The Man. A Story of To-day

“A hundred years?” I asked, astonished; and it was the first feeling of surprise I had felt.

The Man smiled faintly and said:

“Yes; three hundred years have I lived in this body. I was born in 1591. Why do you wonder? Have you no faith in God? You see miracles on every hand, and yet you now are ready to doubt. The oyster mends its shell with pearls: some unthinking person twists off the claw of a cray-fish, and you watch another spring forth and grow to full size, and yet you doubt that a man can retain his strength indefinitely!

“We die through violation of law. This violation is through ignorance, or is wilful. If we do away with ignorance and are willing to obey, we can live as long as we wish. Men only die when they are not fit to live. As long as a person’s body is useful, God preserves it. The body is renewed completely every seven years. This you were taught in school. Why should not this renewal continue? An infant has cartilage, but very little bone. Gradually the cartilage ossifies, until in old age the bones are brittle. This is caused by the deposits of lime which are being continually taken into the system. There is constant waste and constant repair in the human body. You know this full well, and you know that at night and in moments of repose the repair exceeds the waste. So where you were tired and ready to faint an hour ago, you are now strong.

“When I was thirty years of age, and my body at its strongest and best, I adopted a simple plan of keeping the excess lime and deteriorating substances out of my system; so you see my flesh is strong yet, soft, for the muscles should not be hard and tense, but pliable. My bones are not brittle, but cartilage is everywhere where needed to form cushions for the articulations. I have not known pain for a century, for nature does her perfect work and the dead tissue is constantly carried off and replaced with new. Pain generally comes from deposits left in the body when they should be carried off. Rheumatism, you know, is only a deposit in the linings of the muscles; but I never think of my body until the subject is brought to my attention, and do not like to talk of it, as the theme is not profitable; but later I will tell you when you are able to understand, how to have the body throw off those excess substances and renew itself without limit.”

Now lest some of my readers who are very young should imagine I was “in love” with this man let me say – not so! In the presence of The Man sex was lost. He was to me neither man nor woman, yet both; although he had that glorious faculty of joyous anticipation, which we see in children – so he was not only man and woman, but child. Yet in wisdom I felt him to be a prophet, and I myself was but a child. For after all we are but grown up children, and the difference between some grown people is no greater than that found among children and some men.

With this man I was a child, and he seemed to regard me so, yet never talked down to me, and I have since discovered that sensible people do not talk baby talk to children, nor do they talk down to people who they imagine ignorant. Men who do this reverse the situation and become veritable ignorami themselves.

Old John Foster, the horse-trainer, used to break horses for my father, and one day old John said to me, “Young lady, when you breaks a colt, don’t get scared yerself and then the colt won’t. Hitch him up just like he was an old hoss, and he will think he is one and go right along and never know when he was broke.”

Some men always change the conversation when a woman enters, thinking the subject too weighty for her comprehension; and in ‘sassiety’ they still talk soft nonsense to women because they think women like it; and lots of women have adopted the same idea, and have accepted the same creed – that they do know nothing and always will, and that scientific subjects, like Plymouth Rock pants, are for men folks.

Not long ago, you remember, we had a preacher who gave a series of sermons to men only, and a friend of mine who attended tells me the reverend divine gave those men more ‘pointers’ in depravity than they could have guessed alone in a dozen years.

But pardon this diversion and let me simply say, that to educate the heart and conscience, you must not separate men from women, nor make foolish distinctions between the ignorant and the cultured. We are all God’s children, and it is all God’s truth, and this is God’s world.

The Man told me this, and much more in that delightful day of rest, and he seemed to make no distinction between my childish ignorance and his own unfathomed wisdom. So the sense of weakness was never thrust upon me, and all during that day I seemed to grow in spirit. There came a greater self-respect, a reverence for my own individuality (you will not misunderstand me), an increased universality, a broader outlook, a wider experience. It was only one day as men count time, but I had lived – lived a century.

Monday morning came. After breakfast The Man arose and said:

“I will go with you, and get the bicycle.” (How did he know? I had not told him anything of my ride). “You can take the train from Jamison, which is about two miles from here. We can soon walk there.”

We found the wheel in the bushes, where I had left it by the roadside, and the man pushed it ahead of him with one hand through the mud, walking at a rapid easy stride, arriving at the station just as the train pulled up. My benefactor lifted the bicycle lightly into the baggage-car, bought me a ticket, handed it to me, smiled and was gone. He did not say good-bye. I did not thank him for his kindness, and in fact, not a word was spoken after we left the little log house.

Albert Love, the conductor, I knew, as I often rode on his train. Helping me on the car, he laughingly said:

“Ah, you got caught in the storm and couldn’t get back, could you?”

“I didn’t want to,” I said.

“Oh! ah! Relative?” nodding his head in the direction of the retreating form of The Man.

“Yes; uncle.”

“Hem – they call him a crank here. – ’Ll’board.”

CHAPTER IX.

MARTHA HEATH

I hurried from the depot to the office, and was only an hour behind time.

“You are late,” said Mr. Hustler, with a cynical, sickly smile which looked much like a scowl. “Only an hour. Make a note of it and give it to the time-keeper.”

I began my work and seemed to possess the strength of two women. My fingers struck the keys of the typewriter like lightning, and my head was clearer than ever before. When I took up a letter to answer, I saw clear through it, and struck the vital point at once; and yet all the time there was before me the mild and receptive face of The Man. The strange experience I had gone through was ever in my mind, and yet the work never disappeared from my desk as well and rapidly before. Where is that old philosopher who said, “The mind cannot think of two things at one time”?

At home I found my mother had waited tea for me until nine o’clock, when Martha Heath entered, and seeing the untouched supper and the look of despair on my mother’s face, knew the situation at a glance; for if a smart woman cannot divine a thing, she will never, never, NEVER, understand it when told.

Martha Heath came to see Aspasia Hobbs, but Martha Heath did not ask for Aspasia Hobbs. She glanced at the face of the trembling old lady, who was trying to keep back the flood, saw the untasted supper, and Martha Heath then and there told a lie:

“Oh, I just dropped in to tell you Aspasia had gone home with one of the girls who was a little nervous, and perhaps would stay over Sunday with her. Who made your new dress, Mrs. Hobbs? Now don’t you feel big! You are so fond of appearing in print that you always wear calico!”

And the laugh that followed was catching, and even the good old grizzled Grimes felt the tension gone and she too chuckled. All three women sat down to tea, and Martha Heath ate supper again, although she had eaten at home before, and they chatted and the visitor talked a little more than was necessary. She told how she had that afternoon ran her bicycle into a nearsighted dude, who was chasing his hat, and how she not only upset the dude but ran over his hat; and how the dude called on a policeman to arrest her, but the policeman said he “darsen’t tackle the gal alone.” The mother forgot her troubles and the Grimes laughed so that she upset her tea, and when Martha Heath said “Good-bye girls,” they all laughed again, and Grimes wiped her brass-rimmed spectacles with the corner of a big check apron and said, “Now ain’t she a queer un? and so kind too for her to come clear down here to tell us ’Pasia wasn’t killed entirely!”

Gentle and pious reader, you would not tell a lie, would you? Oh, no! But, Martha Heath had faith in me. I am self-reliant, strong, and able to take care of myself, and homely enough, thank Heaven! so I am no longer ogled on the street by blear eyed idlers. Martha Heath knows all this. She believes in me. Martha Heath has faith in Providence – have you?

Well, the work did fly! “Everything goes,” said Hustler as he looked on approvingly. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and some way I grew a little more thoughtful; not nervous, but serious. Friday night I scarcely slept an hour. It seemed as if I was about to depart to another and better world. At breakfast Saturday morning my mother said:

“It was a week ago to-day, Aspasia!”

“Oh, yes,” I said, inwardly.

“A week ago to-day! And now, never try to kill your old mother who loves you just the same whether you love her or not, by going off without telling us. Why, if Martha Heath hadn’t come and told us where you was, I would have died before morning. It was awful thoughtless of her too, not to have come here at once. She ought not to have put it off until ten o’clock.”

It was only nine, but we like to make our troubles as great as possible, for greater credit then is ours for bearing them.

I arose, kissed my good mother, and said: “Yes, I will always tell you myself hereafter when I am to be away – and so I tell you now. I am going away every Saturday to be gone over Sunday from now until October.”

“‘How sharper than a rattlesnake’s tooth it is to have a thankless child,’ the Bible says, and after all I have done for you too! Oh, it is too much to think my only child should thus desert me in my old age, and go off nobody knows where, and disgrace us all! Disgrace us, disgrace us, dis – ”

It was too much, and she covered her face with her hands and burst into tears, rocking to and fro. Here Mrs. Grimes broke in with:

“Mrs. Hobbs, will you never – ! Why, ’Pasia has more sense than all of us. She ain’t no fool. She ain’t – Why, didn’t I come three weeks lackin’ two days afore she was born, and didn’t I wash and dress her myself?” The gentle Grimes always availed herself of the opportunity to tell of my birth, to cut off any quibbler who might state I was not the child of Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs. “Mrs. Hobbs, you are a fool, and if ’Pasia ever does a bad thing it’ll be ’cause you drives her to it. I don’t know where she’s goin’, and dam if I care! I’ll trust her anywhere! Go on, ’Pasia, and stay a year. You’ll find us here when you comes back.”

The Grimes cyclone had cleared the atmosphere, the rain had ceased, although the landscape was a trifle disheveled. I kissed the dear mother, grabbed my lunch-bag, and was gone.

CHAPTER X.

SECOND SUNDAY – TO THE WOODS AWAY

I hurried through my work, dusted off the desk, locked the typewriter, and at two o’clock mounted my bicycle, went straight out Seneca street, over the iron bridge, on out the plank road, past Wendlings, through Springbrook, and stopped then for the first time, and standing on a rising slope of ground, I looked around in every direction. The dandelions seemed to cover the earth as with a carpet, and great masses of white hawthorn-trees in bridal array decked the landscape. The trees were bursting into leaf, and through the silence there came the drowsy hum of insects, and away off in the distance I could just detect the tinkle of a cowbell. To the left, two miles away, I saw a dense wood which seemed to transform the hill on which it stood into a great green mound.

“Yes, that surely is the place,” I said. I followed the plank road a mile further, then turned into a road which seemed like two paths side by side, as a line of green sward filled the centre of the roadway. I came to the wood, let down the bars, and back in the clearing was the log house, and out under the spreading branches of a great oak sat The Man. He smiled the same sweet smile and motioned me to a seat beside him, and together we sat in silence. The calm and rest seemed complete.

“Let us sit here under the trees,” said The Man, “and I will explain several things which you must understand before I make known the higher truths which you are to give to mankind.

“Perhaps you have wondered why I do not go out into the world and teach face to face; and my reason, friend, for not doing this, is because I must needs disguise myself, if I go among the people. They would not comprehend me, but would shout, ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ as they did in the days of old. If I should go into the city and teach as the Master did, can you imagine the headlines in the Sunday papers? I would have followers of course, but even they would misunderstand me and quarrel among themselves about who should be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. Many of them would fall down and worship me, and when I passed out of their sight there would be an ever-increasing number who would deify me, confounding my personality with that of a God, while the power I possess is possible for all men. They would say I was not a man but a ‘supreme being.’ On my metaphor they would construct a system of theology, and would use my words as a fence to hedge in and limit truth, instead of accepting my principles as a broad base on which they might build a tower to touch the skies.

“A modern prophet has said, ‘I am astonished at the incredible amount of Judaism and formalism which still exists nineteen centuries after the Redeemer’s proclamation.’ ‘It is the letter that killeth,’ after his protest against the use of a dead symbolism.

“The new religion, which is the old, is so profound that it is not understood even now, and is a blasphemy to the greater number of professing Christians. The person of Christ is the centre of it. Redemption, eternal life, divinity, humanity, propitiation, judgment, Satan, heaven and hell – all these beliefs have been so materialized and coarsened that with a strange irony they present to us the spectacle of things having a profound meaning and yet carnally interpreted. Christian boldness and Christian liberty must be reconquered. It is the Church that is heretical; the Church it is whose soul is troubled and whose heart is timid. Whether we will or no there is an esoteric doctrine – there is a direct revelation, ‘Each man enters into God so much as God enters into him.’

“They would call me a heretic, and you must remember the heretic is one with faith plus. I do not limit faith to this and that, but extend it to all things. Not only is Sunday holy, but all time is holy. The chancel is no more sacred than the pew. The world is God’s and all, everything is sacred to His use – our needs are His use.

“They would literalize my tropes to suit their own prejudices, and still insisting I was a god, distort my meaning in order to give a show of reason to their own wrong acts. This has been done over and over, as history tells you.

“Osiris, Thor, Memnon, Jupiter, Apollo, Gautama, and many others I could name of whom you know, were strong and brave men who lived on earth and bestowed great benefits on mankind; but ignorant and headstrong people, not content that these great men should live out their simple lives – for the great are simple, and pass for what they are – destroyed to a certain extent their good influence by affirming them to be not men at all; and to prove their statements, as untruthful people ever do strain heaven and earth to prove their allegations, they invented many stories and plans, such as that the great man was born in a ‘miraculous’ way – as if the natural birth was not miracle enough! – there being at the time a most erroneous idea that the act of vitalization was vicious and wrong, and this barbaric idea still remains with us to a certain extent.

“You remember in olden time priests (men who were believed to be in direct communication with Deity) were supposed to have power to grant absolution – that is, to forgive sin – and these granted indulgences; that is, leave for the person to perform certain sinful acts, and by paying a certain sum to the priests no punishment was inflicted upon the sinner. The physical relations of the sexes were supposed by these heathen to be sinful (and indeed they certainly are under wrong conditions!) where the symbolic meaning is lost sight of, but like other sacraments, most holy when performed in right spirit, as symbolizing a perfect union of spirit, a complete giving up and surrender of soul to soul; and many men now, having stood with a woman before a priest and made certain promises, and having paid this priest a sum of money, believe that they have certain rights over this woman; and some women, I am sorry to say, believe too that it is their duty to submit to a loveless embrace thus desecrating the body, which is the temple of the Most High. And as it is a law of God that sin cannot go unpunished, you see the almost endless misery this transgression entails.

“Sin can only be wiped out with suffering. No community, scarcely a house is free from this taint; and yet up to to-day, no public teacher (we need teachers not preachers), has lifted his voice or used pen to right this wrong which men and women in their blindness have pulled down on themselves; but in fact men have been continually fixed in the wrong by the encouragement given to marriages of expediency and a multitude of unavowable motives, all of which are supposed to be consecrated by the religious ceremony.”

CHAPTER XI.

IS IT SO?

This was all so new to me that on Sunday morning I began the conversation by asking:

“What, you do not wish to do away with the sacredness of marriage and establish free love in its place?”

The Man was silent for a moment, then turned on me his gentle gaze and I was answered. I was going to apologize for the interruption, but The Man continued:

“Friend, I know what I have left unsaid. No living soul on earth to-day appreciates the vital importance and the sacredness of the true marriage as completely as I, and although I may touch briefly on certain subjects, you must not think I have spoken all there is to be said on the subject, for I know all spiritual laws – all natural law is spiritual, for behind each material fact stands the spiritual Truth.

“The universe is a whole, made up of parts. I know the relation of these parts to each other, and also the relation of parts to the whole. All knowledge is mine back to the First Great Cause, behind which no man can go, but still I am not without hope even of that. Now you of course can not comprehend all I will tell you, but do not combat it. To attempt to refute, mentally or verbally, is to close the valves of the intellect so that you cannot receive. Those who endeavor to controvert use any weapon that is at hand, truth or error, to accomplish their purpose.

“I know lawyers who pride themselves on their ability to controvert any statement any man can make, and I also see that the Chautauqua Herald in endeavoring to complimentarily describe the Rev. Doctor Buckley, speaks of him as a controversialist. The controversionalist is a controversialist, and rushes in to test his steel as quickly with truth as with error. However, he is diplomatic, and endeavors not to kill the pet knight of his queen – Popular Opinion.

“Avoid controversy as you would a venomous snake. If you cultivate it you will find yourself constantly forming a rebuttal whenever you converse. Thus you lose all grasp on truth, and keep yourself ever outside of Heaven’s gate.

“Sit quietly, put prejudice, jealousy and malice out of your way, ever cultivate the receptive mood and you will only receive the good. Life should be reception, just as the oyster with shell partially open receives the waves bearing its food. What it needs is absorbed; what is not is washed away by the same force that brought it. Do not be afraid of receiving that which is harmful. Have faith – we are in God’s hand and He doeth all things well. Does the oyster fear being poisoned? If you cannot accept what I say let it pass. Much that I tell you, you can absorb; if you do not need the rest the tide will bear it back all in good time.

“All violence of direction in will or belief is harmful and wrong, for man is only the medium of truth. He should be a prism, which receiving the great ray of light coming from the one Source of all life and light, reflects all the beauties of the rainbow, the symbol of promise, never omitting the actinic ray. It is within the reach of every man to so mirror the beauty and goodness of the Infinite, and there is no success short of this. Over the temple at Delphi was the inscription – ‘Know Thyself.’ Over the temple of our hearts let us write the words in white and gold – ‘Trust Thyself.’

“Again, you must believe when I say I know what is left unsaid. Truth is paradoxical, for it holds its perfect poise by the opposition of two forces, just as the earth lies in the soft arms of the atmosphere, poised between centrifugal and centripetal attraction.

“Now I have touched lightly on a few things, just to show you how men in their blindness and hot haste have perverted the good. Eyes accustomed to live in darkness are dazzled when they come to the light, and this partially explains why the great are misunderstood. Men measure them by their little foot rule, which is either six inches or two feet long, and while opinions are divided as to whether the man is a genius or a fool, the majority decide in favor of the latter; but still there are many who, not content in seeing the wonders he performs needs must attribute to him powers which he does not possess. Man now speaks to his friend by word of mouth over a thousand miles of space. The voice with all its peculiar inflections and intonations, is heard and recognized. We know that this is in accordance with natural law, but if the secret was known only to one man, and the rest of us were in ignorance as to the process, we would attribute to that man supernatural powers; and when he died many would relate not only how they heard the voice coming from a thousand miles away, but how they also saw the man jump the entire distance, and many other fables would be invented as to the wonderful acts of this man.

“Now I am in possession of powers which work all smoothly in accordance with natural law, but which you would deem miraculous; but some day you and others will avail yourselves of these same laws, just as your voice can be recorded, bottled up and carried across the ocean in a box, and your body may die and the record of your voice still be preserved and the sounds brought forth at will from this little roll of gelatine. A year hence I will be many miles away, and you will be at home or walking in the fields, and I will speak to you and you will answer.

“Now, have you guessed why I do not reveal myself to the rabble and scatter my pearls before swine? I teach through others, giving them a little truth at a time, and they send it forth. I choose women to carry my messages, for they are more sensitive to truth – more alive – more impressionable! Men are aggressive and bent on conquest – their desire is for place and power, and to be seen and heard of men. But even this has its place, although low down in the scale – is one of the rounds in the spiral of evolution; and all in His own good time men shall be taught, but the work must be done by women. As we are taught in the old fable – which, by the way, is founded on truth – that through woman man fell, so shall woman lead him back to Eden; and even now I see the glorious dawn which betokens the sunrise.

“You now know why I have called you, and you understand too why I cannot afford to run the risk of partial present failure – for in God’s plans there is no failure – by standing before men. I am speaking to many other writers and speakers. Even as I sit here in this beautiful grove, telling them what to say, they are going forth over the whole world preaching the gospel to every creature. You have been surprised possibly to hear of men speaking the same truth at the same time in different parts of the world – now you know how it has come about. Your soul has not yet been quickened into life, so I cannot speak with you excepting through this slow and crude man-contrivance which we call language; but there will soon come a time when we can lay this aside, and you will no longer be a captive to these tethering conditions; for you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”