The Art of Living

In the same class with the law, medicine, and architecture, and seemingly offering at present a greater scope for an ambitious young man, is engineering in all its branches. The furnaces, mines, manufactories, and the hydraulic, electrical, or other plants connected with the numerous vast mechanical business enterprises of the country are furnishing immediate occupation for hundreds of graduates of the scientific or polytechnic schools at highly respectable salaries. This field of usefulness is certain for a long time to come to offer employment and a fair livelihood to many, and large returns to those who outstrip their contemporaries. More and more is the business man, the manufacturer, and the capitalist likely to be dependent for the economical or successful development and management of undertakings on the judgment of scientific experts in his own employment or called in to advise, and it is only meet that the counsel given should be paid for handsomely.

Those who pursue literature or art in their various branches in this country, and have talents in some degree commensurate with their ambition, are now generally able to make a comfortable livelihood. Indeed the men and women in the very front rank are beginning to receive incomes which would be highly satisfactory to a leading lawyer or physician. Of course original work in literature or art demands special ability and fitness, but the general utility man is beginning to have many opportunities presented to him in connection with what may be called the clerical work of these professions. The great magazines and publishing houses have an increasing need for trained, scholarly men, for capable critics, and discerning advisers in the field both of letter-press and illustration. Another calling which seems to promise great possibilities both of usefulness and income to those who devote themselves to it earnestly is the comparatively new profession of journalism. The reporter, with all his present horrors, is in the process of evolution; but the journalist is sure to remain the high-priest of democracy. His influence is almost certain to increase materially, but it will not increase unless he seeks to lead public thought instead of bowing to it. The newspaper, in order to flourish, must be a moulder of opinion, and to accomplish this those who control its columns must more and more be men of education, force, and high ideals. Competition will winnow here as elsewhere, but those who by ability and industry win the chief places will stand high in the community and command large pay for their services.

An aristocracy of brains – that is to say, an aristocracy composed of individuals successful and prominent in their several callings – seems to be the logical sequence of our institutions under present social and industrial conditions. The only aristocracy which can exist in a democracy is one of honorable success evidenced by wealth or a handsome income, but the character of such an aristocracy will depend on the ambitions and tastes of the nation. The inevitable economic law of supply and demand governs here as elsewhere, and will govern until such a time as society may be reconstructed on an entirely new basis. Only the leaders in any vocation can hope to grow rich, but in proportion as the demands of the nation for what is best increase will the type and characteristics of these leaders improve. The doing away with inherited orders of nobility and deliberate, patented class distinctions, gives the entire field to wealth. We boast proudly that no artificial barriers confine individual social promotion; but we must remember at the same time that those old barriers meant more than the perpetuation of perfumed ladies and idle gentlemen from century to century. We are too apt to forget that the aristocracies of the old world signified in the first place a process of selection. The kings and the nobles, the lords and the barons, the knights who fought and the ladies for whom they died, were the master-spirits of their days and generations, the strong arms and the strong brains of civilized communities. They stood for force, the force of the individual who was more intelligent, more capable, and mightier in soul and body than his neighbors, and who claimed the prerogatives of superiority on that account. These master-spirits, it is true, used these prerogatives in such a manner as to crystallize society into the classes and the masses, so hopelessly for the latter that the gulf between them still is wide as an ocean, notwithstanding that present nobilities have been shorn of their power so that they may be said to exist chiefly by sufferance. And yet the world is still the same in that there are men more intelligent, more capable, and mightier in soul and body than their fellows. The leaders of the past won their spurs by prowess with the battle-axe and spear, by wise counsel in affairs of state, by the sheer force of their superior manhood. The gentleman and lady stood for the best blood of the world, though they so often belied it by their actions.

We, who are accustomed to applaud our civilization as the hope of the world, may well look across the water and take suggestions from the institutions of Great Britain, not with the idea of imitation, but with a view to consider the forces at work there. For nearly a century now the government, though in form a monarchy, has been substantially a constitutional republic, imbued with inherited traditions and somewhat galvanized by class distinctions, but nevertheless a constitutional republic. The nobility still exists as a sort of French roof or Eastern pagoda to give a pleasing appearance to the social edifice. The hereditary meaning of titles has been so largely negatived by the introduction of new blood – the blood of the strongest men of the period – that they have become, what they originally were, badges to distinguish the men most valuable to the State. Their abolition is merely a question of time, and many of the leaders to whom they are proffered reject them as they would a cockade or a yellow satin waistcoat. On the other hand, and here is the point of argument, the real aristocracy of England for the last hundred years has been an aristocracy of the foremost, ablest, and worthiest men of the nation, and with few exceptions the social and pecuniary rewards have been bestowed both by the State and by public appreciation on the master-spirits of the time in the best sense. Brilliant statesmanship, wisdom on the bench, the surgeon’s skill, the banker’s sound discernment, genius in literature and art, when signally contributed by the individual, have won him fame and fortune.

It may be said, perhaps, that the pecuniary rewards of science and literature have been less conspicuous than those accorded to other successes, but that has been due to the inherent practical temperament and artistic limitations of the Englishman, and can scarcely be an argument against the contention that English society in the nineteenth century, with all its social idiosyncrasies, has really been graded on the order of merit.

The tide of democracy has set in across the water and is running strongly, and there can be no doubt that the next century is likely to work great and strange changes in the conditions of society in England as well as here. The same questions practically are presented to each nation, except that there a carefully constructed and in many respects admirable system of society is to be disintegrated. We are a new country, and we have a right to be hopeful that we are sooner or later to outstrip all civilizations. Nor is it a blemish that the astonishing development of our material resources has absorbed the energies of our best blood. But it now remains to be seen whether the standards of pure democracy, without traditions or barriers to point the way, are to justify the experiment and improve the race. The character of our aristocracy will depend on the virtues and tastes of the people, and the struggle is to be between aspiration and contentment with low ambitions. Our original undertaking has been made far more difficult by the infusion of the worst blood in Christendom, the lees of foreign nations; but the result of the experiment will be much more convincing because of this change in conditions.

Who are to be the men of might and heroes of democracy? That will depend on the demands and aspirations of the enfranchised people. With all its imperfections, the civilization of the past has fostered the noble arts and stirred genius to immortalize itself in bronze and marble, in cathedral spires, in masterpieces of painting and literature, in untiring scholarship, in fervent labors in law, medicine, and science. Democracy must care for these things, and encourage the individual to choose worthy occupations, or society will suffer. We hope and believe that, in the long run, the standards of humanity will be raised rather than lowered by the lifting of the flood-gates which divide the privileged classes from the mass; but it behooves us all to remember that while demand and supply must be the leading arbiters in the choice of a vocation, the responsibility of selection is left to each individual. Only by the example of individuals will society be saved from accepting the low, vulgar aims and ambitions of the mass as a desirable weal, and this is the strongest argument against the doctrines of those who would repress individuality for the alleged benefit of mankind as a whole. The past has given us many examples of the legislator who cannot be bribed, of the statesman faithful to principle, of the student who disdains to be superficial, of the gentleman who is noble in thought, and speech and action, and they stand on the roll of the world’s great men. Democracy cannot afford not to continue to add to this list, and either she must steel her countenance against the cheap man and his works, or sooner or later be confounded. Was Marie Antoinette a more dangerous enemy of the people than the newspaper proprietor who acquires fortune by catering to the lowest tastes and prejudices of the public, or the self-made capitalist who argues that every man has his price, and seeks to accomplish legislation by bribery?

The Use of Time

I

I brought Rogers home with me again the other day. I do not mean Rogers in the flesh; but the example of Rogers as a bogy with which to confound my better half and myself. You may recall that Rogers is the book-keeper for Patterson the banker, and that he has brought up and educated a family on a salary of twenty-two hundred dollars a year.

“Barbara,” said I, “we were reflecting yesterday that we never have time to do the things we really wish to do. Have you ever considered how Rogers spends his time?”

My wife admitted that she had not, and she dutifully waited for me to proceed, though I could tell from the expression of her mouth that she did not expect to derive much assistance from the example of Mr. Rogers. Therefore I made an interesting pathological deduction to begin with.

“Rogers does not live on his nerves from one year’s end to the other, as we do.”

“I congratulate him,” said Barbara, with a sigh.

“And yet,” I continued, “he leads a highly respectable and fairly interesting life. He gets up at precisely the same hour every morning, has his breakfast, reads the paper, and is at his desk punctually on time. He dines frugally, returns to his desk until half-past four or five, and after performing any errands which Mrs. Rogers has asked him to attend to, goes home to the bosom of his family. There he exchanges his coat and boots for a dressing-gown, or aged smoking-jacket, and slippers, and remains by his fireside absorbed in the evening paper until tea-time. Conversation with the members of his family beguiles him for half an hour after the completion of the meal; then he settles down to the family weekly magazine, or plays checkers or backgammon with his wife or daughters. After a while, if he is interested in ferns or grasses, he looks to see how his specimens are growing under the glass case in the corner. He pats the cat and makes sure that the canary is supplied with seed. Now and then he brings home a puzzle, like ‘Pigs in Clover,’ which keeps him up half an hour later than usual, but ordinarily his head is nodding before the stroke of ten warns him that his bed-hour has come. And just at the time that the wife of his employer, Patterson, may be setting out for a ball, he is tucking himself up in bed by the side of Mrs. Rogers.”

“Poor man!” interjected Barbara.

“He has his diversions,” said I. “Now and again neighbors drop in for a chat, and the evening is wound up with a pitcher of lemonade and angel-cake. He and his wife drop in, in their turn, or he goes to a political caucus. Once a fortnight comes the church sociable, and every now and then a wedding. From time to time he and Mrs. Rogers attend lectures. His young people entertain their friends, as the occasion offers, in a simple way, and on Sunday he goes to church in the morning and falls to sleep after a heavy dinner in the afternoon. He leads a quiet, peaceful, conservative existence, unharassed by social functions and perpetual excitement.”

“And he prides himself, I dare say,” said Barbara, “on the score of its virtuousness. He saves his nerves and he congratulates himself that he is not a society person, as he calls it. Your Mr. Rogers may be a very estimable individual, dear, in his own sphere, and I do think he manages wonderfully on his twenty-two hundred dollars a year; but I should prefer to see you lose your nerves and become a gibbering victim of nervous prostration rather than that you should imitate him.”

“I’m not proposing to imitate him, Barbara,” I answered, gravely. “I admit that his life seems rather dull and not altogether inspiring, but I do think that a little of his repose would be beneficial to many of us whose interests are more varied. We might borrow it to advantage for a few months in the year, don’t you think so? I believe, Barbara, that if you and I were each of us to lie flat on our backs for one hour every day and think of nothing – and not even clinch our hands – we should succeed in doing more things than we really wish to do.”

“I suppose it’s the climate – they say it’s the climate,” said Barbara, pensively. “Foreigners don’t seem to be affected in that way. They’re not always in a hurry as we are, and yet they seem to accomplish very nearly as much. We all know what it is to be conscious of that dreadful, nervous, hurried feeling, even when we have plenty of time to do the things we have to do. I catch myself walking fast – racing, in fact – when there is not the least need of it. I don’t clinch my hands nearly so much as I used, and I’ve ceased to hold on to the pillow in bed as though it were a life-preserver, out of deference to Delsarte, but when it comes to lying down flat on my back for an hour a day – every day – really it isn’t feasible. It’s an ideal plan, I dare say, but the days are not long enough. Just take to-day, for instance, and tell me, please, when I had time to lie down.”

“You are clinching your hands now,” I remarked.

“Because you have irritated me with your everlasting Mr. Rogers,” retorted Barbara. She examined, nevertheless, somewhat dejectedly, the marks of her nails in her palms. “In the morning, for instance, when I came down to breakfast there was the mail. Two dinner invitations and an afternoon tea; two sets of wedding-cards, and a notice of a lecture by Miss Clara Hatheway on the relative condition of primary schools here and abroad; requests for subscriptions to the new Cancer Hospital and the Children’s Fresh Air and Vacation Fund; an advertisement of an after-holiday sale of boys’ and girls’ clothes at Halliday’s; a note from Mrs. James Green asking particulars regarding our last cook, and a letter from the President of my Woman’s Club notifying me that I was expected to talk to them at the next meeting on the arguments in favor of and against the ownership by cities and towns of gas and water-works. All these had to be answered, noted, or considered. Then I had to interview the cook and the butcher and the grocer about the dinner, give orders that a button should be sewn on one pair of your trousers and a stain removed from another, and give directions to the chore-man to oil the lock of the front-door, and tell him to go post-haste for the plumber to extract the blotting-paper which the children yesterday stuffed down the drain-pipe in the bath-tub, so that the water could not escape. Then I had to sit down and read the newspaper. Not because I had time, or wished to, but to make sure that there was nothing in it which you could accuse me of not having read. After this I dressed to go out. I stopped at the florist’s to order some roses for Mrs. Julius Cæsar, whose mother is dead; at Hapgood & Wales’s and at Jones’s for cotton-batting, hooks and eyes, and three yards of ribbon; at Belcher’s for an umbrella to replace mine, which you left in the cable-cars, and at the library to select something to read. I arrived home breathless for the children’s dinner, and immediately afterward I dressed and went to the meeting of the Executive Committee of the Woman’s Club, stopping on the way to inquire if Mrs. Wilson’s little boy were better. We started by discussing a proposed change in our Constitution regarding the number of black-balls necessary to exclude a candidate, and drifted off on to ‘Trilby.’ It was nearly five when I got away, and as I felt it on my conscience to go both to Mrs. Southwick’s and Mrs. Williams’s teas, I made my appearance at each for a few minutes, but managed to slip away so as to be at home at six. When you came in I had just been reading to the children and showing them about their lessons. Now I have only just time to dress for dinner, for we dine at the Gregory Browns, at half-past seven. We ought to go later to the reception at Mrs. Hollis’s – it is her last of three and we haven’t been yet – but I suppose you will say you are too tired. There! will you tell me when I could have found time to lie down for an hour to-day?”

I was constrained to laugh at my wife’s recital, and I was not able at the moment to point out to her exactly what she might have omitted from her category so as to make room for the hour of repose. Nor, indeed, as I review the events of my own daily life and of the daily lives of my friends and acquaintances, am I able to define precisely where it could be brought in. And yet are we not – many of us who are in the thick of modern life – conscious that our days are, as it were, congested? We feel sure that so far as our physical comfort is concerned we ought to be doing less, and we shrewdly suspect that, if we had more time in which to think, our spiritual natures would be the gainers. The difficulty is to stop, or rather to reduce the speed of modern living to the point at which these high-pressure nervous symptoms disappear, and the days cease to seem too short for what we wish to accomplish. Perhaps those who take an intense interest in living will never be able to regain that delightful condition of equipoise, if it ever existed, which our ancestors both here and across the water are said to have experienced. Perhaps, too, our ancestors were more in a hurry when they were alive than they seem to have been now that they are dead; but, whether this be true or otherwise, we are confidently told by those who ought to know that we Americans of this day and generation are the most restless, nervous people under the sun, and live at a higher pressure than our contemporaries of the effete civilizations. It used to be charged that we were in such haste to grow rich that there was no health in us; and now that we are, or soon will be, the wealthiest nation in the world, they tell us that we continue to maintain the same feverish pace in all that we undertake or do.

I am not sure that this charge could not be brought against the Englishman, Frenchman, or German of to-day with almost equal justice, or, in other words, that it is a characteristic of the age rather than of our nation; but that conviction would merely solace our pride and could not assuage “that tired feeling” of which so many are conscious. At all events, if we do not work harder than our kinsmen across the sea, we seem to bear the strain less well. It may be the climate, as my wife has said, which causes our nervous systems to rebel; but then, again, we cannot change the climate, and consequently must adapt ourselves to its idiosyncrasies.

Ever since we first began to declare that we were superior to all other civilizations we have been noted for our energy. The way in which we did everything, from sawing wood to electing a President, was conspicuous by virtue of the bustling, hustling qualities displayed. But it is no longer high treason to state that our national life, in spite of its bustle, was, until comparatively recently, lacking in color and variety. The citizen who went to bed on the stroke of ten every night and did practically the same thing each day from one year’s end to the other was the ideal citizen of the Republic, and was popularly described as a conservative and a strong man. His life was led within very repressed limits, and anything more artistic than a chromo or religious motto was apt to irritate him and shock his principles. To be sure, we had then our cultivated class – more narrowly but possibly more deeply cultivated than its flourishing successor of to-day – but the average American, despite his civic virtues and consciousness of rectitude, led a humdrum existence, however hustling or bustling. There is a large percentage of our population that continues to live in much the same manner, notwithstanding the wave of enlightenment which has swept over the country and keyed us all up to concert pitch by multiplying the number of our interests. I feel a little guilty in having included Rogers among this number, for I really know of my own knowledge nothing about his individual home life. It may be that I have been doing him a rank injustice, and that his home is in reality a seething caldron of progress. I referred to him as a type rather than as an individual, knowing as I do that there are still too many homes in this country where music, art, literature, social tastes, and intelligent interest in human affairs in the abstract, when developed beyond mere rudimentary lines, are unappreciated and regarded as vanities or inanities.

On the other hand, there is nothing more interesting in our present national evolution than the eager recognition by the intelligent and aspiring portion of the people that we have been and are ignorant, and that the true zest of life lies in its many-sidedness and its possibilities of development along æsthetic, social, and intellectual as well as moral lines. The United States to-day is fairly bristling with eager, ambitious students, and with people of both sexes, young and middle-aged, who are anxiously seeking how to make the most of life. This eagerness of soul is not confined to any social class, and is noticeable in every section of the country in greater or less degree. It is quite as likely to be found among people of very humble means as among those whose earliest associations have brought them into contact with the well-to-do and carefully educated. Therefore I beg the pardon of Rogers in case I have put him individually in the wrong category. A divine yet cheery activity has largely taken the place of sodden self-righteousness on the one hand, and analytical self-consciousness on the other. The class is not as yet very large as compared with the entire population of the country, but it is growing rapidly, and its members are the most interesting men and women of the Republic – those who are in the van of our development as a people.

Overcrowded and congested lives signify at least earnestness and absorption. Human nature is more likely to aspire and advance when society is nervously active, than when it is bovine and self-congratulatory. But nerves can endure only a certain amount of strain without reminding human beings that strong and healthy bodies are essential to true national progress. Only recently in this country have we learned to consider the welfare of the body, and though we have begun to be deadly in earnest about athletics, the present generation of workers was, for the most part, brought up on the theory that flesh and blood was a limitation rather than a prerequisite. We are doing bravely in this matter so far as the education of our children is concerned, but it is too late to do much for our own nerves. Though stagnation is a more deplorable state, it behooves us, nevertheless, if possible, to rid ourselves of congestion for our ultimate safety.