The Man. A Story of To-day

So spake The Man, and the stars came out one by one as the daylight died out of the sky, and I sat and seemed filled to overflowing with wondering awe.

CHAPTER XII.

THIRD SUNDAY – PRELIMINARY

“Now take your note-book and pencil and let us take a little look out over the world and see things as they are,” The Man said. “You will then better understand what I will say later.

“The struggling march of Progress is marked on the map of human history by a deep continuous stain of red, but to-day we hear King William apologizing for his vast army by saying it is maintained not for war, but to preserve the peace of Europe.

“In twenty years the population of the United States has increased from forty to sixty-five millions, and our standing army has decreased in like proportion.

“We are no longer able to sleep soundly after a man is hanged, and the dreams have been so hateful that several states have done away entirely with capital punishment, and the balance are searching restlessly for a more humane (?) method of killing. We have tried electrocution, because some one said that the man who killed and the man who got killed would never know anything about it; and here in New York they passed a law declaring that the people should not know anything about the killing either, and that any newspaper publisher who described this killing should be adjudged guilty of felony. Now, we are not satisfied with the death-dealing work of the subtle fluid; but if put to a popular vote with the aid of a secret ballot, we should say emphatically to judge and jury, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’

“This increased sensitiveness which we see manifest on the question thus referred to, finds vent in a thousand varied forms. Prisons are no longer places of punishment but of discipline; the birch is no longer the chief factor in imparting ideas to the young – we make the application not to the anatomy, but to the understanding, and if we still believe the child is totally depraved, we are a little ashamed of the belief and say nothing about it. The woman who lolls in her carriage is not quite comfortable, for her mind is alive to the fact that others are trudging, footsore and weary, carrying heavy burdens. Benevolence has become the fashion, and ‘Fresh Air Funds’ are actually talked of on ’Change. On every hand we hear of Societies of Christian Endeavor, the Chautauqua Idea, Ethical Culture, Kindergartens, not for uppertendom, but for the infected district where violence, disease, strife and discord have before reigned. Every preacher of every denomination indulges the larger hope (possibly there are obscure exceptions), and quotes as corroborating his argument the seers, prophets and poets who were before denounced from the very pulpit in which he now preaches.

“We are hearing much of heresy just now, but the ‘guilty’ man is not disgraced; on the contrary, his crime places him before a larger audience at double salary; and, if one may be allowed to say it, there is a general belief abroad that some heretics have courted their persecution. Certainly we do not try them for what they said, but the way they said it. A man who was a heretic twenty years ago, now finds himself orthodox, for there is faith plus in both pulpit and pew, and the heretic is generally a man of limitless faith. We believe not only that Jesus Christ was the son of God, but all men are or can be if they claim their heritage; not one day in seven is holy, but all are; not that certain places are consecrated, but all is consecrated ground, and that evil is only perverted good, or absence of good, just as darkness is absence of light. These things we hear from every pulpit without surprise.

“Prize fighters use six-ounce gloves, and women endowed with police powers act in behalf of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals and children. Matrons are to be found in jails and station houses, and the maxim that ‘Might makes right’ has been reversed. Never was the tear of pity so near the surface, and the change of which I speak has been brought about largely since 1870. In these twenty-one years the flinty heart of man has been softened more than in the three hundred years preceding.

“Now we are approaching the vital question, for I propose to tell you why this change has come; why our faces are now turned toward Zion. The answer I give is not given out off-hand, but after most careful thought and study for many, many years. The spirit of the time has changed by and through the influence of woman.

“The real essence of sex is spiritual; and as behind every physical fact there is a spiritual truth, so above and beyond this sexual instinct is the most sacred and divinest gift given to man. In the encyclopedias we read that this inclination ‘has its purpose in reproduction of the species.’ And is Nature after all but a trickster? a practical joker? Is this fair dream of holy peace and joy of being at last understood by a some one, loving, gentle, tender, true, in whose presence one may think aloud and be at rest? Is this after all but a scheme for the reproduction of our kind? When we consider what the kind is, is reproduction of the kind the highest good? Even good men have thought so; and for the misuse of God’s more sacred gift man was put out of Eden and has wandered far. The return will be slow, and it must be by the way he came. There is no other way. The monastery is as bad a failure as the house of Camille. Only by a knowledge of the right relation of men and women can we gain Heaven.

“You see me, the possessor of all knowledge, and Heaven is mine – for Heaven is not a place, but a condition of mind. Seemingly I am alone, for your physical eye sees no one near; but she is ever by me – I feel her hand now as it rests lightly on my head. Friend, I am what I am through the love of woman. Love is life.

“There is a class of women who especially have my sincere and profound respect, these are the ‘old maids.’ They form to-day in this country a genuine sisterhood of mercy. They do the work no one else will do nor can do. In every village there are aged parents, orphan children, widowed brothers, helpless invalids, people homeless and friendless who owe a debt of gratitude which time can never repay to the unselfish devotion of some old maid. They are women who will not fling their womanhood away for the sake of a ‘provider,’ or to escape the supposed ignominy of maidenhood. If a woman once decides she must have a man, by just spreading her net, and not being over-choice about quality, she can always secure some sort of game, for no matter how foolish, frivolous and vain a woman is, there is a man near at hand who will out-match her. I am glad to know that the number of old maids is increasing, for a woman had a thousand times over better travel through life alone than to accept any alliance short of her genuine mental and spiritual mate. This may give you a clue to the reason for the well known fact that the average old maid excels in intelligence and culture her married sister. When a man marries the wrong woman it is a mistake, for the woman it is a blunder.”

CHAPTER XIII.

FOURTH SUNDAY – ATMOSPHERE

I sat with note-book on my knee, pencil in hand and The Man began:

“The air here on this hillside is full of health and healing. Physical life you know is only possible in a right atmosphere. Add five parts more of carbonic acid gas and the body is poisoned – ceases to act – dies! Do you see the change in the constituent parts of the air? No – your senses are not aware of any change at all if the poison is introduced gradually; and so the use of the electric light in hotels has worked a great saving of life among the rural population, for the most frantic effort to blow it out proves futile; but in days gone by scarcely a month passed in any city when some innocent and ignorant individual did not lock the door, close the window, vitiate his physical atmosphere, and glide off slowly, surely, into that sleep which we call death.

“In the carboniferous period there was no atmosphere capable of sustaining animal life. Vegetation was flowerless, and the trees grew rank in swamps filled with poisonous miasma, death and gloom. No flowers decked the earth or the tree tops, no fruit hung on the branches, the song of birds was not heard and the only animal life was made up of mollusks and the lower forms of animate existence. Gradually the carbon in the air was absorbed by the vegetation, and sank beneath the bending swale, and new trees grew, and others followed still, and these sank and sank again, carrying down into the depths the material that has formed the shining coal which warms and cheers our homes.

“Gradually this purifying process continued; more and many kinds of plants sprang into being; these too absorbed the poison from the air, fit preparation that earth might receive her king. Animal life appeared in monster shape; fierce, awful forms, that crawled upon the land, through tangled swamps, or swam the sea, thriving in the atmosphere of slime – of gloom – of death. Gradually these nightmare forms have passed away, leaving only grim remains and foot-prints here and there, from which ingenious men have guessed the right proportion of the whole. Finer and finer, better and better grows the teeming life of animal and flower, until in words of prophet told,

“‘Sweet is the breath of morn,Her rising sweet with song of earliest birds;Pleasant the sun, when first on this delightful mornHe spreads his orient ray o’er herb, tree, fruit and flower,Glistening with dew.Fragrant the fertile earth after soft showers,And sweet the coming on of grateful evening mild.’”

The Man seemed musing to himself instead of talking to me, and I thought he had been talking without special point, for he was now silent, seated with back toward me, looking from the window; but it came to me like a flash without his explaining in words that the glimpse he had given of the history of the earth was only a summing up of the history of the soul of man. I saw the hordes of barbarians intent on conquest come streaming out from back of Assyria over into Macedonia, into Greece. I saw the teeming millions of Persia sink struggling beneath the sinking swale, and Greece come forth with men noble, gentle, refined, compared with what men were before them. Rome appeared, and I thought surely the carboniferous period was coming back with its poisonous fumes when Cæsar passed over into Gaul, then Britanny.

For centuries the earth gave forth no sign; but suddenly I saw a woman – not an ideal one to be sure, but men lifted their hats to the Virgin Queen, and with the Elizabethan age came a Spencer and a Shakespeare.

Surely the flowers had begun to bloom, the woods were full of song of birds, and I knew The Man was thinking of the What-Is-To-Be when he slowly and softly repeated the verse I have written. He turned and looked at me – our eyes met in firm, gentle embrace. Perhaps we both smiled, and he knew I understood. I had made a great stride to the front. He had spoken to me without words on a subject I had never thought of. I had received the message and I felt that this was just the beginning – only six o’clock in the morning.

I knew all he would say of atmosphere – that if body can not live excepting in a right atmosphere, neither can spirit; for over and over had I heard The Man say, “The material world is only symbol – behind each physical fact is a spiritual truth. Each planet has its own physical atmosphere varying according to its development.”

“Each person carries with him an atmosphere varying according to his development,” The Man continued, “and this is why in the presence of some person your spirit – that is, your better self – acts and lives. You think great and exalted thoughts with this friend. Neither may say a word, but your heart is full of love, benevolence and good-will. Now the person may be a perfect stranger to you, and yet supply you with an atmosphere in which your spirit may rejoice and sing. And again, who has not felt in coming into the presence of others, that the air was filled with the fumes of sulphur and carbonic acid. You become morose, downcast, spiteful, discouraged. This is only because your spirit is now in an unfavorable atmosphere. Get enough of these people who carry with them a tainted atmosphere and keep you in their presence, you will shrink away and die. Thousands upon thousands of men and women (women suffer more than men from bad spiritual atmosphere, as they are more sensitive and more spiritual) die yearly, and others drag their bodies about – living corpses. See them on the street – these careworn haggard faces. They die for lack of God’s sunshine – their souls are breathing an atmosphere of hate, distrust, jealousy and cruel ambition.

“This accounts for the great number of cases of insanity among farmers’ wives. Living as many do, breathing only the atmosphere of those who are sore labored and distressed – or who think they are, which is the same thing, ‘For as a man thinketh so is he;’ meeting her husband only in body and not in spirit, it is impossible for her to generate a strong spiritual atmosphere of her own. So is it any wonder the soul becomes weary, the body struggles, cries aloud, totters, reels and falls?

“Good people meeting together, talking of good things, thinking great thoughts, putting away all strife, envy and discord, create an atmosphere favorable to spiritual growth, and make it possible for the souls of all to expand and reach out, touching Infinity.

“Every wicked thought that flits across the mind is poisoning the atmosphere which often souls must breathe, and every good thought you think is adding to the total sum of good, and whether spoken or unexpressed, enriches the Universe, for thought is an entity producing a vibration too delicate for our dull physical senses to discern, but our spirits are thus influenced.

“But this is enough. You must rest and then write out what I have told you. What I will tell you next Sunday is of much greater import than you have yet heard me speak.”

CHAPTER XIV.

FIFTH SUNDAY – A REVELATION

Sunday morning came. The day was perfect. Great white billowy clouds floated lazily across the face of the blue ether, a gentle breeze scarcely noticeable stirred the leaves of the trees, and all nature seemed sublime. The birds twittered in the pine-trees as we walked beneath, and the air was saturated with health and healing.

The Man had told me the week before that what he would tell me to-day was of much importance – that I need not write it down at once for I could not forget. Naturally I was somewhat expectant.

“You have read Shakespeare some of course,” he began. “Yes, I know, at school, and then you have seen his plays. This has given you a glimpse of his mind; but one could study years, certainly much longer than it took him to write them, and then not get the full import of Shakespeare’s words. Still, the difference between your mind and that of Shakespeare is not so great as one might at first imagine. You yourself think great thoughts – they come to you at times in great waves, almost threatening to engulf you; high and holy aspirations; sublime impulses, that you dare not attempt to put in words for mortal ear, for you doubt your own strength, and also fear you will be misunderstood. So your best thought is never expressed, for there is no receptacle where you can pour it out – you feel that you go through life alone, so the thought goes through your brain in the twinkling of a second and is gone forever.

“All persons think great thoughts – few have the power to seize the electric spark and clothe it in words. Now just to that extent that you understand Shakespeare, are you his equal. If you see a beautiful thought recorded and detect its beauty, it was already yours or you would not have recognized it. It was yours before, but you never claimed your heritage. That same thought had gone floating through your brain, either in this life or a former one, but you failed to hold it fast; but when it comes back from the lips of the preacher, or is whispered to you from out pages of a great writer you say, ‘Ah yes, how true! I have thought the same thing myself.’

“Now Shakespeare had the faculty (and a more or less mechanical one it is) of seizing with a grasp as strong as iron and as soft as silken cord, every sublime thought that passed through his mind. Your troop of fancies run wild over the prairies of imagination, mine and Shakespeare’s are harnessed and bridled. We guide or lead them where we will; we master them, not they us. The beautiful thought you rode on like a whirlwind yesterday, where is it now? You strive to recall it – but no, all is dark, misty, and obscure. It has gone!

“Now under right conditions you can call up these glowing, prancing thoughts at will, orderly, one at a time, clean and complete as race horses where each is led before you by a competent groom; not in a wild rush of frenzy that leaves you afterward depleted and depressed, but gently, surely, firmly – but the conditions must be right. Now what are these conditions, you ask. Well, if I describe to you the conditions that surrounded Shakespeare from the year 1585 when he went to London, to 1615 when he returned to Stratford, you will then know what are the right conditions for mental growth.

“The mother of William Shakespeare, Mary Arden, was a great and noble woman. Words elude me when I attempt to describe her! Soul secretes body, and how can I have you see the dwelling-place of this great and lofty spirit as I now behold it with my inward eyes? Tall, rather than otherwise, a willowy lithe form that was strong as whalebone, yet at first you would have thought her delicate; hair light, inclining to auburn, wavy; her eyes heaven’s own blue, with a dreamy far-away expression, not fixed on things of earth, but looking into the beyond. She saw things others never saw, she heard music that came not to the ears of others. Her face I cannot describe! Some envious women said she was homely, for her features were rather large and irregular; but a few saw in that face the look of gentle greatness, for the really great are always gentle and modest. They speak with lowered voice – they hesitate. Is it fear? They are silent when we say they should affirm – and Pilate marveled.

“This woman bore eight children, four boys and four girls. Only one of these attained eminence – this was her third child. The others were born under seemingly equal favorable circumstances, but the spirit she called to her when she conceived in that year 1563, was of a different nature from that which prevailed with the other seven. She was then thirty-one years old; her mind working in the direction of the Ideal; her life calm; all of the surroundings at their best. But we must hasten on.”

I had brought my stenographic notebook, and almost from the first I took the words of The Man exact, as I feared I would not remember them. We were seated on a log under the great pine-trees, and as The Man talked slowly, I got the exact words as I give them to you in this book. The Man continued:

“John Shakespeare was not the equal of his wife by any means, but a good man withal, who loved his wife and feared her just a little. She was good and gentle, yet so self-reliant in spite of her seeming sensitiveness, that the good man could never fully comprehend her; but he ever treated her with the awkward yet becoming tenderness of the great, strong, hairy, simple-hearted man that he was.

“William caused his parents more trouble and sorrow than all the other children together. They could not comprehend him at all. He was smart, yet would not study; he was strong, yet would not work except by spells. He would disappear from the task at which he had been set, and be found lying on his back out under the trees, looking up through the branches at the great white clouds floating in the sky. He had hiding-places all his own in the woods and glens where he would spend hours alone, and yet in the childish frolics and games of youth he could always hold his own.

“At eighteen (I hate to think of those awful times) he married Anne Hathaway, ten years his senior. This woman was delivered of a child one month after her marriage. I could tell you the full details of that affair; of how he married this ignorant and stupid woman to defend another, but let us pass over it lightly. The world need not know the bad, it hears too much of it now. Let us only dwell on the good, think the good, speak the good, and we will then live the good.

“For three years Shakespeare ostensibly lived with this woman, who was whimsical, ignorant, fault-finding, jealous – ever upbraiding and too fond of giving advice, and a most uncleanly and slovenly housekeeper beside. When he married her Shakespeare accepted her for better for worse, it proved to be worse, but he was determined to endure and live it out; but after three years of purgatory he brushed away the starting tears, took a few small necessary things, tied them in a handkerchief, and without saying ‘good-bye’ even to the dear mother whom he loved (although she did not understand him), started on foot for London, anxious to lose himself in the great throng. He arrived penniless, ragged and footsore, and sought vainly for employment; but what could the poor country boy do? No trade, no education, no experience with practical things! If he had been used to the manners of polite people he could have hired out as a servant; but, alas! he was only a country boor, unused to city ways, and driven almost to the verge of starvation, he hung about the entrance to the theatre, and offered to hold the horses of visitors who went within. At this he picked up enough to pay for his scanty food and lodging. Besides holding horses he carried a lantern, and increased his little income by attending people home after the play, going before carrying lantern and staff. London streets, you know, were not lighted in those days, and robbers were also plentiful under cover of the night, so strong young men able to give protection were needed. Occasionally he was called into the theatre to act as a soldier or supernumerary.

“One night he was engaged to attend a lady and her daughter from their home to the play, and back again after the performance. This woman was the widow of an Italian nobleman, Bowenni by name, who was driven from his home for political reasons. He died in London leaving the widow and daughter with an income which by prudent management was amply sufficient for their needs. The daughter was twenty-four years old at the time I have mentioned, a girl of most rare education and refinement. Like all Italians she was a born linguist, and spoke French, German, Greek and Latin with fluency. Her father was a scholar, and for years he was the tutor and the only playmate of this daughter. Together they studied Homer and Plato (the wonders of Greece were just then for the first time being opened up in England), and the beauties of the French Moralists they dissected day by day with ever increasing delight; for the girl had that fine glad recipiency for the trinity of truth, beauty and goodness, each of which comprehends the other. Her father took good care that only the best of mental nourishment should be hers. In their exile they had traveled through Egypt, spent months in Denmark, Spain and Portugal, knew Rome, Venice and the Mediterranean by heart, and wherever they went, the father secured the best books of the place – for you must remember that in those days the books of an author very seldom went out of his own country, certainly were never offered for sale in other countries, and the works of French dramatists were almost unknown in England.

“After our youth had left the mother and daughter at the door of their dwelling, and they had entered, the daughter asked: ‘My mother, didst thou notice the respectful attitude of the young man whom we engaged to attend us? – how alert he was to see that no accident did befall us? Yet he spoke no word, nor forced on us attention, but only seemed intent on his duty doing.’

“‘Yes,’ said the mother, ‘a youth of goodly parts and fair to view withal; not large in stature, but strong. He does not bear himself pompously, and bend back as other servants do; but the manly chest – it leads, and methinks the crown is in its proper place. We will him engage again, for honest work well done shall ever bring its own reward.’

“But I must hasten on, and not spend time with mere detail. Suffice it to say, that the young man was hired to attend the noble lady and the daughter to the theatre each Thursday night, and that after four weeks the daughter suggested that as the young man was so gentlemanly in his bearing, so modest, and of such comely features, that there would be no harm for him to attend them as their friend and escort. ‘No one need know,’ she naïvely said, and after much misgiving on the mother’s part the plan was suggested to the young man, who only bowed with uncovered head and said, ‘Madame, I am your hired servant, and therefore at your service to do all that you may command, which cannot be but right.’