Child and Country Part 13

I was relating the experience of the Columbian. In his case there had been much time, so there could be no mistake. He had devoted himself to making and keeping a rather magnificent set of muscles which manifested even through white man's clothing. He did this with long days of sailing and swimming, cultivating his body with the a.s.siduity of a convalescent.... I told him in various ways he was not getting himself out of his work; explained that true preparation is a tearing off of husks one after another; that he was a fine creation in husk, but that he must get down to the quick before he could taste or feel or see with that sensitiveness which would make any observation of his valuable.

With all this body-building, he was in reality only covering himself the thicker. If a man does this sort of thing for a woman's eye, he can only attract a creature of blood and iron whose ideal is a policeman--a very popular ideal....

For two or three days he would work terrifically, then, his weight besetting, he would placate himself with long tissue-feeding sports. I told him that he had everything to build upon; that true strength really begins where physical strength ends; that all that he had in equipment must be set in order and integrated with his own intrinsic powers, it being valueless otherwise. I pointed out that he was but a collector of things he could not understand, because he did not use them; that the great doers of the world had toiled for years upon years, as he did not toil for one week's days successively.... It would not do, except for short intervals, and it came to me that my best service was to get out from under. I told him so, and the manliness of his acceptance choked me. I told him to go away, but to come again later if he mastered Inertia in part.... It was not all his fault. From somewhere, an income reached him regularly, a most complete and commanding curse for any boy.

... I do not believe in long vacations. Children turned loose to play for ten weeks without their tasks, are most miserable creatures at the end of the first fortnight. They become more at ease as the vacation period advances, but that is because the husk is thickening, a most dangerous accretion. The restlessness is less apparent because the body becomes heavy with play. It all must be worn down again, before the fitness of faculty can manifest.

If one's body is ill from overexertion, it must rest; if one's mind is ill from nervousness, stimulation, or from excessive brain activity, it must rest; but if one's soul is ill, and this is the difference, nothing but activity will help it, and this activity can only be expressed through the body and mind. Surplus rest of body or mind is a process of over-feeding, which is a coa.r.s.ening and thickening of tissue, which in its turn causes Inertia, and this word I continually capitalise, for it is the first devil of the soul.

Before every spiritual illumination, this Inertia, in a measure, must be overcome. If you could watch the secret life of the great workers of the world, especially those who have survived the sensuous periods of their lives, you would find them in an almost incessant activity; that their sleep is brief and light, though a pure relaxation; that they do not eat heartily more than once a day; that they reach at times _a great calm_, another dimension of calm entirely from that which has to do with animal peace and repletion. It is the peace of intensive production--and the spectacle of it is best seen when you lift the super from a hive of bees, the spirit of which animates every moving creature to one constructive end. That which emanates from this intensity of action is calm, is harmony, and harmony is rest. A man does not have to sink into a stupor in order to rest. The hours required for rest have more to do with the amount of food one takes, and the amount of tissue one tears down from bad habits, than from the amount of work done. Absolutely this is true if a man's work is his own peculiar task, for the work a man loves replenishes.

Desire tears down tissue. There is no pain more subtle and terrifying than to want something with fury. To the one who is caught in the rhythm of his task, who can lose himself in it, even the processes which so continually tear down the body are suspended. In fact, if we could hold this rhythm, we could not die.

This is what I would tell you: Rhythm of work is joy. This is the full exercise--soul and brain and body in one. Time does not enter; the self does not enter; all forces of beautifying play upon the life. There is a song from it--that some time all shall hear, the song that mystics have heard from the bees, and from open nature at sunrise, and from all selfless productivity.

One cannot play until one has worked--that is the whole truth. Ask that restless child to put a room in order, to cleanse a hard-wood floor, to polish the bath fixtures. Give him the ideal of cool, flyless cleanliness in a room. Hold the picture of what you want in mind and detail it to him, saying that you will come again and inspect his work.

Watch, if you care, the mystery of it. There will be silence until the thing begins to unfold for him--until the polish comes to wood or metal, until the thing begins to answer and the picture of completion bursts upon him. Then you will hear a whistle or a hum, and nothing will break his theme until the end.

The ideal is everything. You may impress upon him that the light falls differently upon clean things, that the odour is sweet from clean things; that the hand delights to touch them, that the heart is rested when one enters a clean room, because its order is soothing.... It isn't the room, after all, that gets all the order and cleansing. The whistle or the hum comes from harmony within.

A man who drank intolerably on occasion told me that the way he "climbed out" was to get to cleaning something; that his thoughts freshened up when he had some new surface to put on an object. He meant that the order came to his chaos, and the influx of life began to cleanse away the litter of burned tissue and the debris of debauch. One cannot keep on thinking evil thoughts while he makes a floor or a gun or a field clean. The thing is well known in naval and military service where bodies of men are kept in order by continual polis.h.i.+ng of bra.s.ses and decks and accoutrements. A queer, good answer comes to some from softening and cleansing leather. There is a little boy here whose occasional restlessness is magically done away with, if he is turned loose with sponge and harness-dressing upon a saddle and bridle. He sometimes rebels at first (before the task answers and the picture comes) but presently he will appear wide-eyed and at peace, bent upon showing his work.

Play is a drug and a bore, until one has worked. I do not believe in athletics for athletics' sake. Many young men have been ruined by being inordinately praised for physical prowess in early years. Praise for bodily excellence appeals to deep vanities and is a subtle deranger of the larger faculties of man. The athlete emerges into the world expectant of praise. It is not forthcoming, and his real powers have been untrained to earn the greater reward. Moreover the one-pointed training for some great momentary physical stress, in field events, is a body-breaker in itself, a fact which has been shown all too often and dramatically. Baseball and billiards are great games, but as life-quests--except for the few consummately adapted players whose little orbit of powers finds completion in diamond or green-baized rectangle--the excessive devotion to such play is desolating, indeed, and that which is given in return is fickle and puerile adulation.

A man's work is the highest play. There is nothing that can compare with it, as any of the world's workmen will tell you. It is the thing he loves best to do--constructive play--giving play to his powers, bringing him to that raptness which is full inner breathing and timeless.... We use the woods and sh.o.r.e, water and sand and sun and garden for recreation. In the few hours of afternoon after Chapel until supper, no one here actually produces anything but vegetables and tan, yet the life-theme goes on. We are lying in the sun, and some one speaks; or some one brings down a bit of copy. We listen to the Lake; the sound and feel of water is different every day. We find the stingless bees on the bluff-path on the way to the bathing sh.o.r.e. It is all water and sh.o.r.e, but there is one place where the silence is deeper, the sun-stretch and sand-bar more perfect. We are very particular. One has found that sand takes magnetism from the human body, as fast as sunlight can give it, and he suggests that we rest upon the gra.s.s above--that fallow lands are fruitful and full of giving. We test it out like a wine, and decide there is something in it.

There is something in everything.

The Dakotan said (in his clipped way and so low-voiced that you have to bend to hear him) that the birds hear something in the morning that we don't get. He says there is a big harmony over the earth at sunrise, and that the birds catch the music of it, and that songs are their efforts to imitate it. An afternoon was not badly spent in discussing this. We recall the fact that it isn't the human ear-drum exactly which will get this--if it ever comes to us--and that Beethoven was stone-deaf when he _heard_ his last symphonies, the great pastoral and dance and choral pieces, and that he wrote them from his inner listening. Parts of them seem to us strains from that great harmony that the birds are trying to bring out.

We thought there must be such a harmony in a gilding wheat-field. Wheat is good; even its husk is good; beauty and order and service have come to it. There is dissonance from chaos; the song clears as the order begins. Order should have a Capital too. All rising life is a putting of surfaces and deeps in Order. The word Cosmos means Order.... Wheat has come far, and one does well to be alone for a time in a golden afternoon in a wheat-field just before cutting. One loves the Old Mother better for that adventure. She must give high for wheat. She must be virgin and strong and come naked and unashamed to the sun to bring forth wheat. She must bring down the spirit of the sun and blend it with her own--for wheat partakes of the _alkahest_. Wheat is a master, an aristocrat.

The Dakotan said that once when he was on the Open Road through the northwest, he slept for two days in a car of wheat, and that it was a bath of power.... We thought we would make our beds in wheat, thereafter--but that would be sacrilege.

Then we talked of that mysterious harmony from the beehives, and we saw at once that it has to do with Order, that Inertia was mastered there--that the spirit of wheat has mastered Inertia--so that there is a n.o.bility, even about the golden husk. It occurred to us, of course, then, that all the aristocrats of Nature--rose and wheat and olives and bees and alabaster and grapes--must all have their part of the harmony, for Order has come to their chaos. Their spirit has come forth, as in the face of a far-come child--the brute earth-bound lines of self gone--the theme of life, Service.

I am at the end of Capitals now.

One afternoon we talked about corn--from the fields where the pa.s.sionate mystic Ruth gleaned, to our own ta.s.seled garden plot. And another day we found the ants enlarging the doors of their tunnels, to let out for the nuptial flight certain winged mistresses. There is something in everything.

Each of us sees it differently. Each of us can take what he sees, after all the rest have told their stories, and make a poem of that. The first wonder of man cannot be conceived until this is realised.

There is an inner correspondence in the awakened human soul for every movement and mystery of Nature. When the last resistance of Inertia is mastered, we shall see that there is no separateness anywhere, no detachment; that the infinite a.n.a.logies all tell the same story--that the plan is one.

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THE IRISH CHAPTER

There was a row of us preparing for sleep out under the stars--the Dakotan at one side, then two small boys, the little girl and the old man.... It was one of those nights in which we older ones decided to tell stories instead of writing them. We had talked long, like true Arabs around a fire on the beach. A South Wind came in and the Lake received and loved it. I asked the Dakotan what the Lake was saying.

"It isn't--it's listening."

It made me think at once of the first movement of Beethoven's sonata, called _Appa.s.sionata_. There is one here who plays that, and because it tells him a story, he plays it sometimes rather well and makes the others see.... The slow movement is deeply rich; the inspiration seems to go out of the sonata after that, but of the first movement we never tire, and the drama is always keen. It tells the story (to us) of a woman--of love and life and death. She wants the earth in her love--but her lover is strange and hears persistently a call that is not of earth.

The woman tries to hold him. All earth beauty is about her--her love a perfume, a torrent. The voice of destiny speaks to her that it must not be. She rebels. The story rushes on, many voices coming to her re-stating the inexorable truth that he must go.

The same story is told in Coventry Patmore's _Departure_--to us the most magic of all the great little poems. But in _Departure_ it is the woman who is called.

... Again and again in the _Appa.s.sionata_, the word comes to the woman, saying that she will be greater if she speeds him on his way. She will not hear. We sense her splendid tenure of beauty--all the wonder that Mother Earth has given her.... One after another the lesser voices have told her that it must be, but she does not obey--and then the Master comes down.

It is one of the most glowing pa.s.sages in all the literature of tone.

The _chelas_ have spoken and have not availed. Now the _Guru_ speaks.

Out of vastness and leisure, out of s.p.a.ciousness of soul and wisdom, out of the deeps and heights of compa.s.sion, the _Guru_ speaks--and suddenly the woman's soul turns to him listening. That miracle of listening is expressed in the treble--a low light rippling receptivity. It is like a cup held forth--or palms held upward. The _Guru_ speaks. His will is done.

And that is what I thought of, when the Dakotan said that the Lake was listening. It was listening to the South Wind.... That night we talked of Ireland. It may have been the fairies that the little girl always brings; or it may have been that a regiment of Irish troops had just been slaughtered in a cause that had far less significance to Ireland than our child talk by the fire; or it may have been the South Wind that brought us closer to the fairy Isle, for it is the Irish peasants who say to a loved guest at parting:

"May you meet the South Wind."

"... There isn't really an Ireland any more--just a few old men and a few old, haunting mothers. Ireland is here in America, and the last and stiffest of her young blood is afield for England. Her sons have always taken the field--that is their way--and the mothers have brought in more sons born of sorrow--magic-eyed sons from the wombs of sorrow. Elder brothers afield--fathers gone down overseas--only the fairies left by the hearth for the younger sons to play with.... So they have sung strange songs and seen strange lights and moved in rhythms unknown to many men. It is these younger sons who are Ireland now. Not a place, but a pa.s.sion; not a country, but a romance.... They are in the love stories of the world, and they are always looking for their old companions, the fairies. They find the fairies in the foreign woodlands; they bring the fairies to the new countries. They are in the songs that hush the heart; they are in the mysticism that is moving the sodden world. Because they played with fairies, they were taught to look past and beyond the flesh of faces--past metals and meals and miles. Of the reds and greys and moving golds which they see, the soul of the world loves to listen, for the greatest songs and stories of all are from the Unseen----"

It was the old man dreaming aloud.

"Ireland isn't a place any more. It is a pa.s.sion infused through the world," he added.

"But the fairies are still there," the little girl said.

"Some are left with the old mothers--yes, some are left. But many have taken the field, and not for the wars."

A four-day moon was dropping fast in the low west. Jupiter was climbing the east in imperial purple--as if to take command.... The littlest boy stirred in the arms of the Dakotan and began to speak, staring at the fire. We all turned and bent to listen--and it was that very thing that spoiled it--for the sentence faltered and flew away.

We all wanted to know what had been born in that long silence, for the firelight was bright in two eyes that were very wide and wise--but the brain was only seven.... I left the circle and went up the cliff to find a book in the study--a well-used book, an American book. Returning, I read this from it, holding the page close to the fire:

OLD IRELAND

Far hence, amid an isle of wondrous beauty, Crouching over a grave, an ancient, sorrowful mother, Once a queen--now lean and tatter'd, seated on the ground, Her old white hair drooping dishevel'd round her shoulders; Long silent--she too long silent--mourning her shrouded hope and heir; Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow, because most full of love.

Yet a word, ancient mother; You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground, with forehead between your knees; O you need not sit there, veil'd in your old white hair, so dishevel'd; For know you, the one you mourn is not in that grave; It was an illusion--the heir, the son you love, was not really dead; The Lord is not dead--he is risen, young and strong, in another country; Even while you wept there by your fallen harp, by the grave, What you wept for, was translated, pa.s.s'd from the grave, The winds favoured and the sea sail'd it, And now with rosy and new blood, Moves to-day in a new country.

One by one they dropped off asleep, the little ones first, as the moon went down--their thoughts so full of stars, asking so dauntlessly all questions of world and sky. What I could, I answered, but I felt as young as any. It seemed their dreams were fresher than mine, and their closeness to G.o.d.... The little girl touched me, as we drifted away----

"May you meet the South Wind!" she whispered.

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