The Memoirs of a Failure

I

I have had occasion to remark how suddenly alcohol may affect the brain if taken on an empty stomach; I shall now illustrate the impression of one stupor after a heavy meal. Last night I drank freely during a long dinner, and when I arrived at my lodging-house, I felt completely overcome with fatigue. After climbing the five flights of stairs to my room, I sank into my arm-chair with the sensations of vast bewilderment and drowsiness. The small squares in the window frame before me merged into the darkness, and I looked out into the crisp moonlight night as if nothing were before my vision. I thought that it was the last Sunday morning in August, as yet in its freshness, long before the steady glare of the noonday sun. I was sitting, as it seemed to me, on the porch of my old plantation home; and my negro servant had just told me of his readiness to dress me for breakfast. Right before me lay the long, rectangular lawn bordered by the grove of chestnut trees. There was the same spreading poplar with the sheep nibbling its fallen leaves; and the same zig-zag fence against which some of them were rubbing themselves; I could even see little strands of grey wool on the splints in the fence, and over the top rails I caught the same glimpse of a curve in the James River, which can really be seen from this point; but the river seemed muddy, as if from recent rains; I saw a hawk rise and grow dim into a speck against the sky as he disappeared down stream.

Looking in this direction led my eyes to rest upon the old clay road which was then a highway crossing our plantation, and down which I saw my father ride off once, never to return. Along this same road now came a young horsewoman with an escort of two negro out-riders. The trio came nearer and nearer until they reached the long driveway bordered by boxwood hedges that led up to our house from the clay road. I recognized her—Susanne, Susanne, wearing a sun-bonnet with ribbons streaming out to the wind, her bosom rising and falling in the excitement of the ride as she urged her bay mare along between the rows of boxwood, the out-riders keeping in her dust. Her lips are red with life and laughter. I remembered the last time but one when I saw her, she kissed me again and again in the bloom of first love, of only love. “Ah, we are together once more, dear, in the happy long ago!” I was different then. I seem to feel the pressure of those lips; methinks I even hear her now, her voice ringing with the love of love and of life. “For life is love;” she used to say. But come I must go into the house and dress to meet her.

For a moment longer I gazed upon this well-known scene, and (as I thought) I heard myself say, “Take me back, oh, take me back again, to the time of youth, and when all nature seemed a friend.” ... At that moment my arm slipped, I grasped hold of the side of my arm-chair, but not without coming forward with a start.... Susanne! A name forgotten on my lips, yet always speaking and calling to me with the tongues of memory. How strange are remembered kisses upon lips that are dead.

II

This night I am guest at a banquet. I am seated next to my host who is a rich man, ah yes, we are all rich men; and he is dining and wining us in celebration of the anniversary of his birth. The table is a long one and is stretched away into a double banqueting hall. The guests are assembled. An orchestra is playing. There is much wine, and food in abundance is passed before us, and we make merry. Course after course is served before us—turtle soup, timbales of pheasant, terrapin, Kennebec salmon, venison, pates of birds in jelly, aspic of plover eggs—bah! I am satiated and can eat no more—and yet now the dessert comes on the table, course after course, but instead of eating anything more I turn my chair a little sideways so that I may shade my eyes and see into the next room. The hall wherein we sit is lighted with brilliant spangles of bright bulbs and dangling prisms, and the whole of our room is surrounded with great mirrors that we may see ourselves feasting and drinking and making merry. But lo! as I shade my eyes and look down the table, it seems to stretch away into a dimness beyond my sight, and seated at the other end of the table in the next room are countless guests; but they are glum and not merry. Upon more careful scrutiny, I observe that this adjoining room is dimly lighted and that there is no food upon the table, neither is there liquor for them to drink. I can see snowflakes falling in the darkness without; I can see it through the crevices in the windows of their room; whereas in our hall the blinds are down, the shutters are closed and the curtains are drawn close.

Every now and then, one of those who are sitting at that other end of the table in the next room way off there in the dimness, would rise, shove his empty chair under the table and make towards the door, but on his way out he would have to pass by my host. As one after another of them drew near, I noticed their wan, care-worn faces. Each one as he passed my host, stooped over and said, “Good-night, brother; you wouldn’t let me eat and I have to go, for all the food is at your end of the table.” Then each would shut the door behind him as he went out into the darkness.

“Who are they?” I asked my host, putting my fingers to my ear that he might whisper.

“They are the poor,” he answered, contracting his eyebrows, “let me fill your glass.”

He filled it to the brim; but in a moment of impulse, I arose and dashed the glass against the wall.

The breaking of the glass and its pieces falling on the floor brought me to my senses. Sandy came rushing into the room. “There is a tumbler over there. Bring me in another;” I said to him. He picked up the broken bits of glass and brought a cloth to dry the stain on the wall-paper where I had thrown my sangaree.

I fear that I shall not be able to sleep this night. Oh, if I could get just a little sleep—

III

Another novel read, another history finished, another biography turned over—enough of them. I am done with them. I prefer to empty another pitcher. Give me my sangaree and my own thoughts in preference to their twaddle. And why twaddle? Well, because each and all of them have a hero—a good man, or a great man, or a successful man, or a man in love with a woman, or a man in love with himself—whereas I am none of them, and I want to hear about myself. I want to hear about a failure. A man who sadly admits that he is a failure. These, then, are the Memoirs of a Failure.

Certainly there have been more failures than heroes, but fiction delights to mock the failures merely to set off the hero. Surely there have been more obscure men than famous men, but history records chiefly the attainments of the leaders. Whereas, the unknown soldier, the insignificant clerk, the patient craftsman, the underpaid writer and teacher—these humble workers had their story, perhaps more touching and perhaps less callous than the career of the noted artist, the famous statesman, the great general.

Who shall write the Epic of Unsuccess—the song of the Vast Obscure?

Did you want to paint?

And have you found that you could not? I have.

Did you try to preach, and lose conviction?

Yes, catechiser.

Did you strive to write and find that you had nothing to say?

I opened a lumber-room of useless odds and ends.

Did you see corruption and poverty and vice, and wish to conquer them?

It was a futile task.

You are soothed by music, but the art is another’s.

True, I have no genius.

What have you, then?

Nothing, but my foiled desires. My dearest hopes are rendered unavailing.

And why are you so?

Ah, that I do not know. Ask the hero, the successful man. He can tell you what I lack. I met a drunken man who said:

“Two kernels of corn fell on the ground, and sprouted in the self-same way. A toad hopped along and passed his dung at the roots of one, while the other shrunk in the shade.”

IV

I have taken more than my usual quota of this pleasant stuff. Why not? Why not? It helps me to get away from this world of conventions and mortal routine. I like to watch the rays of fire-light glistening through the glass and liquor. I am loggerheaded. I can see my eyelashes.

Here comes one with a birch canoe. I get in. A tanned figure bare to the loins, without a sign of passion in his face, holds a paddle aloft as if awaiting my orders, a paddle curiously carved like a totem pole.

“Row to that floating bed of water lilies yonder that I may see their upturned faces of gold.”

The paddle dips noiselessly, the ripples make rings on the glimmering surface of the lake. I hear the water slush the bottom of the canoe. It sways until I can see over the sides and down into the green undergrowth of the lake where sun-fish and rainbow trout flash about in the slender thread-like leaves, as though they were swimming in the delicate, green foliage of a sunken tamarack forest or virgin growth of wild asparagus. What a cooling sensation it is to let the water trickle through the fingers as the canoe is paddled along. A little herd of four deer are coming down a woodland path to the border of the lake on the opposite shore. There are three does and a buck. He courts one of them, rubbing the underpart of his downy neck across her back. She shows her little teeth and leaps nimbly from under him, frisking her little cotton tail to and fro. I wonder for how many centuries that path has been trodden down by the light patter of their forefathers’ feet? I hear squirrels chattering, and I see them pursuing one another. A pair of wild ducks are diving in a little bay beyond, and another pair are mating near them on the land.

“What is the name of this northern swamp?” I ask. But the figure answers nothing at all. I take it that he, too, is one of its aboriginal inhabitants. What a ceaseless propagation has gone on here—when did it begin, when will it end? Life is to give life. “And you, you dumb being, are you happier without words and gibberish? With you there is no vice, for you mate as naturally as the wild ducks yonder. You have no slander or back-biting, then. No boring conversations about social nothings. No nasty words or thoughts! Your mind is as pure as the roebuck’s on the water’s edge.” But the figure answers nothing at all, deftly paddling on and on, until I hear the roar of rapids ahead. It must be the outlet of the swamp. The waters grow disturbed, rocks peer through the surface, foam eddies round them. I can see the rush of the current by the leaves and twigs hurrying by. We are shooting the rapids. The figure backs water, the foam rushing up his bare arms. But he can not stop us, the canoe will strike that rock ahead instantly! He jumped and disappeared with his paddle. The next I know I am thrown forward—

Here I awoke, striking my head in some inexplicable manner against the leg of my centre table, yet for a moment I seemed to feel the closing in of waters around me. Ah, why couldn’t it have lasted a little longer and then I should have been asleep. My tumbler, half full of sangaree, is spilled on the carpet about me. Sandy has brought me some witch-hazel to rub on my head. It is very sore from the blow against the table.

V

How one warms the blood: how two taste bitter and sweet: and the third glass—that’s the end of me. Let us take a trip, Sandy, and escape from the bores. Be sure that you bolt the door.

I have received this minute another invitation to that distant land which lies far out from the beaten track, neither is it found on any map. I travel thither in the same fashion that the Arabian princes used to travel with their genii, and the pointed tops of trees and sooty chimney pots sweep under me, roads and rivers flying beneath look like threads in a motley loom, everything is going and whirling.... Aha, here I am once more on my fourth visit to this land of the Inconsequentials. I am a friend of their ruler, who is the soul of ingenuity, and to whom they give the unique title of Excelsior, if I may translate the word literally, meaning more lofty. Usually I find it bitter cold here.

My chief design at this moment is to describe one of the luxurious diversions of this potentate. I had His Majesty’s permission to be shown over his magnificent demesne. The sieges of extreme cold weather caused him to have built a curious structure, built entirely of glass, and covering an area of eighteen acres. There were three divisions of six acres each, used to represent the three seasons other than winter; so that His Majesty, rolled in an upholstered chair along tan-bark walks from one section to another, could experience respectively the sensations of spring, summer and autumn.

In the first park, the grass was kept young and green by constant irrigation; cherry and crab trees were forced to blossom, and as soon as they began to wither, they were replaced by others; birds were mating and singing at such close proximity that one screeching varlet passed his dung on my bonnet. At the end of the enclosure depicting summer, I saw His Grace stretched out in a cushioned hammock before a fountain. He had one eunuch sprinkling perfume about him, while another kept flies off his bald pate, and a third was squeezing drops from the petals of clover blossoms into his open lips.

Upon approaching the royal presence, I bared my arms which is the custom in this country.

“Here I am, O Excelsior, on a relief expedition from the land of the Yankee bores, as your Supreme Armpit chose to call them on my previous visits, judging me as a sample of my countrymen.”

I translate the word “Armpit” literally which is used by the natives in addressing their ruler, wishing, as I suppose, to signify either that his arms are more beautifully rounded and developed than those of his subjects, or that the shoulders are more lofty and are on a higher plane than the rest of the body. His Grace motioned to the eunuch to cease the spraying of perfume and the dropping of clover juice that he might acknowledge my salutation.

“You speak of being here on a relief expedition,” quoth he; “whom, pray, are you to relieve?”

“Myself,” said I, for I had found on previous visits that the surest means of flattering His Royal Axilla was by depreciating my own countrymen. But this time it seems I was mistaken.

“I take it that you are a failure in your native land,” quoth the ruler, “for those who are failures are usually ‘bored’, to use your tongue. Is it not so, thou parasite of the warm ocean land?”

“True it is, O Excelsior,” I replied, “but my failure is due not to me; it is the fault of——” Here he cut me short with an interruption:

“Those who are failures,” quoth he, “ever place the cause of their failure upon others, while those who attain success always accredit it to themselves.”

I thanked His Majesty for these kind words of wisdom, and was about to take my departure when he asked me if I had seen the new instrument of punishment which he had just had erected. Upon my replying in the negative, he said that I could obtain a good view of it from one of the windows in the royal bed-chamber, and that as he himself was going thither to take his two o’clock siesta, he would gladly show it to me in person. I thanked him with many encomiums upon his hospitality, and we proceeded to his sleeping apartments.

Upon our arrival at the entrance to his bed-chamber, I noticed that the windows were screened by a series of reflectors, making a curious olio of lights, and there were strips of tapestry in many gradations of color and tone effects. To my query as to the purpose of these massive reflectors of light, the Excelsior replied that he deemed it to be very bad for the nervous system to awake suddenly, saying that this theory is supported by the fact that in a true state of nature one is awakened gradually from sleep by the slow transition from darkness to light. Accordingly, he produced by the arrangement of these reflectors an effect similar to that of dawn, and he could thus be awakened gradually at any hour of the day or night.

“The old-fashioned method of letting up blinds or throwing open shutters,” quoth he, “and thereby admitting a sudden influx of bright light is most injurious to the optic nerves and leaves the mind in a drowsy and dazed condition. My optician, whom I have had with me for two decades, agrees with me in this theory. And my invention overcomes these deleterious effects of a sudden awakening.”

Hereupon he ordered the eunuchs to slide back the reflectors that he might show me the aforementioned instrument of punishment. We stepped out upon a balcony, and I saw in the courtyard below an immense bladder, supported upon two uprights of timber, like the sweep of an old-fashioned well. This bladder is operated as a whip, only it belabors the victim upon the head. It was thus explained to me by His Majesty.

“For what crime is this used as a punishment?” I asked.

“For those who are unduly given to self-praise,” replied the potentate, “and there are two degrees of penalty, first for those who praise themselves directly, and secondly for those who praise themselves indirectly.”

“From what class of your subjects do most of these victims come?”

“From all classes,” he continued, “but those who praise themselves frankly and openly are chiefly made up of successful business men, actors and patent medicine doctors; whereas those who are given to praising themselves indirectly, mostly consist of politicians, authors, artists, professors and clergymen; and to this latter class is accorded the most severe punishment.”

I observed now that the Excelsior was yawning profusely, and I began to bare my arms and to bow myself out from his presence and to excuse my long visit.

“Wait a moment,” he said, “now that you are here, take a look at another invention of mine. There it is in the corner by the hearth.”

I turned and saw a large oblong table with three layers of shelves, upon which were rows of bottles with automatic stoppers attached to them. These stoppers or flat corks were manipulated by finger stops and pedals, much the same as an ordinary organ. I should surely have noticed this unique instrument upon my entrance, had it not been for those colored reflectors which cut off the light.

“What does your Royal Axilla call that?” I asked, looking at the labels on the bottles.

“That,” quoth he, “is my smelling piano. Did it never occur to you that civilized man has been cultivating his ear with musical sounds ever since he was in the stage of savagery, while he has utterly neglected that much more sensitive member, the nose?”

This subject seemed to rouse great animation in His Majesty, and he spoke about it with much fluency, as follows:

“Take for instance the fact that one never forgets an odor,” he continued, “while a musical sound is scarcely remembered over night. It is a matter of common observation that an odor will recall the scenes or incidents or persons with which it was first perceived. Indeed my chief chemist, whom I have had at my court several decades, is of the belief that the memory of a smell, be it pleasant or disagreeable, is the last thing that the mind retains. I have him compress into those bottles the essences of the principal odors. There now, you have the idea of this invention in a nutshell.”

“And can you compose upon this smelling piano?” I asked.

“Why, certainly,” he replied; “there is as much a symphony of smells as of sounds; and the harmony of odors depends in like manner upon discords. As, for example, in a sonata that I was producing last night, the delicate fragrance of mignonette and of lilies of the valley was offset by an odor of Edam cheese.”

It was with difficulty that I maintained the composure of my countenance, but His Royal Armpit was in earnest, and I dared not laugh.

“Then you have scales for the smells?”

“Exactly,” continued His Majesty, glowing with satisfaction at my appreciation of the subject, “there are minor odors, such as the essences of beeswax, of tan-bark, of most kinds of flowers and the various mixtures of tobacco, and so forth; and then there are major odors in which are included the rank smell of the poppy and of the milk-weed, of the sap of the pungent ailanthus tree, and of most of the concentrated acids, and what-not, and especially those odors of a high pitch, such as of molten soap and burning rubber. And this last bottle,” said he sharply, and at the same time giving vent to an unconcealed yawn, “this last bottle I open whenever visitors overstay their welcome.” Whereupon he pulled out one of the finger stops and pushed the base pedal. Instantly the chamber was filled with the vile stench of burning gutta-percha. At this strong hint I bade the Excelsior adieu, thanking him for his cordial reception of me, and then I repeated the custom of baring my arms before leaving his presence.

A moment later Sandy came running into my room crying, “Lor’ maarstar, the house am on fire!”

This information startled me, though I doubted its truth. “No, Sandy,” said I, “it is only the smell of burning rubber.” And upon making an investigation, Sandy discovered that I had for some inexplicable reason thrown my fountain pen into the fire. Probably in an absent-minded moment I mistook it for my half-burned segar. Such was the cause of the stench. Sandy reports that it is four o’clock in the morning. My lamp is just flickering. Perhaps I shall now be able to get a little sleep.

VI

My window is open, though it is a night in the late autumn. I have sat sipping this beverage until my brain is aroused to false action. Listen! There comes a band of music, marching. It is coming nearer and nearer until I can hear the human shouts of applause. I can see the crowd swaying and forging up the street past my window. I can see that they are escorting a chief to a rostrum where they may proclaim him leader! How grand and humble must he feel, knowing their expectations and his limitations.

Hear the fighting, onward notes of that music! It seems to say for him:

“Come on, my followers! I have won. I have triumphed! At last I have come into my own. Life is not a failure! My forehead beats with the inspiration of fame, of music, of triumphal progress. The bells are ringing for me, and every clash of their tongues sends a quiver through my blood. The whistles shriek! Each blast makes the hair on my head tingle. And the shouts: ‘Huzzah! Huzzah! Tiger! Three cheers for Me! And three times three! Huzzah! Huzzah!’”

The band, the crowd and the leader have passed my window, and the music has died away. I sit looking up into the star-lighted heavens, sipping my sangaree.

I wonder how many of the followers of that exalted man had longed to hear the music sound what it was sounding for him? Or was it? Ah, the dream of fame that was, but never is, pewter for silver. I see the spirits of the things which were to be, hovering about the living facts of the things which are, I see them standing as shadow sentinels to us, the sullen puppets of fate.

That crowd begins to march before me.

“You there! what are you? A clerk? A neat, scribbling clerk, and in your hopeful youth, in the knee breeches of sturdy boyhood, you dreamed that you were to be an architect! An architect of what? You alone can tell us. Oh yes, I know you.

“Next! What art thou? A cringing politician, and from the height of your white temple, one might surmise that good blood flowed in your veins. What of you? Back at college, are you? I mean in your memory. Very good, do you remember a clear-eyed enthusiastic youth with ideals of civic purity, a young lawyer hearing the dictates of righteousness—where is he? Dead! And you stand in his place, stanching the wounds of conscience with the cobwebs of half-success. You had money. It was not the greed for money, no, not that, but the easy greed of ambition. Cheap ambition! Has the band played for you? How, pray, does it sound? Tell us that? Ah yes, I know you.

“And you too, you lazy being with a sleek, well-fed smile upon your rosy lips, yes, yes, I know you well. You have shirked doing anything except to stroll along the Road of Least Resistance. You were born an inheritor of great wealth, were you not? You are the scion of a great money-getter who was at heart a voluptuary, and so you have never done what you have not wanted to do, eh? No, that is not strictly the truth, else why have you not done what you really wanted to do? Look back to that brilliant dawn of your manhood, when your soul bade you speak, and you had a decent ambition to tell your fellow beings the truth, that you were not to be envied, that it was not so! And you thought of a great poem of discontent, of half-lighted love—aha, I know you well. Do you ever hear the band?

“Here is another of your ilk, only he was poor, and had more excuse. See his fingers, smeared with ink. See his nervous eye, dodging us lest we read his secret. He has a little money now; he can buy food and raiment, yet even when he is physically most at ease, he is still uncomfortable. He wrote what he did not want to write. He wrote what he did not believe. He had to please or starve, so he pleased. Ah, sir, I do not want to examine you, for you know yourself. I knew your twin brother once, years ago, he had genius, whereas you have talent. Why did he cut his throat?

“Who is that pompous one over there? Let him step forward. He looks the part of self-made success. He comes nigh to the World’s Conception of Complete Rapture, only he speaks fairly bad grammar. He is the practical ideal of the present-day American, industrious, self-reliant, not embarrassed by his past, confident in his contempt for others—we almost hear the conquering music as he advances. But do we know him? Let him come closer. You struggled all your youth and manhood and middle life, did you not? He nods. You slaved for your children and for your children’s children, to perpetuate your name above want and in respectability. Ah yes, I think I know you. Your children? They are not what you willed them to be. He hung his head. And sadder than that, you imagined that you outgrew the wife of your struggles. You may take your stand under the Banner of Success for Others; it is just ahead of the Banner of Success. The band plays a little sweetly for you, but it does not thrill you. The zest is gone.”

Charity, charity, I pray God for charity toward the Other’s Self and toward myself. Charity!

For, sirs, I, too, have had Macbeth’s vaulting ambition which o’erlept itself. I, too, have horsed the clouds with Kaiser Peer Gynt, and ridden under the stars. Ozymandias, king of kings, never looked upon grander works than those on my demense. And I have dropped from poetry into fact. I have sailed the sea and cried, “Fear not. You carry Caesar!”

Macbeth became a murderer; Peer Gynt something worse. Ozymandias has been forgotten; and we know not where Julius Caesar lies.

On such a night as this, the heavens seem aglow with brilliants. Stars, moons, planets, suns, worlds—how many of you are inhabited as ours is? Or do you reckon at all of such atoms as men and women? You have shone upon a mighty host of leaders and their followers. You shine indifferently upon our passing shows and remain to shine when we are gone, mocking our longest efforts. Ah, how does that Eternity of the Past outdo the little Eternity of the Future of which poor man has dreamed!

Tell us, Moon, did the mastodons shed their heavy hair when the ice receded? And did the Aztecs have a written alphabet?

Was Helen of Troy sweet to look upon? Or was she bold and brazen?

Was Shakespeare a drunkard? And did he consider Marlowe a failure?

In that company of Greeks who came to Philip with the request: “Sir, we would see Jesus;”—did they think that Christ had Grecian blood in his veins, as his thought indicated?

When I die, will I get my sleep at last in the wide bed which holds us all? Failures and successes cut much the same figure under the great green sheet of that bed, don’t they?

Sandy, the moon has set and will not answer me. You may go to sleep, Sandy. I am going out for an early morning walk and gather us some mushrooms before the sun strikes them.

VII

I am in a warm part of the world where the sun is always vertical. I should judge that I must be somewhere in the tropic of Capricorn. Magnificent forests stretch away from the spot where I am lying, but immediately before me is a grove of the wild date palm, while I myself am luxuriating in the midst of gigantic grasses. I seem to be overcome with deep drowsiness. Yet my mind is quick to such a degree that I am able to contemplate an endless panorama that is unwinding before me. My body is bare in the white sunlight, but my head is kept cool by the lush green shade of the date palm. Let me watch that figure in the panorama.

I observe that the figure is a male. He is seated at the trunk of a tree on the edge of the forest. I set my eyes steadily upon him and perceive that his jaw projects as it does in all brutes, his nose is rudimentary, his hide is covered with silken hairs, his face partially naked, and when he turns his back to me I can see that his buttocks are callous. He is devouring fruit; but he is of a prying, inquisitive nature and examines what he eats. His mate, overhead in the branches, is likewise eating, and feeding their single offspring, but her meal is upon cocoanuts, which she throws at other of her kind who draw near to their tree.

When lo! of a sudden, I see the male figure try to raise himself off all fours. He appears to find it most difficult to stand erect for more than a moment, for his head is thrown forward, and he stands awkwardly upon the sides of his two rear feet. He keeps, trying, trying, and each time that I see him erect himself, he takes a look afar off, and gradually from these attempts, lo and behold! his forehead rises slowly, his jaw is receding, his eye develops, he can see his enemy at a distance!

Who is this enemy? I scan the outer skirts of the forest and perceive another male figure, fashioned like himself. Only this one approaches on all fours, whereas his upright brother has already seen him and is striving to prepare for his attack. I can see his front claws itch and quiver with indecision, when, ha! one claw spreads out from the others and the thumb is born! Now he is thinking. An idea is germinating!

His enemy is creeping slowly upon him, imagining himself unseen, little knowing of his disadvantage of being upon all fours. With a hideous yell he springs into view. But our upright brother is calmly chattering. He has used that thumb—he has grasped a club! The enemy is awe-stricken at that erect figure, which drives him to cover and strikes him dead.

The mate in the tree screams with exultation, the offspring leaps to her bosom, and both descend to embrace their upright spouse and father in a perfect whirl of chattering. Inarticulate chattering, most unlike speech, but still chattering—for Love was born.

And those other enemies, those tremendous enemies, various and of a multitude of shapes, some as big as a mastodon—think of it!—he can see them away in the distance in season to escape. He pats himself with a sense of relief. He even kisses his wife.

Scenes shift before me; and there is a persistent blank in the panorama. This tapestry of the fated past, vast and unknown, winds and unwinds before me. Yet chaos on the screen is becoming more and more definite in outline. Yes, praise be given, there is the figure, the same upright figure, before me again. He is sitting on a rocky beach, bordering the bank of a gurgling river. His club is beside him. It is evidently late in the autumn, for the rock pile is covered with dried leaves. A little animal that he has killed with his club, is lying beside him. That off-member, the thumb, has grown strong on both hands, and he is grabbing the smaller boulders with intense delight and clashing them together. What? A spark flew to the elemental tinder and the dead leaves are all ablaze. The figure became so frightened at this sight and so insane in his actions that he fell into the river. But by the time he scrambled ashore, the blaze had spent its force, and he noticed that where he shook himself, the water extinguished the fire. Gracious! What a relief to be without those biting colors once more. What did cause that trouble? He sits upon his haunches and ponders until his mind hurts. He is hungry. Where is the animal that he killed? He looks over at the rock pile with trepidation. Yes, there is the little carcass, but its fur is gone! He can hardly recognize it. He summons up courage and snatches it. But it hurts so that he lets it fall. He sucks his thumb in pain. The new smell! The new taste! Those biting colors made that rich odor and delicious flavor. How did he make them? He will make them again! He wants some more cooked meat.

Here the panorama ceased; and I fell inadvertently into a light sleep. I know not for how long I remained in slumber, but I was abruptly aroused by cries of “Fire! Fire!” That did not seem to me strange, as my room is directly opposite an engine house. I rushed to my windows. I could hear the telephone and the telegraph ring and click in the engine house. Gong! Gong! The fire tower sounded. Gong! Gong! And there was the hitching up of the fire patrol.

I could not rid myself of the remembrance of the figure, and my mental eye kept looking about for him. Gong! Gong! There was the clatter of the horses’ hoofs. Gong! Gong! The entire fire company sprang through its doors. Gong! Gong!

“There he is!” I cried to myself, tingling in every hair of my head, “there he is!”

It was the flash of the figure that I saw, driving horses breakneck, to save his fellow men.

VIII

This morning I am making a tour of inspection with the Great Axilla. We are driving in his chariot, which is a wide-seated, low-swung ox-cart drawn by a yoke of white oxen. The Excelsior has other means of faster locomotion, but he abhors those vehicles, while I am made nervous by the slow speed of our ox-cart.

“Why are you so fidgety, puny one?” asked the Excelsior, “evidently the inhabitants of your country get small enjoyment out of life, because they do not train themselves to observe. If one travels faster than an ox can walk, it is not possible for him to observe the indispensable details of this world. I am going through life for the last time, my little fellow, and I want to see all that there is. I am in no hurry.”

We rode along in frisky pomp, and I tried to sit still.

“Who lives in that great mansion?” I asked, as we jaunted past the abode of some evidently wealthy citizen.

“His name was Missed-It.”

“Is he dead?”

“Yes, he died yesterday.”

“What a strange name;” I mused.

“No, not if you knew him,” said the Excelsior, “you know I never allow my great folk to have permanent names until they are dead. Then I name them. If you will go some other time to visit our cemetery you will see by the tombstones that several important personages have passed away this winter. You will see that I have had their names cut deep in the stones. For instance, ‘Natural Poser’ died in November; likewise ‘Poor Imitation.’ Then in December, we lost ‘Anybody’s Flirt,’ and a little later ‘Sublime Assurance’ had to die. And now little old ‘Missed-It’ is to be tucked away. He was certainly very rich.”

“How much did he leave?”

“He left everything.”

The ox-cart slowly mounted a snow-covered hill, and I kept quiet. Presently my host said:

“There are no pockets to our shrouds; neither are there money drawers in our burial vaults; and that man’s coffin could not hold a tithe of what he amassed.”

“Why, how much was he worth?”

“Ninety billion buttons!” exclaimed the Excelsior, his eyes bulging in spite of himself.

“Buttons? Are buttons the coin of your realm?” I asked, smiling.

“You need not be so supercilious, my small guest,” snapped the Excelsior, “for I adopted our currency system from your own people.”

“How is that?”

“I sent my agents to the warm ocean lands to search out what gave the majority of your people the greatest satisfaction. They made an exhaustive inquiry, and reported that most of you derived satisfaction from saying and having it said: He or she is worth so many million dollars, francs, pounds, rubles; and that the larger the number they could say the more glee they derived. Very well, if it be simply that the larger the sum the more the satisfaction, why not have a coin which can be multiplied indefinitely? Hence I decided upon buttons. Moreover, there is a moral attaching to our form of currency, for as buttons are used upon our clothes, and we can not use more than ten or a dozen upon one suit, and can only wear one suit at a time, a rich man is constantly reminded how superfluous are his other billions of buttons. Now, let us ride along for a while in peace.”

The snow fell so fast that it balled upon the feet of our oxen, but as we ourselves were protected by a massive parasol, our view was unobstructed. Shortly we entered a thickly settled portion of the city where high structures towered toward the clouds. They resembled in architecture our great office buildings. I could not maintain my silence any longer.

“Pray tell me what are all these high edifices jammed together here?”

“They are Sane Asylums,” answered the Excelsior, “and the inmates are devotees of routine.”

At that moment, whistles shrieked and bells rang: and lo, behold! vast throngs of individuals swarmed in the hallways and issued out of doors.

“Look at them,” said the Excelsior, “they are now going to crawl to luncheon, no matter whether they are hungry or not. Yet you will find odd specimens in that mass. You will find presidents of companies who spend their lives poring over countless figures when they would much prefer to study along the inclinations of their temperaments. You will find lawyers and physicians who long to love and dream instead of listening to petty ills and complaints. You will find bankers who might have been philosophers. You will find clerks who conceal and are ashamed of poetic fancies. And yet they all slave on in their voluntary prisons, giving forth only mediocre efforts. And why? Because they do not love their work. They work only to procure buttons, instead of living for rational happiness. That is why this age of ours is unfortunately a Millennium of Minnows.”

My host thought he had said enough for a while and ceased to entertain me. He lolled back and stroked his magnificent whiskers. Again we were jaunting down hill when the oxen drew up to water at a curved trough which stood before a crooked building with dingy, little windows, all arow.

“What on earth is this; who lives in here?”

“My cowards,” answered the Excelsior, “did you not know that I own the rarest and most complete collection of cowards in the world?”

“I have never even heard of such a collection.”

“What a puny ignoramus you are!” exclaimed the Great Axilla, “where can you have lived and not have been taught the underlying principles of cowardice? And I, sir, have specimens to illustrate each of those principles. Do you not even know the three grand divisions of cowards: the Physical Coward, the Moral Coward and the Intellectual Coward?”

“Have we not time to go in and see some of them?”

The Excelsior consulted his travelling dial, and said:

“It is almost time for my afternoon siesta, but if you will make haste and not interrupt me with your insipid questions, I can give you a quick tour of inspection.”

We alighted and ran in through the low, grated portals.

“Here,” said the Excelsior, as we entered the first tier of cells, “are the Physical Cowards. They are too ordinary and common to need explanation. They are divided into two main subdivisions. Firstly, the positive physical coward, who, having neither intellect nor morality on his side, resorts to force. And when he defeats you by the strength of his bull neck and coarse fists he declares that he has proved himself in the right.

“The second subdivision, which comprises those cells on the left-hand side, consists of the other and even more common variety. That is, a person who will not risk his body for the chance of protecting another, or who will not give up his cheap life for his country. A philosopher of your country once remarked, ‘’Tis man’s perdition to be safe, when for the Truth, he ought to die!’”

The Excelsior took me by the arm and escorted me up a flight of winding stairs, until we reached a shaky, moving platform. The Axilla expatiated as follows:

“On this higher level in this second tier of cells, live my Moral Cowards. Their cowardice has to do with character. Here too, there are subdivisions. Firstly, those who prefer to be what they are, and not what they might be. My friend, I speak with all due reverence: your Savior spoke of the Sin against the Holy Ghost, and here I think is that sin’s personification. For, the Unpardonable Sin, as I understand it, is not to struggle, not to strive to do right even though failure faces you at every turn, but instead to give up and become satiated with sloth, to yield to the worst elements in your nature and to grovel in their lowness. Bah! Do not start me talking about them, for it taints my own soul.

“The other and more open moral coward, and therefore the more simple, is he or she who takes out his or her anger, not upon himself or herself who is really to blame, but foists the blame upon another, as the wolf found pretext against the lamb. Then of course, there is also that vast class who openly attack one of their sex for having done what they themselves would inwardly like to do. This last variety has always struck me as being the most human of all.

“Come, now, to the third and highest level, where I maintain my Intellectual Cowards at a great expense. They are the very costly specimens, for they come chiefly from the places of elevated culture.”

While he was speaking, we ascended a cast-iron stairway inlaid with arabesques. The Excelsior let down a narrow, filigree draw-bridge which was the only means of access to the tier of intellectual cowards. We ambled across it, and the Excelsior made a sweep with his cane, exclaiming:

“Look at them! Are they not ludicrous? You have often heard the adjective contemptible applied to cowardice. The application came from this sect. These are the contemptible cowards. They lack the courage of their convictions. And the curious fact is that these persons are proud of their cowardice, because they call it another name—self-preservation, which includes self-appreciation.”

Here the Excelsior turned upon me.

“Did it ever occur to you,” he asked, “that a humbug is at heart a coward? A humbug is simply one who is afraid to be himself for fear it may not pay. As an example, one of the oldest and most harmful devices of the humbug is to titulate the imagination with smut under the pretense of being outspoken. That is why you see so many modern playwrights and novelists amongst them. If they were really clean-minded and earnest in their work, they would not have to adopt such false methods.”

The Excelsior took me to the other end of the balcony where a ball was in progress.

“Here are some more humbugs,” he began, “indeed by far the majority of humbugs are found among the so-called fashionable classes. These specimens came from the esoteric ‘sets’ of your society folk.”

“Do you allow them to carry on their same diversions?” I asked, noticing the luxurious furnishings and grandeur.

“Oh yes,” answered the Excelsior, “otherwise they would languish and die. Look at that grand lady there in the gilt arm-chair. She is a famous leader. She has composure, but nothing to compose.

“Can you see that loose-jointed male specimen, stroking his blond mustache. How very haughty he is! He is exclusive, for fear of being excluded.

“These are all cowards, you understand, because they are imitated poses. Imitation is a confession that you lack the stamina to be yourself.”

My brain was buzzing with the Excelsior’s concentrated talk. He gave me some relief by asking me to follow him into a wing of the building. He unlocked a suite of private apartments. In the dining-room there sat five persons.

“Here,” he whispered, “is a family of cowards, two parents and three children, a sister and two brothers. One of the brothers is a poet of some ability, but his family opposes him on the ground that it is not nice and proper to write such sentiments as he desires to give forth. Instead of lending a word of encouragement to his feeble will, as relatives are supposed to do, they show him their utmost contempt. And he does not realize that contempt from certain persons is a compliment. They are Pharisees of the purest type; and no more profound coward exists than a Pharisee, for he or she is invariably a conscious coward, shamming sincerity.”

The Excelsior descended to the open air, and I gladly followed him; for the atmosphere was close and exotic within.

“Now I excuse you;” he said to me, yawning, “please do not visit me again for at least some months.”

IX

I am on the Pacific seaboard, seated in an ocean breeze; the sun, falling delicately through a mist, makes me feel like a young god awaiting the daughters of men. It seems as though all nature would utter passionate yearnings upon this warm, buxom day. Yonder in clear view are the round, beautifully curved hills, rising gently from the soft smooth water, like breasts from a woman’s form. And the firm, supple ship masts leap upward upon the waves.

Where is my mate? I am ready for her, and she for me. And yet we are denied each other. By what right? By whose authority? There is evil thought in forbidding the pure, the naturally pure, to embrace.

In front of me, built up from the shifting beach, is a huge, stolid sea-wall, composed of a multitude of boulders, stuck together with crude, coarse cement. I have examined these boulders somewhat carefully with my eyes. They have each and every one of them been rolled and washed and moulded by the sea. And yet no two are alike. Some are beautifully shaped with radiant crystals in their make-up. Some are jagged, rough-edged pyramids, uncut, with moss upon them. Many are flat rocks, worn by the beatings of countless aeons of waves until they are quite colorless. And then there is another kind which resembles these last and yet seem different. I refer to the plain, ordinary, flat, stupid stone, looking for all the world as if it had been created merely to be trodden upon. But the boulders that interest and amuse me most are those which are sheer bulks of matter or rather hulks of space, having their own way, always getting the place they want, boulders which are proud and satisfied with being exactly the sort of boulders that they are. I think that they like being big boulders chiefly because they catch the eye.

Can that coarse, man-made cement hold these elemental things together? Yes, for a while, but not forever. This sea-wall will have to be torn down and rebuilt again by coming nations; for that cement, Sandy, is civilization trying to weld men together; and that sea beating with the waves of beautiful, noble, animal passion, keeps ceaselessly, ceaselessly saying:

“Down! Come down, I say, you can not curb me, for I am life, and the Giver of Life, personified in motion, crucified in your sinful cement, come down; you have not yet builded rightly!”

Then empires and republics fall; then cities sink upon sunken cities; and the ant-hills lie waste upon an even desert. And man, poor, lonely, bewildered, impotent man begins again to mix cement.

Troy was destroyed because of a prostitute. And why? Because there should be no such person as a prostitute.

Sodom, Babylon and the Rome of the Caesars followed in the fated cycle of Troy—in the perversion of love. Paris, London, Berlin and New York will follow them, too. Nemesis takes time, plenty of time, too much time, yet follows as surely as the stars shine out of the sky. But the turtle doves of Solomon, without our vain intelligence, waste their little lives in love, or rather because of love, natural, untrammelled love, not one of them was wasted. Turtle doves do not sell their daughters in marriage for convenience, nor in harlotry for necessity. Marriage does not make love sacred. Love makes true marriage sacred. But what of marriage without love, or where love is killed?

Turtle doves do not mate after they cease to love. And so their love dies only with death, for they have no dogmas which call love a vice, no laws which call love illegitimate. Turtle doves have no prudery, for they are not foul-minded. Do not accept the fallacy that they are silly, effeminate, cooing lovers. Quite the contrary, they are the most shapely, virile and dignified of all creatures, happy in the fulfillment of their being.

They have not the poor always with them, and so their males do not force the young females by starving them until they yield for money. Neither do they know of such base acts as rape, seduction and broken vows amongst them. Jesus Christ knew all this when he told us to have the heart right. Aye, but how can we have the heart right when superstition makes us believe that we do wrong. Here, then, is the key, and that old sinner, William Shakespeare, found it when he said that there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. We think love a sin, when it is as natural as breathing and as beautiful as the warm birth of sunrise.

Are these statements true or not true? I appeal not to the advocates of the so-called “free love.” They are debauchees, too low for notice. I appeal not to religious ascetics, or bloodless beings. I appeal to normal, healthy, passionate men and women. Is it so, or is it not so?

Ah, you scientists, you theologians, cease seeking for what is hidden from us. Give up what is beyond us. Turn instead and tell us what of the Geology of Passion? What of the Dogmas of the female’s right to the male?

Come, Sandy, bring my tin spade and empty the little bucket upon the beach. I am going to try a new cement.

X

Once again I am in the company of my royal host, His Excelsior. The Great Axilla is showing me another section of his collection of men. We are in a vast inclosure which resembles a city park. Crossing it are shaded walks with benches at intervals, and at the intersection of these various paths, that is at the centre of the park, is a fountain. Upon the benches are seated men of different ages, some with chins almost beardless, others in the evening of life, with the harsh furrows of experience upon their features, and many who are worn into greyness.

“Look at these men,” said His Excelsior, “examine them with care and tell me what you see.”

I gazed about me with intentness, but remained silent.

“Can not you tell me what you see, slow one?” demanded the Excelsior, impatiently taking me by the elbow and turning me about face, “look at this specimen here—one with the down of youth still upon him.”

“How hollow-eyed he looks!” I whispered.

“Aye, and his belly pinched.”

“He looks up through the leafless branches as though he were dreaming and yet awake;” I added.

“Aye,” quoth the Great Axilla, “and his dreams never have and never shall come true.”

“What is he?” I asked.

“He is a misfit;” was the reply.

Then we strolled slowly on until we reached the centre where the fountain was flowing drearily. As we came to a stop, the Excelsior squeezed my arm gently to attract my attention to a man of middle age who sat upon a bench immediately beside us. I turned to study him for a passing moment. His trousers were frayed at the bottom and soiled. His beard was muddy with a growth of several days. He was leaning on the arm at the end of the bench, holding in his fingers a twig with which he was drawing strange devices upon the gravel walk, while the shadows and the light of the sun played around him. There could be no mistake in his actions. He was trying to get time behind him, and above all to occupy his mind. He was striving to distract his thoughts from himself, a ceaseless endeavor. No, there could be no doubt about the meaning of that wayward, woe-begone look.

“Tell me, what is he?” I asked in a low voice.

“He is one of the unfits;” rejoined my host, meditatively.

I had to ponder a little, too.

By this time we were near enough to the fountain to hear the water falling, falling, with its never-ending splash; and from this point we could look up and down the different avenues that stretched away from us like the spokes of a gigantic wheel, of which we were the hub.

“And who are those up that avenue? And these here, who are they?”

“Those and these, all of them,” quoth the Axilla, “the misfits and the unfits, they are the people who have nothing to do.”

“I notice that most of them stop as they pass and drink at this fountain.”

“Aye, verily,” answered the Axilla, “for these are the waters of the Fountain of Endurance.”

Before leaving this spot I did not fail to observe one among them who, by his countenance, clothing and deportment, seemed out of place. I noted that apparently he was doing exactly what I was doing, looking about and observing his fellow beings with scrutiny.

“What have you got him in here for?” I asked.

“Don’t be so petulant, little visitor,” answered the Great Axilla, “I have him here for the reason that he belongs here. He is one of the so-called dilettanti. He imagines that he is different from the horde, because he sits by and watches them, calling himself a student of human nature. But mark me, he has the streak in common with the rest of them—he is tired of it all, for he, too, has nothing to do. Follow his gaze now, and you may again query whether that spectacle is germane to this exhibit.”

I looked in the direction in which the dilettante was looking, toward the border of the park, and I saw a wide, white boulevard. Many people were driving and riding thereon, carrying whips with ribbons, or beautifully painted sun-shades. The vehicles themselves were splendid equipages, some were swung high, and some were swung low, according to the fancy and ease of the owners; and the coachmen and the footmen in their uniforms of sombre and brilliant hues made a showy spectacle to behold.

“I confess I can not see why they should be exhibited with these misfits and unfits.”

“That is because your physical eye is not near enough to see them clearly, puny one,” replied His Excelsior, “take you this strong field-glass,” continued he, offering me the instrument, “and examine the faces of those you see upon horse-back and in the various vehicles.”

I looked first at the face of a woman, protected by a gaudy parasol. She was driving in an open landau. Hers was the face of a woman far beyond maidenhood. There was something make-believe about her expression, as though in reality she was not free from care, as though her landau were neither carrying her to nor taking her from the realms of realized anticipations. Then I cast the glasses hastily upon a man on horse-back. He had the frame of one who was trying to recover a wasted constitution; but he had begun too late. A cigarette drooped languidly from his lips. He looked overfed with foods and wines that could no longer nourish him. Bah! I dropped the glasses from my eyes.

“Aha!” smiled the Excelsior, “now you perceive that they, too, have the same awful streak in their aspect.”

“But, Great Axilla,” cried I, “you surely allow them to drink also at the Fountain of Endurance?”

“Not so!” he exclaimed, “see their exclusive bowers which line the boulevard and into which they pass now and again? In those massive places they quench their thirst by sucking the juice from the acrid grapes of Ennui.”

I pondered once more, but said nothing. The path we were treading led toward the edge of the park. We walked on, fist on fist, which is a sign of cordiality in the Excelsior’s country. I had never known my host to be so familiar. Presently we came to a curve in our path, and there, hidden by a row of privet bushes was a long bench with arms at each seat for comfort. All of the occupants of this settee were women.

“I did not think that you had them in here, too;” I said sadly.

“Oh yes” said the Axilla, “that bench is reserved exclusively for them.”

“Why is that?”

“Because it looks more comfortable than the others, but in reality it is hard and poses them in unnatural postures. How they paint and powder, and their cologne fairly makes me ill. I guess that you recognize them,” concluded the Excelsior, eyeing me slyly, “they are the sort whom you meet seldom by day, and who abound late at night.”

“Yes, I imagined as much; but, sire, I am again at a loss to account for their being exhibited here.”

“You are not very bright, or else you sham stupidity,” quoth the Great Axilla, “surely you know that a strumpet is both an unfit and a misfit—isn’t she? She is a product of your civilization just as much as those poor men whom you saw sitting on the other side of this transformed, grass-growing ash heap.”

I did not have a word to reply, and I hung my head in silence.

“But,” said the Excelsior, “they enjoy a severe privilege. They drink not only at the Fountain of Endurance, but are also allowed to suck the acrid grapes of Ennui.”

As we passed out of the inclosure, my royal host turned to me and said:

“What think you is the motto that I have had placed over this exhibit of individuals who have nothing to do? Read—there it is.”

He pointed to a sign, bearing these immense letters of gold:

IDLERS ARE NOT TO BE ENVIED.

“Now, my little visitor,” quoth he, “you have wearied me sufficiently for the present. Perhaps you yourself may also enjoy a little sleep.”

XI

I am seated in my room at a hotel in the city of New York. The proprietor told me that there is a large closet between my room and Sandy’s which was reserved and locked by the former occupant of these rooms. I dislike privacy within my own privacy.

Sandy went out early in the evening to get the necessary ingredients for the making of his sangaree, as I told him that I should like to have a fresh quantity on hand. He returned about two hours since and made me about a gallon of the mixture. After I drank a glass, I told him that I felt better, and that he might go out to see the sights of this great city. Sandy is always reluctant to leave me alone. I am sorry now that I allowed him to go out, for I have a prescience that an unusual coma is about to fall upon me. But why worry about the unknown? Where death is, said a philosopher, we are not. And where we are, death is not.

I arose and thought that I ought to lie down in an attempt to sleep, when I thought that I heard a knock upon a door. Oddly enough, it was not upon my outer chamber door, but upon the closet door within. Surely I was mistaken.

I removed my dressing gown and stretched myself upon the bed. To convince myself, I arose and went to the inner closet door, but as I took hold of the handle, I stopped.

“What a superstitious wretch you are,” I uttered unconsciously aloud to myself, “get to bed. For how could a human being be knocking at an inner closet door?”

With this I was consoled, yet I shuddered, and drank another glass of sangaree.

My God, the noise was repeated again!

I was in this awful predicament when a clearer knock at my outer door brought me to my senses. Although relieved at hearing a human sound, I was much embarrassed at my condition, as I had on an oriental costume which I wear for comfort when shut within my chambers. While I hesitated, another sharp knock came at the outer door, and in another second, I heard a scratch in the key-hole. Unfortunately I had not shot the bolt on the inside, so rather than have the intruder open the door for himself, I sprang forward and swung open the door. There stood a man. He was flurried and out of breath, but apparently a gentleman of culture. He carried a valise.

I was angry and beside myself with nervousness, and determined to be abrupt with him.

“Be good enough to pardon me for disturbing you,” he said, “for I know how angry I would be if a similar interruption should occur to me. I shall only bother you for a moment. I was the last occupant of these rooms, and the proprietor of this hotel allowed me to reserve the large closet until such a time as I might be able to carry away its contents.”

“Yes, so he told me,” I answered, sharply, “but you come at a late hour to remove your effects and will arouse the other guests who may retire earlier than I am accustomed to do.”

“To say the whole truth,” he replied, “I did not come to remove my effects. I came to look upon your face. Now I am at my ease. I will leave without bothering you, and I shall remain away until you give up these apartments.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, bluntly, as I thought the man insinuated that I would have pried into his effects if he had not seen me.

“I mean that I take you for a gentleman,” he said, “a gentleman without the curiosity of Bluebeard’s wives.”

His frankness at once unarmed me and amused me.

“You are quite out of breath;” I remarked.

“Yes,” he said, “I have walked up the seven flights of stairs.”

“What, are not the elevators running?” I asked, worrying about Sandy’s return.

“Oh, yes, but they make me dizzy. I—I—I rarely use them.”

The man’s hesitation shot a fiendish idea into my brain. There are two classes of men who interest me particularly, one type is composed of those who are taciturn about their mysterious selves, and the other kind who conceal mystery under a glib and suave exterior. My visitor being of the latter class, this fiendish intention came into my brain: suppose you dose him with your sangaree until he reveals his mystery, and you can read his naked soul. Besides this, the man had a fascinating face and figure. He was about fifty years of age, his hair streaked with grey, his eyes outwardly plausible but inwardly leering, his mouth told of an exceedingly sensuous nature. His features and his body stood out like a mask, covering an actual self within, totally different from his considerate, gentlemanly exterior. I want to scratch that thin veneer of civilization, and get a look at this urbane creature.

“I fear that you mistook my abruptness for rudeness,” I said, “sit down, won’t you? Rest a few minutes until you recover your breath. I fear you have no conception of how hard stair-climbing is on the heart.”

“I have been used to it for years,” he replied, about to depart, “for eighteen years I climbed the pyramids of Egypt.”

“What a coincidence,” I answered, “I myself am a student of the East. I even adopt their dress within doors, as you see. Did you ever work about the vicinity of Memphis? Come in and sit a moment, for you are in no condition to strain yourself any more for a while. My servant is out, or I would offer you refreshment.”

I opened the door wide. He hesitated, but after brushing off a cloud of suspicion arising from my change of manner, he entered, set down his valise, and looked at me as I closed the door.

“When you spoke of Memphis,” said he, “well, I can only say that I was taken aback! Memphis was the site of most of my work.”

“You were surprised no more than I when you spoke of the pyramids,” I replied, “pardon me, but will you excuse me if I take a glass of a mild beverage which I keep on hand? I would gladly offer you some, but I fear you would not care for it, and I am sorry that I have nothing else to give you, and that my servant is out.”

“What is your beverage? I have tasted every liquor from vodka to white whiskey.”

“Oh, mine is a very mild concoction. It is only sangaree.”

“Sangaree? Why, I was raised on sangaree.”

“I am glad that I can now be hospitable. Excuse me while I fill the caraffe.”

I went into Sandy’s room, drew a pitcher of his strong stock solution, and returned to find my visitor reading one of the books on my table.

“A most exhaustive work upon marriage,” he said, running over its pages, “I finished it myself last spring. The Germans are the only thorough scholars we have, and this book by Westermark will remain a standard work.”

These matter-of-course remarks of his did not interest me, so I made no reply, and merely filled two goblets with the sangaree, offering him one. He raised the glass to his lips like one accustomed to heavy draughts, emptied half of it, looked at the liquor, looked at me, looked at the liquor again, set it down, and said nothing. I refilled it before taking my seat. Thinking that I was not observing him, he scrutinized me again, once more looked at the liquor, saw me empty my glass, rubbed his nose, and then emptied his again. For a time, we sat in silence.

“Do you want to know what Westermark taught me, though he contradicts it himself?”

I nodded, looking him full in the eyes.

“I came to the conclusion that the Almighty had married a monogamous woman to a polygamous man.”

As he set down his glass, I knew that the liquor was beginning to work. I felt like another Ethan Brand.

“There’s rum in your sangaree;” he said, compressing his lips.

“Yes, to give it flavor with the cherry bounce—don’t you like it?”

“Very much indeed. It’s difficult to procure real Medford rum these days.”

“Let me fill your glass.”

“Really, I have had sufficient; thank you.”

I filled his glass again.

“Plenty, plenty, thank you!” he insisted, as the liquor reached the brim of the glass.

“But the trouble with Westermark and the other scientific observers,” I began, “is that they give you second-hand knowledge of men and women, theirs is mostly book knowledge. I always feel that I am reading works upon heated blood written by cold, dried-up, bloodless professors, who lack the first-hand experience of one’s own life.”

“I am a professor myself;” said he.

“I beg your pardon, but I mean—”

“Tush—tush!” said he, “you are entirely right. I had to resign my professorship because of a woman. I say, this is a mighty good drink.”

He took the pitcher and refilled his own glass.

“My dear sir,” said he, unbending and stretching his legs, “I like you, for sometimes we can say things to a stranger which we would not dare breathe to a life-long friend. Fourteen years ago I was a professor at a Theological Seminary; I was a lover of beauty, a devout searcher for truth, as natural and free as I am with you now. (Here he lighted one of my cigars.) One twilight in April, the Chairman of the Faculty came to my room, told me that I was the subject of gossip, that my words shocked the New Englanders, and that I must be more circumspect in my conduct. His words wounded my frank nature. I went to Boston and got intoxicated, and sent the Faculty this telegram, saying, “Good-bye, my colleagues. Your world is not my world. Yours is a world of sham learning, hypocritical inconsistency between your reason and your emotions. Good-bye.” Naturally, it was an indiscreet thing to do; but you can wager that they never published that telegram.”

“I should think not;” I said, smiling.

He knocked the ashes off his cigar and continued:

“Seriously, my friend, it is this theological tinkering that has caused most of the trouble in this world. Long ago when the world was young, men wanted to do certain things; so they invented gods and told their people that it was the gods, not themselves, who wanted these things done. Then began the tinkering with what was beyond man’s sphere. Then man began to tinker with elements over which he had no control, with elements which he was never meant to comprehend. He segregated men and women apart, and made the distance between them contrary to natural laws. Instead of allowing Nature to run her beautiful course, he set up laws out of his own little brain. In order to protect himself as a selfish egoist, in order to gain power over his fellow men, in order to be able to own any woman whom he might desire under the guise of divine right, he had the assurance to say that these laws were God-given, and that therefore his wilful possession of a woman was a sacrament! That is what I mean by his tinkering, mental juggling with elemental truths which he did not understand and had no right to touch. It was his conceit. His sophistry for physical perversion. Do you know what ‘God-given’ means? I don’t. And I have been trying to find out for twenty years. And woman, like the silly she has always been, said it was grand, and acquiesced; while all other animals have, without man’s arrogance, remained true to their elemental nature, and so are spared our trials and shortcomings. I am right, I am right, I know I am right! That is why civilization is a failure, caused by man’s tinkering with the fundamental, basic operations of the ordinary course of the perpetuation of the species.”

When the strange professor finished speaking, I confess that I was at a loss for words, and asked:

“Do you really believe that civilization is a failure?”

“My dear sir, look about you. Side by side with material progress, with perfected inventions and conquest of disease, how much have our morals improved? How much have our vanities diminished? Do men and women grow more and more faithful to that sacrament? Do our cities grow more and more pure, and free from the taint of perversion? With our much-vaunted inheritance of art and culture, what has become of the freedom of the will, which was said to be the supreme good in that inheritance?”

“Well,” I said, “you are not saying anything new; we all know that! What are you going to do about it? You Ibsens are wonderful diagnosticians, but what we want is a cure!”

“That is only a quibble, if indeed it is not nonsense,” answered the strange professor, “for then you admit that we have not freedom of the will, that there is no such thing; well, my friend, I heartily agree with you. It is not a question of free will with us, it is a question of strength of will and weakness of will, which is purely a matter of fate.”

“Surely you are not a fatalist!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, sir, every inch a fatalist. You doubt my faith in my convictions, I see? Would you like me to prove them to you by supernatural means?”

Here the man leered at me with defiance, and I grew uneasy and longed for Sandy’s return.

“Proceed if you wish;” I said, folding my arms.

“My dear sir,” he began, rising and holding out his hand for me to clasp, “can I trust you? If you do not wish to believe me, may I prove my position to you by a discovery for which I searched a lifetime, an invention on which I lavished the slavery of years, an invention whose workings may warp your credulity until you doubt my sanity and your own. Can I trust you with my secret? I have the instrument in that valise. That is why I have walked up the seven flights of stairs, because the elevator’s motion would upset its delicate mechanism. Can I trust you?”

“Proceed if you wish;” I said, without taking his hand, for there was something uncanny about the man in his present state.

“Listen to me. I may be a trifle long, but if you knew how I am enjoying myself, yes, how I am relieving my brain by detaining you! I say relieving my brain, for it is about pent-up brains that I am about to speak. Have you ever thought that when each one of us dies, how many facts, memories, griefs, joys, are enclosed in the folds of our brain? How our skull is literally the storehouse of all we knew, felt and experienced. That in there, it was; and that in there, it must be? I have spent hours roaming through museums in which mummies were exposed; I have spent still more hours passing through cemeteries where the countless dead, known and unknown, lie. What if their skulls could be tapped? I asked myself, would we not find a few ideas, perhaps, which had filtered to the bone and survived alone of all the mind that was?

“My dear sir, you know what we have done with electricity? Thirty years ago, the first time I heard over the telephone, it sounded like a voice from the other world, and many believed that it was, until we got so we could recognize the individual voice. On that line of the vibratory properties of matter, I have worked. If we can vibrate with the dead, they will reply. I followed the example of that famous musician who said he would fiddle down a bridge. And he did. I, in turn, sought to fiddle down that invisible bridge over which we must all walk with astral steps. And, sir, my efforts have been rewarded.”

That instant he ceased speaking, and there came the same gentle knock at my inner closet door.

“There he is now!” uttered the strange professor.

“Who?” I asked, breathlessly.

“My mummy! My mummy! You shall hear him orate. Has he tapped before I came this evening?”

I was paralyzed with fear, believing that I was in the presence of a spiritualistic maniac. But I maintained my composure as the surest means of safeguard, and held my tongue.

The strange professor took from his pocket a bunch of keys, unlocked his valise, produced an instrument not unlike the phonograph, attached a long rubber tube to it, the tube having two metal balls at the other end; these balls he carried to the closet door, unlocked it and drew out the case of an Egyptian mummy! The professor turned off the lights. What he did, I know not. I heard him start his machine. I heard him rummage in the closet and say, “Here is your suit of modern clothes!”

After long trying moments for me, he turned on the lights, and a man with a yellow complexion sat between us; and the mummy case was empty. I swear it upon my oath.

“Tell the gentleman who you are,” demanded the strange professor, “make for him your oration, as you did for me. Are you able to stand alone now?”

The man arose and said:

“I belong to the Undying Ones. I am the Thracian, named Zalmoxis, of whom Herodotus tells. I could not endure the civilization of my time, and had a subterranean hall built in which to reside. The people of my day believed that I never died. But I did die, though I contracted with an Egyptian priest to embalm and mummify me. And here is my secret. I took with me the power to return at the end of certain cycles of years to the land of the living. How I came by that power, I reveal to no man, neither do I reveal the term of my cycles, lest the living plot against me. Besides this, I learned the art wherewith to speak the language of whatever land or age in which I may arise. The last I spoke was Arabic. At another time I was a contemporary of Cartaphilus, the Usher of the Divan in Jerusalem. He was Pilate’s door-keeper at the time of Christ’s trial. I myself saw him strike Jesus on the neck when the young men were leading Him from the hall of judgment. I hear that this Jew who smote Jesus has also lived since.

“Ah, if you could believe that with these eyes of mine, I have seen the ancient caliphs of Babylon; that with these legs I have traveled the empire of the Saracens; that with these arms, I fought throughout the wars in the Holy Land. I was a compatriot of the bravest man who ever walked the earth, Godfrey de Bouillon.”

“Tell us,” said the strange professor, cutting him short, “in your various revisits to this land of the living, what impresses you the most?”

“I look back with surprise and wonder at the intricate systems of the theology of the ancient Greek and Roman, and can scarcely credit the credulity which could receive them as truths and cherish them with reverence from age to age. I marvel at my own faith in them. Yet the doctrines of the Trinity and of the Resurrection, no whit less dark and intricate, and requiring nothing less of credulity, I see you receive with religious reverence, and respect as revelations of Deity.

“Indeed, when I consider the faith which is requisite for your own religion, and without which you are destitute of any religion, it should teach you to look with respect at least upon the passionate but noble gods of Rome, at the artful but polished deities of Greece.

“Even the gods are not immortal! And these are a great and forgotten race. The calm, majestic Neptune, who soothed the mighty ocean with his trident, has sunk beneath its waves to rise no more forever. The roar of cannon has frightened Mars from out the world. Alas for sighing youth, that laughter-loving, blushing Venus lives only in the skies. A dark shade hangs over Pluto; and the entrance to the realms of Tartarus has been withdrawn from mortal ken. High in heaven, another deity now sits upon the seat of dethroned Jove; and the book of fate, new-bound and new-entitled ‘Providence’ is yet preserved, though the three sisters no longer guard its sacred records.

“Thus with curiosity unmixed with reverence, I recall the names of the departed gods whom I once worshipped, and sometimes with a confidence mingled with a doubt, I wonder lest such should be the fate of your own religion.”

At this point, the man’s knees trembled, and the strange professor motioned him to be seated, as he seemed about to collapse. The whole spectacle was too much for me; and I sprang out of my chair.

“Come, we must go out in the open air,” I suggested, “the heat of this room is oppressive.”

“Nothing would suit us better,” said the strange professor, “it will do my friend good, and afford him an opportunity to see our great metropolis.” Upon this, I began at once to change my costume.

“To what nationality does he claim to belong?” I asked.

“I am an Egyptian,” spoke up the man, “I was born a Thracian, but I moved to Egypt. I lived at Memphis, a superb city which has long since passed into complete oblivion. I often think that not one of us as we used to walk its streets could ever have believed such utter desolation possible. Away in the distance only the pyramids of our Pharaohs stand. When I saw them last, I could hardly recognize them.”

“Why did you go to Memphis when you were alive?” asked the strange professor.

“On account of a common concubine. I had to be a foolish young man.”

By this time, we had reached the elevators, and the professor said that he would have to walk down, as he took with him the valise which contained the mechanism too sensitive to be taken upon an elevator. Whereupon, I insisted upon the three of us walking down, for I did not wish to be left alone with the Egyptian.

When at last we reached the street, I offered to take them to the opera, though I confessed that it would be nearly over. I hoped that even a few strains of music might soothe my troubled brain. I purchased three tickets, and we mingled with the magnificent assemblage in the foyer. After looking about him, the Egyptian suddenly stood aghast.

“Is that the best your women can do?” asked the Egyptian, turning first to me and then to the professor.

“What is the matter with them?” we asked together.

“After all these centuries, is the best they can do, the wearing of trinkets on their ears, bangles on their arms, and their fingers stiff with rings? Why, the barbaric brain of the early Egyptian perfected every known design of jewelry. Is woman at heart still a savage? And these absurd head-dresses! And that dirty powder on their faces! Have you not gotten beyond even that common sort of vanity?”

“I am afraid that your friend will not enjoy it here,” I said, fearing a scene, “let us leave.”

As it was now late in the evening, I took them to a famous French café. We had hardly seated ourselves at a table, when the place filled with people who came from the closing of the theatres. Soon the corks popped from the bottles, soon the men became noisy and drowned the music, and soon the painted women became vulgar.

“Is this the best your men can do?” asked the Egyptian, looking about him, as though a pall of ennui had fallen upon him, “after all these generations since I was foolish, is man’s chief diversion that of getting drunk with low women? I used to do this with the strumpets of Babylon; and those chartered courtesans were at least naturally beautiful.”

“You had better go back to your mummy case,” said the professor, “we have nothing more to offer you. Here is your sleeping powder.”

The Egyptian took the powder and willingly made his escape. The professor looked at me, and I looked at the professor. I fear that I was rather sheep-faced and ashamed of the only civilization we had to offer. The professor saw my chagrin, and that he had scored in favor of his doctrines.

“I have just one more experiment to prove to you the scope of my invention,” said he, “and then I shall bid you good-night.”

He took me by the arm, and with the other hand he carried his valise. He led me into the downtown districts, along the great thoroughfare which is so crowded by day and so deserted by night. We came to the gates of an old cemetery, and after looking up and down the street to make sure that the police did not observe us, the strange professor ushered me into the cemetery, and we sat down upon a cold marble slab, and once more in the hush and chill of quiet moonlight, the man became uncanny.

“I know what you think,” said he, “you think that I have this power over only that one man. You even suspect me. You fear lest I have you in a state of hypnosis or morbid sleep, and that even the Egyptian himself was an illusion. I know you. You tried to get me intoxicated with your sangaree. I admit that you have a power of extracting confidences. You thought that perhaps you had found in me some interesting phantast who would amuse you. But let me tell you the most profound paradox in the world: if you possess a power, and abuse your power, that power will be taken away from you. Take care!

“Now for my last experiment. Answer me, if you can not believe your eyes, can you trust your ears? Listen to the sentiments which have outlasted the brains of a few of the dead. Often these ideas crystallize their whole experience.”

He undid his valise, placed two hard rubber tubes in my ears, and then slowly inserted the two metal balls into the head of a grave. I saw his spider-like fingers reach out and touch the valise, and the machine started.

“Hold the tubes tightly in your ears.”

Presently a gurgling vibration ceased and these words came distinctly:

“I should like to see the sun shining, and my sheep nibbling the green, tender grass. I was happy.”

Then the vibration stopped. The professor seemed to know it, probably from the relaxed intentness of my expression. He said not a word, but motioned me to follow him. We moved to another grave where he repeated the operations. Then came these words to my ears:

“Too late, too late; everything came for me too late. They even tried to cure me too late. Alas, poor Dorothy!”

The next grave gave forth these words:

“I believed in God and said my prayers. That was my only solace.”

We moved again to a mound covered with fresh earth and new flowers. The professor whispered that the lately dead often had confused ideas. This was the message:

“Last night was my first night in the grave. I trusted my lover. His faithlessness turned me into a bad woman. I weighed only ninety-two pounds when I died. I wish that I could drink and dance with him once more. I wish I could see his eyes beam on me. I do love him.”

The words ceased to come and the vibration stopped.

The professor whispered that he would go to three more graves and then depart.

The first gave out only one sentence:

“I married a man whom I did not love, yet I kept him from knowing the truth.”

And the second:

“My eight children which I bore my husband gave me much joy and some sorrow. I was so proud of my son, Charlie.”

And the last:

“I was known as the rich spinster of the place where I lived. Ah, they little knew that money does not, can not, make one happy. Why had I to be sterile?”

To my dying day, I shall hear that plaintive, unselfish question. And when they tap my skull, the answer will be graven there.

The strange professor put the metal balls and the tubes back in their place, and closed the valise. We issued forth again upon the sidewalk.

“Why was it that only women spoke?” I asked.

“Because most women die keeping the true secrets of their existence; whereas few men can maintain a life-long self within a self. Men are more vain, but they have less pride than women. Goodnight! Good-bye!”

Without another word the strange professor took a passing street car and left me stark alone. And I walked for hours before I cared, or rather dared, to go to my hotel. Daylight was coming through the windows when at last I reached my rooms. The mummy case was gone! The closet door was open, and the closet empty! I went into Sandy’s room, and there he sat awaiting me.

“Lor’, maarstar, you done do me wrong. I jest come home, after tryin’ to spy on you. I sees you once with two gen’lemen.”

“What? Were there three of us, Sandy?”

“Yes, maarstar, you know one of them was yaller. He never did look like he come from this country.”

“Do you swear it, Sandy?” I asked, placing my hand on his shoulder.

“I sirtainly do, maarstar;” said he, looking up at me as if I were bereft of my reason.

“Thank heaven!” I uttered aloud, “I almost thought that I might be going mad. We must leave this city, Sandy, for while I am here, I keep thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking of the days I spent here once as a boy. Oh, Sandy, that morning in May when I awoke to find that it was true! Too true! You remember, the following February Miss Susanne died?—Let us pack the trunks.”

XII

When I was a child of four, long, long ago, as it seems to me, some friend gave my father a setter dog. And my father named him “Tim,” for the giver’s name was Timothy.

Tim and our old gardener, Sandy’s father, whose name was Uncle Robert, were about the only friends of my early childhood. I remember how in the fall of every year, when the chestnut burrs used to get big and the pippins began to ripen, Uncle Robert used to dig up all the potatoes and make them into a huge mound at the end of our garden. Then he would rake together in heaps the dead and falling leaves, and use them for a warm covering for the potato mound in order to protect the potatoes from the snow and frost, for he kept them there all winter, and only brought them up to the kitchen as the cook needed them. Uncle Robert’s mountain of potatoes always impressed me as being perfectly wonderful. Indeed most everything that Uncle Robert did, came pretty near to the marvelous. Upon the first fall of snow, I used to get a staff, and scale that mountain, and pose on the summit “like stout Cortez—silent, upon a peak in Darien.” I have crossed the Rockies and the Alps since, but not one of them has seemed quite so high or inspiring. Sometimes I think that when a child loses that appreciative sense of the marvelous, the joy of life dies. Mounds become mere mounds, and mountains only mountains.

But the real fun at potato time, was after Uncle Robert had used up as many leaves as he could, and set the rest on fire. No one could ever light a fire quite as well as Uncle Robert. No matter how the wind blew, no matter how much the leaves jumped up in his old face, Uncle Robert caught them and turned them into shoots of flame. That was toward the end of the chilly days when the clouds used to grow black even before the chickens went to roost. And now came the real treat. Uncle Robert would give me two potatoes from within the mound. Then he would poke a hole in the hot, red ashes; I would drop them in; and he would smoulder them with fresh leaves. Hereupon, Uncle Robert would leave to feed the turkeys.