The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow

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One morning the district Coroner, not, generally speaking, a poet
himself, but an adept at discovering poetry buried under unlikely
rubbish-heaps, tells us more about her. She earned six shillings a
week, and upon it supported a bed-ridden mother and three younger
children. She was housewife, nurse, mother, breadwinner, rolled
into one. Yes, there are heroines OUT of fiction.

So loutish Tom has won the Victoria Cross--dashed out under a storm
of bullets and rescued the riddled flag. Who would have thought it
of loutish Tom? The village alehouse one always deemed the goal of
his endeavours. Chance comes to Tom and we find him out. To Harry
the Fates were less kind. A ne'er-do-well was Harry--drank, knocked
his wife about, they say. Bury him, we are well rid of him, he was
good for nothing. Are we sure?

Let us acknowledge we are sinners. We know, those of us who dare to
examine ourselves, that we are capable of every meanness, of every
wrong under the sun. It is by the accident of circumstance, aided
by the helpful watchfulness of the policeman, that our possibilities
of crime are known only to ourselves. But having acknowledged our
evil, let us also acknowledge that we are capable of greatness. The
martyrs who faced death and torture unflinchingly for conscience'
sake, were men and women like ourselves. They had their wrong side.
Before the small trials of daily life they no doubt fell as we fall.
By no means were they the pick of humanity. Thieves many of them
had been, and murderers, evil-livers, and evil-doers. But the
nobility was there also, lying dormant, and their day came. Among
them must have been men who had cheated their neighbours over the
counter; men who had been cruel to their wives and children;
selfish, scandal-mongering women. In easier times their virtue
might never have been known to any but their Maker.

In every age and in every period, when and where Fate has called
upon men and women to play the man, human nature has not been found
wanting. They were a poor lot, those French aristocrats that the
Terror seized: cowardly, selfish, greedy had been their lives. Yet
there must have been good, even in them. When the little things
that in their little lives they had thought so great were swept away
from them, when they found themselves face to face with the
realities; then even they played the man. Poor shuffling Charles
the First, crusted over with weakness and folly, deep down in him at
last we find the great gentleman.

I like to hear stories of the littleness of great men. I like to
think that Shakespeare was fond of his glass. I even cling to the
tale of that disgraceful final orgie with friend Ben Jonson.
Possibly the story may not be true, but I hope it was. I like to
think of him as poacher, as village ne'er-do-well, denounced by the
local grammar-school master, preached at by the local J. P. of the
period. I like to reflect that Cromwell had a wart on his nose; the
thought makes me more contented with my own features. I like to
think that he put sweets upon the chairs, to see finely-dressed
ladies spoil their frocks; to tell myself that he roared with
laughter at the silly jest, like any East End 'Arry with his Bank
Holiday squirt of dirty water. I like to read that Carlyle threw
bacon at his wife and occasionally made himself highly ridiculous
over small annoyances, that would have been smiled at by a man of
well-balanced mind. I think of the fifty foolish things a week _I_
do, and say to myself, "I, too, am a literary man."

I like to think that even Judas had his moments of nobility, his
good hours when he would willingly have laid down his life for his
Master. Perhaps even to him there came, before the journey's end,
the memory of a voice saying--"Thy sins be forgiven thee." There
must have been good, even in Judas.

Virtue lies like the gold in quartz, there is not very much of it,
and much pains has to be spent on the extracting of it. But Nature
seems to think it worth her while to fashion these huge useless
stones, if in them she may hide away her precious metals. Perhaps,
also, in human nature, she cares little for the mass of dross,
provided that by crushing and cleansing she can extract from it a
little gold, sufficient to repay her for the labour of the world.
We wonder why she troubles to make the stone. Why cannot the gold
lie in nuggets on the surface? But her methods are secrets to us.
Perchance there is a reason for the quartz. Perchance there is a
reason for the evil and folly, through which run, unseen to the
careless eye, the tiny veins of virtue.

Aye, the stone predominates, but the gold is there. We claim to
have it valued. The evil that there is in man no tongue can tell.
We are vile among the vile, a little evil people. But we are great.
Pile up the bricks of our sins till the tower knocks at Heaven's
gate, calling for vengeance, yet we are great--with a greatness and
a virtue that the untempted angels may not reach to. The written
history of the human race, it is one long record of cruelty, of
falsehood, of oppression. Think you the world would be spinning
round the sun unto this day, if that written record were all?
Sodom, God would have spared had there been found ten righteous men
within its walls. The world is saved by its just men. History sees
them not; she is but the newspaper, a report of accidents. Judge
you life by that? Then you shall believe that the true Temple of
Hymen is the Divorce Court; that men are of two classes only, the
thief and the policeman; that all noble thought is but a
politician's catchword. History sees only the destroying
conflagrations, she takes no thought of the sweet fire-sides.
History notes the wrong; but the patient suffering, the heroic
endeavour, that, slowly and silently, as the soft processes of
Nature re-clothing with verdure the passion-wasted land, obliterate
that wrong, she has no eyes for. In the days of cruelty and
oppression--not altogether yet of the past, one fears--must have
lived gentle-hearted men and women, healing with their help and
sympathy the wounds that else the world had died of. After the
thief, riding with jingle of sword and spur, comes, mounted on his
ass, the good Samaritan. The pyramid of the world's evil--God help
us! it rises high, shutting out almost the sun. But the record of
man's good deeds, it lies written in the laughter of the children,
in the light of lovers' eyes, in the dreams of the young men; it
shall not be forgotten. The fires of persecution served as torches
to show Heaven the heroism that was in man. From the soil of
tyranny sprang self-sacrifice, and daring for the Right. Cruelty!
what is it but the vile manure, making the ground ready for the
flowers of tenderness and pity? Hate and Anger shriek to one
another across the ages, but the voices of Love and Comfort are none
the less existent that they speak in whispers, lips to ear.

We have done wrong, oh, ye witnessing Heavens, but we have done
good. We claim justice. We have laid down our lives for our
friends: greater love hath no man than this. We have fought for
the Right. We have died for the Truth--as the Truth seemed to us.
We have done noble deeds; we have lived noble lives; we have
comforted the sorrowful; we have succoured the weak. Failing,
falling, making in our blindness many a false step, yet we have
striven. For the sake of the army of just men and true, for the
sake of the myriads of patient, loving women, for the sake of the
pitiful and helpful, for the sake of the good that lies hidden
within us,--spare us, O Lord.

ON THE MOTHERLINESS OF MAN

It was only a piece of broken glass. From its shape and colour, I
should say it had, in its happier days, formed portion of a cheap
scent-bottle. Lying isolated on the grass, shone upon by the early
morning sun, it certainly appeared at its best. It attracted him.

He cocked his head, and looked at it with his right eye. Then he
hopped round to the other side, and looked at it with his left eye.
With either optic it seemed equally desirable.

That he was an inexperienced young rook goes without saying. An
older bird would not have given a second glance to the thing.
Indeed, one would have thought his own instinct might have told him
that broken glass would be a mistake in a bird's nest. But its
glitter drew him too strongly for resistance. I am inclined to
suspect that at some time, during the growth of his family tree,
there must have occurred a mesalliance, perhaps worse. Possibly a
strain of magpie blood?--one knows the character of magpies, or
rather their lack of character--and such things have happened. But
I will not pursue further so painful a train: I throw out the
suggestion as a possible explanation, that is all.

He hopped nearer. Was it a sweet illusion, this flashing fragment
of rainbow; a beautiful vision to fade upon approach, typical of so
much that is un-understandable in rook life? He made a dart forward
and tapped it with his beak. No, it was real--as fine a lump of
jagged green glass as any newly-married rook could desire, and to be
had for the taking. SHE would be pleased with it. He was a well-
meaning bird; the mere upward inclination of his tail suggested
earnest though possibly ill-directed endeavour.

He turned it over. It was an awkward thing to carry; it had so very
many corners. But he succeeded at last in getting it firmly between
his beak, and in haste, lest some other bird should seek to dispute
with him its possession, at once flew off with it.

A second rook who had been watching the proceedings from the lime
tree, called to a third who was passing. Even with my limited
knowledge of the language I found it easy to follow the
conversation: it was so obvious.

"Issachar!"

"Hallo!"

"What do you think? Zebulan's found a piece of broken bottle. He's
going to line his nest with it."

"No!"

"God's truth. Look at him. There he goes, he's got it in his
beak."

"Well, I'm --!"

And they both burst into a laugh.

But Zebulan heeded them not. If he overheard, he probably put down
the whole dialogue to jealousy. He made straight for his tree. By
standing with my left cheek pressed close against the window-pane, I
was able to follow him. He is building in what we call the Paddock
elms--a suburb commenced only last season, but rapidly growing. I
wanted to see what his wife would say.

At first she said nothing. He laid it carefully down on the branch
near the half-finished nest, and she stretched up her head and
looked at it.

Then she looked at him. For about a minute neither spoke. I could
see that the situation was becoming strained. When she did open her
beak, it was with a subdued tone, that had a vein of weariness
running through it.

"What is it?" she asked.

He was evidently chilled by her manner. As I have explained, he is
an inexperienced young rook. This is clearly his first wife, and he
stands somewhat in awe of her.

"Well, I don't exactly know what it's CALLED," he answered.

"Oh."

"No. But it's pretty, isn't it?" he added. He moved it, trying to
get it where the sun might reach it. It was evident he was
admitting to himself that, seen in the shade, it lost much of its
charm.

"Oh, yes; very pretty," was the rejoinder; "perhaps you'll tell me
what you're going to do with it."

The question further discomforted him. It was growing upon him that
this thing was not going to be the success he had anticipated. It
would be necessary to proceed warily.

"Of course, it's not a twig," he began.

"I see it isn't."

"No. You see, the nest is nearly all twigs as it is, and I thought-
-"

"Oh, you did think."

"Yes, my dear. I thought--unless you are of opinion that it's too
showy--I thought we might work it in somewhere."

Then she flared out.

"Oh, did you? You thought that a good idea. An A1 prize idiot I
seem to have married, I do. You've been gone twenty minutes, and
you bring me back an eight-cornered piece of broken glass, which you
think we might 'work into' the nest. You'd like to see me sitting
on it for a month, you would. You think it would make a nice bed
for the children to lie on. You don't think you could manage to
find a packet of mixed pins if you went down again, I suppose.
They'd look pretty 'worked in' somewhere, don't you think?--Here,
get out of my way. I'll finish this nest by myself." She always
had been short with him.

She caught up the offending object--it was a fairly heavy lump of
glass--and flung it out of the tree with all her force. I heard it
crash through the cucumber frame. That makes the seventh pane of
glass broken in that cucumber frame this week. The couple in the
branch above are the worst. Their plan of building is the most
extravagant, the most absurd I ever heard of. They hoist up ten
times as much material as they can possibly use; you might think
they were going to build a block, and let it out in flats to the
other rooks. Then what they don't want they fling down again.
Suppose we built on such a principle? Suppose a human husband and
wife were to start erecting their house in Piccadilly Circus, let us
say; and suppose the man spent all the day steadily carrying bricks
up the ladder while his wife laid them, never asking her how many
she wanted, whether she didn't think he had brought up sufficient,
but just accumulating bricks in a senseless fashion, bringing up
every brick he could find. And then suppose, when evening came, and
looking round, they found they had some twenty cart-loads of bricks
lying unused upon the scaffold, they were to commence flinging them
down into Waterloo Place. They would get themselves into trouble;
somebody would be sure to speak to them about it. Yet that is
precisely what those birds do, and nobody says a word to them. They
are supposed to have a President. He lives by himself in the yew
tree outside the morning-room window. What I want to know is what
he is supposed to be good for. This is the sort of thing I want him
to look into. I would like him to be worming underneath one evening
when those two birds are tidying up: perhaps he would do something
then. I have done all I can. I have thrown stones at them, that,
in the course of nature, have returned to earth again, breaking more
glass. I have blazed at them with a revolver; but they have come to
regard this proceeding as a mere expression of light-heartedness on
my part, possibly confusing me with the Arab of the Desert, who, I
am given to understand, expresses himself thus in moments of deep
emotion. They merely retire to a safe distance to watch me; no
doubt regarding me as a poor performer, inasmuch as I do not also
dance and shout between each shot. I have no objection to their
building there, if they only would build sensibly. I want somebody
to speak to them to whom they will pay attention.

You can hear them in the evening, discussing the matter of this
surplus stock.

"Don't you work any more," he says, as he comes up with the last
load, "you'll tire yourself."

"Well, I am feeling a bit done up," she answers, as she hops out of
the nest and straightens her back.

"You're a bit peckish, too, I expect," he adds sympathetically. "I
know I am. We will have a scratch down, and be off."

"What about all this stuff?" she asks, while titivating herself;
"we'd better not leave it about, it looks so untidy."

"Oh, we'll soon get rid of that," he answers. "I'll have that down
in a jiffy."

To help him, she seizes a stick and is about to drop it. He darts
forward and snatches it from her.

"Don't you waste that one," he cries, "that's a rare one, that is.
You see me hit the old man with it."

And he does. What the gardener says, I will leave you to imagine.

Judged from its structure, the rook family is supposed to come next
in intelligence to man himself. Judging from the intelligence
displayed by members of certain human families with whom I have come
in contact, I can quite believe it. That rooks talk I am positive.
No one can spend half-an-hour watching a rookery without being
convinced of this. Whether the talk be always wise and witty, I am
not prepared to maintain; but that there is a good deal of it is
certain. A young French gentleman of my acquaintance, who visited
England to study the language, told me that the impression made upon
him by his first social evening in London was that of a
parrot-house. Later on, when he came to comprehend, he, of course,
recognized the brilliancy and depth of the average London
drawing-room talk; but that is how, not comprehending, it impressed
him at first. Listening to the riot of a rookery is much the same
experience. The conversation to us sounds meaningless; the rooks
themselves would probably describe it as sparkling.

There is a Misanthrope I know who hardly ever goes into Society. I
argued the question with him one day. "Why should I?" he replied;
"I know, say, a dozen men and women with whom intercourse is a
pleasure; they have ideas of their own which they are not afraid to
voice. To rub brains with such is a rare and goodly thing, and I
thank Heaven for their friendship; but they are sufficient for my
leisure. What more do I require? What is this 'Society' of which
you all make so much ado? I have sampled it, and I find it
unsatisfying. Analyze it into its elements, what is it? Some
person I know very slightly, who knows me very slightly, asks me to
what you call an 'At Home.' The evening comes, I have done my day's
work and I have dined. I have been to a theatre or concert, or I
have spent a pleasant hour or so with a friend. I am more inclined
for bed than anything else, but I pull myself together, dress, and
drive to the house. While I am taking off my hat and coat in the
hall, a man enters I met a few hours ago at the Club. He is a man I
have very little opinion of, and he, probably, takes a similar view
of me. Our minds have no thought in common, but as it is necessary
to talk, I tell him it is a warm evening. Perhaps it is a warm
evening, perhaps it isn't; in either case he agrees with me. I ask
him if he is going to Ascot. I do not care a straw whether he is
going to Ascot or not. He says he is not quite sure, but asks me
what chance Passion Flower has for the Thousand Guineas. I know he
doesn't value my opinion on the subject at a brass farthing--he
would be a fool if he did, but I cudgel my brains to reply to him,
as though he were going to stake his shirt on my advice. We reach
the first floor, and are mutually glad to get rid of one another. I
catch my hostess' eye. She looks tired and worried; she would be
happier in bed, only she doesn't know it. She smiles sweetly, but
it is clear she has not the slightest idea who I am, and is waiting
to catch my name from the butler. I whisper it to him. Perhaps he
will get it right, perhaps he won't; it is quite immaterial. They
have asked two hundred and forty guests, some seventy-five of whom
they know by sight, for the rest, any chance passer-by, able, as the
theatrical advertisements say, 'to dress and behave as a gentleman,'
would do every bit as well. Indeed, I sometimes wonder why people
go to the trouble and expense of invitation cards at all. A
sandwich-man outside the door would answer the purpose. 'Lady
Tompkins, At Home, this afternoon from three to seven; Tea and
Music. Ladies and Gentlemen admitted on presentation of visiting
card. Afternoon dress indispensable.' The crowd is the thing
wanted; as for the items, well, tell me, what is the difference,
from the Society point of view, between one man in a black
frock-coat and another?

"I remember being once invited to a party at a house in Lancaster
Gate. I had met the woman at a picnic. In the same green frock and
parasol I might have recognized her the next time I saw her. In any
other clothes I did not expect to. My cabman took me to the house
opposite, where they were also giving a party. It made no
difference to any of us. The hostess--I never learnt her name--said
it was very good of me to come, and then shunted me off on to a
Colonial Premier (I did not catch his name, and he did not catch
mine, which was not extraordinary, seeing that my hostess did not
know it) who, she whispered to me, had come over, from wherever it
was (she did not seem to be very sure) principally to make my
acquaintance. Half through the evening, and by accident, I
discovered my mistake, but judged it too late to say anything then.
I met a couple of people I knew, had a little supper with them, and
came away. The next afternoon I met my right hostess--the lady who
should have been my hostess. She thanked me effusively for having
sacrificed the previous evening to her and her friends; she said she
knew how seldom I went out: that made her feel my kindness all the
more. She told me that the Brazilian Minister's wife had told her
that I was the cleverest man she had ever met. I often think I
should like to meet that man, whoever he may be, and thank him.

"But perhaps the butler does pronounce my name rightly, and perhaps
my hostess actually does recognize me. She smiles, and says she was
so afraid I was not coming. She implies that all the other guests
are but as a feather in her scales of joy compared with myself. I
smile in return, wondering to myself how I look when I do smile. I
have never had the courage to face my own smile in the
looking-glass. I notice the Society smile of other men, and it is
not reassuring. I murmur something about my not having been likely
to forget this evening; in my turn, seeking to imply that I have
been looking forward to it for weeks. A few men shine at this sort
of thing, but they are a small percentage, and without conceit I
regard myself as no bigger a fool than the average male. Not
knowing what else to say, I tell her also that it is a warm evening.
She smiles archly as though there were some hidden witticism in the
remark, and I drift away, feeling ashamed of myself. To talk as an
idiot when you ARE an idiot brings no discomfort; to behave as an
idiot when you have sufficient sense to know it, is painful. I hide
myself in the crowd, and perhaps I'll meet a woman I was introduced
to three weeks ago at a picture gallery. We don't know each other's
names, but, both of us feeling lonesome, we converse, as it is
called. If she be the ordinary type of woman, she asks me if I am
going on to the Johnsons'. I tell her no. We stand silent for a
moment, both thinking what next to say. She asks me if I was at the
Thompsons' the day before yesterday. I again tell her no. I begin
to feel dissatisfied with myself that I was not at the Thompsons'.
Trying to get even with her, I ask her if she is going to the
Browns' next Monday. (There are no Browns, she will have to say,
No.) She is not, and her tone suggests that a social stigma rests
upon the Browns. I ask her if she has been to Barnum's Circus; she
hasn't, but is going. I give her my impressions of Barnum's Circus,
which are precisely the impressions of everybody else who has seen
the show.

"Or if luck be against me, she is possibly a smart woman, that is to
say, her conversation is a running fire of spiteful remarks at the
expense of every one she knows, and of sneers at the expense of
every one she doesn't. I always feel I could make a better woman
myself, out of a bottle of vinegar and a penn'orth of mixed pins.
Yet it usually takes one about ten minutes to get away from her.

"Even when, by chance, one meets a flesh-and-blood man or woman at
such gatherings, it is not the time or place for real conversation;
and as for the shadows, what person in their senses would exhaust a
single brain cell upon such? I remember a discussion once
concerning Tennyson, considered as a social item. The dullest and
most densely-stupid bore I ever came across was telling how he had
sat next to Tennyson at dinner. 'I found him a most uninteresting
man,' so he confided to us; 'he had nothing to say for himself--
absolutely nothing.' I should like to resuscitate Dr. Samuel
Johnson for an evening, and throw him into one of these 'At Homes'
of yours."

My friend is an admitted misanthrope, as I have explained; but one
cannot dismiss him as altogether unjust. That there is a certain
mystery about Society's craving for Society must be admitted. I
stood one evening trying to force my way into the supper room of a
house in Berkeley Square. A lady, hot and weary, a few yards in
front of me was struggling to the same goal.

"Why," remarked she to her companion, "why do we come to these
places, and fight like a Bank Holiday crowd for eighteenpenny-worth
of food?"

"We come here," replied the man, whom I judged to be a philosopher,
"to say we've been here."

I met A----- the other evening, and asked him to dine with me on
Monday. I don't know why I ask A----- to dine with me, but about
once a month I do. He is an uninteresting man.

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