,

That ever I was born to set it right!"

He takes himself and his cause always with equal seriousness. He hurls himself against the accumulated wrongs and the invincible ignorance of the world, and there is a great crash; but somehow, the world seems to survive the shock better than he does. It is a tough old world, and bears a great deal of pounding. Indeed, it has been pounded so much and so long that it has become quite solid.

Now and then, however, there comes along a reformer whose zeal is tipped with humor. His thought penetrates where another man's is only shattered. That is what made Luther so effective. He struck heavy blows at the idols men adored. But he was such a genial, whole-souled iconoclast that those who were most shocked at him could not help liking him—between times. He would give a smashing blow at the idol, and then a warm hand grasp and a hearty "God bless you" to the idolater; and then idolater and iconoclast would be down on the floor together, trying to see if there were any pieces of the idol worth saving. It was all so unexpected and so incongruous and so shocking, and yet so unaffectedly religious and so surprisingly the right thing to do, that the upshot of it all was that people went away saying, "Dr. Martin isn't such a bad fellow, after all."

Luther's "Table Talk" penetrated circles which were well protected against his theological treatises. Men were conscious of a good humor even in his invective; for he usually gave them time to see the kindly twinkle in his eye before he knocked them down.

In order to engage Karlstadt in a controversy, Luther drew out a florin from his pocket and cried heartily, "Take it! Attack me boldly!" Karlstadt took it, put it in his purse, and gave it to Luther. Luther then drank to his health. Then Karlstadt pledged Luther. Then Luther said, "The more violent your attacks, the more I shall be delighted." Then they gave each other their hands and parted. One can almost be reconciled to theological controversy, when it is conducted in a manner so truly sportsmanlike.

Luther had a way of characterizing a person in a sentence, that was much more effective than his labored vituperation (in which, it must be confessed, he was a master). Thus, speaking of the attitude of Erasmus, he said, "Erasmus stands looking at creation like a calf at a new door." It was very unjust to Erasmus, and yet the picture sticks in the mind; for it is such a perfect characterization of the kind of mind that we are all acquainted with, which looks at the marvels of creation with the wide-eyed gaze of bovine youthfulness, curious, not to know how that door came there, but only to know whether it leads to something to eat.

The humor of Luther suggests that of Abraham Lincoln. Both were men of the people, and their humor had a flavor of the soil. They were alike capable of deep dejection, but each found relief in spontaneous laughter. The surprise of the grave statesman when Lincoln would preface a discussion with a homely anecdote of the frontier was of the same kind felt by the sixteenth-century theologians when Luther turned aside from his great arguments, which startled Europe, to tell a merry tale in ridicule of the pretensions of the monks.

If I were to speak of the humorist as a philosopher, some of the gravest of the philosophers would at once protest. Humor, they say, has no place in their philosophy; and they are quite right. Indeed, it is doubtful if a humorist would ever make a good, systematic philosopher. He is a modest person. He is only a gleaner following the reapers; but he manages to pick up a great many grains of wisdom which they overlook.

Dante pictures the sages of antiquity as forever walking on a verdant mead, "with eyes slow and grave, and with great authority in their looks;" as if, in the other world, they were continually oppressed by the wisdom they had acquired in this. But I can imagine a gathering of philosophers in a different fashion. Gravely they have come, each bearing his ponderous volume, in which he has explained the universe and settled the destiny of mankind. Then, suddenly, in contrast with their theories, the reality is disclosed. The incorrigible pedants and dogmatists turn away in sullen disappointment; but from all true lovers of wisdom there arises a peal of mellow laughter, as each one realizes the enormous incongruity between what he knew and what he thought he knew.

The discovery that things are not always as they seem is one that some people make in this world. They get a glimpse of something that is going on behind the scenes, and their smile is very disconcerting to the sober spectators around them.

Sometimes it is the bitter smile of disillusion. Matthew Arnold wrote of Heine:—

"The Spirit of the world,

Beholding the absurdity of men,—

Their vaunts, their feats,—let a sardonic smile,

For one short moment, wander o'er his lips.

That smile was Heine."

But there is another kind of smile evoked by the incongruity between the appearance and the reality. It is the smile that comes when behind some mask that had affrighted us we recognize a familiar and friendly face. There is a smile which is not one of disillusion. There is a philosophy which is dissolved in humor. The wise man sees the incongruities involved in the very nature of things. They are the result of the free play of various forces. To his quick insight the actual world is no more like the formal descriptions of it than the successive attitudes of a galloping horse are like the pose of an equestrian statue. His mind catches instantaneous views of this world as its elements are continually dissolving and recombining. It is all very surprising, and he smiles as he sees how much better they turn out than might be expected.

"Sad-eyed Fakirs swiftly say

Endless dirges to decay.

. . . . . . . . . .

And yet it seemeth not to me

That the high gods love tragedy;

For Saadi sat in the sun.

. . . . . . . . . .

Sunshine in his heart transferred,

Lighted each transparent word.

. . . . . . . . . .

And thus to Saadi said the Muse:

'Eat thou the bread which men refuse;

Flee from the goods which from thee flee;

Seek nothing,—Fortune seeketh thee.

. . . . . . . . . .

On thine orchard's edge belong

All the brags of plume and song.

. . . . . . . . . .

Nor scour the seas, nor sift mankind,

A poet or a friend to find:

Behold, he watches at the door!

Behold his shadow on the floor!'"

In the book of Proverbs, Wisdom says, "I, Wisdom, dwell with Prudence." But there is another member of the household. It is Humor, sister of serene Wisdom and of the heavenly Prudence. She does not often laugh, and when she does it is mostly at her sister Wisdom, who cannot long resist the infection. There is not one set smile upon her face, as if she contemplated an altogether amusing world. The smiles that come and go are shy, elusive things, but they cannot remain long in hiding.

Wisdom, from her high house, takes wide views, and Prudence peers anxiously into the future; but gentle Humor loves to take short views; she delights in homely things, and continually finds surprises in that which is most familiar. Wisdom goes on laborious journeys, and comes home bringing her treasures from afar; and Humor matches them, every one, with what she has found in the dooryard.

HAT was a curious state of things in Salem village. There was the Meeting-House in plain sight, with sermons every Sunday and lectures on week-days. There were gospel privileges for all, and the path of duty was evident enough for the simplest understanding. Nevertheless, certain persons who should have listened to the sermons, when they heard the sound of a trumpet hied to the rendezvous of witches. When haled before the court their only answer was that they couldn't help it.

The ministers were disturbed, but being thorough-going men, they did not rest content with academic discussion of the question of the falling-off in church attendance. They inquired into its cause, and became convinced that they were dealing with sorcery. All this is duly set down in Increase Mather's treatise on "Cases of Conscience concerning Witchcrafts."

This method of inquisition is commended to those writers who look upon the Gentle Reader's love of Romance as a deadly sin. The trouble, as I understand it, is this. A number of gentlemen devoted to literature have cultivated style till it is as near a state of utter perfection as human nature will tolerate. Indeed, they emulate that classic writer of whom Roger Ascham remarked that he labored "with uncontented care to write better than he could." They have attained such accuracy of observation and such skill in the choice of words that the man in the book is as like to the man on the street as two peas. They are also skilled in criticism and are able to prove that it is our duty not only to admire but also to read their books. The complaint is that the readers, instead of walking in the path of duty, troop off after some mere story-teller who has never passed an examination in Pathology, and who is utterly incapable of making an exhaustive analysis of motives.

The Gentle Reader when he hears the accusations of the stern realists makes no denial of the facts. He admits that he likes a good story better than an involved study of character. He listens to the reproofs with the helplessness of one who has only the frail barrier of a personal taste to shield him from the direct blow of the categorical imperative. If personal taste were to be accepted as a sufficient plea, he is aware that the most besotted inebriate would go unwhipped of justice. In this predicament he shields himself behind his favorite authors. If there be a fault it is theirs, not his. They have bewitched him by their spells. It is impossible for him to withstand the potent enchantments of these wizards.

I am inclined to think that there is much justice in this view of the matter and that the militant realists should turn their attention from the innocent reader to those who have power to bewitch him.

The accepted signs of witchcraft, as enumerated by the Mathers, are present. Thus we are told: "A famous Divine recites among other Convictions of a Witch, the Testimony of the Party bewitched, together with the joint Oaths of sufficient Persons that they have seen Prodigious Pranks or Feats wrought by the Party accused."

This was the kind of evidence relied upon in the case of G. B. in the Court of Oyer and Terminer held at Salem in 1692. "He was accused by Nine Persons for extraordinary Lifting and such Feats of Strength as could not be done without Diabolical Assistance." It was said that "though he was a Puny Man yet he had done things beyond the strength of a Giant. A Gun of about seven foot Barrel, and so heavy that strong Men could not steadily hold it out with both hands; there were several Testimonies that he made nothing of taking up such a Gun behind the Lock, with one hand, and holding it out like a Pistol at arm's end." Any readers of romance can tell of many such prodigious pranks which, while the spell was upon them, seemed altogether credible.

The test which was looked upon as infallible by those judicious judges who put little confidence in the flotation of witches on the mill pond, was that of the lack of intellectual consistency. "Faltering, faulty, inconstant, and contrary answers upon judicial and deliberate Examination are accounted unlucky symptoms of guilt."

Such inconsistencies may be found in all romantic fiction; yet the magicians seem to have the power to make all things appear probable. I might tell what a pleasant thrill is sometimes produced by these sorceries, but I had better follow the policy of Cotton Mather, who declined to tell all he knew about the Invisible World, lest he might make witchcraft too attractive. "I will not speak plainly lest I should, unaware, poison some of my Readers, as the pious Hermingius did one of his Pupils when he only by way of Diversion recited a Spell."

Cotton Mather makes a suggestion which is of value in regard to the different grades of witches and other wonder-working spirits. His remarks upon this head are so judicious that they should be quoted in full.

"Thirdly, 'tis to be supposed, that some Devils are more peculiarly Commission'd, and perhaps Qualify'd, for some Countries, while others are for others. This is intimated when in Mar. 5. 10. The Devils besought our Lord much, that he would not send them away out of the Countrey. Why was that? But in all probability, because these Devils were more able to do the works of the Devil, in such a Countrey, than in another. It is not likely that every Devil does know every Language; or that every Devil can do every Mischief. 'Tis possible, that the Experience, or, if I may call it so, the Education of all Devils is not alike, and that there may be some difference in their Abilities. If one might make an Inference from what the Devils do, to what they are, One cannot forbear dreaming, that there are degrees of Devils. Who can allow, that such Trifling Demons, as that of Mascon, or those that once infested our New-berry, are of so much Grandeur, as those Demons, whose Games are mighty Kingdoms? Yea, 'tis certain, that all Devils do not make a like figure in the Invisible World. Nor does it look agreeably, That the Demons, which were Familiars of such a Man as the old Apollonius, differ not from those baser Goblins that chuse to Nest in the filthy and loathsome Rags of a beastly Sorceress. Accordingly, why may not some Devils be more accomplished for what is to be done in such and such places, when others must be detach'd for other Territories? Each Devil, as he sees his advantage, cries out, Let me be in this Countrey, rather than another."

It is only on the theory of bewitchment by a trifling demon who belongs to the lower orders of the literary world that I can account for the sad fall of the reader whose confession follows. Carefully shielded in his youth from all the enticements of the imagination, he yet fell from grace. The unfortunate person seems to be lacking in strength of will, and yet to have some good in him. In my opinion he was more sinned against than sinning. But I will let him tell his story in his own way.

A CONFESSION

One half the world does not know what the other half reads; but good people are now taught that the first requisite of sociological virtue is to interest themselves in the other half. I therefore venture to call attention to a book that has pleased me, though my delight in it may at once class me with the "submerged tenth" of the reading public. It is "The Pirate's Own Book."

By way of preface to a discussion of this volume, let me make a personal explanation of the causes which led me to its perusal. My reading of such a book cannot be traced to early habit. In my boyhood I had no opportunity to study the careers of pirates, for I was confined to another variety of literature. On Sunday afternoons I read aloud a book called "The Afflicted Man's Companion." The unfortunate gentleman portrayed in this work had a large assortment of afflictions,—if I remember rightly, one for each day of the month,—but among them was nothing so exciting as being marooned in the South Seas. Indeed, his afflictions were of a generalized and abstract kind, which he could have borne with great cheerfulness had it not been for the consolations which were remorselessly administered to him.

If I have become addicted to tales of piracy, I must attribute it to the literary criticisms of too strenuous realists. Before I read them, I took an innocent pleasure in romantic fiction. Without any compunction of conscience I rejoiced in Walter Scott; and when he failed I was pleased even with his imitators. My heart leaped up when I beheld a solitary horseman on the first page, and I did not forsake the horseman, even though I knew he was to be personally conducted through his journey by Mr. G. P. R. James. Fenimore Cooper, in those days, before I was awakened to the nature of literary sin, I found altogether pleasant. The cares of the world faded away, and a soothing conviction of the essential rightness of things came over me, as the pioneers and Indians discussed in deliberate fashion the deepest questions of the universe, between shots. As for stories of the sea, I never thought of being critical. I was ready to take thankfully anything with a salty flavor, from "Sindbad the Sailor" to Mr. Clark Russell. I had no inconvenient knowledge to interfere with my enjoyment. All nautical language was alike impressive, and all nautical manœuvres were to me alike perilous. It would have been a poor Ancient Mariner who could not have enthralled me, when

"He held me with his skinny hand;

'There was a ship,' quoth he."

And if the ship had raking masts and no satisfactory clearance papers, that was enough; as to what should happen, I left that altogether to the author. That the laws of probability held on the Spanish Main as on dry land, I never dreamed.

But after being awakened to the sin of romance, I saw that to read a novel merely for recreation is not permissible. The reader must be put upon oath, and before he allows himself to enjoy any incident must swear that everything is exactly true to life as he has seen it. All vagabonds and sturdy vagrants who have no visible means of support, in the present order of things, are to be driven out of the realm of well-regulated fiction. Among these are included all knights in armor; all rightful heirs with a strawberry mark; all horsemen, solitary or otherwise; all princes in disguise; all persons who are in the habit of saying "prithee," or "Odzooks," or "by my halidome;" all fair ladies who have no irregularities of feature and no realistic incoherencies of speech; all lovers who fall in love at first sight, and who are married at the end of the book and live happily ever after; all witches, fortune-tellers, and gypsies; all spotless heroes and deep-dyed villains; all pirates, buccaneers, North American Indians with a taste for metaphysics; all scouts, hunters, trappers, and other individuals who do not wear store clothes. According to this decree, all readers are forbidden to aid and abet these persons, or to give them shelter in their imagination. A reader who should incite a writer of fiction to romance would be held as an accessory before the fact.

After duly repenting of my sins and renouncing my old acquaintances, I felt a preëminent virtue. Had I met the Three Guardsmen, one at a time or all together, I should have passed them by without stopping for a moment's converse. I should have recognized them for the impudent Gascons that they were, and should have known that there was not a word of truth in all their adventures. As for Stevenson's fine old pirate, with his contemptible song about a "dead men's chest and a bottle of rum," I should not have tolerated him for an instant. Instead, I should have turned eagerly to some neutral-tinted person who never had any adventure greater than missing the train to Dedham, and I should have analyzed his character, and agitated myself in the attempt to get at his feelings, and I should have verified his story by a careful reference to the railway guide. I should have treated that neutral-tinted character as a problem, and I should have noted all the delicate shades in the futility of his conduct. When, on any occasion that called for action, he did not know his own mind, I should have admired him for his resemblance to so many of my acquaintances who do not know their own minds. After studying the problem until I came to the last chapter, I should suddenly have given it up, and agreed with the writer that it had no solution. In my self-righteousness, I despised the old-fashioned reader who had been lured on in the expectation that at the last moment something thrilling might happen.

But temptations come at the unguarded point. I had hardened myself against romance in fiction, but I had not been sufficiently warned against romance in the guise of fact. When in a book-stall I came upon "The Pirate's Own Book," it seemed to answer a felt want. Here at least, outside the boundaries of strict fiction, I could be sure of finding adventure, and feel again with Sancho Panza "how pleasant it is to go about in expectation of accidents."

I am well aware that good literature—to use Matthew Arnold's phrase—is a criticism of life. But the criticism of life, with its discriminations between things which look very much alike, is pretty serious business. We cannot keep on criticising life without getting tired after a while, and longing for something a little simpler. There is a much-admired passage in Ferishtah's Fancies, in which, after mixing up the beans in his hands and speculating on their color, Ferishtah is not able to tell black from white. Ferishtah, living in a soothing climate, could stand an indefinite amount of this sort of thing; and, moreover, we must remember that he was a dervish, and dervishry, although a steady occupation, is not exacting in its requirements. In our more stimulating climate, we should bring on nervous prostration if we gave ourselves unremittingly to the discrimination between all the possible variations of blackishness and whitishness. We must relieve our minds by occasionally finding something about which there can be no doubt. When my eyes rested on the woodcut that adorns the first page of "The Pirate's Own Book," I felt the rest that comes from perfect certainty in my own moral judgment. Ferishtah himself could not have mixed me up. Here was black without a redeeming spot. On looking upon this pirate, I felt relieved from any criticism of life; here was something beneath criticism. I was no longer tossed about on a chop sea, with its conflicting waves of feeling and judgment, but was borne along triumphantly on a bounding billow of moral reprobation.

As I looked over the headings of the chapters, I was struck by their straightforward and undisguised character. When I read the chapter entitled The Savage Appearance of the Pirates, and compared this with the illustrations, I said, "How true!" Then there was a chapter on the Deceitful Character of the Malays. I had always suspected that the Malays were deceitful, and here I found my impressions justified by competent authority. Then I dipped into the preface, and found the same transparent candor. "A piratical crew," says the author, "is generally formed of the desperadoes and renegades of every clime and nation." Again I said, "Just what I should have expected. The writer is evidently one who 'nothing extenuates.'" Then follows a further description of the pirate: "The pirate, from the perilous nature of his occupation, when not cruising on the ocean, that great highway of nations, selects the most lonely isles of the sea for his retreat, or secretes himself near the shores of bays and lagoons of thickly wooded and uninhabited countries." Just the places where I should have expected him to settle.

"The pirate, when not engaged in robbing, passes his time in singing old songs with choruses like,—

'Drain, drain the bowl, each fearless soul!

Let the world wag as it will;

Let the heavens growl, let the devil howl,

Drain, drain the deep bowl and fill!'

Thus his hours of relaxation are passed in wild and extravagant frolics, amongst the lofty forests and spicy groves of the torrid zone, and amidst the aromatic and beautiful flowering vegetable products of that region."

Again: "With the name of pirate is also associated ideas of rich plunder,—caskets of buried jewels, chests of gold ingots, bags of outlandish coins, secreted in lonely out-of-the-way places, or buried about the wild shores of rivers and unexplored seacoasts, near rocks and trees bearing mysterious marks, indicating where the treasure is hid." "As it is his invariable practice to secrete and bury his booty, and from the perilous life he lives being often killed, he can never revisit the spot again, immense sums remaining buried in these places are irrevocably lost." Is it any wonder that, with such an introduction, I became interested?

After a perusal of the book, I am inclined to think that a pirate may be a better person to read about than some persons who stand higher in the moral scale. Compare, if you will, a pirate and a pessimist. As a citizen and neighbor I should prefer the pessimist. A pessimist is an excellent and highly educated gentleman, who has been so unfortunate as to be born into a world which is inadequate to his expectations. Naturally he feels that he has a grievance, and in airing his grievance he makes himself unpopular; but it is certainly not his fault that the universe is no better than it is. On the other hand, a pirate is a bad character; yet as a subject of biography he is more inspiring than the pessimist. In one case, we have the impression of one good man in a totally depraved world; in the other case, we have a totally depraved man in what but for him would be a very good world. I know of nothing that gives one a more genial appreciation of average human nature, or a greater tolerance for the foibles of one's acquaintances, than the contrast with an unmitigated pirate.

My copy of "The Pirate's Own Book" belongs to the edition of 1837. On the fly-leaf it bore in prim handwriting the name of a lady who for many years must have treasured it. I like to think of this unknown lady in connection with the book. I know that she must have been an excellent soul, and I have no doubt that her New England conscience pointed to the moral law as the needle to the pole; but she was a wise woman, and knew that if she was to keep her conscience in good repair she must give it some reasonable relaxation. I am sure that she was a woman of versatile philanthropy, and that every moment she had the ability to make two duties grow where only one had grown before. After, however, attending the requisite number of lectures to improve her mind, and considering in committees plans to improve other people's minds forcibly, and going to meetings to lament over the condition of those who had no minds to improve, this good lady would feel that she had earned a right to a few minutes' respite. So she would take up "The Pirate's Own Book," and feel a creepy sensation that would be an effectual counter-irritant to all her anxieties for the welfare of the race. Things might be going slowly, and there were not half as many societies as there ought to be, and the world might be in a bad way; but then it was not so bad as it was in the days of Black Beard; and the poor people who did not have any societies to belong to were, after all, not so badly off as the sailors whom the atrocious Nicola left on a desert island, with nothing but a blunderbuss and Mr. Brooks's Family Prayer Book. In fact, it is expressly stated that the pirates refused to give them a cake of soap. To be on a desert island destitute of soap made the common evils of life appear trifling. She had been worried about the wicked people who would not do their duty, however faithfully they had been prodded up to it, who would not be life members on payment of fifty dollars, and who would not be annual members on payment of a dollar and signing the constitution, and who in their hard and impenitent hearts would not even sit on the platform at the annual meeting; but somehow their guilt seemed less extreme after she had studied again the picture of Captain Kidd burying his Bible in the sands near Plymouth. A man who would bury his Bible, using a spade several times too large for him, and who would strike such a world-defying attitude while doing it, made the sin of not joining the society appear almost venial. In this manner she gained a certain moral perspective; even after days when the public was unusually dilatory about reforms, and the wheels of progress had begun to squeak, she would get a good night's sleep. Contrasting the public with the black background of absolute piracy, she grew tolerant of its shortcomings, and learned the truth of George Herbert's saying, that "pleasantness of disposition is a great key to do good."

Not only is a pirate a more comfortable person to read about than a pessimist, but in many respects he is a more comfortable person to read about than a philanthropist. The minute the philanthropist is introduced, the author begins to show his own cleverness by discovering flaws in his motives. You begin to see that the poor man has his limitations. Perhaps his philanthropies are of a different kind from yours, and that irritates you. Musical people, whom I have heard criticise other musical people, seem more offended when some one flats just a little than when he makes a big ear-splitting discord; and moralists are apt to have the same fastidiousness. The philanthropist is made the victim of the most cruel kind of vivisection,—a character-study.

Here is a fragment of conversation from a study of character: "'That was really heroic,' said Felix. 'That was what he wanted to do,' Gertrude went on. 'He wanted to be magnanimous; he wanted to have a fine moral pleasure; he made up his mind to do his duty; he felt sublime,—that's how he likes to feel.'"

This leaves the mind in a painful state of suspense. The first instinct of the unsophisticated reader is that if the person has done a good deed, we ought not to begrudge him a little innocent pleasure in it. If he is magnanimous, why not let him feel magnanimous? But after Gertrude has made these subtle suggestions we begin to experience something like antipathy for a man who is capable of having a fine moral pleasure; who not only does his duty, but really likes to do it. There is something wrong about him, and it is all the more aggravating because we are not sure just what it is. There is no trouble of that kind in reading about pirates. You cannot make a character-study out of a pirate,—he has no character. You know just where to place him. You do not expect anything good of him, and when you find a sporadic virtue you are correspondingly elated.

For example, I am pleased to read of the pirate Gibbs that he was "affable and communicative, and when he smiled he exhibited a mild and gentle countenance. His conversation was concise and pertinent, and his style of illustration quite original." If Gibbs had been a philanthropist, it is doubtful whether these social and literary graces would have been so highly appreciated.

So our author feels a righteous glow when speaking of the natives of the Malabar coasts, and accounting for their truthfulness: "For as they had been used to deal with pirates, they always found them men of honor in the way of trade,—a people enemies of deceit, and that scorned to rob but in their own way."

He is a very literal-minded person, and takes all his pirates seriously, but often we are surprised by some touch of nature that makes the whole world kin. There was the ferocious Benevedes, who flourished on the west coast of South America, and who, not content with sea power, attempted to gather an army. It is said that "a more finished picture of a pirate cannot be conceived," and the description that follows certainly bears out this assertion. Yet he had his own ideas of civilization, and a power of adaptation that reminds us of the excellent and ingenious Swiss Family Robinson. When he captures the American whaling-ship Herculia, we are prepared for a wild scene of carnage; but instead we are told that Benevedes immediately dismantled the ship, and "out of the sails made trousers for half his army." After the trousers had been distributed, Benevedes remarked that his army was complete except in one essential particular,—he had no trumpets for the cavalry: whereupon, at the suggestion of the New Bedford skipper, he ripped off the copper sheets of the vessel, out of which a great variety of copper trumpets were quickly manufactured, and soon "the whole camp resounded with the warlike blasts." While the delighted pirates were enjoying their instrumental music, the skipper and nine of the crew took occasion to escape in a boat which had been imprudently concealed on the river bank.

In the "Proverbial Philosophy" we are told that

"Many virtues weighted by excess sink among the vices,

Many vices, amicably buoyed, float among the virtues."

Had Mr. Tupper been acquainted with the career of Captain Davis of the Spanish Main, he would have found many apt illustrations of his thesis. Captain Davis had the vices incidental to a piratical career, but they were amicably buoyed up by some virtues which would have adorned a different station in life. He was a great stickler for parliamentary law, and everything under his direction was done decently and in order. Whenever it was possible, he made his demands in writing, a method which was business-like and left no room for misunderstanding. After a sloop had been seized and duly pillaged, we are informed that:—

"In full possession of the vessel and stores and goods, a large bowl of punch was made. Under its exhilarating influence it was proposed to choose a commander, and to form a future mode of policy. The election was soon over and a large majority of legal voters were in favor of Davis, and, no scrutiny being demanded, Davis was declared duly elected. He then addressed them in a short and appropriate speech."

The chief virtue of Davis seemed to be neatness, which on one occasion he used to admirable advantage. "Encountering a French ship of twenty-four guns, Davis proposed to the crew to attack her, assuring them that she would prove a rich prize. This appeared to the crew such a hazardous enterprise that they were adverse to the measure; but he acquainted them that he had conceived a stratagem that he was confident would succeed."

This stratagem was worthy of the Beau Brummel of pirates. At the critical moment, the crew "according to the direction of Davis appeared on deck in white shirts, which making an appearance of numbers the Frenchman was intimidated and struck." Why the white shirts should have given the appearance of numbers it is difficult to understand, but we can well understand the surprise of the Frenchman over the pirates' immaculate attire.

Most of the pirates seem to have conducted their lives on a highly romantic, not to say sensational plan. This reprehensible practice, of course, must shut them off from the sympathy of all realists of the stricter school, who hold that there should be no dramatic situations, and that even when a story is well begun it should not be brought to a finish, but should "peter out" in the last chapters, no one knows how or why. Sometimes, however, a pirate manages to come to an end sufficiently commonplace to make a plot for a most irreproachable novel. There was Captain Avery. He commenced the practice of his profession very auspiciously by running away with a ship of thirty guns from Bristol. In the Indian Ocean he captured a treasure-ship of the Great Mogul. In this ship, it is said, "there were several of the greatest persons of the court." There was also on board the daughter of the Great Mogul, who was on a pilgrimage to Mecca. The painstaking historian comments on this very justly: "It is well known that the people of the East travel with great magnificence, so that they had along with them all their slaves, with a large quantity of vessels of gold and silver and immense sums of money. The spoil, therefore, that Avery received from that ship was almost incalculable." To capture the treasure-ship of the Great Mogul under such circumstances would have turned the head of any ordinary pirate who had weakened his mind by reading works tinged with romanticism. His companions, when the treasure was on board, wished to sail to Madagascar, and there build a small fort; but "Avery disconcerted the plan and rendered it altogether unnecessary." We know perfectly well what these wretches would have done if they had been allowed to have their own way: they would have gathered in one of the spicy groves, and would have taken up vociferously their song,—

"Drain, drain the bowl, each fearless soul!

Let the world wag as it will."

Avery would have none of this, so when most of the men were away from the ship he sailed off with the treasure, leaving them to their evil ways, and to a salutary poverty. Here begins the realism of the story. With the treasures of the Great Mogul in his hold, he did not follow the illusive course of Captain Kidd, "as he sailed, as he sailed." He did not even lay his course for the "coasts of Coromandel." Instead of that he made a bee-line for America, with the laudable intention of living there "in affluence and honor." When he got to America, however, he did not know what to do with himself, and still less what to do with the inestimable pearls and diamonds of the Great Mogul. An ordinary pirate of romance would have escaped to the Spanish Main, but Avery did just what any realistic gentleman would do: after he had spent a short time in other cities—he concluded to go to Boston. The chronicler adds, "Arriving at Boston, he almost resolved to settle there." It was in the time of the Mathers. But in spite of its educational and religious advantages, Boston furnished no market for the gems of the Orient, so Captain Avery went to England. If he had in his youth read a few detective stories, he might have known how to get his jewels exchanged for the current coin of the realm; but his early education had been neglected, and he was of a singularly confiding and unsophisticated nature—when on land. After suffering from poverty he made the acquaintance of some wealthy merchants of Bristol, who took his gems on commission, on condition that they need not inquire how he came by them. That was the last Avery saw of the gems of the Great Mogul. A plain pirate was no match for financiers. Remittances were scanty, though promises were frequent. What came of it all? Nothing came of it; things simply dragged along. Avery was not hanged, neither did he get his money. At last, on a journey to Bristol to urge the merchants to a settlement, he fell sick and died. What became of the gems? Nobody knows. What became of those merchants of Bristol? Nobody cares. A novelist might, out of such material, make an ending quite clever and dreary.

To this realistic school of pirates belongs Thomas Veal, known in our history as the "Pirate of Lynn." To turn from the chapter on the Life, Atrocities, and Bloody Death of Black Beard to the chapter on the Lynn Pirate, is a relief to the overstrained sensibilities. Lynn is in the temperate zone, and we should naturally reason that its piracies would be more calm and equable than those of the tropics, and so they were. "On one pleasant evening, a little after sunset, a small vessel was seen to anchor near the mouth of the Saugus River. A boat was presently lowered from her side, into which four men descended and moved up the river." It is needless to say that these men were pirates. In the morning the vessel had disappeared, but a man found a paper whereon was a statement that if a quantity of shackles, handcuffs, and hatchets were placed in a certain nook, silver would be deposited near by to pay for them. The people of Lynn in those days were thrifty folk, and the hardware was duly placed in the spot designated, and the silver was found as promised. After some months four pirates came and settled in the woods. The historian declares it to be his opinion (and he speaks as an expert) that it would be impossible to select a place more convenient for a gang of pirates. He draws particular attention to the fact that the "ground was well selected for the cultivation of potatoes and common vegetables." This shows that the New England environment gave an industrial and agricultural cast to piracy which it has not had elsewhere. In fact, after reading the whole chapter, I am struck by the pacific and highly moral character of these pirates. The last of them—Thomas Veal—took up his abode in what is described as a "spacious cavern," about two miles from Lynn. "There the fugitive fixed his residence, and practiced the trade of a shoemaker, occasionally coming down to the village to obtain articles of sustenance." By uniting the occupations of market-gardening, shoe-making, and piracy, Thomas Veal managed to satisfy the demands of a frugal nature, and to live respected by his neighbors in Lynn. It must have been a great alleviation in the lot of the small boys, when now and then they escaped from the eyes of the tithing-men, and in the cave listened to Mr. Veal singing his pirate's songs. Of course a solo could give only a faint conception of what the full chorus would have been in the tropical forests, but still it must have curdled the blood to a very considerable extent.

There is, I must confess, a certain air of vagueness about this interesting narration. No overt act of piracy is mentioned. Indeed, the evidence in regard to the piratical character of Mr. Veal, so far as it is given in this book, is largely circumstantial.

There is, first, the geographical argument. The Saugus River, being a winding stream, was admirably adapted for the resort of pirates who wished to prey upon the commerce of Boston and Salem. This establishes the opportunity and motive, and renders it antecedently probable that piracy was practiced. The river, it is said, was a good place in which to secrete boats. This we know from our reading was the invariable practice of pirates.

Another argument is drawn from the umbrageous character of the Lynn woods. We are told with nice particularity that in this tract of country "there were many thick pines, hemlocks, and cedars, and places where the rays of the sun at noon could not penetrate." Such a place would be just the spot in which astute pirates would be likely to bury their treasure, confident that it would never be discovered. The fact that nothing ever has been discovered here seems to confirm this supposition.

The third argument is that while a small cave still remains, the "spacious cavern" in which Thomas Veal, the piratical shoemaker, is said to have dwelt no longer exists. This clinches the evidence. For there was an earthquake in 1658. What more likely than that, in the earthquake, "the top of the rock was loosened and crushed down into the mouth of the cavern, inclosing the unfortunate inmate in its unyielding prison?" At any rate, there is no record of Mr. Veal or of his spacious cavern after that earthquake.

No one deserves to be called an antiquarian who cannot put two and two together, and reconstruct from these data a more or less elaborate history of the piracies of Mr. Thomas Veal. The only other explanation of the facts presented, that I can think of as having any degree of plausibility, is that possibly Mr. Veal may have been an Anabaptist, escaped from Boston, who imposed upon the people of Lynn by making them believe that he was only a pirate.

I must in candor admit that the Plutarch of piracy is sometimes more edifying than entertaining. He can never resist the temptation to draw a moral, and his dogmatic bias in favor of the doctrine of total depravity is only too evident. But his book has the great advantage that it is not devoid of incident. Take it all in all, there are worse books to read—after one is tired of reading books that are better.

I am inclined to think that our novelists must make home happy, or they may drive many of their readers to "The Pirate's Own Book." The policy of the absolute prohibition of romance, while excellent in theory, has practical difficulties in the way of enforcement. Perhaps, under certain restrictions, license might be issued to proper persons to furnish stimulants to the imagination. Of course the romancer should not be allowed to sell to minors, nor within a certain distance of a schoolhouse, nor to habitual readers. My position is the conservative one that commended itself to the judicious Rollo.

"'Well, Rollo,' said Dorothy, 'shall I tell you a true story, or one that is not true?'

"'I think, on the whole, Dorothy, I would rather have it true.'"

But there must have been times—though none are recorded—when Rollo tired even of the admirable clear thinking and precise information of Jonas. At such times he might have tolerated a story that was not so very true, if only it were interesting. There are main thoroughfares paved with hard facts where the intellectual traffic must go on continually. There are tracks on which, if a heedless child of romance should stray, he is in danger of being run down by the realists, those grim motor-men of the literary world. But outside the congested districts there should be some roadways leading out into the open country where all things are still possible. At the entrance to each of these roads there ought to be displayed the notice, "For pleasure only. No heavy teaming allowed." I should not permit any modern improvements in this district, but I should preserve all its natural features. There should be not only a feudal castle with moat and drawbridge, but also a pirate's cave.

HAPPEN to live in a community where there is a deeply rooted prejudice in favor of intelligence, with many facilities for its advancement. I may, therefore, be looked upon as unmindful of my privileges when I confess that my chief pleasures have been found in the more secluded paths of ignorance.

I am no undiscriminating lover of Ignorance. I do not like the pitch-black kind which is the negation of all thought. What I prefer is a pleasant intellectual twilight, where one sees realities through an entrancing atmosphere of dubiety.

In visiting a fine old Elizabethan mansion in the south of England our host took us to a room where he had discovered the evidences of a secret panel. "What is behind it?" we asked. "I do not know," he answered; "while I live it shall never be opened, for then I should have no secret chamber."

There was a philosopher after my own heart. He was wise enough to resist the temptation to sell his birthright of mystery for a mess of knowledge. The rural New Englander expresses his interest by saying, "I want to know!" But may one not have a real interest in persons and things which is free from inquisitiveness? For myself, I frequently prefer not to know. Were Bluebeard to do me the honor of intrusting me with his keys, I should spend a pleasant half-hour speculating on his family affairs. I might even put the key in the lock, but I do not think I should turn it. Why should I destroy twenty exciting possibilities for the sake of a single discovery?

I like to watch certain impressive figures as they cross the College Yard. They seem like the sages whom Dante saw:—

"People were there with solemn eyes and slow,

Of great authority in their countenance."

Do I therefore inquire their names, and intrusively seek to know what books they have written, before I admire their scholarship? No, to my old-fashioned way of thinking, scholarship is not a thing to be measured; it is a mysterious effluence. Were I to see—

"Democritus who puts the world on chance,

Diogenes, Anaxagoras, and Thales,

Zeno, Empedocles, and Heraclitus,

. . . . . . . . . .

Tully and Livy and moral Seneca,

Euclid, geometrician, and Ptolemy,

Galen, Hippocrates, and Avicenna,"

I should not care to ask, "Which is which?" still less should I venture to interview Galen on the subject of medicine, or put leading questions to Diogenes. The combined impression of ineffable wisdom would be more to me than any particular information I might get out of them.

But, as I said, I am not an enthusiast for Ignorance. Mine is not the zeal of a new convert, but the sober preference of one to the manner born. I do not look upon it as a panacea, nor, after the habit of reformers, would I insist that it should be taught in the public schools. There are important spheres wherein exact information is much to be preferred.

Because Ignorance has its own humble measure of bliss I would not jump at the conclusion that it is folly to be wise. That is an extravagant statement. If real wisdom were offered me I should accept it gratefully. Wisdom is an honorable estate, and, doubtless, it has pleasures of its own. I only have in mind the alternative that is usually presented to us, conscious ignorance or a kind of knowingness.

It is necessary, at this point, to make a distinction. A writer on the use of words has a chapter on Ignorantism, which is a term he uses to indicate Ignorance that mistakes itself, or seeks to make others mistake it, for Knowledge. For Ignorantism I make no plea. If Ignorance puts on a false uniform and is caught within the enemy's lines, it must suffer the penalties laid down in the laws of war.

Nor would I defend what Milton calls "the barbarous ignorance of the schools." This scholastic variety consists of the scientific definition and classification of "things that aren't so." It has no value except as a sort of gelatine culture for the propagation of verbal bacteria.

But the affectations of the pedants or the sciolists should not be allowed to cast discredit on the fair name of Ignorance. It is only natural Ignorance which I praise; not that which is acquired. It was a saying of Landor that if a man had a large mind he could afford to let the greater part of it lie fallow. Of course we small proprietors cannot do things on such a generous scale; but it seems to me that if one has only a little mind it is a mistake to keep it all under cultivation.

I hope that this praise of Ignorance may not give offense to any intelligent reader who may feel that he is placed by reason of his acquirements beyond the pale of our sympathies. He need fear no such exclusion. My Lady Ignorance is gracious and often bestows her choicest gifts on those who scorn her. The most erudite person is intelligent only in spots. Browning's Bishop Blougram questioned whether he should be called a skeptic or believer, seeing that he could only exchange

"a life of doubt diversified by faith,

For one of faith diversified by doubt:

We called the chess-board white,—we call it black."

Whether a person thinks of his own intellectual state as one of knowledge diversified by ignorance or one of ignorance diversified by knowledge is a matter of temperament. We like him better when he frankly calls his intellectual chess-board black. That, at any rate, was the original color, the white is an afterthought.

Let me, then, without suspicion of treasonable intent, be allowed to point out what we may call in Shakespearean phrase "the honorable points of ignorance."

The social law against "talking shop" is an indication of the very widespread opinion that the exhibition of unmitigated knowledge is unseemly, outside of business hours. When we meet for pleasure we prefer that it should be on the humanizing ground of not knowing. Nothing is so fatal to conversation as an authoritative utterance. When a man who is capable of giving it enters,

"All talk dies, as in a grove all song

Beneath the shadow of a bird of prey."

Conversation about the weather would lose all its easy charm in the presence of the Chief of the Weather Bureau.

It is possible that the fear of exhibiting unusual information in a mixed company may be a survival of primitive conditions. Just as the domesticated dog will turn around on the rug before lying down, for hereditary reasons which I do not remember, so it is with civilized man. Once ignorance was universal and enforced by penalties. In the progress of the race the environment has been modified, but so strong is the influence of heredity that The Man Who Knows no sooner enters the drawing-room than he is seized by guilty fears. His ancestors for having exhibited a moiety of his intelligence were executed as wizards. But perhaps the ordinary working of natural selection may account for the facts. The law of the survival of the fittest admits of no exceptions, and the fittest to give us pleasure in conversation is the sympathetic person who appears to know very little more than we do.

In the commerce of ideas there must be reciprocity. We will not deal with one who insists that the balance of trade shall always be in his favor. Moreover there must be a spice of incertitude about the transaction. The real joy of the intellectual traffic comes when we sail away like the old merchant adventurers in search of a market. There must be no prosaic bills of exchange: it must be primitive barter. We have a choice cargo of beads which we are willing to exchange for frankincense and ivory. If on some strange coast we should meet simple-minded people who have only wampum, perhaps even then we might make a trade.

Have you never when engaged in such commerce felt something of the spirit of the grave Tyrian trader who had sailed away from the frequented marts, and held on

"O'er the blue Midland waters with the gale,

Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily,

To where the Atlantic raves

Outside the western straits, and unbent sails

There where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam,

Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come;

And on the beach undid his corded bales."

It is not every day that one meets with such shy traffickers, for the world is becoming very sophisticated. One does not ask that those with whom we converse should be ignorant of everything; it is enough that they should not know what is in our bales before we undo them.

One very serious drawback to our pleasure in conversation with a too well-informed person is the nervous strain that is involved. We are always wondering what will happen when he comes to the end of his resources. After listening to one who discourses with surprising accuracy upon any particular topic, we feel a delicacy in changing the subject. It seems a mean trick, like suddenly removing the chair on which a guest is about to sit down for the evening. With one who is interested in a great many things he knows little about there is no such difficulty. If he has passed the first flush of youth, it no longer embarrasses him to be caught now and then in a mistake; indeed your correction is welcomed as an agreeable interruption, and serves as a starting point for a new series of observations.

The pleasure of conversation is enhanced if one feels assured not only of wide margins of ignorance, but also of the absence of uncanny quickness of mind.

I should not like to be neighbor to a wit. It would be like being in proximity to a live wire. A certain insulating film of kindly stupidity is needed to give a margin of safety to human intercourse. There are certain minds whose processes convey the impression of alternating currents of high voltage on a wire that is not quite large enough for them. From such I would withdraw myself.

One is freed from all such apprehensions in the companionship of people who make no pretensions to any kind of cleverness. "The laughter of fools is like the crackling of thorns under a pot." What cheerful sounds! The crackling of the dry thorns! and the merry bubbling of the pot!

There is an important part played by what I may call defensive Ignorance. It was said of Robert Elsmere that he had a mind that was defenseless against the truth. It is a fine thing to be thus open to conviction, but the mental hospitality of one who is without prejudices is likely to be abused. All sorts of notions importunately demand attention, and he who thinks to examine all their credentials will find no time left for his own proper affairs.

For myself, I like to have a general reception-room in my mind for all sorts of notions with which I desire to keep up only a calling acquaintance. Here let them all be welcomed, good, bad, and indifferent, in the spacious antechamber of my Ignorance. But I am not able to invite them into my private apartments, for I am living in a small way in cramped quarters, where there is only room for my own convictions. There are many things that are interesting to hear about which I do not care to investigate. If one is willing to give me the result of his speculations on various esoteric doctrines I am ready to receive them in the spirit in which they are offered, but I should not think of examining them closely; it would be too much like looking a gift horse in the mouth.

I should like to talk with a Mahatma about the constitution of the astral body. I do not know enough about the subject to contradict his assertions, and therefore he would have it all his own way. But were he to become insistent and ask me to look into the matter for myself, I should beg to be excused. I would not take a single step alone. In such a case I agree with Sir Thomas Browne that "it is better to sit down in modest ignorance and rest contented with the natural blessings of our own reasons."

There are zealous persons of a proselyting turn of mind who insist upon our accepting their ideas or giving reasons for our rejection of them. When we see the flames of controversy sweeping upon us, the only safety lies in setting a back fire which shall clear the ground of any fuel for argument. If we can only surround ourselves with a bare space of nescience we may rest in peace. I have seen a simple Chinese laundry-man, by adopting this plan, resist a storm of argument and invective without losing his temper or yielding his point. Serene, imperturbable, inscrutable, he stood undisturbed by the strife of tongues. He had one supreme advantage,—he did not know the language.

It was thus in the sixteenth century, when religious strife waxed mad around him, that Montaigne preserved a little spot of tolerant thought. "O what a soft, easy, and wholesome pillow is ignorance and incuriosity whereon to compose a well-contrived head!"

This sounds like mere Epicureanism, but Montaigne had much to say for himself: "Great abuse in the world is begot, or, to speak more boldly, all the abuses of the world are begot by our being taught to be afraid of professing our ignorance, and that we are bound to accept all things we are not able to refute.... They make me hate things that are likely when they impose upon me for infallible. I love those words which mollify and moderate the temerity of our propositions, 'Peradventure, in some sort, 'tis said, I think,' and the like.... There is a sort of ignorance, strong and generous, that yields nothing in honor and courage to knowledge; an ignorance which to conceive requires no less knowledge than knowledge itself."

Not only is protection needed from the dogmatic assaults of our neighbors, but also from our own premature ideas. There are opinions which we are willing to receive on probation, but these probationers must be taught by judicious snubbing to know their place. The plausibilities and probabilities that are pleasantly received must not airily assume the place of certainties. Because you say to a stranger, "I'm glad to see you," it is not certain that you are ready to sign his note at the bank.

When one happens to harbor any ideas of a radical character, he is fortunate if he is so constituted that it is not necessary for his self-respect that he should be cock-sure. The consciousness of the imperfection of his knowledge serves as a buffer when the train of progress starts with a jerk.

Sir Thomas More was, it is evident, favorably impressed with many of the sentiments of the gentleman from Utopia, but it was a great relief to him to be able to give them currency without committing himself to them. He makes no dogmatic assertion that the constitution of Utopia was better than that of the England of Henry VIII. In fact, he professes to know nothing about Utopia except from mere hearsay. He gracefully dismisses the subject, allowing the seeds of revolutionary ideas to float away on the thistle-down of polite Ignorance.

"When Raphael had made an end of speaking, though many things occurred to me both concerning the manners and laws of that country that seemed very absurd ... yet since I perceived that Raphael was weary and I was not sure whether he could bear contradiction ... I only commended their constitution and the account he had given of it in general; and so, taking him by the hand, carried him to supper, and told him I would find some other time for examining this subject more particularly and discoursing more copiously upon it."

One whose quiet tastes lead him away from the main traveled roads into the byways of Ignorance is likely to retain a feeling in regard to books which belongs to an earlier stage of culture. Time was when a book was a symbol of intellectual mysteries rather than a tool to be used. When Omar Khayyám sang of the delights of a jug of wine and a book, I do not think he was intemperate in the use of either. The same book and the same jug of wine would last him a long time. The chief thing was that it gave him a comfortable feeling to have them within reach.

The primitive feeling in regard to a book as a kind of talisman survives chiefly among bibliophiles, but with them it is overlaid by matters of taste which are quite beyond the comprehension of ordinary people. As for myself, I know nothing of such niceties.

I know nothing of rare bindings or fine editions. My heart is never disturbed by coveting the contents of my neighbor's bookshelves. Indeed, I have always listened to the tenth commandment with a tranquil heart since I learned, in the Shorter Catechism, that "the tenth commandment forbiddeth all discontentment with our own estate, envying or grieving at the good of our neighbor and all inordinate motions and affections to anything that is his." If that be all, it is not aimed at me, particularly in this matter of books.

I feel no discontentment at the disorderly array of bound volumes that I possess. I know that they are no credit either to my taste or to my scholarship, but if that offends my neighbor, the misery is his, not mine. If he should bring a railing accusation against me, let him remember that there is a ninth commandment which "forbiddeth anything that is injurious to our own or our neighbor's good name." As for any inordinate motions or affections toward his literary treasures, I have no more than toward his choice collection of stamps.

Yet I have one weakness in common with the bibliophile; I have a liking for certain books which I have neither time nor inclination to read. Just as according to the mediæval theory there was a sanctity about a duly ordained clergyman altogether apart from his personal character, so there is to my mind an impressiveness about some volumes which has little to do with their contents, or at least with my knowledge of them. Why should we be too curious in regard to such matters? There are books which I love to see on the shelf. I feel that virtue goes out of them, but I should think it undue familiarity to read them.

The persons who have written on "Books that have helped me" have usually confined their list to books which they have actually read. One book has clarified their thoughts, another has stimulated their wills, another has given them useful knowledge. But are there no Christian virtues to be cultivated? What about humility, that pearl of great price?

To be constantly reminded that you have not read Kant's "Critique of the Pure Reason," and that therefore you have no right to express a final opinion on philosophy, does not that save you from no end of unnecessary dogmatism? The silent monitor with its accusing, uncut pages is a blessed help to the meekness of wisdom. A book that has helped me is "The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars of England," by Edward, Earl of Clarendon. I am by nature and education a Cromwellian, of a rather narrow type. I am more likely than not to think of Charles I. as a man of sin. When, therefore, I brought home Clarendon's History I felt a glow of conscious virtue; the volume was an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace,—the grace of tolerance; and so it has ever been to me.

Years have passed, and the days of leisure have not yet come when I could devote myself to the reading of it. Perhaps the fact that I discovered that the noble earl's second sentence contains almost three hundred words may have had a discouraging influence,—but we will let that pass. Because I have not crossed the Rubicon of the second chapter, will you say that the book has not influenced me? "When in my sessions of sweet, silent thought," with the Earl of Clarendon, "I summon up remembrance of time past," is it necessary that I should laboriously turn the pages? It is enough that I feel my prejudices oozing away, and that I am convinced, when I look at the much prized volume, that there are two sides to this matter of the English Commonwealth. Could the most laborious reading do more for me?

Indeed, it is dangerous, sometimes, not to let well-enough alone. Wordsworth's fickle Muse gave him several pretty fancies about the unseen banks of Yarrow. "Yarrow Unvisited" was so delightful that he was almost tempted to be content with absent treatment.

"We will not see them, will not go

To-day nor yet to-morrow,

Enough if in our hearts we know

There's such a place as Yarrow.

Be Yarrow's stream unseen, unknown,

It must, or we shall rue it,

We have a vision of our own,

Ah, why should we undo it?"

Ah, why, indeed? the reader asks, after reading Yarrow Visited and Yarrow Re-visited. The visits were a mistake.

Perhaps Clarendon Unread is as good for my soul as Clarendon Read or Clarendon Re-read. Who can tell?

There is another sphere in which the honorable points of ignorance are not always sufficiently appreciated, that of Travel. The pleasure of staying at home consists in being surrounded by things which are familiar and which we know all about. The primary pleasure of going abroad consists in the encounter with the unfamiliar and the unknown.

That was the impulse which stirred old Ulysses to set forth once more upon his travels.

"For my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down,

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew."

"It may be"—there lay the charm. There was no knowing what might happen on the dark, broad seas. Perhaps they might get lost, and then again they might come upon the Happy Isles. And if as they sailed under their looming shores they should see the great Achilles—why all the better!

What joys the explorers of the New World experienced! The heart leaps up at the very title of Sebastian Cabot's joint stock company. "Merchants Adventurers of England for the discovery of lands, territories, isles and signories, unknown." There was no knowing beforehand which was an island and which the mainland. All they had to do was to keep on, sure only of finding something which they had not expected. When they got to the mainland they were as likely as not to stumble on the great Khan himself. Of course they might not make a discovery of the first magnitude like that of the Spaniards on the Peak in Darien,—but if it was not one thing it was another!

Two or three miles back of Plymouth, Mass., is a modest little pond called Billington's Sea. Billington, an adventurous Pilgrim, had climbed a tree, and looking westwards had caught sight of the shimmering water. He looked at it with a wild surmise, and then the conviction flashed upon him that he had discovered the goal of hardy mariners,—the great South Sea. That was a great moment for Billington!

Of course the Spaniards were more fortunate in their geographical position. It turned out that it was the Pacific that they saw from their Peak in Darien; while Billington's Sea does not grow on acquaintance.

But my heart goes out to Billington. He also was a discoverer, according to his lights. He belonged to a hardy breed, and could stare on new scenes with the best of them. It was not his fault that the Pacific was not there. If it had been, Billington would have discovered it. We know perfectly well that the Pacific Ocean does not lave the shores of Plymouth County, and so we should not go out into the woods on a fine morning to look for it. There is where Billington had the advantage of us.

Is it not curious that while we profess to envy the old adventurers the joys of discovery, yet before we set out on our travels we make it a point of convenience to rob ourselves of these possibilities? Before we set out for Ultima Thule we must know precisely where it is, and how we are going to get there, and what we are to see and what others have said about it. After a laborious course of reading the way is as familiar to our minds as the road to the post office. After that there is nothing more for us to do but to sally forth to verify the guide-books. We have done all that we could to brush the bloom off our native Ignorance.

Of course even then all the possibilities of discovery are not shut out. The best-informed person cannot be completely guarded against surprise. Accidents will happen, and there is always the chance that one may have been misinformed.

I remember a depressed looking lady whom I encountered as she trudged through the galleries of the Vatican with grim conscientiousness. She had evidently a stern duty to perform for the cause of Art. But in the Sistine Chapel the stillness was broken by her voice, which had a note of triumph as she spoke to her daughter. She had discovered an error in Baedeker. It infused new life into her tired soul.

"Some flowerets of Eden we still inherit

Though the trail of the serpent is over them all."

Speaking of the Vatican, that suggests the weak point in my argument. It suggests that there are occasions when knowledge is very convenient. On the Peak in Darien the first comer, with the wild surmise of ignorance, has the advantage in the quality of his sensation; but it is different in Jerusalem or Rome. There the pleasure consists in the fact that a great many interesting people have been there before and done many interesting things, which it might be well to know about.

At this point I am quite willing to grant an inch; with the understanding that it shall not be lengthened into an ell. The Camel of Knowledge may push his head into the tent, and we shall have to resist his further encroachments as we may.

What we call the historic sense is not consistent with a state of nescience. The picture which the eye takes in is incomplete without the thousand associations which come from previous thought. Still, it remains true that the finest pleasure does not come when the mental images are the most precise. Before entering Paradise the mediæval pilgrims tasted of the streams of Eunoë and Lethe,—the happy memory and the happy forgetfulness. The most potent charm comes from the judicious mingling of these waters.

There is a feeling of antiquity that only comes now and then, but which it is worth traveling far to experience. It is the thrill that comes when we consciously stand in the presence of the remote past. Some scene brings with it an impression of immemorial time. In almost every case we find that it comes from being reminded of something which we have once known and more than half forgotten. What are the "mists of time" but imperfect memories?

Modern psychologists have given tardy recognition to the "Subliminal Self,"—the self that lodges under the threshold of consciousness. He is a shy gnome, and loves the darkness rather than the light; not, as I believe, because his deeds are evil, but for reasons best known to himself. To all appearances he is the most ignorant fellow in the world, and yet he is no fool. As for the odds and ends that he stores up under the threshold, they are of more value than the treasures that the priggish Understanding displays in his show windows upstairs.

In traveling through historic lands the Subliminal Self overcomes his shyness. There are scenes and even words that reach back into hoar antiquity, and bring us into the days of eld.

Each person has his own chronology. If I were to seek to bring to mind the very ancientest time, I should not think of the cave-dwellers: I should repeat, "The Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites."

There is antiquity! It is not only a long time since these tribes dwelt in the land; it has been a long time since I first heard of them.

My memory goes back to the time when a disconsolate little boy sat on a bench in a Sunday-school and asked himself, "What is a Girgashite?"

The habit of the Sunday-school of mingling the historical and ethical elements in one inextricable moral had made it uncertain whether the Girgashite was a person or a sin. In either case it happened a long time ago. There upon the very verge of Time stood the Girgashite, like the ghost in Ossian, "His spear was a column of mist, and the stars looked dim through his form."

Happily my studies have not led in that direction, and there is nothing to disturb the first impression. If some day wandering over Oriental hills I should come upon some broken monuments of the Girgashites, I am sure that I should feel more of a thrill than could possibly come to my more instructed companion. To him it would be only the discovery of another fact, to fit into his scheme of knowledge: to me it would be like stumbling unawares into the primeval world.

What is more delightful than in a railway train in Italy to hear voices in the night calling out names that recall the lost arts of our childhood! There is a sense

"Of something here like something there,

Of something done, I know not where,

Such as no language can declare."

There is a bittersweet to it, for there is a momentary fear that you may be called upon to construe; but when that is past it is pure joy.

"Monte Soracte," said the Italian gentleman on the train between Foligno and Rome, as he pointed out a picturesque eminence. My answering smile was intended to convey the impression that one touch of the classics makes the whole world kin. Had I indeed kept up my Horace, a host of clean-cut ideas would have instantly rushed into my mind. "Is that Soracte! It is not what I had reason to expect. As a mountain I prefer Monadnock."

Fortunately I had no such prepossessions. I had expected nothing. There only came impressions of lessons years ago in a dingy school-room presided over by a loved instructor whom we knew as "Prof. Ike." Looking back through the mists of time, I felt that I had been the better for having learned the lessons, and none the worse for having long since forgotten them. In those days Soracte had been a noun standing in mysterious relations to a verb unknown; but now it was evident that it was a mountain. There it stood under the clear Italian sky just as it had been in the days of Virgil and Horace. Thoughts of Horace and of the old professor mingled pleasantly so long as the mountain was in sight.

It may seem to some timid souls that this praise of Ignorance may have a sinister motive, and may be intended to deter from the pursuit of knowledge. On the contrary, it is intended to encourage those who are "faint yet pursuing."

It must have occurred to every serious person that the pursuit of knowledge is not what it once was. Time was when to know seemed the easiest thing in the world. All that a man had to do was to assert dogmatically that a thing was so, and then argue it out with some one who had even less acquaintance with the subject than he had. He was not hampered by a rigid, scientific method, nor did he need to make experiments, which after all might not strengthen his position. The chief thing was a certain tenacity of opinion which would enable him, in Pope's phrase, to "hold the eel of science by the tail." There were no troublesome experts to cast discredit on this slippery sport. If a man had a knack at metaphysics and a fine flow of technical language he could satisfy all reasonable curiosity about the Universe. Or with the minimum of effort he might attain a jovial scholarship adequate for all convivial purposes, like Chaucer's pilgrim

"Whan that he wel dronken had the win,

Than wold he speken no word but Latin."

It was the golden age of the amateur, when certainty could be had for the asking, and one could stake out any part of the wide domain of human interest and hold it by the right of squatter sovereignty. But in these days the man who aspires to know must do something more than assert his conviction. He must submit to all sorts of mortifying tests, and at best he can obtain a title to only the tiniest bit of the field he covets.

With the severer definitions of knowledge and the delimitation of the territory which any one may call his own there has come a curious result. While the aggregate of intellectual wealth has increased, the individual workers are being reduced to penury. It is a pathetic illustration of Progress and Poverty. The old and highly respected class of gentlemen and scholars is being depleted. Scholarship has become so difficult that those who aspire after it have little time for the amenities. It is not as it was in the "spacious times of great Elizabeth." Enter any company of modern scholars and ask what they know about any large subject, and you will find that each one hastens to take the poor debtor's oath. How can they be expected to know so much?

On this minute division of intellectual labor the exact sciences thrive, but conversation, poetry, art, and all that belongs to the humanities languish.

Your man of highly specialized intelligence has often a morbid fear of half-knowledge, and he does not dare to express an opinion that has not been the result of original research. He shuns the innocent questioners who would draw him out, as if they were so many dunning creditors. He becomes a veritable Dick Swiveller as one conversational thoroughfare after another is closed against him, until he no longer ventures abroad. The worst of it is that he has a haunting apprehension that even the bit of knowledge which he calls his own may be taken away from him by some new discovery, and he may be cast adrift upon the Unknowable.