A Pessimist in Theory and Practice

"No doubt. But your philanthropic experiments are apt to be damnably expensive to the patient."

"You couldn't be much worse than you were, according to your own account. Any change ought to have been for the better."

"That was your assumption. Do I strike you as being changed for the better?"

"Well, no, you don't – not to put too fine a point upon it."

He certainly does not. His whole manner is altered. His former gentleness has given way to rough harshness. You have seen how he treats me. It may be his best, as he says; if so, his best is far from good. His bitterness used to be, if I may say so, in the abstract, and leveled against abstractions; now it seems to have a painfully concrete character and aim. His estrangement from the scheme of things, or from his kind at least, was purely intellectual, leaving his heart no more affected than the heart usually is by brain-disorders; now it is moral. He is like a man tormented by remorse, or regrets as savage. But I think I know a cure for his complaint.

After a pause he said, "I don't want to blame you, Bob, and I don't propose to whine. Nor was it any great matter what came to me, wherever it might come from. I thought I was done with the world, and had nothing to fear from it, except being bored and disgusted. There was only one thing I cared about, and that I supposed I could keep. I was mistaken. It was my little ewe lamb – all I had; and they took it from me."

"I thought your live stock was confined to dogs, and a cow, and the tomcat – by the way, I don't see him any more. I didn't know you went into sheep. Was Tommy the ewe-lamb, and did the dogs play Nathan and David with him?"

This I said, thinking to cheer him up a bit; but he only scowled. Really, I must remember Mabel's caution about telling the wrong stories and laughing in the wrong places. "Well, Jim, what was 'it' that you valued so, and who were 'they' who took it away?"

"The prince of the power of the air; the spirit that walks in darkness, and rules in the children thereof. The beautiful order of things generally, and their incurable depravity. All these are one, and the name doesn't matter. If you urged me to it, I might say that you had played a very passable David to my Uriah."

"Who – I? I'm not a sheep-stealer. What would I want to hurt you for? Jim, you're joking, and it's a joke of doubtful taste."

"Do I look like it? You might find a joke in this: you can find them everywhere. I can't."

"As I told you, you take Life too seriously. If you will be more specific, and tell me what you have lost, perhaps I can help you to find it."

"Some losses are irrecoverable. You'd better let it alone, Bob; you'd better have let me alone before, as I've said. You mean well enough; but it's ill meddling with another man's life. You don't know what responsibility you take, or what effect you may produce. I don't say that it's the worst of all possible worlds, but it is such that each of us had best go his own way, and keep clear of the others. When one forgets that safe rule, and mixes with his kind, only harm seems to come of it."

"If that is so, I might better have staid at home now. Methinks your written hand is different from your spoken. I mean – "

"O yes, when I write I try to come out of myself and be decently civil; and so I should to a chance visitor for five minutes, or an hour maybe. But I can't keep it up all day – not to say for a week. You'll have to see the facts, and bear with them. I don't want to be rough on you; but I'm not myself – or not what I was before, or supposed myself to be. It's all in the plan, no doubt; we are fulfilling the beneficent intentions of Nature. Perhaps I'm breaking down, and the end is not so far off as we thought. If so, so much the better: we'll escape that sad old age you prophesied."

Now I am not lacking in humanity, but it does not afflict me as it did six months ago to hear Jim go on in this way. I know what is the matter with him now, and what he is driving at, though I must assume ignorance for a while yet. The patient must tell his symptoms, and then the doctor will give him the physic he needs, and proceed to make a new man of him. That is what I am after now, and the good work must not be spoiled by undue haste. So I put on a decorous air of sympathy, and said,

"That's all bosh, you know. If anything is the matter with you physically, I ought to hear about it; but I don't believe there is. As for the mind, we are all subject to gloomy moods and periods of depression; but they pass, Jim – they pass. You believed in friendship before; hadn't you better tell me what you think ails you?"

"I can't talk about it, except in this roundabout way: what's the use? Best keep to broad principles: the particular case only illustrates the general law. I knew it of old: what business had I to expose myself again? What would you do with a child who will keep on playing about moving cars, or mill machinery? Let him fall under the wheels, and rid the earth of an idiot."

"O no: pull him out in time, and he'll learn better. Well, Jim, you might at least tell me what hand I had in this catastrophe."

"O, none, none whatever: how should you? You never laid any plots for me, and used me for your mirth. You never devised an elaborately concealed ambush, and smoothed it over till I was in the snare. That would be foreign to your open and candid nature. It is very good fun to practice on unsuspecting innocence; but you are far above that."

"See here, Hartman: you talk as if my house were a den of iniquity. If so, I was not aware of it till now. Your ill opinion has not thus far been reciprocated. We entertain none but kind feelings toward you: we all regretted your hasty departure. You were received as a friend, and treated as such, I believe. My wife and sister often speak of you: you could command their fullest sympathy in this, or any trouble, real or imaginary."

"That I never doubted: I owe them nothing but pleasant memories, and thankful good will. – You need not stare at me so: I make no charges, and imply none. – Well, if you must have it, I can say that every member of your family has my absolute respect, – down to the twins; do you understand? If I have any grudge, it is toward you alone."

It was plain that he forced himself to say this – or some of it – as if it were coming perilously near a name he could not utter. He is having his bad time now, as I had mine last week. It is his own fault: he has no need to be so censorious. He had to say what he did, or there would be trouble: some things a man cannot stand, and my best friend would be my friend no longer, if he ventured to reflect upon the Princess.

"I'm glad to hear you say so: the difficulty is simple then, and easily settled. You've got no pistols, of course, and I didn't bring mine. I'll take your rifle, and you can borrow Hodge's old shotgun: if it bursts, it won't be much loss – only you mustn't come too near me with it. There's no danger of interference from the police up here, I judge? But I say, what shall we do for a surgeon?"

"There you go again, turning everything into a jest. Can you never be serious, man?"

"Try to say something original, James: that is stale. Jane asks me that about six times a day, and Mabel frequently, and – and the others. I was serious with you just now, or nearly: had I been entirely so, I might have knocked the top of your head off, and then they would have blamed me at home. You see, they think you are more of a man than you show yourself. To be serious all the time is the most serious mistake one can make in life; and I want no worse example than you. When I go back to town I shall write the Decline and Fall of an Alleged Seeker after Truth, who missed it by taking things too seriously. You are too stiff and narrow and rigid and dogmatic: you take one point of view and stick to it like grim death. You can't get at Truth in that way."

"I suppose you would stand on your head and look at it upside down, and then turn a back somersault and view it from between your legs."

"You express it inelegantly, but you have caught the idea. Truth is not a half pound package done up in brown paper and permanently deposited in one corner of the pantry shelf; she is big and various and active. While you have your head fixed in the iron grip and are staring at the sign 'Terms Cash,' she is off to the other side of the room – and you don't make a good picture at all in that constrained attitude. Your mind has got to be nimble and unbiassed if you want to overtake her, because she is always changing: that is, she appears in new and – to you – unexpected places. I gave you a hint of this in May, and another last summer, but you seem to have forgotten it. O, I could sit here all night and explain it to you, if you were in the right frame of mind."

"No doubt: happily I am not. What has this to do with your defence of buffoonery, and apotheosis of clowns and pantomimes?"

"A pantomime is a very good thing in its way. But that is your illustration; I would rather say opera bouffe, which is probably the truest copy of Life – if we were limited to one kind. But we are not: I tell you, we must have all sorts. There is tragedy in Life, and comedy – that more especially; a little of the other goes a long way. But they are always mixed – not kept apart, and one alone taken in large and frequent doses, after your fashion. Shakespeare understood his business pretty well; though, if I had been he, I would have put in more of those light and graceful touches which hit us where we live, and make the whole world kin."

"Like the Dromios, or the Carriers in Henry Fourth."

"Or the Gravediggers; they are more to your purpose. I want you to see that Humor is the general solvent and reconciler, the key that opens most locks: a feeling for it, well developed, would be money in your pocket. Things don't go to suit you, and you think your powers of the air are frowning, the universe a vault, and the canopy a funeral pall: perhaps the powers are only laughing at you, and want you to smile with them. If you could do that, it would let in light on your darkness. Any situation, properly viewed, has its amusing elements: if you ignore them, you fail to understand the whole. What did Heine say about his irregular Latin nouns? That his knowledge of them, in many a gloomy hour, supplied much inward consolation and delight. You ought to read him more, Jim."

"And Josh Billings, and Bill Nye. Well, that's enough of your wisdom for to-night. We must arrange for to-morrow. Are you up to another scramble?"

"Not like to-day's. Let's take in some decent scenery along with the trout."

"There is a wild gorge ten miles off, with a brook in it. We can take Hodge's mare, put up at a house, and work down the ravine. It's not so bad as the last place, nor so good for fish." I agreed, and we went to bed.

You may think I am humoring Hartman too much, and letting him shirk the subject. But I have a week – more if necessary – and I don't want to be too hard on him. He'll thaw out by degrees: so long as he doesn't blame Clarice, it is all right. He has got my idea about the way to discover Truth now, and it will work in his brain, and soften him. I know Jim: he never seems to take hold at first, but he comes round in time. You just wait, and you will see whether I know what I am about.

XXVII.

SCENERY IMPROVED

The next day we drove to a farmhouse which had annexed some rather decent fields for that region. On one side was tolerably level ground, on the other a cut between two savage mountains. Down this we made our way, taking presently the bed of a small brook: woodroad or footpath never can be there. For a while there was room to walk on dry land: soon the cliffs closed in upon us, on the right rising sheer, on the left sloping, but steeper than I would want to climb. At first the stream was very shallow and narrow, and the fish small and scarce; but think of the creatures that must come there to drink at night! It was the only watercourse for miles, Jim said. He pointed out the tracks of a bear or two, and he thought of a panther; but it is not here I should choose to hunt – your game might have you at a disadvantage. He tried to make me believe that even now some of these beasts might catch us; but that was simply to discourage me from going after them, later on: Jim does not like the chase. My jokes are in better taste: as he is now, I believe the bears could beat him in manners. Near noon we found a place to sit down, where we could see a little of the crags, and proceeded to assimilate our frugal lunch.

"Hartman," said I, "I should think you would want to live up to your scenery, as the ladies do to their blue china. Look at this majestic cliff, whose scarred and aged front, frowning upon these lonesome trout since the creation, has never been profaned by mortal foot."

"Probably not. People very seldom come here, and when they do, they wouldn't be fools enough to try to climb up. They couldn't do it, and it wouldn't pay if they could."

"Well, it is grand, anyway, and it ought to quicken your soul to grand thoughts. In such a scene you ought to feel stirring within you noble sympathies and resolves."

"I can't see much grandeur in human nature, Bob, nor any in myself. If you had thought yourself a gentleman, and suddenly awaked to the fact that you were a cad and a scoundrel, you would be apt to change your tune, and drop the high notes."

Oho, I thought, he is coming to the point. While I was meditating how to utilize this confidence, a small piece of rock fell from above upon the edge of my toes: if it had been a large piece, and fallen on my head, you would have missed this moral tale. When I had expressed my sentiments, he said, "I can't insure you against accidents, – any more than you did me. If I had brought you here in spring, you might growl. The rocks are loose then, and it is dangerous. A man was killed once just below here, and his body never found till the year after." This trivial occurrence seemed to turn his thoughts away from the important topic, and I could not get him back to it.

It was a warm day for the season: once in a while it will be hotter in these sylvan solitudes than it is in New York. While we were in the brook we did not mind that, for we could drop every five minutes and drink. I suppose I consumed some nine gallons of aqua pura during the morning: you can do this with impunity, because there is no ice in it, and the bacteria are of the most wholesome kind. But by and by we finished with the gorge: then we had to go across a sort of common, up hill. There was no water now, and it was hot. After more trees, and a steeper ascent, Jim said, "You'll get a view now." We came out on an open place, with steep rocks beneath. Before us lay a wilderness, with clearings here and there, and a background of mountains. The forests were in their early November bloom; the country looked one great flower. In the Alps or the Rockies they can give this odds, and beat it easily, but it was pretty well for eastern America – and an occasion to be improved. "Jim, if the crags don't appeal to you, this might. If you don't feel up to moral grandeur, why not go in for peace? Let your perturbed spirit catch the note of harmony from this landscape, and drink in purity from this air."

"That is all very fine, and you would make a pretty fair exhorter – with practice. But natural theology is not in my line. These hills look nicely now, but it will be different within a month. If I am to learn peace from a fine day, what from a stormy one? Nature changes for the worse like us, and with less shame: she has no regrets for the past, no care to keep up appearances or make a show of consistency."

"I fear you have been learning of Nature on her wrong side then. Half confidences are in bad taste, Jim. What is it you keep hinting at? It ought to be murder, from the airs you put on about it."

"Leave that for to-night, when we have nothing better to attend to. There is another brook here we ought to try."

XXVIII.

DIPLOMACY

We got back reasonably early, much less tired than the day before. Now, I thought, for some progress. "Well, Jim, you wanted to unfold your tale to-night."

"That is, you wanted to ask me about it. You can't do any good, and I don't find speech a safety-valve: but I suppose it is my duty to supply you with amusement. So get on, and say what is on your mind."

He takes this tone to conceal his morbid yearning to ease his bosom of its perilous stuff: I will have his coil unwound pretty soon. If I were not here, he would probably be whispering her name under the solemn stars, and shouting it in tragic tones on the lonely mountain-top; sighing it under the waterfalls, and expecting the trout to echo it. He talks about fishing the home brook the first rainy day, but he must have scared all the fish away from there with his sentiment. I must remember to notice whether 'C. E.' is carved about the forest. He will pretend to hold back; but I will get it out of him. – I made this pause long enough to let him prepare for the examination on which depends his admission into the civil service, so to speak – he will have to be more civil and serviceable than hitherto if he is to pass it, and follow me back to town – and indeed his whole future.

"You say you have lost something valuable. All you had, you said it was; but that is nonsense. You have health, and more money than you want, and brains and education, of which you are making very poor use, and friends, whom you are treating badly. I can't think what you have lost – unless it was your heart, perhaps." This I brought in in the way of afterthought, as if it had suddenly occurred to me. He started, but assumed a tone of cynical indifference.

"My heart? Would I sit down and howl over that? What use have I for a heart, any more than for a poodle? And if I had one, what does it matter what may have become of it?"

"Strayed or stolen, probably. Such things have happened, especially when persons of the opposite sex are about. They are apt to attach themselves to poodles, and vice versa. But if you give me your honor that a loss of heart is not the cause of these lamentations – "

"Why will you press that point, Bob? What is done can't be undone, and what is broken can't be mended."

"And what is crooked can't be made straight, and what is wanting can't be supplied; though these things are done every day and every hour. Why any able-bodied lady of my acquaintance, even those at my own house, limited as is their experience of the world's devious ways – Jane, I mean, or Mabel – could tell you how."

"Robert, I am too old for these follies."

"James, you are the youngest man I ever knew. Any boy of eighteen would be apt to know better how to manage such matters, and – if you will pardon the frankness you employ yourself – to exhibit more sense."

He stared a little, and I gave him time to recover. Then he took up his parable, defensively falling back on the abstract, after his manner.

"Of course I have thought of these things, Bob, and the philosophy of them, if they can be said to have any. They seem much like everything else. Taking Life in its unfinancial aspects, men do things, not because the particular things are worth doing, but as an apology for the unwarranted liberty they take in being alive. 'I am: why am I?' said the youth at prayer-meeting, and everybody gave it up. As an effort toward answering his own conundrum, he entered the ministry. Being alive, we have to make a pretense of doing something, which else might better remain undone. That is why books are written, and controversies waged; it explains most of our intellectual and moral activities. So with society: time must be killed, and we go out for an evening, though we are dreadfully bored and gain nothing at all. So, I suppose, with what is called love. The emotional part of our nature, which is the absurdest part of all, finds or fancies itself unemployed: a void craves and aches in the breast, and the man, as an old farmer once expressed it, is 'kinder lovesick for suthin he ain't got and dunno what.' Almost any material of the other sex, if you allow a little for taste and temperament, will fill the void – in a way, and for a time at least. Darby marries Joan and is content, though any other woman would have served his turn as well. With us of the finer feelings and higher standards, the only difference is that we rant more and sophisticate more, as belongs to our wider range. No one ever felt thus before – because the feeling is new to us, and newer each time it comes: so Festus protests to each successive mistress, perjuring himself in all sincerity. Nor was any mistress ever so beautiful and divine as this one, appointed to possess and be adored by us. All that is purely a mental exercise: carry the illusion a little farther, and it might be practised as well on a milliner's lay-figure. 'He that loves a coral cheek or a ruby lip admires' is simply a red hot donkey, Bob. Nature provides the imbecile desire, Propinquity furnishes an object at random. Imagination does all the rest."

"Just so, Jim. I am glad to find you again capable of such lucid and exhaustive analysis. But how about what is called falling in love, when the wild ass has not been craving to have his void filled up at all, but is suddenly brought down unawares by an Amazonian arrow?"

"He was no less a donkey that he didn't know it, and it only comes harder for him. The fool ought to have been better acquainted with his own interior condition; then he might have eased his descent to his royal thistle, secured his repast or gone without it, and got back to his stable with a whole skin. Otherwise it is just the same. The heart is an idiot baby, Robert: it feeds on pap and thinks it is guzzling nectar on Olympus."

"Exactly, James; exactly. As you say, it is our fertile fancy that does it all. You and I can conjure up women far more charming than we ever met on brick or carpet. If we only had the raw material and knew how to work it up, we could beat these flesh and blood girls off the field before breakfast. Their merits and attractions are mainly such as we generously invest them with; and often they take a mean advantage of our kindness."

I glanced at him sideways, and he flushed and winced. "I would not derogate from women, nor rate myself so high. I meant only that we imagine – well, monstrous heaps of nonsense. For instance, we often fancy that they care for us when they don't – and whose fault is that but ours? There's a deal of rot talked about lords of creation – when a man isn't able to be lord of himself. O, women are very well in their way: I've nothing against them. They are just as good as we – better, very likely; and wiser, for they don't idealize us as we do them."

"Yes, but this idealizing faculty is a very useful one to have. I see you must have found a Blowsalinda on some of these hill farms: – why, man, you're as red as her father's beets. I congratulate you, Jim: I do, heartily. As you say, the tender passion is merely a spark struck by the flint of Opportunity on the steel of Desire; and for the rest, you can enrich her practical native virtues with the golden hues of your imagination. She'll suit you just as well as any of these proud cityfied damsels – after you've sent her a term or two to boarding school; and she'll be more content to stay up here than the city girl would."

I paused to view my work, and was satisfied. The shadows of wrath and disgust were chasing each other over my friend's intelligent countenance. You see, I get so browbeaten at home that I must avenge myself on somebody now and then; and of course, it has to be a man. And then it is all for Jim's good, and he deserves all he is getting. So I went on.

"But seeing this is so, Jim, you ought to be content; and what means all your wild talk of last night and this morning, as if you had something on your conscience? You haven't – you wouldn't – No, you're not that kind of a man. Well then, what in thunder have you been making all this fuss about, and pitching into me for?"

He suppressed something with a gulp: I think it was not an expression of gratitude or affection. "Confound you, Bob; one never knows how to take you. In the name of Satan and all the devils, what are you after now?"

"I'm not after anything in the name of the gentlemen you mention; they are no friends of mine, nor objects of my regard. Put a better name on it, and I'm after getting you to say what you mean, as we agreed – though it seems to be hard work. Who's playing tricks upon travellers, and misleading a confiding friend now? I never knew such a man for beating about the bush, and talking nonsense." (I remembered this apothegm of Jane's, which sounded well, and fitted in nicely just here.)