The Crow's Nest

It was owing to this that the gods discovered what he had done. A volley of terrible thunder-claps at once shook the skies, and Zeus had Prometheus arrested. He was led off to Scythia – the Siberia of those times – without trial, and the police left him chained to a rock there, and hurried back home. And everybody sympathized greatly with Mrs. Prometheus, for having a husband who had wilfully disgraced his poor wife. And they tried to be nice to her, but of course she was under a cloud, and had to take in more sewing than ever, and was never asked out. And a year or two later some books were written, psychoanalyzing Prometheus; and a professor who had made a study of the economic interpretation of heroes wrote an interesting paper discussing his probable motives, pointing out that he must have had relatives who wished to sell fire-insurance.

So his great deed ended in confusion. Like other great deeds. All he got was a tumult of mixed praise and blame from the crowd; and in his dark moments he must have felt completely discouraged, and wished that he'd just lived along in comfort and minded his business.

His friend, who had warned him originally, thought of him at times. He used to sit at home and feel glad that for his part he'd kept out of it. Then he would stir up the fire in his grate and comfortably get into bed, and forget about Prometheus, facing the winds and the vulture.

The Death of Logan

Cockroaches, like the Wise Men, originally lived in the East. They were at first far from hardy – wretched travelers, hating changes of climate. But when England began trading with the Orient, the cockroach grew venturesome, and began putting to sea as a stowaway. It was thus he reached England.

He settled down at first in her seaports. Remained there for years. People inland heard of him, or saw him if they went to the coast, but supposed themselves immune from his visits. Now he owns the whole island. And wherever the Englishman has journeyed, or settled, or trafficked, except perhaps on the ice-floes of Labrador, we now find the cockroach.

We all know his habits. He prefers to live in kitchens and bakeries. Eats all kinds of food. Eats shoes and the bindings of books. Also eats his own relatives. Any relative that isn't good and lively is at once eaten up.

You can tell the sexes apart (if you want to) by this: The males don't drag their stomachs on the ground the way the females do, and they have better wings. Their wings are not good enough to use much, but still, they have little ones.

The most surprising thing about roaches is that they live several years. Scientists say maybe five. Owing to this they get to know all of a family's ways, and can't be caught napping; they have plenty of time to study roach powders and learn to digest them. They dislike castor oil, though, and keep away from where it has been rubbed.

Cockroaches are intelligent beings. Their natures are human. They are not like other insects, any more than dogs are like other animals. I wish some man of science and sympathy would interpret their lives.

That book that I dream of on roaches: will it ever be written? Brown Beauty, or Only a Cockroach, by Mary Gook Twillee – a book that little children would read with wet eyes Sunday evenings. No, that sounds like a pamphlet from the Society for the Prevention of Stepping on Cockroaches. We want nothing humanitarian. Still less, a Work on the subject. We want a poet to do for the cockroach what Maeterlinck has done for the Bee.

If nobody else will, I shall probably have to do it myself.

Since boyhood (I shall begin) I have felt the injustice of men to the roach. Or not men, no; but women. Men are in this matter more tolerant, more live-and-let-live in their ways. But women have condemned the roach not only unheard, but unjudged. Not one of them has ever tried petting a roach to gain his affection. Not one of them has studied him or encouraged him to show his good side. Some cockroaches, for instance, are exceedingly playful and gay, but what chance have they to show this, when being stepped on, or chased with a broom? Suppose we had treated dogs this way; scared them; made fugitives of them!

No, the human race, though kind to its favorites, is cruel to others. The pale little, lovable cockroach has been given no show. If a housewife would call to her roaches as she does to her hens, "Here chick-chick, here cock-cock, here roaches," how they would come scampering! They would eat from her hand and lay eggs for her – they do now, in fact.

"But the eggs are not legible – I mean edible," an excited reader objects. How do you know, my poor prejudiced reader? Have you ever tried them? And suppose they are not. Is that the fault of the cockroach or God?

We should learn that blind enmity is not the attitude to take toward strangers. The cockroach has journeyed from Asia to come to our shores; and because he looked queer, like most Asiatics, he has been condemned from the start. The charges are that he is dirty and that he eats the food we leave lying around. Well, well, well! Eats our food, does he? Is that a crime? Do not birds do the same? And as to his being dirty, have you ever kept dogs in your home? One dog will bring in more dust and mud and loose hairs in a day, than a colony, an empire, of cockroaches will in a year.

It is easy enough to drive cockroaches away if you wish. Not with powder or poison: this only arouses their obstinacy. The right way is to import other insects that prey upon roaches. The hawk-ticks exterminate them as readily as wimples do moles. The only thing to remember is that then you have the hawk-ticks on hand, and they float around the ceiling, and pounce down, and hide in your ears.

You may be sure that some insects will live with you. It's only a question which kind.

I remember Mr. Burbank once denied this when we talked of the matter. Alluding to the fact that the cockroach likes to eat other roaches, he said why not breed a roach that wouldn't eat anything else? When one introduced these into the home they would first eat the old timers, and then quietly devour each other until all were gone.

But how could a home remain bare of insects? Nature abhors such a vacuum. Some men would like to cover the whole world with porcelain tiles, and make old Mother Earth, as we know her, disappear from our view. They would sterilize and scrub the whole planet, so as to make the place sanitary. Well, I too feel that way at times: we all have finicky moments. But in my robust hours I sympathize with Nature. A hygienic kitchen is unnatural. It should be swarming with life. (The way mine is.)

I see a great deal of the roach when I visit my kitchen. His habits, to be sure, are nocturnal. But, then, so are mine. However, with a little arranging, it is simple to prevent awkward clashes. I do not like cockroaches on my table at supper, for instance. Very well, I merely get me a table with carved spiral legs. The roach cannot climb up such legs. To hump himself over them bruises him, and injures his stomach. And if he tries to follow the spiral and goes round and round, he soon becomes dizzy and falls with plaintive cries to the floor. He can climb up my own legs, since they are not spiral, you say? Yes, but I rub castor oil on them before I enter the kitchen.

The cockroach has a fascinating personality. He is not socialistic and faithful, like the ant, for example: he is anarchistic, wild, temperamental, and fond of adventure. He is also contemplative by nature, like other philosophers. How many an evening, at midnight, when I have wanted a sandwich, I have found him and his friends standing still, lost in thought, by the sink. When I poke him up, he blinks with his antennae and slowly makes off. On the other hand, he can run at high speed when the cook is pursuing him. And he zigzags his course most ingeniously. He uses his head. Captain Dodge, of the British Navy, who first used this method to escape from a submarine, is said to have learned how to zigzag from the cockroaches aboard his own ship. They should go down in history, those roaches, with the geese that saved Rome.

Again and again I have tried to make a pet of the cockroach, for I believe under his natural distrust he has an affectionate nature. But some hostile servant has invariably undone my work. The only roach I succeeded in taming was hardly a pet, because he used to hide with the others half the time when he saw me, and once in a fit of resentment he bit a hole in my shoe. Still, he sometimes used to come at my call when I brought him warm tea. Poor fellow! poor Logan! – as I called him. He had a difficult life. I think he was slightly dyspeptic. Perhaps the tea was not good for him. He used to run about uttering low, nervous moans before moulting; and when his time came to mate, I thought he never would find the right doe. How well I remember my thrill when he picked one at last, and when I knew that I was about to see their nuptial flight. Higher and higher they circled over the clean blue linoleum, with their short wings going so fast they fairly crackled, till the air was electric: and then, swirling over the dresser, their great moment came. Unhappily, Logan, with his usual bad luck, bumped the bread-box. The doe, with a shrill, morose whistle, went and laid on the floor; but Logan seemed too balked to pursue her. His flight was a failure.

He rapidly grew old after this, and used to keep by himself. He also got into the habit of roaming around outdoors at night. Hated to see other roaches mating by the bread-box, perhaps. As he was too big to crawl back in under the door when we shut it, he was sometimes locked out when he roamed, and had to wait until morning. This in the end caused his death. One winter evening, blocked at the door, he climbed the fire-escape and tried to get in the bathroom window. But it chanced to be shut. He hung there all night, barking hoarsely – and I heard him, but never thought it was Logan. When I went to look at the thermometer in the morning, there he lay in the snow.

Portrait of a Lady

Elsie has just got back from an expedition to the Sea Islands. She had had her eye on those islands for a long time, she tells me. They lie off the coast of South Carolina, out of the way of all traffic, and they looked to her like a good hunting ground for African folk-lore. Her ethnological field-work is always taking her off to such places. I suppose that that Englishman, Selous, used to go around studying maps, and questioning natives about the best jungles for lions, in much the same way that Elsie constantly studies our continent, looking for some corner of it that might interest an intelligent person. The parts that are civilization to us, are mere jungle to her: the houses and street cars are like underbrush that she must push through, to get to the places where her quarry is, and where she really wakes up. In between, she lives in New York with us, – she has to, – and conforms to our ways, or to most of them anyhow, just as Stefansson does with the Eskimos: she wears the usual tribal adornments, and beadwork, and skins; she's as dazzling as any other beauty, in her box at the opera; and she sleeps and eats in the family's big stone igloo near Fifth Avenue. An unobservant citizen might almost suppose she was one of us. But every now and then her neglect of some small ceremonial sets our whole tribe to chattering about her, and eyeing her closely, and nodding their hairy coiffures or their tall shiny hats, whispering around their lodge-fires, evenings, that Elsie is queer.

When she went south this time, she first placed herself "in the hands of the whites," as she detachedly puts it: that is to say, she became the guest of a white family on one of the more civilized islands. This was a mistake. They were interested in her plans, and they didn't in the least mean to block them, but they felt it was necessary for them to go around with her everywhere. They wanted to be sure nothing happened, – and Elsie wanted to be sure something did. "They guarded me," she exclaimed, over and over, when she told me this part of it. I got an impression of her tramping off into the wilds, after breakfast, to look around for what she was after, in her business-like way; and of worried hostesses panting along, following her, – in spite of the cold looks they got.

There were also a number of small difficulties. Her smoking, for instance. Her hostesses didn't mind – much; but they had a brother, a clergyman, just back from France, where he had been in the Y. M. C. A. service; and it would upset him, they said. So instead of smoking downstairs, by the fire, she had to do it up in her room; and also burn Chinese incense after each smoke, by request.

This clergyman held family prayer-meetings, regularly, which everybody was supposed to attend; but Elsie did not object. She is always interested in ritual. And the singing was often of negro spirituals, which she is collecting. She has a recording phonograph nowadays, that she takes around with her, to get them.

This wasn't what she had come down for, however. It wasn't enough. And not being able to explore without being "guarded" made the country no use to her. The game was too shy to be stalked with a whole crowd of whites. So in order to make a new entrance, she decided on a preliminary retreat. She left the islands, went back to the mainland, and took a room in a boarding-house.

There was a lady in the neighborhood who once had collected a few negro tales, but who told Elsie that the colored folk around there didn't tell them now. The lady wanted to be obliging, and called in her cook to make sure; but the cook corroborated her statement: didn't know any, no ma'am.

Elsie formed the opinion that the cook probably knew plenty of stories, but would not talk freely to whites. Few or none of them will. She kept on making inquiries, however, as to possible sources, and finally heard about one old negro who was said to be chock-full of folk-lore. Elsie got on his trail. She found him one day in the street, and she soon won him over. He not only told her all he knew, but he stopped a one-armed man going by, – a dirty man with a wheel-barrow full of old bottles – who, the old man said, knew other stories, and who promptly made good, telling several that Elsie took down, while she sat on the curb.

This negro's name was Mr. Jack – at least that is how Elsie speaks of him. He had lost his other arm after a man had shot him up, he said, skylarking. But he could do remarkable things with his remaining one: open an umbrella, for instance. He said that on one of the islands there were people who knew lots of old tales. So Elsie engaged Mr. Jack to go there with her, as guide, and off they sailed, like the owl and the pussy-cat, only with quite other intentions, and they ultimately landed on the beach of the island he'd chosen. There was no wharf. The Sea Islands are primitive. They had to land in the surf. There were two or three natives on the beach, just the way there were when Columbus appeared, but they didn't fall down and worship Elsie – as I should have done. They just stared, and shuffled away, and were lost in the bush. So Elsie and Mr. Jack pushed on inland, and found a negro with a horse, and Elsie gave him some sticks of tobacco and bright-colored cloth, or whatever currency it is she uses, and added him to her expedition. His name was James Bone, and he had a cart as well as a horse. They all got in this cart and went cruising away into the interior.

It was raining like mad, I forgot to say, but they didn't much mind, and besides it had a result in the end that was lucky for Elsie. There was a store on this island, and James Bone was heading for it, with the idea of depositing Elsie there so she could get shelter. But when they got there, the white man who kept it said his wife was away, and probably wouldn't be back that night because of the rain. Elsie wished to stay anyhow, but he flatly declined to take her in unless his wife came.

After making a silent study of his moral ideas, which he expressed loudly, and writing them down in her notebooks (I hope) for the Folkways Society, Elsie quietly went out in the rain again to continue her travels. It was now dark, however, and Mr. Jack and James Bone were tired. The expedition conferred. James Bone said they could go to some friends of his, named (I think) Peevie, who had a large house with five rooms in it. So they steered for this landmark. But when they arrived, very late, all the five rooms were found to be full. In addition to the whole Peevie family, which was sufficiently numerous, there were several Peevie relations and guests who had come on for a funeral. But James Bone was insistent. He went indoors and stirred them up and made a lot of talk and excitement, and never stopped until the funeral guests rose and went away, in the rain; and with them all the relations except old Aunt Justine and her nieces. These and the regular family somehow packed themselves into three rooms, and gave up the two best to Elsie, who promptly retired. I don't know where Mr. Jack slept. Maybe under the cart.

This cabin was about the most comfortable place Elsie stayed. She could smoke all she wished, she had a fireplace, and the cooking was good. Her two rooms were only six by ten apiece, but all the more cozy. Old Aunt Justine who at first had not liked it, thawed after a while, and sat around with Elsie and smoked with her and told her old tales. She was a picturesque ancient, Elsie says, and wore a large clean white turban.

Everybody came and told Elsie all the stories they knew. If any one passed on the road, he was hailed to come in: "Hi, Numph, d'you wanter make a quarter, telling this lady a story?"

"We wouldn't have told you any, though, if you had stayed at the store," James Bone said. "We don't have no traffic with the white folks, only buying or selling. They keep to themselves, and we keep to ourselves, 'cept for that."

Elsie put it all down. "No nexus exists but the economic one between the two groups," she wrote. Then, having exhausted this island, she packed up her notebooks, and she and Mr. Jack put to sea again to visit one other.

This other was an island where Mr. Jack said he had relatives, whom he would love dearly to see again if they were alive. He had lived right over on the mainland without visiting them for about twenty years, until Elsie came along and roused his energies; but he now felt warmed up. When they landed, however, none of his relatives were at all glad to see him. He and Elsie wandered around for a while, getting a chilling reception, until late in the day they met some women who were opening oysters. One of these exclaimed at seeing Mr. Jack, and gave him a great welcome. An old sweetheart, Elsie conjectured. Mr. Jack introduced her. These women gave Elsie a handful of oysters to eat for her supper, and she got out some of her own thick bran cookies which are so good for the stomach, and they sat by the fire and talked together until it was midnight. Then the oyster boat left for the mainland, with Elsie aboard. And luckily there was a man on that boat who knew some valuable stories, so Elsie sat up all night taking them down, by a ship's lamp, as they sailed. The wind was light and it was five hours before they reached port.

She parted with Mr. Jack, on the oyster-dock landing, at dawn. "I stayed wid you to de en'," he said; and afterwards mailed her her rubbers.

There is more to this story, about her visiting the Cherokee Indians down there. But I don't remember the Cherokee chapter as well as the old Mr. Jack one. Still I hope this gives some kind of picture of Elsie's real life.

Grandfather's Three Lives

A great Englishman died a few years ago, little known in America. His name, Sir Charles Dilke. A statesman, a radical, a republican; and a strong solid man.

There is one thing that strikes you about some of these leaders, in England: the number of advantages they have when they're boys, growing up. It gives them a tremendous head-start. Charles Dilke began meeting great men when he was a mere child: the Duke of Wellington, Thackeray, Dickens, – I could name a long list. And he had the close companionship of a grandfather, a man of distinction, who treated him as an equal, and devoted himself to his grandson's development.

A fortunate boy.

Think of other small boys, who show signs of fine brains and strong characters. Are they ever introduced to Thackeray or treated as equals? No, they're taught to respect their dull fathers and their fathers' ideas. They are taught not to have any separate ideas of their own. Or at best they run wild with no wise elder friend, like Charles Dilke's.

Here is one of his grandfather's letters. Shows the tone of their friendship. The boy has just won an English Essay Prize, and "they say that parts of my essay were vulgar," he writes. "My special interest," his grandfather answers, "is aroused by the charge of occasional vulgarity. If it be true, it is not improbable that the writer caught the infection from his grandfather. With one half the world, in its judgment of literature and life, vulgarity is the opposite of gentility, and gentility is merely negative, and implies the absence of all character, and, in language, of all idiom, all bone and muscle… You may find in Shakespeare household words and phrases from every condition and walk in life – as much coarseness as you please to look for – anything and everything except gentility and vulgarity. Occasional vulgarity is, therefore, a question on which I refuse to take the opinion of any man not well known to me."

Good for Grandfather! Eh? He was a pretty interesting old boy. He might have been a great man himself, if he could have brought himself up. But Great-grandfather had been in the government's service in England, some position in the Navy Department, or the Admiralty, as they call it. And when his son grew up, he got him a place in the Admiralty too. He meant well, but Grandfather might have done better without.

It gave him a berth, and a chance to lie back and look on. And while that helped to ripen his wisdom, it sapped his initiative.

He had a fine mind; clear, impartial. Strong radical views. He had character, integrity, insight. A man of much weight. But he saw there was much to be learned and observed about life, and his instinct was to go slow, and quietly study its problems. "Instead," you say, "of immediately solving them like other young men!" But instead, too, – for such was his instinct – of handling the problems. He wished to know more and feel wiser before he dealt with them. He had the preparatory attitude.

The trouble with the preparatory attitude is there's no end to it. There is so much to learn in this world that it won't do to wait. If you wait to fit yourself before acting, you never will act. You will somehow lose the habit of acting. Study too conscientiously the one hundred best books on swimming, and of course you'll learn a great deal about it, but you never will swim.

This was Grandfather's type. If he had been kicked out alone into the world and found every one fighting him, and if he had had to fight back, and fight hard, from his boyhood, it would have taught him the one thing he needed – more force for his powers.

As it was, he remained in the Admiralty. Studying life.

Grandfather was thirty-seven years old when Great-grandfather died. He (Grandfather) had been writing for the magazines for quite a long time, – he was only twenty-six when the Quarterly Review editors began to speak highly of him.

He now bought the London Athenaeum, which, though just born, was dying. Under Grandfather's editorship it became an important authority. It was known all over the world soon. But Grandfather wasn't. He never signed one of his articles, not even pseudonymously. And during the sixteen years in which he had control of the paper, this remarkable man withdrew altogether from general society, in order, he said, to avoid making literary acquaintances which might either prove annoying to him, or be supposed to compromise the integrity of his journal.

That rings hollow, that reason. He doubtless thought it true; but it wasn't. He withdrew from society, probably, because he liked withdrawing. With the gifts of a great man he didn't have a great man's robustness. Some kink in him held him back, and kept him from jousting and tournaments. He should have been psychoanalyzed. It may have been such a small kink.