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Other Sketches, by David Starr Jordan
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Title: The Story of the Innumerable Company, and Other Sketches
Author: David Starr Jordan
Release Date: May 28, 2006 [EBook #18462]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF THE INNUMERABLE ***
Produced by Al Haines
THE STORY OF THE INNUMERABLE COMPANY, AND OTHER SKETCHES
BY
DAVID STARR JORDAN
PRESIDENT OF LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY
SAN FRANCISCO
THE WHITAKER & RAY COMPANY (INCORPORATED)
1896
COPYRIGHT, 1896,
BY
DAVID STARR JORDAN
TO MY WIFE,
JESSIE KNIGHT JORDAN.
PREFATORY NOTE.
This volume is made up of separate sketches, historical or allegorical,
having in some degree a bond of union in the idea of "the higher
sacrifice."
I am under obligations to Professor William R. Dudley for the use of a
photograph of a record of Father Serra. This was secured through the
kindness of the late Father Casanova, of Monterey.
PALO ALTO, CAL., June 1, 1896.
CONTENTS.
THE STORY OF THE INNUMERABLE COMPANY
THIS STORY OF THE PASSION
THE CALIFORNIA OF THE PADRE
THE CONQUEST OF JUPITER PEN
THE LAST OF THE PURITANS
A KNIGHT OF THE ORDER OF POETS
NATURE-STUDY AND MORAL CULTURE
THE HIGHER SACRIFICE
THE BUBBLES OF SÁKI
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Peter Rendl as Saint John
Johann Zwink as Judas
Rosa Lang as Mary
"Ecce Homo!"
A Record of Junípero Serra
Mission of San Antonio de Pádua
Mission of San Antonio de Pádua--Interior of Chapel
Mission of San Antonio de Pádua--Side of Chapel,
with the Old Pear-trees
The Great Saint Bernard
Hospice of the Great Saint Bernard
Hospice of the Great Saint Bernard--in Winter
Jupitère (Great Saint Bernard Dog)
Monks of the Great Saint Bernard
Saint Bernard and the Demon
John Brown
The John Brown Homestead, North Elba, N. Y.
John Brown's Grave
Ulrich Von Hutten
Ulrich Zwingli
_Men told me, Lord, it was a vale of tears
Where Thou hast placed me, wickedness and woe
My twain companions whereso I might go;
That I through ten and threescore weary years
Should stumble on beset by pains and fears,
Fierce conflict round me, passions hot within,
Enjoyment brief and fatal but in sin.
When all was ended then should I demand
Full compensation from thine austere hand:
For, 'tis thy pleasure, all temptation past,
To be not just but generous at last._
_Lord, here am I, my threescore years and ten
All counted to the full; I've fought thy fight,
Crossed thy dark valleys, scaled thy rocks' harsh height,
Borne all the burdens Thou dost lay on men
With hand unsparing threescore years and ten.
Before Thee now I make my claim, O Lord,--
What shall I pray Thee as a meet reward?_
_I ask for nothing. Let the balance fall!
All that I am or know or may confess
But swells the weight of mine indebtedness;
Burdens and sorrows stand transfigured all;
Thy hand's rude buffet turns to a caress,
For Love, with all the rest. Thou gavest me here,
And Love is Heaven's very atmosphere,
Lo, I have dwelt with Thee, Lord. Let me die.
I could no more through all eternity._
THE STORY OF THE INNUMERABLE COMPANY.
There was once a great mountain which rose from the shore of the sea,
and on its flanks it bore a mighty forest. Beyond the crest of the
mountain were ridges and valleys, peaks and chasms, springs and
torrents. Farther on lay a sandy desert, which stretched its
monotonous breadth to the shore of a wide, swift river. What lay
beyond the river no one knew, because its shores were always hid in
azure mist.
Year by year there came up from the shore of the sea an Innumerable
Company. Each one must cross the mountain and the forest, faring
onward toward the desert and the river. And this was one condition of
the journey--that whosoever came to the river must breast its waters
alone. Why this was so, no one could tell; nor did any one know aught
of the land beyond. For of the multitude who had crossed the river not
one had ever returned.
As time went on there came to be paths through the forest. Those who
went first left traces to serve as guides for those coming after. Some
put marks on the trees; some built little cairns of stones to show the
way they had taken in going around great rocks. Those who followed
found these marks and added to them. And many of the travelers left
little charts which showed where the cliffs and chasms were and by what
means one could reach the hidden springs. So in time it came to pass
that there was scarcely a tree on the mountain which bore not some
traveler's mark; there was scarcely a rock that had not a cairn of
stones upon it.
In early times there was One who came up from the sea and made the
journey over the mountain and across the desert by a way so fair that
the memory of it became a part of the story of the forest. Men spoke
to each other of his way, and many wished to find it out, that haply
they might walk therein. He, too, had left a Chart, which those who
followed him had carefully kept, and from which they had drawn help in
many times of need.
The way he went was not the shortest way, nor was it the easiest. The
ways that are short and easy lead not over the mountain. But his was
the most _repaying_ way. It led by the noblest trees, the fairest
outlooks, the sweetest springs, the greenest pastures, and the shadow
of great rocks in the desert. And the chart of his way which he left
was very simple and very plain--easy to understand. Even a child might
use it. And, indeed, there were many children who did so.
On this chart were the chief landmarks of the region--the mountain with
its forest, the desert with its green oases, the paths to the hidden
springs. But there were not many details. The old cairns were not
marked upon it, and when two paths led alike over the mountain, there
was no sign to show that one was to be taken rather than the other.
Not much was said as to what food one should take, or what raiment one
should wear, or by what means one should defend himself. But there
were many simple directions as to how one should act on the road, and
by what signs he should know the right path. One ought to look upward,
and not downward; to look forward, and not backward; to be always ready
to give a helping hand to his neighbor: and whomsoever one meets is
one's neighbor, he said.
As to the desert, one need not dread it; nor should one fear the river,
for the lands beyond it were sweet and fair. Moreover, one should
learn to know the forest, that he might choose his course wisely. And
this knowledge each one should seek for himself. For, as he said, "If
the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch."
There were many who followed his way and gave heed to his precepts.
The path seemed dangerous at times, especially at the outset; for it
lay along dizzy heights, through tangled underwood, and across swollen
torrents. But after a while all these were left behind. The way
passed on between cleft rocks, into green pastures, and by still
waters; and in the desert were sweet springs which gave forth
abundantly.
But some who tried to follow him said that his Chart was not explicit
enough. Every step in the journey, they contended, should be laid out
exactly; for to travel safely one should never be left in doubt.
Now, it chanced that on the slope of the mountain there was a huge
granite rock, which stood in the midst of the way. Some of the
travelers passed to the right of it, while others turned to the left.
Strangely enough, the Chart said nothing concerning this rock. No hint
was given as to how one should pass by it.
When they came to the rock, many of the travelers took counsel one of
another, and at last a great multitude was gathered there. Which way
had he taken? For in the path he took they must surely go. Many
scanned the rock on every side, to find if haply he had left some
secret mark upon it. But they found none; or, rather, no one could
convince the others that the hidden marks he found were intended for
their guidance.
At nightfall, after much discussion, the old men in the council gave
their decision. The safe way led to the right. So he who kept the
Chart marked upon it the place of the rock, and he wrote upon the Chart
that the one true path leads to the right. Henceforth each man should
know the way he must go.
Moreover, those who bore the records showed that this decision was
justified. They wrote upon the Chart a long argument, chain upon chain
and reason upon reason, to prove that from the beginning it was decreed
that by this rock should the destiny of man be tested.
But in spite of argument, there were still some who chose the left-hand
path because they verily believed that this was the only right way.
They, too, justified their course by arguments, line upon line and
precept upon precept. And each band tried to make its following as
large as it could. Some men stood all day by the side of the rock,
urging people to come with them to the right or to the left. For,
strangely enough, although each man had his own journey to make, and
must cross the river at last alone, he was eager that all others should
go along with him.
And as each band grew larger, its members took pride in the growth of
its numbers. In the larger bands, trumpets were blown, harps were
sounded, and banners were waved in the wind. Those who walked shoulder
to shoulder under waving flags to the sound of trumpets felt secure and
confident, while those who journeyed alone seemed always to walk with
fear and trembling. It was said in the old Chart that where two or
three were gathered together on the way, strength and courage would be
given them. But men could not believe this, and few had the heart to
test whether it were true or no.
So the bands went on to the right or to the left, each in its chosen
path. But after they had passed the first great rock, they came to
other rocks and trees and places of doubt. Other councils were held,
and at each step there were some who would not abide by the decision of
the elders. So these from time to time went their own ways. And they
made new inscriptions on the Chart, and erased the old ones, each
according to his own ideas. And there was much pushing and jostling
when the bands separated themselves one from another.
At last one of the oldest travelers in the largest band--a man with a
long white beard, and wise with the experience of years--arose and said
that not in anger, nor in strife, should they journey on. Discord and
contention arise from difference of opinion. Let all men but think
alike, and they will walk in peace and harmony. Let each band choose a
leader. Let him carry the Chart, and let him night and day pore over
its precepts. No one else need distress himself. One had only to keep
step on the road, and to follow whithersoever the leader might direct.
So the people chose a leader--a man grave and serious, wise in the lore
of the forest and the desert. He noted on the Chart each rock and
tree, drawing in sharp outlines every detail in the only safe path.
Moreover, all deviating trails he marked with the symbol of danger.
And it came to pass that day by day other bands followed, and to them
the Chart was given as he had left it. And these bands, too, chose
leaders, whose part it was to interpret the Chart. But each one of
these added to the Chart some better way of his own, some short cut he
had found, or some new trail not marked with the proper sign of warning.
And with all these changes and additions, as time went on, the true way
became very hard to find. At one point, so the story is told, there
were twenty-nine distinct paths, leading in as many directions; each of
these, if the Chart be true, came to its end in some frightful chasm.
With these there was a single narrow trail that led to safety; but no
two leaders could agree as to which was the right trail. One thing
only was certain: the true way was very hard to find, and no traveler
might discover it unaided.
And some declared that the Chart was complicated beyond all need.
There was one who said, "The multiplication of non-essentials has
become the bane of the forest." Even a little meadow which he had
found, and which he called the "Saints' Rest," was so entangled in
paths and counterpaths that once out of sight of it one could never
find it again.
All this time there were many bands that wandered about in circles,
finding everywhere cairns of stones, but no way of escape. Still
others remained day after day in the shadow of great rocks, disputing
and doubting as to how they should pass by them. There were arguments
and precedents enough for any course; but arguments and precedents made
no man sure.
And it came to pass that most travelers followed the band they found
nearest. At last, to join some band became their only care. And they
looked with pity and distrust upon those who traveled alone.
But the bands all made their way very slowly. No matter how wise the
leader, not all were ready to move at once, and not all could keep step
to the sound of even the slowest trumpet. There was often much ado at
nightfall over the pitching of the tents, and many were crowded out
into the forest. At times also, in the presence of danger, fear spread
through the band, and many of the weaker ones were trampled on and
sorely hurt.
Then, too, as they passed through the rocky defiles, some of them lost
sight of the banners, and then the others would wait for them, or
perchance leave them behind, to struggle on as best they might without
chart or guide.
And there were those who spoke in this wise: "Many paths lead over the
mountain, and sooner or later all come to the desert and the river. It
does not matter where we walk; the question is, How? We cannot know
step by step the way he went. Let us walk by faith, as he walked. If
our spirit is like his, we shall not lack for guidance when we come to
the crossing of the ways." And so they fared on. But many doubted
their own promptings. "Tell me, am I right?" each one asked of his
neighbor; and his neighbor asked it again of him. And those who were
in doubt followed those who were sure.
So it came to pass that these who walked by faith likewise gathered
themselves into great companies, and each company followed some leader.
Some of these leaders had the gift of woodcraft, and saw clearly into
the very nature of things. But some were only headstrong, and these
proved to be but blind leaders of the blind.
Then one said, "We must not be filled with our own conceit, but must
humbly imitate him. We must try to work as he worked; to rest as he
rested; to sleep as he slept. The deeds we do should be those he did,
and those only. For on his Chart he has told us, not the way he went
past rocks and trees, but the actions with which his days were filled."
Then those who tried to do as he had done, moved by his motives and
acting through his deeds, found the way wonderfully easy. The days and
the hours seemed all too short for the joy with which they were filled.
But, again, there were many who said that his directions were not
explicit enough. The Chart said so little. "That we may make no
mistake," they said, "we must gather ourselves in bands and choose
leaders. We cannot act as he acted unless there is some one to show us
how."
Thus it came to pass that leaders were chosen who could do everything
that he had done, in all respects, according to his method. And they
added to the Chart the record of their own practices--not only that "He
did thus and so," but also, "Thus and so he did not do." "Thus and
thus did he eat bread, and thus only. Thus and thus did he loose his
sandals. In this way only gave he bread and wine. Here on the way he
fasted; there he feasted. At this turn of the road he looked upward
thus, shading his eyes with his hand. Here he anointed his feet; there
his face wore a sad smile. Such was the cut of his coat; of this wood
was his staff; of such a number of words his prayer." And many were
comforted in the thought that for every turn in the road there was some
definite thing which he had done, and which they, too, might perform.
Thus the duties of every moment were fixed. But as the days went on
these duties grew more and more difficult. No one had time to look at
the rocks or trees; no one could cast his eyes over a noble prospect;
no one could stop to rest by the sweet fountains or in the refreshing
shadows. One could hardly give a moment to such things, lest he should
overlook some needful service.
Then many lost heart, and said that surely he cared not for times and
observances, else he would have said more about them. When he made the
journey, it was his chief reproach that he heeded not these things.
With him, ceremony or observance rose directly out of the need for it,
each one as the need was felt. To imitate him is to feel as he felt.
With him feelings gave rise to word and action. "So will it be with
us. It is not for us to imitate him in the fashion of his coat or the
cut of his beard. He went over the road giving help and comfort, as
the sun gives light or the flowers shed fragrance, all unconscious of
the good he did." And in this wise did many imitate him. They turned
aside the boughs of the trees, that the sunshine of heaven might fall
upon their neighbors. And behold, the same sunshine fell upon them
also. They removed the stones from the road, that others might not
stumble over them. And others removed the stones from their way also.
But many were still in doubt and hesitation. The record, they said,
was not explicit enough. They counseled together, and gathered in
bands, and chose leaders who should tell them how to feel. And the
leaders gave close heed to all his feelings and to the times and
seasons proper to each. Here he was joyous, and at a signal all the
baud broke into merry laughter. Here he was stern, and the multitude
set its teeth. There he wept, and tears fell like rain from
innumerable eyes.
As time went on, repeated action made action easy. The springs of
feeling were readily troubled. Still each one felt, or tried to feel,
all that he should have felt. No one dared admit to his fellows that
his tears were a sham, his joy a pretense, his sadness a lie. But
often, in the bottom of their hearts, men would confess with real tears
that they had no genuine feeling there.
Then the people asked for leaders who could bring out real feelings.
And there arose leaders, who, by terrible words, could fill the hearts
with fear; by burning words, could stir the embers of zeal; by the
intensity of their own passions, could fill the throng with pity, with
sorrow, or with indignation. And the multitude hung on their lips; for
they sought for feelings real and not simulated.
But here again division arose; for not all were touched alike by those
who had power over the hearts of men. Some followed the leader who
moved them to tears; others chose him who filled them with fear and
trembling. Still others loved to linger in the dark shadow of remorse.
Some said that right emotions were roused by loud and ringing tones.
Some said that the tones should be sad and sweet.
Then there were some who said that feelings such as all these were idle
and common. When he trod the way of old, it was with radiant eyes and
with uplifted heart. He saw through the veil of clouds to the glory
which lay beyond. We follow him best when we too are uplifted. Now
and then on the way come to us moments of exultation, when we tread in
his very footsteps. These are the precious moments; then our way is
his way. In the rosy mists of morning, we may behold the glory which
encompassed him. In moments of silent communion in the forest, we may
feel his peace steal over us. In the gentle rain that falls upon the
just and the unjust, we may know the soft pity of his tears. When the
sun declines, its last rays touch with gold the far-off mountain tops
beyond the great river.
And the uplifting of great moments, filling the souls of men with peace
that passeth understanding, came to many. As they went their way, this
peace fell upon their neighbors also. And no man did aught to make
them afraid. And others sought to go with these, and thus they became
a great band.
So they chose as their leaders those whose visions were brightest. And
they made for themselves a banner like the white mist flung out from
the mountain-tops at the rising of the sun. They spoke much to each
other concerning the white banner and the peace which filled their
souls.
But as they journeyed along, the dust of the way dimmed the banner, and
the bright visions one by one faded away. At last they came no more.
Then the people murmured and called upon the leaders to grant them some
brighter vision, something that all could see and feel at once--some
sign by which they might know that they were still in his way. "Cause
that a path be opened through the thicket," they said, "and let a white
dove come forth to lead us on; or, let the mists beyond the river part
for a moment, that we may behold the far country beyond."
And one of the leaders standing at the head of the column, clothed in
the morning light as with a garment, raised his staff high in the air.
The sun's rays fell upon it, touching the morning mists with gold, and
threw across them the long shadow of the upraised staff. The shadow
fell far out across the plains, and about it was a halo of bright
light. And all the band looked joyfully at the vision. Adown the
slope of the mountain and out into the plain they followed the way of
the shadow. And all the time the white banner waved at the head of the
column. The people said little to one another, but that little was a
word of praise and rejoicing.
But it came to pass, as the day wore on, that the sun rose in the sky,
and drew the mists up from the valley. With them vanished the long
shadow of the staff, and in its place appeared the sandy plain. The
feet of the people were sore with the rocks and stones. The air was
thick with dust. Their hearts were uplifted no longer. Instead they
were filled with doubt and distress.
And the people repined and murmured against their leader. But the
leader said that all was well; even in the way he went there had been
stones and hindrances. More than once had he carried a heavy burden
along a dusty road. But he never doubted nor complained, and so the
radiance round about him never faded away.
But all the more the people clamored for a sign. Let the bright vision
of the morning appear to us again. At length, worn with much entreaty,
the leader raised once more his staff above his head. The sun at noon
fell upon it. But as the people gazed they saw no long line of
radiance stretching out across the plains amid a halo of shining mist.
The shadow of the staff was a little shapeless mark upon the sand at
their very feet.
Then the leader cast his staff away and went by himself alone, sad and
sorrowful. That night, as he lay by the roadside, he looked upward to
the clear, calm, honest stars. They seemed to say to him, "See all
things as they really are. This was his way. 'In spirit and in truth'
means in the light of no illusion. Not all the visions of mist or of
sunshine can make the journey other than it is."
So he came to look closely at all things on the road. Day by day he
read the lessons of the desert and the mountain. He learned to know
directions by the growth of the trees. By the perfume of the lilies,
he sought out the hidden springs. By the red clouds at evening, he
knew that the sky would be fair. By the red light in the morning, he
was warned of the coming storm. And there were many who followed him
and his way, though he did not will it so.
And he taught his companions, saying: "We must seek his way in the
nature of the things that abide. To learn this nature of things is the
beginning of wisdom. For day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto
night showeth knowledge. The way of nature is solid, substantial,
vast, and unchanging. He who walks in it stands secure, as in the
shadow of a high tower or as if encompassed by a mighty fortress. The
wisdom of the forest shall be granted to him who seeks for it with calm
heart and quiet eye."
But among his followers there were many who were eager and would hasten
on, and although they spoke much of the Nature of Things and of the Law
of the Forest, they were contented with speaking. "The road is long,"
they said to themselves, "and the hours are fleeting." They had no
time to contemplate the glory of the heavens. The beauty of the lilies
fell on unobservant eyes. For all these things they trusted to the
report of others. The words passed from mouth to mouth, losing ever a
little of their truth. And in this wise the voice of wisdom was turned
to the language of folly. For the nature of things is truth. But no
man can find truth except he seek it for himself. And so they fared
on, each well or ill, according to the truth to which his way bore
witness.
Meanwhile those who bore the white banner remained long in council. At
last one remembered that it was written, "Faith without works is dead,
being alone." And it was written again, "Those who follow me in spirit
must follow me in truth." The essence of truth lies not in thought or
feeling, but must be expressed in deeds. Right feelings follow right
actions. Thus it was with him; thus will it be with us.
Then they went their way together, doing good to one another. And each
called his neighbor "brother"; and some bore cups of cold water, and
some balm for healing; some carried oil and wine and pots of precious
ointment. To whomsoever they met they gave help and comfort. The
hungry they fed. The thirsty were given drink. He who had fallen by
the wayside was lifted up and strengthened, and the blessing of
cleanliness was brought to him who lay in filth and shame. The
blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon them, and the heart
of the widow sang for joy.
But soon those who were filled with zeal for good works were gathered
together in great bands, and each band wished to magnify its work. In
every way, to all men who asked, help was given. They searched out the
lame and the blind, and brought them that they might perforce be
healed. Cup after cup of cold water was given to the little ones, even
to those who might bring water for themselves. They cared for the
wounded wayfarer long after his wounds were made whole. It was their
joy to bathe his limbs in oil and wine, or to swathe them in fragrant
bands. And the wayfarer ceased to bear his own tent or to seek his own
raiment. What others would do for him, he need not do for himself.
And those who did not help themselves lost the power of self-help. And
those who had helped others overmuch came themselves to need the help
of others.
At last the number of the helpless became so great that there was no
one to serve them. Many waited day after day for the aid that never
came, and they grew so weak with waiting that they could not take up
their burdens. The little ones were thrust aside by the strong, and as
the band went on many of them were forgotten and left behind. They
fainted and fell by the healing springs, because there was no one to
give them drink, and they could not help themselves.
And the burden of the way grew very hard and grievous to bear. Then
there were those who said that one cannot help another save by leading
him to help himself. All that is given him must he repay. Sooner or
later each must bear his own burden. Each must make his own way
through the forest in such manner as he may.
So they turned back to the old Chart. They would read his words again,
that they might be led to better deeds. In these words they found help
and cheer. These words spake they one to another. They came like rain
to a thirsty field, or as balm to a wound, or as good news from a far
country. And there was wonderful consolation in the thought that for
every step of the way he had spoken the right word.
So those who knew his words best were chosen as leaders, and great
companies followed them. And as band after band passed along, his
message sounded from one to another. His words were ever on their
lips. Those who could run swiftly carried them far and wide, even into
the depths of the forest. To those who were in sorrow they came as
glad tidings of great joy, and beautiful upon the mountains seemed the
feet of those who bore them. Wherever men were weary and heavy laden,
they were cheered by his promise of rest.
But there were some who turned to his message only to gratify sordid
hopes or vain desires. He who was lazy sought warrant for sleep. He
who was covetous looked for gain. He who was filled with anger sought
promise of vengeance. There were many who repeated his words for the
mere words' sake. And there were some who used them in disputations
about the way. And the words of help on the Chart they turned into
words of command. Each one took these commands not to himself alone,
but sought to enforce them upon others. "For it is our duty," they
said, "to see that no word of his shall be unheeded of any man." And
many rose in resistance. And the conflicts on the way were fierce and
strong; for with each different band there was diversity of
interpretation. Thus the words of kindness became the voice of hate.
And it came to pass that all along the way the green sward was red with
the blood of wayfarers. Everywhere the leaves of the forest were
trampled by struggling hosts. And "In his name" was the watchword of
each warring band. And each band called itself "his army." And
whosoever bore the sword that was reddest, they called the "Defender of
the Faith." They placed his name upon their battle-flags, and beneath
it they wrote these fearful words, "In this sign, conquer." And each
went forth to conquer his neighbor, and the wayfarer fled from the
sight of their banners as from a pestilence. But "Conquer, conquer,"
was no word of his. He spoke not of victory over others; only of
conquest of oneself. He had said, "Resist not, but overcome evil with
good." And till all men ceased to resist and ceased to conquer, no one
found himself in the right way. Then some one said: "By words alone
can no one truly follow him. His words without his faith and love are
like sounding brass or tinkling cymbal. Out of the abundance of the
heart the mouth speaketh. When the heart is empty the speech of the
mouth is idle as the crackling of thorns beneath a pot."
And there appeared other bands from the number of those who had passed
to the right of the first great rock; and seeing the tumult and
confusion of the others, they said to themselves: "These are they who
followed not us. We have chosen the better part. Our leader bears the
only perfect Chart. All other charts are the invention of men. In the
right Chart there can be nothing false; in the others there can be
nothing true. Those who have not the true Chart can never go right,
not even for a moment. For even good deeds done in the paths of evil
must partake of the nature of sin. Straight is the way and narrow is
the gate, but there is no safety except ye walk therein."
So they went on, stumbling ever along the rocky road, never resting,
never murmuring. "For the way at best is a vale of tears," said they,
"and no one would have it otherwise. He found it thus in his time. He
was ever a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. More than all
others had he suffered. It was his glory to be despised and rejected
of men. For the greater the abasement the greater the exaltation in
the land beyond the river." So day by day they walked in the hardest
part of the road. But they spoke often together of a land of pure
delight, of sweet fields beyond the swelling floods, and of turf soft
as velvet that rose from the river's bank.
If perchance on the way they came to green pastures, they would hasten
on, lest they should be tempted to rest before the day of rest was
come. From sweet springs they turned aside, that theirs might be the
greater satisfaction when they came to the sweetest springs of all.
They shut their eyes to beauty and their ears to music, that the light
and music of the unknown shore might burst upon them as a sudden
revelation. They looked not at the stars, lest perchance these should
declare a glory which was reserved for other days. Dreary and harsh
was the way they trod. But in its very dreariness they found safety.
They sought no pleasure, they fought no battles, they wasted no time.
In the pushing aside of all temptation, the scorn of all beauty and
idleness, they found delight. Against the strength of granite rock
they set the force of iron will. Withal, at the bottom their hearts
were light with the certainty of coming joy. Even the multitude of
conflicting paths gave them a peculiar satisfaction; for whatever way
they took was always the right way.
But there were some among them who lost all heart. And they threw
their charts away and set forth in disorder through the forest and up
the mountain. Some of them came safely to the river, far in advance of
the bands they had left behind. But to most the way was strange, and
harder than of old. And as the journey wore on they began to hate the
forest and all its ways.
So they fared on, together or apart, in ever-deepening shadow. They
distrusted their neighbors. They despised the joyous bands who trooped
after their leaders with mouthing of verses and waving of flags. They
were stirred by the sound of no trumpet. They were deceived by no
illusion of sunshine or of mist. They said: "We know the forest; no
one knows it but ourselves. There is no future; there is no way; there
is no rest; there is no better country. The azure mists are shadows
only, hiding some dreary plain, if haply they hide anything at all.
Evil is man; evil are all things about him. Love and joy, hope and
faith, all these are but flickering lights that lure him to
destruction. Vultures croak on the rocks. The fountains flow with
ink. Danger lurks in the desert. The name of the river is Death."
And when they came to the shore of the river they saw no rift in the
clouds above it, for their eyes were filled with gloom.
But as time passed on, the way of man grew brighter, whether he would
or no. No day nor hour was without its joy to him who opened his heart
to receive it. And men saw that most of the difficulties and dangers
of the way were those which they unwittingly had made for themselves or
for others. Thus, as the road became more secure, it no longer seemed
dreary or lonely.
And so it came to pass at last that men ceased to gather themselves in
great bands. Nor did they longer set store on the sound of trumpets or
the waving of flags. The men who were wisest ceased to be leaders of
hosts. They became teachers and helpers instead.
And with all this a sure way was from day to day not hard to find. Men
fell into it naturally and unconsciously. And the ways which are safe
are innumerable as the multitude of those that may walk therein.
And those who had gone by diverse paths came from time to time
together. Each praised the charms of the path he had taken, but each
one knew that in other paths other men found as great delight. And as
time went on many wise men passed over the way, and each in his own
fashion left a record of all that had come to him.
But the old Chart men kept in ever-increasing reverence. They found
that its simple, honest words were words of truth, and whoso sought for
truth gained with it courage and strength. But they covered it no
longer with their own additions and interpretations. Nor did any one
insist that what he found helpful to himself should be law unto others.
No longer did men say to one another, "This path have I taken; this way
must thou go."
And some one wrote upon the Chart this single rule of the forest:
"Choose thou thine own best way, and help thy neighbor to find that way
which for him is best." But this was erased at last; for beneath it
they found the older, plainer words, which One in earlier times had
written there, "_Thy neighbor as thyself._"
THE STORY OF THE PASSION.
The Alps are not confined to Switzerland. They fill that little
country full and overflow in all directions, into Austria, Italy,
Germany, and France. Beautiful everywhere, these mountains are nowhere
more charming than in Southern Bavaria. Grass-carpeted valleys, lakes
as blue as the sky above them, dark slopes of pine and fir, over-topped
by crags of gray limestone dashed by perpetual snow, the Bavarian
Oberland is one of the most delightful regions in all Europe. When
Attila and the Huns invaded Germany fifteen centuries ago, it is said
that their cry was, "On to Bavaria--on to Bavaria! for there dwells the
Lord God himself!"
In the heart of these mountains, shut off from the highways of travel
by great walls of rock, lies the valley of the little river Ammer. Its
waters are cold and clear, for they flow from mountain springs, and its
willow-shaded eddies are full of trout. At first a brawling torrent,
its current grows more gentle as the valley widens and the rocks
recede, and at last the little river flows quietly with broad windings
through meadows carpeted with flowers. On these meadows, a couple of
miles apart, lie the twin villages of the Ammer Valley--the one
world-famous, the other unheard of beyond the sound of its
church-bells--Ober and Unter Ammergau.
Long, straggling, Swiss-like towns, these villages on the Ammer meadows
are. You may find a hundred such between Innsbruck and Zürich. Stone
houses, plastered outside and painted white, stand close together, each
one passing gradually backward into woodshed, barn, and stable. You
may lose your way in the narrow, crooked streets, as purposeless in
their direction as the footsteps of the cows who first surveyed them.
Oberammergau is a cleaner town than most, with a handsomer church, and
a general evidence of local pride and modest prosperity. Frescoes on
the walls of the houses here and there, paintings of saints and angels,
bear witness to a love of beauty and to the prevalence of a religious
spirit. These pictures, still bright after more than a century's wear,
go back to the time when the peasant boy, Franz Zwink, of Oberammergau,
mixed paints for a famous artist who painted the interior of the Ettal
Monastery and the village church. The boy learned the art as well as
the process, and when his master was gone, he covered the walls of his
native town with pictures such as made men famous in other times and in
other lands. The spirit of the Italian masters was his, and the work
of Zwink at Oberammergau has been called "a wandering wave from the
mighty sea of the Renaissance which has broken on a far-off coast."
The Passion Play at Oberammergau has been characterized as a relic of
medieval times--the last remains of the old Miracle Play. This is
true, in the sense of historical continuity, and in that sense alone.
The spirit of the times has penetrated even to this isolated valley,
and its Passion Play is as much a product of our century as the poetry
of Tennyson. Miracle Plays were shown at Oberammergau and in the town
about it more than five hundred years ago, but the Passion Play of
to-day is not like them. The imps and devils and all the machinery of
superstition are gone. Harmony has taken the place of crudity, and the
Christ of Oberammergau is the Christ of modern conception. The Miracle
Play, dead or dying everywhere else, has lived and been perfected at
Oberammergau.
It has been pre-eminently the work of the Church of Rome to teach the
common people, and to train them to obedience. In its teaching it has
made use of every means which could serve its purposes. Didactic
teaching is not effective with tired and sleepy peasants. Sermons
soothe, rather than instruct, after a week of hard labor in the fields.
Hence comes the need of object-teaching, if teaching is to be real.
Images have been used in this way in the Catholic Church--not as
objects to be worshiped, but as representations of sacred things.
Paintings have served the same purpose. The noblest paintings in the
world have been wrought to this end. It was in such lines alone that
art could find worthy recognition. In like manner, processions and
"Passion[1] Plays" have served the same purpose.
The old Miracle Plays were grotesque enough--made by common people for
the instruction of common people. Even amid the pathos of divine
suffering the peasants must be amused. Care was taken that the
character of Judas should meet this demand. So Judas was made at once
a traitor and a clown. His pathway was beset by devils of the most
ridiculous sort. And when at last he hung himself on the stage, his
body burst open, and the long links of sausages which represented
intestines were devoured by the imps amid the laughter and delight of
the peasant audience. Now all this has passed away. Wise and learned
men have taken the play in hand, and have left it a monument to their
piety and good taste. Everything grotesque, or barbarous, or
ridiculous has been eliminated. All else is subordinated to a faithful
and artistic representation of the life and acts of Christ. Stately
prose and the language of the Gospel narratives have been substituted
for doggerel verse. As a work of art, the Passion Play deserves a high
place in the literature of Germany.
One striking feature of the Passion Play is the absence of
superstitious elements. Beyond the dominating influence of the purpose
of God, which is brought into strong prominence, there is almost
nothing which suggests the supernatural or miraculous. That little
even is forgotten in the intensity of human interest. The Devil and
his machinations have vanished entirely. One sees in the religious
customs of the people of Oberammergau few of the superstitions common
among the peasant classes of other parts of Europe. In his little
book, "Oberammergau und Seine Bewohner," Pastor Daisenberger says:
"Superstitious beliefs and customs one does not find here." Even the
ordinary ghost-stories and traditions of Germany are outworn and
forgotten in this town.
In 1634, so the tradition says, the black death came to Oberammergau,
and one-tenth of the inhabitants died. The others made a vow, "a
trembling vow, breathed in a night of tears," that if God should stay
the plague, they would, on every tenth year, repeat in full, for the
edification of the people, the Tragedy of the Passion. Other
communities might build temples or monasteries, or could undertake
pilgrimages; it should be their duty to show "The Way of the Cross."
When this vow was taken, the pestilence ceased, and not another person
perished. This was regarded by the people as a visible sign of divine
approval. Thus every tenth year for nearly three centuries, ever since
the time when the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, with varying
fortunes and interruptions, the Passion Play has been represented in
Oberammergau.
The play in its present form is essentially the work of Josef Alois
Daisenberger, who was for twenty years pastor of the church at
Oberammergau. In this town he was born in the last year of the last
century, and there he died, in 1888, revered and beloved by all who
came near him.
"I wrote the play," Pastor Daisenberger said, "for the love of my
Divine Redeemer, and with no other object in view than the edification
of the Christian world."
The first aim of the Passion Play has been the training of the common
people. To its various representations came the peasants of Bavaria,
Würtemberg, and the Tyrol, on horses, on donkeys, on foot, a long and
difficult journey across mountain-walls and through great forests. It
was the memory and inspiration of a lifetime to have seen the Passion
Play.
About forty years ago the tourist world discovered this scene; and
since then, on the decennial year, an ever-increasing interest has been
felt, an ever-growing stream of travel has been turned toward the Ammer
Valley. All, prince or peasant, are treated alike by the simple,
honest people, and the same preparation is made for the reception of
all. The purpose of the play should be kept in mind in any just
criticism. To have the right to discuss it at all, one must treat it
in a spirit of sympathy.
We came into Oberammergau on Friday, the 1st day of August, 1890, to
witness the performance of the Sunday following. The city of Munich,
seventy miles away, was crowded with visitors, all bound to the Passion
Play. The express-train of twenty cars which carried us from Munich
was crowded with people from almost every part of the civilized world.
At Oberau, six miles from Oberammergau, at the foot of the Ettal
Mountain, we left the railway, and there took part in a general
scramble for seats in the carriages. The fine new road winds through
dark pine woods, climbing the hill in long zigzags above wild chasms,
past the old monastery of Ettal, and then slowly descends to the soft
Ammer meadows. The great peak of the Kofel is ever in front, while the
main chain of the Bavarian Alps closes the view behind.
Arrived in the little village, all was bustle and confusion. The
streets were full of people--some busy in taking care of strangers,
others sauntering idly about, as if at a country fair. Young women, in
black bodices and white sleeves, welcomed the visitors at the little
inns or served them in the shops. Everywhere were young men in
Tyrolese holiday attire--green coats, black slouch hats, with a feather
or sprig of Edelweiss in the hat-band, and with trousers, like those of
the Scottish Highlanders, which end hopelessly beyond the reach of
either shoes or stockings. Besides the rustics and the tourists, one
met here and there upon the streets men whose grave demeanor and long
black hair resting on their shoulders proclaimed them to be actors in
the Passion Play.
On Sunday morning we were awakened by the sound of a cannon planted at
the foot of the Kofel, a sharp, conical, towering mountain, some two
thousand feet above the town, and bearing on its summit a tall gilded
cross. It was cold and rainy, but that made no difference with the
audience or the play. At eight o'clock, when the cannon sounds again,
all are in their places, and the play begins. It lasts for eight
hours--from eight o'clock in the morning to half-past five in the
afternoon, with a single interruption of an hour and a half at noon.
The stage is wide and ample. Its central part is covered, but the
front, which represents the fields and the streets of Jerusalem, is in
the open air. This feature lends the play a special charm. On the
left, across the stage, over which the fitful rain-clouds chase one
another, we can plainly see the long, green slope of Ettal mountain,
dotted from bottom to top with herdmen's huts or _châlets_, and on the
summit a tall pine-tree, standing out alone above all its brethren. On
the other side appear the wild crags of the Kofel, its gilded cross
glistening in the sunshine above the morning mists. Swallows fly in
and out among the painted palm-trees, their twitter sounding sharply
above the music of the chorus. The little birds raise their voices to
make themselves heard to each other.
As the play progresses the intense truthfulness of the people of
Oberammergau steadily grows upon us. For many generations the best
intellects and noblest lives in the town have been devoted to the sole
end of giving a worthy picture of the life and acts of Christ. Each
generation of actors has left this picture more noble than it ever was
before. Their work has been wrought in a spirit of serious
truthfulness, which in itself places the Oberammergau stage in a class
by itself, above and beyond all other theaters. Everything is real,
and stands for what it is. Kings and priests are dressed, not in
flimsy tinsel, but in garments such as real kings and priests may have
worn. And so no artificial light or glare of fireworks is needed to
make these costumes effective. And this genuineness enables these
simple players to produce effects which the richest theaters would
scarcely dare to undertake; and all this in the open air, in glaring
sunshine or in pouring rain. The players themselves can scarcely be
called actors. In their way, they are strong beyond all mere actors,
and for this reason--that they do not seem to act. From childhood they
have grown up in the parts they play. Childish voices learn the solemn
music of the chorus in the schools, and childish forms mingle in the
triumphal procession in the regular church festivals. All the effects
of accumulated tradition, all the results of years of training tend to
make of them, not actors at all, but living figures of the characters
they represent. And we can look back over the history of Oberammergau,
and see how, through the growth of this purpose of its life, it has
come to be unique among all the towns of Europe.
Many have wondered that in so small a town there should be so many men
of striking personality. The reason for this is to be sought in the
operation of natural selection. In the ordinary German village, the
best men find no career. They go from home to the cities or to foreign
lands, in search of the work and influence not to be secured at home.
The strongest go, and the dull remain. All, this is reversed at
Oberammergau. Only the native citizen takes part in the play. Those
who are stupid or vicious are excluded from it. Not to take part in
the play is to have no reason for remaining in Oberammergau. To be
chosen for an important part is the highest honor the people know. So
the influences at work retain the best and exclude the others.
Moreover, the leading families of Oberammergau, the families of Zwink,
Lang, Rendl, Mayr, Lechner, Diemer, etc., are closely related by
intermarriage. These people are all of one blood--all of one great
family. This family is one of actors, serious, intelligent, devoted,
and all these virtues are turned to effect in their acting.
This work is that of a lifetime. Little boys and girls come on the
stage in the arms of the mothers--matrons of Jerusalem. Older boys
shout in the rabble and become at last Roman soldiers or servants of
the High Priest. Still later, the best of them are ranged among the
Apostles, and the rare genius becomes Pilate, John, Judas, or the
Christ.
In the house of mine host, the chief of the money-changers in the
temple, the eldest daughter was called Magdalena. In 1890, at
fourteen, she was leader of the girls in the tableau of the falling
manna. In 1900, she may, perhaps, become Mary Magdalen, the end in
life which her parents have chosen for her.
After the cannon sounds, the chorus of guardian spirits
(_Schützengeister_) comes forward to make plain by speech or action the
meaning of the coming scenes. This chorus is modeled after the chorus
in the Greek plays. It is composed of twenty-four singers, the best
that Oberammergau has, all picturesquely clad in Greek costumes,--white
tunics, trimmed with gold, and over these an outer mantle of some deep,
quiet shade, the whole forming a perfect harmony of soft Oriental
colors. Stately and beautiful the chorus is throughout. The time
which in ordinary theaters is devoted to the arranging of scenes behind
a blank curtain is here filled by the songs and recitations of the
guardian spirits. Once in the play the chorus appears in black, in
keeping with the dark scenes they come forth to foretell. But at the
end the bright robes are resumed, while the play closes with a burst of
triumph from their lips.
At the beginning of each act, the leader of the singers, the village
schoolmaster, comes forth from the chorus, and the curtain parts,
revealing a tableau illustrative of the coming scenes. These tableaux,
some thirty or forty in number, are taken from scenes in the Old
Testament which are supposed to prefigure acts in the life of Christ.
Thus the treachery of Judas is prefigured by the sale of Joseph by his
brethren. The farewell at Bethany has its type in the mourning bride
in the Song of Solomon; the Crucifixion, in the brazen serpent of
Moses. Sometimes the connection between the tableaux and the scenes is
not easily traced; but even then the pictures justify themselves by
their own beauty. Often five hundred people are brought on the stage
at once. These range in size from the tall and patriarchal Moses to
children of two years. But, old or young, there is never a muscle or a
fold of garment out of place. The first tableau represents Adam and
Eve driven from Eden by the angel with the flaming sword. It was not
easy to believe that these figures were real. They were as changeless
as wax. They did not even wink. The critic may notice that the hands
of the women are large and brown, and the children's faces not free
from sunburn. But there is no other hint that these exquisite pictures
are made up from the village boys and girls, those who on other days
milk the cows and scrub the floors in the little town. The marvelously
varied costumes and the grouping of these tableaux are the work of the
drawing-teacher, Ludwig Lang. Without appearing anywhere in the play,
this gifted man makes himself everywhere felt in the delicacy of his
feeling for harmonies of color.
At the beginning of the play the leader of the chorus addresses the
audience as friends and brothers who are present for the same reason as
the actors themselves--namely, to assist devoutly at the mystery to be
set forth, the story of the redemption of the world. The purpose is,
as far as may be, to share the sorrows of the Saviour and to follow him
step by step on the way of his sufferings to the cross and sepulcher.
Then comes the prologue, solemnly intoned, of which the most striking
words are these:
"Nicht ewig zürnet Er
Ich will, so spricht der Herr,
Den Tod des Sünders nicht."
"He will not be angry forever. I, saith the Lord, will not the death
of the sinner. I will forgive him; he shall live, and in my Son's
blood shall be reconciled."
When its part is finished the chorus retires, and the Passion Play
begins with the entry of Christ into Jerusalem. Far in the distance we
hear the music, "Hail to thee, O David's son!" Then follows a
seemingly endless procession of men, women, and children who wave
palm-leaves and shout hosannas. One little flaxen-haired girl, dressed
in blue, and carrying a long, slender palm-leaf, is especially striking
in her beauty and naturalness.
At last He comes, riding sidewise upon a beast that seems too small for
his great stature. He is dressed in a purple robe, over which is a
mantle of rich crimson. Beside him, in red and olive-green, is the
girlish-looking youth, Peter Rendl, who takes the part of Saint John.
Behind him follow his disciples, each with the pilgrim's staff. Two of
these are more conspicuous than the others. One is a white-haired,
eager old man, wearing a mantle of olive-green. The other, younger,
dark, sullen, and tangle-haired, dressed in a robe of saffron over dull
yellow, is the only person in the throng out of harmony with the
prevailing joyousness.
[Illustration: Peter Rendl as Saint John.]
Followed by the people, who stand apart in reverence as he passes among
them, Christ approaches the temple. His face is pale, in marked
contrast to his abundant black hair. His expression is serious, or
even care-worn, less mild than in the usual pictures of Jesus, but
certainly in keeping with the scenes of the Passion Play. A fine,
strong, masterful man of great stature and immense physical strength is
the wood-carver, Josef Mayr, who now for three successive decades has
taken this part. A man of attractive presence and lofty bearing, one
whom every eye follows as he goes about the town on the round of his
daily duties, yet simple-hearted and modest, as becomes one who takes
on himself not only the dress but the name and figure of the Saviour.
Essays have been written on "Christus" Mayr and his conception of
Jesus, and I can only assent to the general impression. To me it seems
that Mayr's thought of Christ is one which all must accept. He appears
as "one driven by the Spirit,"--the great mild teacher, the man who can
afford to be silent before kings and before mobs, and to whom the pains
of Calvary are not more deep than the sorrows of Gethsemane, the man
who comes to do the work of his Father, regardless alike of human
praise or of human contempt. The great strength of the presentation is
that it brings to the front the essentials of Christ's life and death.
There is no suggestion of theological subtleties nor of the ceremonies
of any church. It is simply true and terrible.
From one of his fellow-actors, I learned this of Josef Mayr. He has
always been what he is now, a hand-worker ("_gemeiner Arbeiter_") in
Oberammergau. He has never been away from his native town except once,
when he went as a workman to Vienna, and once when, in 1870, the play
was interrupted by the war with France, and Mayr himself was taken into
the army. Out of respect to his art, he was never sent to the front,
but kept in the garrison at Munich. When the war was over, and he came
back, in 1871, the grateful villagers resumed the play as their "best
method of thanking God who had given them the blessings of victory and
peace."
Canon Farrar, of Westminster, has given us the best and most
sympathetic account yet published of the various actors. Of Mayr he
said: "It is no small testimony to the goodness and the ability of
Josef Mayr that in his representation of Christ he does not offend us
by a single word or a single gesture. If there were in his manner the
slightest touch of affectation or of self-consciousness; if there were
the remotest suspicion of a strut in his gait, we should be compelled
to turn aside in disgust. As it is, we forget the artist altogether.
For it is easy to see that Josef Mayr forgets himself, and wishes only
to give a faithful picture of the events in the Gospel story."
As the Master enters the temple, he finds that its courts are filled
with a noisy throng of money-changers, peddlers, and dealers in animals
for sacrifice. He is filled with wrath and indignation. In a
commanding tone, he orders them to take their own and leave this holy
place. "There is room enough for trading outside. 'My house,' thus
saith the Lord, 'shall be a house of prayer to all the people.' Ye
have made it a den of thieves." ("_Zur Räuberhöhle, habt Ihr es
gemacht!_")
The peddlers pay no attention to his protest. Then, with a sudden
burst of wrath, he breaks upon them, overturning their tables,
scattering their gold upon the floor, and beating them with thongs.
The animals kept for sacrifice are released. The sheep scamper
backward to the rear of the stage, and escape through the open door.
The white doves fly out over the heads of the spectators, and are lost
against the green slopes of the Kofel.
The play now follows the Gospel narrative very closely. It is, in
fact, the Gospel story, with only such changes as fit it for continuous
presentation. Events aside from the current of the story, such as the
wedding at Cana and the raising of Lazarus, are omitted. There are few
long speeches. The leading features of what may be called the plot,
the wrath of the money-changers, the fierce hatred of the Pharisees,
the avarice of Judas, which makes him their tool, are all sharply
emphasized.
The next scene introduces us to the High Council of the Jews, and to
its leading spirit, Caiaphas. Caiaphas is represented by the
burgomaster of the village, Johann Lang. "No medieval pope," says
Canon Farrar, "could pronounce his sentences with more dignity and
verve. He is what has been called 'that terrible creature, the perfect
priest.'" Violent, unforgiving, and harsh, he is the soul of the
conspiracy. His strong determination is reflected in the weak
malignity of his colleague, Annas, as well as in the priests and
scribes. "While he lives," Caiaphas says, "there is no peace for
Israel. It is better that one man should die, that the whole nation
perish not."
We next behold Jesus accompanied by his disciples on the road toward
the house of Simon of Bethany. As they walk along, he talks sadly of
his approaching death. None of them can understand his words; for to
them he has been victorious over all his enemies. "A word from thee,"
says Peter, "and they are crushed." "I see not," says Thomas, "why
thou speakest so often of sorrow and death. Do we not read in the
prophets that Christ lives forever? Thou canst not die, for with thy
power thou wakest even the dead." Even John declares that Christ's
words are dark and dismal, while he and his associates use every effort
to cheer the Master.
At the house of Simon of Bethany, Mary Magdalen breaks the costly dish
of ointment. Judas, who carries the slender purse of the disciples, is
vexed at the waste, and talks of all the good the value of this
ointment might have done if given to the poor.
Very carefully worked out is the character of Judas, represented by
Johann Zwink, the miller of Oberammergau, who ten years ago took the
part of Saint John. The people of Oberammergau regard Zwink as the
most gifted of all their actors; for he can, they say, play any part.
("_Er spielt alle Rolle._") Gregor Lechner, who in his younger days
had the part of Judas, is now Simon of Bethany. Of all the actors of
Oberammergau, the people told us, Lechner is the most beloved
("_bestens beliebt_").
[Illustration: Johann Zwink as Judas.]
In Zwink's conception, Judas is a man full of ambition, but without
enthusiasm. He is attracted by the power of Christ, from which he
expects great results. But Christ seems to care little for his own
mighty works. "My mission," he says, "is not to command, but to
serve." So Judas becomes impatient and dissatisfied. The eager
enthusiasm of Peter and the tender devotion of John alike bore and
disgust him. So the emissaries of Caiaphas find him half-prepared for
their mission. He admits that he has made a mistake in joining his
fortunes to those of an unpractical and sorrowful prophet who lets
great opportunities slip from his grasp, and who wastes a fortune in
precious ointment with no more thought than if it had been water.
"There has of late been a coolness between him and me," he confesses.
"I am tired," he says, "of hoping and waiting, with nothing before me
except poverty, humiliation, perhaps even torture and the prison." He
is especially ill at ease when the Master speaks of his approaching
death. "If thou givest up thy life," he says, "what will become of
us?" And so Judas reasons with himself that he can afford to be
prudent. If his Master fail, then he must be a false prophet, and
there is no use in following him. If he succeed, as with his mighty
power he can hardly fail to do, then, says Judas, "I will throw myself
at his feet. He is such a good man; never have I seen him cast a
penitent away. But I fear to face the Master. His sharp look goes
through and through me. Still at the most I shall only tell the
priests where my Master is." And thus the good and bad impulses
struggle for the mastery, giving to this character the greatest tragic
interest. He visibly shrinks before the words of Christ, "One of you
shall betray me." In the High Council he cringes under the scorching
reproach of Nicodemus. "Dost thou not blush," Nicodemus says, "to sell
thy Lord and Master? This blood-money calls to heaven for revenge.
Some day it will burn hot in thine avarice-sunken soul."
But the High Priest says, "Come, Judas, take the silver, and be a man."
And when the thirty pieces are counted out to him, he cannot resist the
temptation, but clutches them with a miser's grasp and hurries off to
intercept the Master on his way through the Garden of Gethsemane.
Meanwhile, after a tender farewell from his mother, Christ leaves the
house of Simon of Bethany, and, with his disciples, takes the road to
Jerusalem.
The part of Mary the mother of Christ is admirably taken by Rosa Lang.
In dress and mien, she seems to have stepped down from some
picture-frame of Raphael or Murillo. The Mary of Rosa Lang is in every
respect a worthy companion of Mayr's Christus.
[Illustration: Rosa Lang as Mary.]
The various scenes in which the Apostles appear are modeled more or
less after the great religious paintings, especially those of the
Bavarian artist, Albrecht Dürer. The Last Supper is a living
representation of the famous painting of Leonardo da Vinci in the
refectory at Milan. Peter and Judas are here brought into sharp
contrast. Next to Christ, is the slender figure of the beloved
disciple. The characters of the different Apostles are placed in bold
relief. We are at once interested in the fine face of Andreas Lang,
the Apostle Thomas, critical and questioning, but altogether loyal.
The Apostle Philip looks for signs and visions, and would see the
Father coming in His glory from the skies, not in the common every-day
scenes of life into which the Master led them. "Have I been so long
time with thee, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?"
Next comes the night scene in the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of
Olives. The tired Apostles rest upon the grassy bank, and one by one
they fall asleep. Even Peter, who is nearest the Master, can keep
awake no longer. Christ kneels upon the rocks above the sleeping
Peter. "O Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." He
looks back to his disciples. "Are your eyes so heavy that ye cannot
watch? The weight of God's justice lies upon me. The sins of the
fallen world weigh me down. O Father, if it is not possible that this
hour go by, then may thy holy will be done."
Suddenly a great tumult is heard. The faint light of the morning is
reflected from the clanging armor and from glittering spears. The
Apostles are rudely awakened. Judas comes forth and greets the Master
with a kiss. At this signal, the Master is seized by the soldiers and
roughly bound. Then he is carried away, first to Annas, and afterwards
to the house of Caiaphas.
Of the scenes that immediately follow, the most striking is that of the
denial of Peter. Peter, as represented by the sexton of the church,
Jacob Hitt, is an old man with a young heart, eager and impulsive. He
dreams of the noble part he will take while standing by the Master's
side before kings and priests, but behaves very humanly when he is
brought face to face with an unexpected test.
The scenes of the night have crowded thick and fast. The Apostles have
been scattered by the soldiers. The Master had been bound, and carried
away they know not whither. Peter had tried to defend him, but was
told to "put away his useless sword." In forlorn agony Peter and John
wander about in the dark, seeking news of Jesus. They meet a servant
who tells them that he has been carried before the High Priest, and
that the whole brood of his followers is to be rooted out.
Near the house of the High Priest Annas we see a sort of inn occupied
by rough soldiers. The night is damp and cold. A maid has kindled a
fire in the courtyard, and Peter approaches it to warm his hands, and,
if possible, to gain some further news of the Master. He hears the
soldiers talking of Malchus, one of their number who had had his ear
cut off. They boast of what they will do with the culprit, if he
should ever fall into their power. "An ear for an ear," he hears them
say. Suddenly the maid turns towards Peter and says, "Yes, you, surely
you were with the Nazarene Jesus." Peter hesitates. Should he
confess, he would have his own ears cut off, an ear for an ear--and
most likely his head, too, while his body would be thrown out on the
rubbish heap behind the inn. Peter had said that he would die for the
Master; and so he would on the field of battle, or in any way where he
might have a glorious death. He would die for the Master, but not then
and there. The death of a martyr has its pleasures, no doubt, but not
the death of a dog.
While Peter stood thus considering these matters, one and then another
of the servants insisted that he had surely been seen with the Nazarene
Jesus. Again and again Peter refused all knowledge of the Master.
When the cock crew once more he had denied his Master thrice. While
Peter still insisted, the door opened and the Master came forth under
the High Priest's sentence of death. "And the Lord turned and looked
upon Peter, and Peter went out and wept bitterly." "Oh, Master," he
says in the play:
"Oh, Master, how have I fallen!
I have denied thee, how can it be possible?
Three times denied thee! Oh, thou knowest, Lord,
I was resolved to follow thee to death."
Meanwhile Judas hears the story of what has happened. He is at once
filled with agony and remorse, for he had not expected it. He was sure
that the great power of the Master would bring him through safely at
last. In helpless agony, he rushes before the Council and makes an
ineffective protest. "No peace for me forevermore; no peace for you,"
he says. "The blood of the innocent cries aloud for justice." He is
repulsed with cold indifference. "Will it or not," says the High
Priest, "he must die, and it would be well for thee to look out for
thyself."
In fury he cries out, "If he dies, then am I a traitor. May ten
thousand devils tear me in pieces! Here, ye bloodhounds, take back
your curse!" And flinging the blood-money at the feet of the priests,
he flies from their presence, pursued by the specter of his crime.
The next scene shows us the field of blood--a wind-swept desert, with
one forlorn tree in the foreground. We see the wretched Judas before
the tree. He tears off his girdle, "a snake," he calls it, and places
it about his neck, snapping off a branch of the tree in his haste to
fasten it. "Here, accursed life, I end thee; let the most miserable of
all fruit hang upon this tree." In the action we feel that Judas is
not so much wicked as weak. He has little faith and little
imagination, and his folly of avarice hurries him into betrayal. Those
who see the play feel as the actors feel, that Christ knows the
weakness of man. He would have forgiven Judas, just as he forgave
Peter.
In the early morning Christ is brought before Pontius Pilate. The
Roman governor, admirably represented by Thomas Rendl, appears in the
balcony and talks down to Caiaphas, who sends up his accusations from
the street below. His clear sense of justice makes Pilate at first
more than a match for the conspirators. With magnificent scorn he
tells Caiaphas that he is "astounded at his sudden zeal for Caesar."
Of Christ he says: "He seems to me a wise man--so wise that these dark
men cannot bear the light from his wisdom." Learning that Jesus is
from Galilee, he throws the whole matter into the hands of Herod, the
governor of that province.
The words of Pilate are very finely spoken. "We marvel," says one
writer, "how the peasant Rendl learned to bear himself so nobly or to
utter the famous question, 'What is truth?' with a certain dreamy
inward expression and tone, as though outward circumstances had for the
instant vanished from his mind, and he were alone with his own soul and
the flood of thought raised by the words of Jesus."
In contrast to Pilate, stands Herod, lazy and voluptuous. He, too,
finds nothing of evil in Jesus, whom he supposes to be a clever
magician. "Cause that this hall may become dark," he says, "or that
this roll of paper, which is thy sentence of death, shall become a
serpent." He receives Christ in good-natured expectancy, which changes
to disgust when he answers him not a word. Herod pronounces him "dumb
as a fish," and, after clothing him in a splendid purple mantle, he
sends him away unharmed, with the title of "King of Fools."
Again Christ is brought before Pilate, who tells Caiaphas plainly that
his accusations mean only his own personal hatred, and that the voice
of the people is but the senseless clamor of the mob set in operation
by intrigue. Pilate orders Jesus to be scourged, in the hope that the
sight of his noble bearing amid unmerited cruelties may soften the
hearts of the people. Nowhere does the noble figure of Mayr appear to
better advantage than in this scene, where, after a brutal
chastisement, scarcely lessened in the presentation on the stage, the
Roman soldiers place a cattail flag in his hand and salute him as a
king.
Pilate then brings forth an abandoned wreck of humanity, old Barabbas,
the murderer. As Christ stands before them, blood-stained and crowned
with thorns, half in hope and half in irony, Pilate invites them to
choose. "Behold the man," he said, "a wise teacher whom ye have long
honored, guilty of no evil deed. Jesus or Barabbas, which will ye
choose?"
All the more fiercely the mob cries, "Crucify him! Crucify him!"
[Illustration: "Ecce Homo!"]
Pilate is puzzled. "I cannot understand these people," he said. "But
a few days ago, ye followed this man with rejoicing through the streets
of Jerusalem." The High Priest threatens to appeal to Rome. Pilate
fears to face such an appeal. He has little confidence in the favor or
the justice of the Caesar whom he serves. At last he consents to what
he calls "a great wrong in order to avert a greater evil." He calls
for water, and washes his hands in ostentatious innocence. Finally, as
he signs the verdict of condemnation in wrath and disgust, he breaks
his staff of office, and flings the fragments upon the stairs, at the
feet of the priests.
Next we behold in the foreground of the stage, John and Mary the mother
of Jesus, and with them a little group of followers. A tumult is
heard, and, in the midst of a great throng of people, we see three
crosses borne by prisoners. Jesus beholds his mother. Suddenly he
faints, under the weight of the cross. The rough soldiers urge him on.
Simon of Cyrene, a sturdy passer-by, who is carrying home provisions
from the market, is seized by the soldiers and forced to give aid. At
first he refuses. "I will not do it," he says; "I am a free man, and
no criminal." But his indignant protests turn to pity, when he beholds
the Holy Man of Nazareth. "For the love of thee," he says, "will I
bear thy cross. Oh, could I make myself thus worthy in thy sight!"
The closing scenes of the Passion Play, associated as they are with all
that has been held sacred by our race for nearly two thousand years,
are thrilling beyond comparison. No one can witness them unmoved. No
one can forget the impression made by the living pictures. In
simplicity and reverence, the work is undertaken, and it awakens in the
beholder only corresponding feelings. Every heart, for the time at
least, is stirred to its depths.
When the curtain rises, two crosses are seen, each in its place. The
central cross is not yet raised. The Roman soldiers take their time
for it. "Come, now," says one of them, "we must put this Jewish king
upon his throne." So the heavy cross, with its burden, is raised in
its place. We see the bloody nails in his hands and feet; and so
realistic is the representation, that the nearest spectator cannot see
that he is not actually nailed to the cross. There is no haste shown
in the presentation. The Crucifixion is not a tableau, displayed for
an instant and then withdrawn. The scene lasts so long that one feels
a strange sense of surprise when Christus Mayr appears alive again.
Twenty minutes is the time actually taken for the representation. "It
is hard," said our landlady, the good Frau Wiedermann, "to be on the
cross so long, even if one is not actually nailed to it. It is hard
for the thieves, too," she said, "as well as for Josef Mayr."
The thieves themselves deserve a moment's notice. The one on the right
is a bald old man, who meets his death in patience and humility. The
one on the left is a robust young fellow, who defies his associates and
tormentors alike, and joins his voice to that of the rabble in scoffing
at the power of Jesus. "If thou be a god," he says, "save thyself and
us." There is at first a struggle over the inscription at the head of
the cross. "Let it read, 'He called himself the King of the Jews,'"
say the priests. But the Roman soldier is obdurate. "What I have
written I have written," and the centurion grimly nails it on the cross
above his head, regardless alike of their rage and protestations.
Meanwhile, in the foreground the four Roman guards part the purple robe
of Christ, each one taking his share. But the seamless coat they will
not divide. So they cast the dice on the ground to see to whom this
prize shall fall. They are in no hurry. Traitors and thieves have all
night to die in, and they can wait for them. The first soldier throws
a low number, and gives up the contest. The second does better. The
third calls up to the cross, "If thou be a god, help me to throw a
lucky number." One cast of the dice is disputed. It has to be tried
again.
Meanwhile we hear the poor dying body on the cross, in a voice broken
with agony, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."
Again, amid the railings of the Jews, "My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?" Then again, after a sharp cry of pain, "It is finished!"
The captain drives the scoffing mob away, bidding the women come
nearer. Then a Roman soldier, sent by Pilate, comes and breaks the
legs of the thieves. We hear their bones crack under the club. Their
heads fall, their muscles shrink, as the breath leaves the body. But
finding that Jesus is already dead, the soldier breaks not his legs,
but thrusts a spear into his side. We can see the spear pierce the
flesh, but we cannot see that the blood flows from the spear-point
itself, and not from the Master's body. The soldiers fall back with a
feeling of awe. Then, one by one, as the darkness falls, we see them
file away on the road to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man is left in
silence.
Then follows the descent from the cross, which suggests comparison with
Rubens' famous painting in the Cathedral at Antwerp, but here shown
with a fineness of touch and delicacy of feeling which that great
painter of muscles and mantles could never attain. We see Nicodemus
climb the ladder leaned against the back of the cross. He takes off
first the crown of thorns. It is laid silently at Mary's feet. He
pulls out the nails one by one. We hear them fall upon the ground.
With the last one falls the wrench with which he has drawn it. Passing
a long roll of white cloth over each arm of the cross, he lets the
Saviour down into the strong arms of Joseph of Arimathea, and, at last,
into the loving embrace of John and Mary. No description can give an
idea of the all-compelling force of this scene. A treatment less
reverent than is given by these peasants would make it an intolerable
blasphemy. As it is, its justification is its perfection.
And this is the justification of the Passion Play itself. It can never
become a show. It can never be carried to other countries. It never
can be given under other circumstances. So long as its players are
pure in heart and humble in spirit, so long can they keep their
well-earned right to show to the world the Tragedy of the Cross.
[1] The word "passion," as used in the term "Passionspiel," signifies
anguish or sorrow. The Passion Play is the story of the great anguish.
THE CALIFORNIA OF THE PADRE.[1]
There is something in the name of Spain which calls up impressions
rich, warm, and romantic. The "color of romance," which must be
something between the hue of a purple grape and the red haze of the
Indian summer, hangs over everything Spanish. Castles in Spain have
ever been the fairest castles, and the banks of the Xenil and the
Guadalquivir still bound the dreamland of the poet.
"There was never a castle seen
So fair as mine in Spain;
It stands embowered in green,
Overlooking a gentle slope,
On a hill by the Xenil's shore."
It has been said of Spanish rule in California, that its history was
written upon sand, only to be washed away by the advancing tide of
Saxon civilization. So far as the economic or political development of
our State is concerned, this is true; the Mission period had no part in
it, and its heroes have left no imperishable monuments.
But in one respect our Spanish predecessors have had a lasting
influence, and the debt we owe to them, as yet scarcely appreciated, is
one which will grow with the ages. It is said that Father Crespi, in
1770, gave Spanish names to every place where he encamped at night, and
these names, rich and melodious, make the map of California unique
among the States of the Union. It is fitting that the most varied,
picturesque, and lovable of all the States should be the one thus
favored. We feel everywhere the charm of the Spanish language--Latin
cut loose from scholastic bonds, with a dash of firmness from the
Visigoth and a touch of warmth from the sun-loving Moor. The names of
Mariposa, San Buenaventura, Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, and Monterey can
never grow mean or common. In the counties along the coast, there is
scarcely a hill, or stream, or village that does not bear some
melodious trace of Spanish occupation.
To see what California might have been, we have only to turn away from
the mission counties to the foothills of the Sierras, where the
mining-camps of the Anglo-Saxon bear such names as Fiddletown, Red Dog,
Dutch Flat, Murder Gulch, Ace of Spades, or Murderer's Bar; these
changing later, by euphemistic vulgarity, into Ruby City, Magnolia
Vale, Largentville, Idlewild, and the like. Or, if not these, our
Anglo-Saxon practically gives us, not Our Lady of the Solitude, nor the
City of the Holy Cross, not Fresno, the ash, nor Mariposa, the
butterfly, but the momentous repetition of Smithvilles, Jonesboroughs,
and Brownstowns, which makes the map of the Mississippi Valley a waste
of unpoetical mediocrity.
So the Spanish names constitute our legacy from the Mission Fathers.
It is now nearly three hundred and fifty years since Alta California
was discovered, one hundred and twenty years since it was colonized by
white people, and a little over forty years since it became a part of
our republic. In 1542, Cabrillo had sailed up the coast as far as Cape
Mendocino. In 1577, Sir Francis Drake came as far north as Point
Reyes, where, seeing the white cliffs of Marin County, he called the
country New Albion. Better known than these to Spanish-speaking people
was the voyage of Sebastian Vizcaino, who, in 1602, had coasted along
as far as Point Reyes, and had left a full account of his discoveries.
The landlocked harbor which Cabrillo had named San Miguel, Vizcaino
re-christened in honor of his flag-ship, San Diego de Alcalá. Farther
north, Vizcaino found a glorious deep and sheltered bay, "large enough
to float all the navies of the world," he said; and this, in honor of
the Viceroy of Mexico, he called the Bay of Monterey. To a broad curve
of the coast to the north, between Point San Pedro and Point Reyes, he
gave the name of the Bay of San Francisco,[2] dedicating it to the
memory of St. Francis of Assisi. A rough chart of the coast was made
by his pilot, Cabrera Bueno, who left also an account of its leading
features.
For a hundred and sixty years after Vizcaino's expedition, no use was
made of his discoveries. In Professor Blackmar's words: "During all
this time, not a European boat cut the surf of the northwest coast; not
a foreigner trod the shore of Alta California. The white-winged
galleon, plying its trade between Acapulco and the Philippines,
occasionally passed near enough so that those on board might catch
glimpses of the dark timber-line of the mountains of the coast or of
the curling smoke of the forest fires; but the land was unknown to
them, and the natives pursued their wandering life unmolested."
Toward the end of the seventeenth century, Father Salvatierra, head of
the Jesuit missions in Lower California, fixed his eye on this region,
and made plans for its occupation. In this the good Father Kühn--a
German from Bavaria, whom the Spaniards knew as "Quino,"--seconded him.
But these plans came to naught. The power of the Jesuit order was
broken; the charge of the missions in Lower California was given to the
Dominicans, that of Upper California to the Franciscans, and to these
and their associates the colonization of California is due. The
Franciscans, it is said, "were the first white men who came to live and
die in Alta California."
And this is how it came about. One hundred and thirty years ago, the
port of La Paz, in Baja California, lay baking in the sun. La Paz was
then, as now, a little old town, with narrow, stony streets and adobe
houses, standing amidst palms, and chaparral, and cactus. To this port
of La Paz came, one eventful day, Don José de Galvez, envoy of the King
of Spain. He brought orders to the Governor of California, Don Gaspar
de Portolá, that he should send a vessel in search of the ports of San
Diego and of Monterey, on the supposed island, or peninsula, of Upper
California, once found by Vizcaino, but lost for a century and a half.
There they were to establish colonies and missions of the Holy Catholic
Church. They were "to spread the Catholic religion," said the letter,
"among a numerous heathen people, submerged in the obscure darkness of
paganism, thereby to extend the dominion of the king, our lord, and to
protect this peninsula of California from the ambitious designs of the
foreign nations."
"The land must be fertile for everything," says Galvez, "for it lies in
the same latitude as Spain." So they carried all sorts of household
and field utensils, and seeds of every useful plant that grew in Spain
and Mexico--the olive and the pomegranate, the grape and the orange,
not forgetting the garlic and the pepper. All these were placed in two
small ships, the San Carlos, under the gallant Captain Vila, and the
San Antonio, under Captain Perez.
Padre Junípero Serra, chief apostle of these Spanish missions, blessed
the vessels and the flags, commending the whole enterprise to the Most
Holy Patriarch San José, who was supposed to feel a special interest in
this class of expeditions. His early flight into Egypt gave him a
peculiar fondness for schemes involving foreign travel. Galvez
exhorted the soldiers and sailors to respect the priests, and not to
quarrel with each other. And thus they sailed away for San Diego in
the winter of 1769.
At the same time there was organized a land expedition, which should
cross the sandy deserts and cactus-covered hills and join the vessels
at San Diego. That there should be no risk of failure, Don Gaspar de
Portolá divided the land forces into two divisions, one led by himself,
the other by Captain Rivera. These two parties were to take different
routes, so that if one were destroyed the other might accomplish the
work. In front of each band were driven a hundred head of cattle,
which were to colonize the new territories with their kind.
Padre Serra went with the land expedition under the command of Portolá.
A barefooted friar, clad in a rough cloak confined by a rope at the
waist, looks comfortable enough in the cool shade of an Italian
cathedral; but the garb of the Franciscan order is ill-fitted to the
peculiarities of the California mesa. For the vegetation of Lower
California makes up in bristliness what it lacks in luxuriance. Bush
cactuses, so prickly that it makes one's eyes smart to look at them,
and bunch cactuses, in wads of thorns as large as a bushel-basket,
swarm everywhere. Before the barefooted Padre had traveled far, so
Miss Graham tells us in her charming little paper on the Spanish
missions, he had made the acquaintance of many species of cactus.
Horses in that country become lame sometimes, and people say that they
are "cactus-legged." And soon Father Serra became "cactus-legged,"
too, so that he could neither walk nor ride a mule. The Indians were
therefore obliged to carry him in a litter, for he would not go back to
La Paz.
But the Father felt great compassion for the Indians, who had enough to
do to carry themselves. He prayed fervently for a time, and then,
according to the chronicler of the expedition, "He called a mule-driver
and said to him: 'Son, do you know some remedy for my foot and leg?'
But the mule-driver answered, 'Father, what remedy can I know? Am I a
surgeon? I am a mule-driver, and have cured only the sore backs of
beasts.' 'Then consider me a beast,' said the Father, 'and this sore
leg to be a sore back, and treat me as you would a mule.' Then said
the muleteer, 'I will, Father, to please you,' and taking a small piece
of tallow, he mashed it between two stones, mixing with it herbs that
grew close by. Then heating it over the fire, he anointed the foot and
leg, and left the plaster upon the sore. 'God wrought in such a
manner,' wrote the Padre Serra afterwards, 'that I slept all that
night, and awoke so much relieved that I got up and said matins and
prime, and afterwards mass, as if nothing had happened.'"
But Father Serra did not show his faith by such simple miracles as
these alone. In one of his revival meetings in Mexico, Bancroft tells
us, he was beating himself with a chain in punishment for his imaginary
offenses, when a man seized the chain and beat himself to death as a
miserable sinner, in the presence of the people. At another time,
sixty persons who neglected to attend his meetings were killed by an
epidemic, and the disease went on, killing one after another, until the
people had been scared into attention to their religious duties. Then,
at a sign from Padre Serra, the plague abated.
At one time the good Padre was well lodged and entertained in a very
neat wayside cottage on a desolate and solitary road. Later he learned
that there was no such cottage in that region, and, we are told, he
concluded that his entertainers were Joseph, Mary, and Jesus.
Suffering greatly from thirst on one of his journeys, he said to his
companions, who were complaining: "The best way to prevent thirst is to
eat little and talk less." In a violent storm he was perfectly calm,
and the storm ceased instantly when a saint chosen by lot had been
addressed in prayer. And so on; for miracles like these are constant
accompaniments of a mind wholly given over to religious enthusiasm.
In due season, Padre Serra and his party arrived at San Diego, having
followed the barren and dreary coast of Lower California for three
hundred and sixty miles, often carrying water for great distances, and
as often impeded by winter rains. The boats and the other party were
already there, and in the valley to the north of the _mesa_, on the
banks of the little San Diego River, they founded the first mission in
California.
Within a fortnight of Serra's arrival at San Diego, a special land
expedition set out in search of Vizcaino's lost port of Monterey. The
expedition, under Don Gaspar de Portolá, was unhappy in some respects,
though fortunate in others--unhappy, for after wandering about in the
Coast Range for six months, the soldiers returned to San Diego, weary,
half-starved, and disgusted, failing altogether, as they supposed, to
find Monterey; fortunate, for it was their luck to discover the far
more important Bay of San Francisco. It seems evident, from the
researches of John T. Doyle and others, that the company of Portolá,
from the hills above what is now Redwood City, were the first white men
to behold the present Bay of San Francisco. The journal of Miguel
Costanzo, a civil engineer with Portolá's command, is still preserved
in the Sutro Library in San Francisco, and Costanzo's map of the coast
has been published. The diary of Father Crespi, who accompanied
Portolá, has also been printed.
The little company went along the coast from San Diego northward,
meeting many Indians on the way, and having various adventures with
them. In the pretty valley which they named San Juan Capistrano, they
found the Indian men dressed in suits of paint, the women in bearskins.
On the site of the present town of Santa Ana, which they called Jesus
de los Temblores, they met terrific earthquakes day and night. At Los
Angeles, they celebrated the feast of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels
(Nuestra Señora, Reina de Los Angeles), from which the valley took the
name it still bears. They passed up the broad valley of San Fernando
Rey, and crossed the mountains to the present village of Saugus.
Thence they went down the Santa Clara River to San Buenaventura and
Santa Barbara, their route coinciding with that of the present
railroad. Above San Buenaventura they found Indians living in huts of
sagebrush. At Santa Barbara, the Indians fed on excellent fish, but
played the flute at night so persistently that Portolá and his soldiers
could not sleep for the music. They next passed Point Concepcion, and
crossed the picturesque Santa Ynez and the fertile Arroyo Grande to the
basin-shaped valley of San Luis Obispo, with its row of four conical
mountains. At the last of these, Moro Rock, they reached the sea
again. Above Piedras Blancas, where the rugged cliffs of the Santa
Lucia crowd down to the ocean, they were blocked, and could go no
farther. Crossing the mountains to the east, they followed Nacimiento
Creek to below Paso Robles, then went down the dusty valley of the
Salinas, past the pastures on which the missions of San Miguel and
Soledad were later planted. Below Soledad, they came again to the sea.
They then went along the shore to the westward, past the present site
of Monterey and Pacific Grove, and on to the Point of Pines itself, the
southern border of the Bay of Monterey. Yet not one of them recognized
the bay or any of the landmarks described by Vizcaino. At the Point of
Pines, they were greatly disheartened, because they could nowhere find
a trace of the Bay of Monterey, or of any other bay which was
sheltered, or on which "the navies of the world could ride." Father
Crespi celebrated here "the Feast of Our Father in the New World";
"or," he adds, "perhaps in a corner of the Old World, without any other
church or choir than a desert." Portolá offered to return, but Crespi
said: "Let us continue our journey until we find the harbor of
Monterey; if it be God's will, we will die fulfilling our duty to God
and our country." So they crossed the Salinas again, and went
northward along the shore of the very bay they had sought so long.
Then they came to another river, where they killed a great eagle, whose
wings spread nine feet and three inches. They called this river
Pajaro, which means "bird," and devoutly added to it the name of Saint
Anne, "Rio del Pajaro de Santa Ana." To the memory of this bird, the
Pájaro River still remains dedicated. Farther on, they came to forests
of redwood--"_Palo Colorado_," they called it. Crespi describes the
trees "as very high, resembling cedars of Lebanon, but not of the same
color; the leaves different, and the wood very brittle."
[Illustration: A Record of Junípero Serra.]
At Santa Cruz, on the San Lorenzo River, they encamped, still bewailing
their inability to find Monterey Bay. Going northward, along the coast
past Pescadero and Halfmoon Bay, they saw the great headland of Point
San Pedro. They called it Point Guardian Angel (Angel Custodio), and
from its heights they could clearly see Point Reyes and the chalk-white
islands of the Farallones. These landmarks they recognized from the
charts of Cabrera Bueno. Crespi says: "Scarce had we ascended the
hill, when we perceived a vast bay formed by a great projection of land
extending out to sea. We see six or seven islands, white, and
differing in size. Following the coast toward the north, we can
perceive a wide, deep cut, and northwest we see the opening of a bay
which seems to go inside the land. At these signs, we come to
recognize this harbor. It is that of our Father St. Francis, and that
of Monterey we have left behind." "But some," he adds, "cannot believe
yet that we have left behind us the harbor of Monterey, and that we are
in that of San Francisco."
But the "Harbor of San Francisco," as indicated by Cabrera Bueno, lay
quite outside the Golden Gate, in the curve between Point San Pedro on
the south, and Point Reyes on the north. The existence of the Golden
Gate, and the landlocked waters within, forming what is now known as
San Francisco Bay, was not suspected by any of the early explorers.
The high coast line, the rolling breakers, and, perhaps, the banks of
fog, had hidden the Golden Gate and the bay from Cabrillo, Drake, and
Vizcaino alike. By chance a few members of Portolá's otherwise
unfortunate expedition discovered the glorious harbor. Some of the
soldiers, led by an officer named Ortega, wandered out on the Sierra
Morena, east of Point San Pedro. When they reached the summit and
looked eastward, an entirely new prospect was spread out before them.
From the foothills of these mountains, they saw a great arm of the
ocean--"a mediterranean sea," they termed it, according to Mr. Doyle's
account, "with a fair and extensive valley bordering it, rich and
fertile--a paradise compared with the country they had been passing
over." They rushed back to the seashore, waving their hats and
shouting. Then the whole party crossed over from Halfmoon Bay into the
valley of San Mateo Creek. Thence they turned to the south to go
around the head of the bay, passing first over into the Cañada del
Raymundo, which skirts the foot of the mountain. Soon they came down
the "Bear Gulch" to San Francisquito Creek, at the point where
Searsville once stood, before the great Potolá Reservoir covered its
traces and destroyed its old landmark, the Portolá Tavern. They
entered what is now the University Campus, on which columns of
ascending smoke showed the presence of many camps of Indians. These
Indians were not friendly. The expedition was out of provisions, and
many of its members were sick from eating acorns. There seemed to be
no limit to the extension of the Estero de San Francisco. At last, in
despair, but against the wishes of Portolá, they decided to return to
San Diego. They encamped on San Francisquito Creek, and crossed the
hills again to Halfmoon Bay. Then they went down the coast by Point
Año Nuevo, to Santa Cruz. At the Point of Pines they spent two weeks,
searching again everywhere for the Bay of Monterey.
At last they decided that Vizcaino's description must have been too
highly colored, or else that the Bay of Monterey must, since his time,
have been filled up with silt or destroyed by some earthquake. At any
rate, the bay between Santa Cruz and the Point of Pines was the only
Monterey they could find. According to Washburn, Vizcaino's account
was far from a correct one. It was no fault of Portolá and Crespi
that, after spending a month on its shores, it never occurred to them
to recognize the bay.
On the Point of Pines they erected a large wooden cross, and carved on
it the words: "Dig at the foot of this and you will find a writing."
According to Crespi this is what was written:
"The overland expedition which left San Diego on the 14th of July,
1769, under the command of Don Gaspar de Portolá, Governor of
California, reached the channel of Santa Barbara on the 9th of August,
and passed Point Concepcion on the 27th of the same month. It arrived
at the Sierra de Santa Lucia on the 13th of September; entered that
range of mountains on the 17th of the same month, and emerged from it
on the 1st of October; on the same day caught sight of Point Pinos, and
the harbors on its north and south sides, without discovering any
indications or landmarks of the Bay of Monterey. We determined to push
on farther in search of it, and on the 30th of October got sight of
Point Reyes and the Farallones, at the Bay of San Francisco, which are
seven in number. The expedition strove to reach Point Reyes, but was
hindered by an immense arm of the sea, which, extending to a great
distance inland, compelled them to make an enormous circuit for that
purpose. In consequence of this and other difficulties--the greatest
of all being the absolute want of food,--the expedition was compelled
to turn back, believing that they must have passed the harbor of
Monterey without discovering it. We started on return from the Bay of
San Francisco on the 11th of November; passed Point Año Nuevo on the
19th, and reached this point and harbor of Pinos on the 27th of the
same month. From that date until the present 9th of December, we have
used every effort to find the Bay of Monterey, searching the coast,
notwithstanding its ruggedness, far and wide, but in vain. At last,
undeceived and despairing of finding it, after so many efforts,
sufferings, and labors, and having left of all our provisions but
fourteen small sacks of flour, we leave this place to-day for San
Diego. I beg of Almighty God to guide us; and for you, traveler, who
may read this, that He may guide you also, to the harbor of eternal
salvation.
"Done, in this harbor of Pinos, the 9th of December, 1769.
"If the commanders of the schooners, either the San José or the
Principe, should reach this place within a few days after this date, on
learning the accounts of this writing, and of the distressed condition
of this expedition, we beseech them to follow the coast down closely
toward San Diego, so that if we should be happy enough to catch sight
of them, we may be able to apprize them by signals, flags, and firearms
of the place where help and provisions may reach us."
The next day the whole party started back to San Diego, making the
journey fairly well, in spite of illness and lack of proper food.
Though disappointed at Portolá's failure, Serra had no idea of
abandoning his project of founding a mission at Monterey. He made
further preparations, and in about three months after Portolá's return
a newly organized expedition left San Diego. It consisted of two
divisions, one by land, again commanded by Portolá, and one by sea.
This time the good Father wisely chose for himself to go by sea, and
embarked on the San Antonio, which was the only ship he had in sailing
condition. In about a month Portolá's land party reached the Point of
Pines, and there they found their cross still standing. According to
Laura Bride Powers, "great festoons of abalone-shells hung around its
arms, with strings of fish and meat; feathers projected from the top,
and bundles of arrows and sticks lay at its base. All this was to
appease the stranger gods, and the Indians told them that at nightfall
the terrible cross would stretch its white arms into space, and grow
skyward higher and higher, till it would touch the stars, then it would
burst into a blaze and glow throughout the night."
Suddenly, as they came back through the forest from the Point of Pines,
the thought came both to Crespi and Portolá that here, after all, was
the lost bay of Vizcaino. In this thought they ran over the landmarks
of his description, and found all of them, though the harbor was less
important than Vizcaino had believed. Since that day no one has
doubted the existence of the Bay of Monterey.
A week later, the San Antonio arrived, coming in sight around the Point
of Pines, and was guided to its anchorage by bonfires along the beach.
The party landed at the mouth of the little brook which flows down a
rocky bank to the sea. On the 3rd of June, 1770, Father Serra and his
associates "took possession of the land in the name of the King of
Spain, hoisting the Spanish flag, pulling out some of the grass and
throwing stones here and there, making formal entry of the
proceedings." On the same day Serra began his mission by erecting a
cross, hanging bells from a tree, and saying mass under the venerable
oak where the Carmelite friars accompanying Vizcaino celebrated it in
1602. Around this landing grew up the town of Monterey.
At a point just back from the shore, near the old live-oak tree under
which the Padre rendered thanks, there has long stood a commemorative
cross. On the hill above where the Padre stood looking out over the
beautiful bay, there was placed one hundred and twenty years later, by
the kind interest of a good woman, a noble statue, in gray granite,
representing Father Serra as he stepped from his boat.
A fortress, or presidio, was built, and Monterey was made the capital
of Alta California. But the mission was not located at the town. It
was placed five miles farther south, where there were better pasturage
and shelter. This was on a beautiful slope of the hill, flanked by a
fertile valley opening out to the glittering sea, with the mountains of
Santa Lucia in front and a great pine forest behind. The valley was
named Carmelo, in honor of Vizcaino's Carmelite friars, and the mission
was named for San Carlos Borromeo.
The present church of Monterey was not a mission church, but the chapel
of the _presidio_, or barracks. It is now, according to Father
Casanova, the oldest building in California. The old Mission of San
Diego, first founded of all, was burned by the Indians. It was
afterwards rebuilt, but this took place after the chapel in Monterey
was finished. The mission in Carmelo was not completed until later, as
the Padre was obliged to secure authority from Mexico, that he might
place it on the pasture lands of Carmelo, instead of the sand-hills of
Monterey.
When the discoveries of Portolá and Ortega had been reported at San
Diego, the shores of this inland sea of San Francisco seemed a most
favorable station for another mission. Among the missions already
dedicated to the saints, none had yet been found for the great father
of the Franciscan order, St. Francis of Assisi, the beloved saint who
could call the birds and who knew the speech of all animals. Before
this, Father Serra had said to Governor Galvez, "And for our Father St.
Francis is there to be no mission?" And Galvez answered, "If St.
Francis wants a mission, let him show his port, and we will found the
mission there."
And now the lost port of St. Francis was found, and it was the most
beautiful of all, with the noblest of harbors, and the fairest of views
toward the hills and the sea. So the new mission was called for him,
the Mission San Francisco de los Dolores. For the Creek Dolores, the
"brook of sorrows," flowed by the mission, and gave it part of its
name. But Dolores stream is long since obliterated, forming part of
the sewage system of San Francisco.[3]
Thus was founded
"that wondrous city, now apostate to the creed,
O'er whose youthful walls the Padre saw the angel's golden reed."
Meanwhile, following San Diego de Alcalá and San Carlos Borromeo, a
long series of missions was established, each one bearing the sonorous
Spanish name of some saint or archangel, each in some beautiful sunny
valley, half-hidden by oaks, and each a day's ride distant from the
next. In the most charming nook of the Santa Lucia Mountains was built
San Antonio de Pádua; in the finest open pastures of the Coast Range,
San Luis Obispo de Tolosa. In the rich valley, above the city of the
Queen of the Angels, the beautiful church of San Gabriel Arcángel was
dedicated to the leader of the hosts of heaven. Later, came the
magnificent San Juan Capistrano, ruined by earthquakes in 1812. In its
garden still stands the largest pepper-tree in Southern California.
Then Santa Clara was built in the center of the fairest valley of the
State. Next came San Buenaventura and Santa Barbara, for the coast
Indians of the south, and Santa Cruz, for those to the north of
Monterey Bay. In the Salinas Valley, along the "_Camino real_," or
royal highway, from the south to the north, were built Nuestra Señora
de la Soledad and San Miguel Arcángel. A day's journey from Carmelo,
in the valley of the Pájaro, arose San Juan Bautista. In the charming
valley of Santa Ynez, still hidden from the tourist, a day's journey
apart, were Santa Ynez and La Purisima Concepcion. East of the Bay of
San Francisco, in a nook famous for vineyards, arose the Mission San
José.
[Illustration: Mission of San Antonio de Padua.]
In the broad, rocky pastures above Los Angeles, arose San Fernando Key
de Espana, while midway between San Diego and San Juan Capistrano was
placed the stateliest of all the missions, dedicated, with its rich
river valley, to the memory of San Luis Rey de Francia. Finally, to
the north of San Francisco Bay, was built San Rafael, small, but
charmingly situated, and then San Francisco Solano, still farther on in
Sonoma. This, the northernmost outpost of the saints, the last,
weakest, and smallest, was first to die. It was founded in 1823, fifty
years after the Mission San Diego.
Wherever you find in California a warm, sunny valley leading from the
ocean back to the purple mountains, with a clear stream in its midst,
and filled in summer with blue haze, around it steep slopes on which
grapes may grow, you have found a mission valley, and these grapes are
mission grapes. Somewhere in it you will see a cluster of large,
wide-spreading pepper-trees, with delicate light-green foliage, or a
grove of gnarled olives, looking like stunted willows, or, perhaps, a
cluster of old pear-trees, or sometimes a tall palm. Near these you
will find the ruins of old houses of adobe, wherein once dwelt the
Indian neophytes. These houses are clustered around the walls, now
almost in ruins, of the mission itself, which had its chapel,
refectory, and baptistry, and in all its details it resembled closely a
parish church of Italy of Spain.
The mission was usually laid out in the form of a hollow square,
inclosed by a wall of adobe, twelve feet high, the whole inclosure
being two or three hundred feet square. In the center of this square
was a chapel, also of adobe; for the sun of California is kind to
California's children, and a house of dried mud will withstand the
scanty rains of a century. Some of these old chapels are still used,
but the roofs of most of them have long since fallen in, and the
ornaments have been removed to decorate some other building. The
mission churches were built like mimic cathedrals, cathedrals of mud
instead of marble, and, like their great models, each had its altar,
with candles and crucifix, its vessels of holy water, and on the walls
the inevitable paintings of heaven and purgatory. Their most charming
feature was the arched cloister, a feature which has been retained and
beautified in the architecture of Leland Stanford Jr. University, at
Palo Alto.
Each church, too, had its little chime of bells, some of which were
partly of gold or silver, as well as of brass. During the early
enthusiasm, when the mission bells were cast, old heirlooms from Spain,
rings, vases, and ancestral goblets from which had been "drunk the red
wine of Tarragon," were thrown into the molten metal. And when these
consecrated bells chimed out the Angelas at the sunset hour, with the
sound of their voices all evil spirits were driven away, and no harm
could come to man or beast or growing grain.
"Bells of the past, whose long-forgotten music
Still fills the wide expanse,
Tingeing the sober twilight of the present
With color of romance;
I hear you call, and see the sun descending
On rock and wave and sand,
As down the coast the mission voices blending,
Girdle the heathen land.
"Within the circle of your incantation
No blight nor mildew falls,
Nor fierce unrest nor sordid low ambition
Passes those airy walls.
Borne on the swell of your long waves receding
I touch the farther past.
I see the dying glow of Spanish glory,
The sunset dream and last.
* * * * * *
"Your voices break and falter in the darkness,
Break, falter, and are still,
And veiled and mystic, like the Host descending,
The sun sinks from the hill." [4]
Around the church were built storehouses, workshops, granaries,
barracks for the soldiers,--in short, everything necessary for comfort
and security. Each mission was at once fortress, refuge, church, and
town. The little town grew in time more and more to resemble its
fellows in old Spain. Bull-fights and other festivals were held in the
_plaza_, or public square, in front of the _presidio_, or governor's
house, and the long, low, whitewashed _hacienda_, or tavern.
About the mission arose a great farm. Vines and olives were planted,
and often long avenues of shade-trees. The level lands were sown to
barley and oats; great herds of cattle and horses roamed over the
hills. The sale of wine, and especially of hides, brought in each year
an increasing revenue. The poor, struggling missions became rich. The
commanders kept up a dignity worthy of the representatives of the
Spanish king, though often they had little enough to command. It is
said that one of them, wishing to fire a salute in honor of some
foreign vessel, first sent on board to borrow powder. In the words of
Bret Harte, with the _comandante_ the days "slipped by in a delicious
monotony of simple duties, unbroken by incident or interruption. The
regularly recurring feasts and saint's days, the half-yearly courier
from San Diego, the rare transport ship, and rarer foreign vessels,
were the mere details of his patriarchal life. If there was no
achievement, there was certainly no failure. Abundant harvests and
patient industry amply supplied the wants of the _presidio_ and
mission. Isolated from the family of nations, the wars which shook the
world concerned them not so much as the last earthquake; the struggle
that emancipated their sister colonies on the other side of the
continent had to them no suggestiveness. It was that glorious Indian
summer of California history, that bland, indolent autumn of Spanish
rule, so soon to be followed by the wintry storms of Mexican
independence and the reviving spring of American conquest."
[Illustration: Mission of San Antonio de Padua--Interior of Chapel.]
The Indians were usually gathered about the mission by force or by
persuasion. Being baptized with holy water, they were taught to build
houses, raise grain, and take care of cattle. In place of their savage
rites, they learned to count their beads and say their prayers. They
learned also to work, and were pious and generally contented. But
these California Indians, at the best, were far inferior to those of
the East. "When attached to the mission," Mr. Soulé says, "they were
an industrious, contented, and numerous class, though, indeed, in
intelligence and manly spirit they were little better than the beasts,
after all."
The Jesuit Father, Venegas, remarks, discouragingly: "It is not easy
for Europeans who were never out of their own country to conceive an
adequate idea of these people. Even in the least frequented quarters
of the globe there is not a nation so stupid, of such contracted ideas,
and weak, both in body and in mind, as the unhappy Californians. Their
characteristics are stupidity and insensibility, want of knowledge and
reflection, inconstancy, impetuosity, and blindness of appetite,
excessive sloth, abhorrence of all fatigue of every kind, however
trifling or brutal,--in fine, a most wretched want of everything which
constitutes the real man and makes him rational, inventive, tractable,
and useful to himself and others." All of which goes to show that
climate is not everything, and that contact with other minds and other
people, with the sifting that rigorous conditions enforce, may outweigh
all the advantages of the fairest climate. The highest development
comes with the fewest barriers to migration, to competition, and to the
spread of ideas.
The destruction of the missions and the advent of our Anglo-Saxon
freedom has been for the Indian and his kind only loss and wrong. He
has become an alien and tramp, with his half-brother, the despised
Greaser.
The mission fathers left no place for idleness on the part of their
converts, or "neophytes"; nor did they make much provision for the
development of the individual. The Indians were to work, and to work
hard and steadily, for the glory of the church and the prosperity of
the nation. In return they were insured from all harm in this world
and in the world to come. The rule of the Padre was often severe,
sometimes cruel, but not demoralizing, and the Indians reached a higher
grade of industry and civilization than the same race has attained
otherwise before or since.
Believing that the use of the rod was necessary to the Indians'
salvation, the Padres were in no danger of sparing it, and thus
spoiling their children. The good Father Serra would as "soon have
doubted his right to breathe as his right to flog the Indian converts";
and meek and quiet though these converts usually were, there were not
wanting times when they turned about in sullen resistance. The annals
of some of the missions show a series of events that may well have
discouraged the most enthusiastic of missionaries. The unconverted
Indians, or "gentiles," of Southern California were heathens indeed,
and they made repeated attacks upon the missions by day, or stole their
stock or burned their houses by night. Volleys of arrows not
unfrequently greeted the priests on their return from morning mass.
In San Diego, faith in the power of gunpowder to hurt long preceded any
belief in the power of the cross to save. For a whole year after the
mission was founded, not a convert was made. The sole San Diego Indian
in Father Serra's service was a hired interpreter, who did not have a
particle of reverence for his employer's work. "In all these
missionary annals of the Northwest," says Bancroft, "there is no other
instance where paganism remained so long stubborn as in San Diego."
And the converts made at such cost of threats and promises were always
ready to backslide. It was hard to convert any unless they subjugated
all. The influence of the many outside would often stampede the few
within the fold.
In one of the numerous uprisings at San Diego the Fathers were
victorious over the Indians; the warriors were flogged, and thus
converted, and their four chiefs were condemned to death. The sentence
of death, according to Bancroft, read as follows:
"Deeming it useful to the service of God, the king, and the public
good, I sentence them to a violent death by musket shots, on the 11th
of April, at 9 A.M., the troops to be present at the execution, under
arms; and also all the Christian rancherias subject to the San Diego
Mission, that they may be warned to act righteously."
To the priests who were to assist at the last sacrament, the following
grim directions was given:
"You will co-operate for the good of their souls, in the understanding
that if they do not accept the salutary waters of holy baptism, they
die on Saturday morning; and if they do accept, they die all the same."
The character of the first great mission chief, Junípero Serra, is thus
summed up by Bancroft:
"All his energy and enthusiasm were directed to the performance of his
missionary duties as outlined in the regulations of his order and the
instruction of his superiors. Limping from mission to mission, with a
lame foot that must never be cured, fasting much and passing sleepless
nights, depriving himself of comfortable clothing and nutritious food,
he felt that he was imitating the saints and martyrs who were the
ideals of his sickly boyhood, and in recompense of abstinence he was
happy. He was kind-hearted and charitable to all, but most strict in
his enforcement of religious duties. It never occurred to him to doubt
his absolute right to flog his neophytes for any slight negligence in
matters of the faith. His holy desires trembled within him like
earthquake throbs. In his eyes there was but one object worth living
for--the performance of religious duty; and but one way to accomplish
that object--a strict and literal compliance with Franciscan rules. He
could never understand that there was anything beyond the narrow field
of his vision. He could apply religious enthusiasm to practical
affairs. Because he was a grand missionary, he was none the less a
money-maker and civilizer; but money-making and civilizing were
adjuncts only to mission work, and all not for his glory, but for the
glory of God."
After Junípero Serra came a saner and wiser, if not a better, man, the
Padre Fermin Lasuen. I need not go into details in regard to him or
his life. No miracles followed his path, and no saint made him the
object of spectacular intervention; but his gentle earnestness counted
for more in the development of Old California than that of any other
man. Of Lasuen, Bancroft says:
"In him were united the qualities that make up the ideal Padre, without
taint of hypocrisy or cant. He was a frank, kind-hearted old man, who
made friends of all he met. Of his fervent piety there are abundant
proofs, and his piety and humility were of an agreeable type,
unobtrusive, and blended with common sense. He overcame obstacles in
the way of duty, but he created no obstacles for the mere sake of
surmounting them. He was not a man to limp through life on a sore leg
if a cure could be found. . . . First among the Californian prelates
let us ever rank Fermin de Lasuen, as a friar who rose above his
environment and lived many years in advance of his times."
Thirteen years after the serene founding of the Mission San Francisco
came the first shock to the community, thus noticed in a letter from
the governor of the territory to the _comandante_ at San Francisco:
"Whenever there may arrive at the Port of San Francisco a ship named
the Columbia, said to belong to General Washington, of the American
States, commanded by John Kendrick, which sailed from Boston in
September, 1787, bound on a voyage of discovery to the Russian
establishments on the northern coast of this peninsula, you will cause
the said vessel to be examined with caution and delicacy, using for
this purpose a small boat which you have in your possession."
Afterwards another enemy, almost as dangerous as the Yankee, appeared
in the shape of Russians from Alaska. They brought down a colony of
Kodiak Indians, or Aleuts, and established themselves at Fort Ross,
north of San Francisco. The Spaniards then founded the missions of San
Rafael and Solano in front of the Russians, to head them off, as the
priest makes the sign of the cross to ward off Satan. Trading with the
Russians was forbidden, but, nevertheless, the Russian vessels, on one
pretext or another, made repeated visits to the Bay of San Francisco.
The Spaniards had no boats in the bay, and could not prevent the
ingress of the Russian and American traders. One of the singular facts
in connection with the missions is that the Padres made no use of the
sea, and the missions usually kept no boats at all, and so the Spanish
officials were forced to receive in friendliness many encroachments
which they were powerless to prevent.
In 1842, as the seals grew scarce around Bodegas Head, the Russians, to
the great satisfaction of the Spaniards, disappeared as suddenly as
they came. The joy of the missions was short-lived, for seven years
later gold was discovered, California was ceded to the United States,
and the most remarkable invasion known in history followed. Over the
mountains, across the plains, by the Isthmus, and by the Horn they
came, that wonderful procession which Bret Harte has made so familiar
to us--Truthful James, Tennessee's Partner, Jack Hamlin, John Oakhurst,
Flynn of Virginia, Abner Dean of Angels, Brown of Calaveras, Yuba Bill,
Sandy McGee, the Scheezicks, the Man of No Account, and all the rest.
And the California of the gambler and the gold-seeker succeeds the
California of the Padre.
Numerous causes had meanwhile contributed to the decline of the Spanish
missions. They had been supported at first by a Pious Fund, obtained
by subscriptions in Mexico and Spain. After the separation of these
two countries, this fund was lost, its interest being regularly
embezzled by Mexican officials, and, finally, the principal, it is
said, was taken in one lump by the President, Santa Ana. Still the
missions were able to hold their own until the Mexican Government
removed the Indians from the control of the Padres, for the benefit, I
suppose, of the "Indian ring." The secular control of the native
tribes was, in Mexican hands, an utter failure. The Indians, now no
longer compelled to work, no longer well fed and comfortably clothed,
were scattered about the country as paupers and tramps. The missions,
after repeated interferences of this sort, fell into a rapid decline,
and at the time that California was ceded to the United States, not one
of them was in successful operation. A few of the churches are still
partly occupied, as at San Luis Obispo, San Capistrano, and San Miguel.
The Mission of Santa Barbara is still intact, and has yet its little
bands of monks. A few, like San Carlos, have been partially saved or
partially restored, thanks to the loving interest of Father Casanova
and others; but the Indians are gone, and neither wealth nor influence
remains with the missions. Most of them are crumbling ruins, and have
already taken their place as curiosities and relics of the past. Some
of them, as the noble San Antonio de Pádua and the stately San Luis
Rey, are exquisitely beautiful, even in ruins. Of others, as San
Rafael, not a trace remains, and its spot can be kept green only in
memory. It is said that at San Antonio, a mission once numbering
fourteen hundred souls, and rearing the finest horses in California,
the last priest lived all alone for years, and supported himself by
raising geese and selling the tiles from the mission roof. When he
died, ten years ago, no one was left to care for his beloved mission,
which is rapidly falling into utter decay.
[Illustration: Mission of San Antonio de Padua--side of the chapel,
with the old pear-trees.]
So faded away the California of the Padre, and left no stain on the
pages of our history.
[1] Address at the Teachers' Institute at Monterey, California,
September, 1893.
[2] This stretch of water, as explained below, lies entirely outside of
what is now known as San Francisco Bay.
[3] The limits of San Francisco Bay, as now understood, were
ascertained at the time of the founding of the mission, and the name
was then formally adopted.
[4] Bret Harte.
THE CONQUEST OF JUPITER PEN.
In a cleft of the high Alps stands the Hospice of the Great Saint
Bernard. Its tall, cold, stone buildings are half-buried in ice in the
winter, while even in summer the winds, dense with snow, shriek and
howl as they make their way through the notch in the mountain. Its
little lake, cold and dark, frozen solid in winter, is covered with
cakes of floating ice under the sky of July. The scanty grass around
it forms a thick, low turf, which is studded with bodiless blue
gentians, primroses, and other Alpine flowers. Overhanging the lake
are the frost-bitten crags of the Mountain of Death; and the other
mountains about, though less dismally named, are not more cheerful to
the traveler. Along the lake margin winds the narrow bridle-path,
which follows rushing rivulets in zigzags down steep flower-carpeted
slopes to the pine woods of Saint Rémy, far below. Among the pines the
path widens to a wagon-road, whence it descends through green pastures,
purple with autumnal crocus, past beggarly villages, whose houses crowd
together, like frightened cattle in a herd, through beech woods,
vineyards, and grain-fields, till at last it comes to its rest amid the
high stone walls of the old city of Aosta, named for Augustus Caesar.
Above Aosta are the sources of the river Po, one of the chief of these
being the Dora Baltea, in a deep gorge half-hid by chestnut-trees. It
is twenty miles from the lake to the river--twenty miles of wild
mountain incline--twenty miles from Switzerland to Italy, from the
eternal snows and faint-colored flowers of the frigid zone, to the
dust, and glare of the torrid.
The Hospice of the Great Saint Bernard stands thus in a narrow mountain
notch, with only room for itself and its lake, while above it, on
either side, are jagged heights dashed with snow-banks, their summits
frosted with eternal ice.
[Illustration: The Great Saint Bernard.]
It is a large stone building, three stories high, beside the two attic
floors of the steep, sloping roof. A great square house of cold, gray
stone, as unattractive as a barn or a woolen-mill, plain, cold, and
solid. At one end of the main building is a stone addition precisely
like the building itself. On the other side of the bridle-path is an
outbuilding--a tall stone shed, "the Hotel of Saint Louis," three
stories high, as plain and uncompromising as the Hospice is. The front
door of the main building is on the side away from the lake. From this
door down the north side of the mountain the path descends steeply from
the crest of the Pennine Alps to the valley of the Rhone, even more
swiftly than the path on the south side drops downward to the valley of
the Po.
As one approaches the Hospice he is met by a noisy band of great dogs,
yellow and white, with the loudest of bass voices, barking incessantly,
eager to pull you out of the snow, and finding that you do not need
this sort of rescue, apparently equally eager to tear you to pieces for
having deceived them. Classical names these dogs still bear--names
worthy of the mountain long sacred to Jupiter, on which the Hospice is
built--Jupitère, Junon, Mars, Vulcan, Pluton, the inevitable Leon, and
the indomitable Turc, and all have for the traveler such a greeting as
only a band of big, idle dogs can give. These dogs are not so large
nor so well kept as the Saint Bernard dogs we see in American cities,
but they have the same great head, huge feet and legs, and the same
intelligent eye, as if they were capable of doing anything if they
would only stop barking long enough to think of something else.
The inside of the house corresponds to its outer appearance. Thick,
heavy triple doors admit you to a cold hall floored with stone.
Adjoining this is a parlor, likewise floored with the coldest of stone,
and this parlor is used as the dining-room and waiting-room for
travelers. Its walls are hung with pictures, many of them valuable
works of art, the gifts of former guests, while its chilly air is
scantily warmed by a small fireplace, on which whoever will may throw
pine boughs and fragments of the spongy wood of the fir. By this fire
the guests take their turn in getting partly warmed, then pass away to
shiver in the outer wastes of the room.
[Illustration: Hospice of the Great Saint Bernard.]
In this room the travelers are served with plain repasts, princes and
peasants alike, coarse bread, red wine, coffee, and boiled meat;
everything about the table neat and clean, but with no pretense at
pampering the appetite. You take whatever you please without money and
without price. Should you care to pay your way, or care to help on the
work of the Hospice, you can leave your mite, be it large or small, in
a box near the door of the chapel. The guest-rooms are plain but
comfortable--a few religious pictures on the walls; tall, old-fashioned
bedsteads, with abundant feather-beds and warm blankets. For one night
only all persons who come are welcome. The next day all alike, unless
sick or crippled, must pass on.
There are about a dozen monks in the Hospice now, all of them young
men, devoted to their work, and some of them at least intelligent and
generously educated. The hard climate and the exposure of winter
breaks down their health before they are old. When they become unable
to carry on the duties of the Hospice, they are sent down the mountains
to Martigny, while others come up to take their places. There are
beautiful days in the summer-time, but no season of the year is free
from severity. Even in July and August the ground is half the time
white with snow. Terrible blasts sweep through the mountains; for the
commonest summer shower in the valleys below is, in these heights, a
raging snow-storm, and its snow-laden winds are never faced with
impunity.
We visited the Hospice in July, 1890. We drove from Aosta up to Saint
Rémy, a little village crowded in on the side of the mountain, where
the pine-trees cease. The light rain which followed us out from Saint
Rémy changed to snow as we came up the rocky slopes. By the time we
reached the Hospice it became a blinding sleet. The ground was only
whitened, so that the dogs who came barking to meet us had no need to
dig us out from the drifts. In this they seemed disappointed, and
barked again.
Once inside the walls, one cared not to go out. Many travelers came up
the mountain that day. Among them were a man and his wife, Italian
peasants, who had been over the mountains to spend a day or two with
friends in some village on the Swiss side, and were now returning home.
Man and woman were dressed in their peasants' best, and with them was a
little girl, some four years old. The child carried a toy horse in her
hands, the gift of some friend below. As they toiled up the steep path
in the blinding snow, all of them thinly clad and dressed only for
summer, they seemed chilled through and through, while the child was
almost frozen. The monks came out to meet them, took the child in
their arms, and brought her and her parents to the fire, covered her
shoulders with a warm shawl, and, after feeding them, sent them down
the mountain to their home in the valley, warmed and filled. This was
a simple act, the easiest of all their many duties, but it was a very
touching one. Such duties make up the simple round of their lives.
In the storms of winter the work of the Hospice takes a sterner cast.
From November to May the gales are incessant. The snow piles up in
billows, and in the whirling clouds all traces of human occupation are
obliterated. There are many peasants and workingmen who go forth from
Italy into Switzerland and France, and who wish to return home when
their summer labors are over. To these the pass of the Great Saint
Bernard is the only route which they can afford. The long railway
rides and the great distances of the Simplon and the Saint Gotthard
would mean the using up of their scanty earnings. If they go home at
all, they must trust their lives to the storms and the monks, and take
the path which leads by the Hospice. So they come over day after day,
the winter long. No matter how great the storm, the dogs are on the
watch. In the last winter, of the many who came, not one was lost.
[Illustration: The Hospice in winter.]
This is the Hospice as it stands to-day. I come next to tell its story
and the story of its founder. I tell it, in the most part, from a
little volume in French, which some modest and nameless monk of the
Hospice has compiled from the old Latin records of the monks who have
gone before him. This volume he has printed, as he says, "for the use
of the faithful in the parishes which lie next the Alps, and which, in
his time, the good Saint Bernard[1] passed through." This story I must
tell in his own spirit, in some degree at least, else I should have no
right to tell it at all.
In the tenth century, he informs us, the dark ages of Europe could
scarcely have been darker. Weak and wicked kings, the dregs of the
worn-out blood of Charlemagne, misruled France, while along the
northern coast the Normans robbed and plundered at their will. Even
the church had her share of crimes and scandals. In this dark time,
says the chronicle, "God, who had promised to be with His own to the
end of the centuries, did not fail to raise up in that darkness great
saints who should teach the people to lift their eyes toward heaven; to
rise above afflictions; not to take the form of the world for a
permanent habitation, and to suffer its pains with patience, in the
prospect of eternity."
[Illustration: Jupitére.]
It happened that in the days of King Raoul, in the Castle of Menthon,
on the north bank of the lake of Annécy, in Savoy, in the year 923,
Bernard de Menthon was born. His father was the Baron Richard, famous
among the noblemen of the time, while his mother, the Lady Bernoline,
was illustrious for virtues. The young Bernard was a fair child, and
his history, as seen from the perspective of his monkish historian,
shows that even in his earliest youth he was predestined for saintship.
Even before he could walk, the little child would join his hands in the
attitude of supplication, and murmur words which might have been
prayers. While still very young, he brought in a book one day and
asked his mother to teach him to read, and when she would not, or could
not, he wept, for the books in which even then he delighted were the
prayer-books of the church.
He grew up bright and beautiful, and his father was proud of him, and
determined that he should take his part in public life. But Bernard's
thoughts ran in other channels. He spent his moments in copying
psalms, and in writing down the words of divine service which he heard.
Even in his seventh year he began to practice austerities and
self-castigation, which he kept up through his life. He chose for his
model Saint Nicholas, the saint who through the ages has been kind to
children. Him he resolved to imitate, and to walk always in his steps.
The University of Paris had been founded by Charlemagne more than a
century before, and this university was then the Mecca of all ambitious
youth. To the University of Paris his father decided to send him. But
his mother feared the influence of the gay capital, and wished to keep
Bernard by her side. But the boy said, "Virtue has too deep a root in
my heart, mother, for the air of Paris to tarnish it. I will bring
back more of science, but not less of purity." And to Paris he went.
Here he studied law, to please his father, and theology, to please
himself. "As Tobias lived faithful in Nineveh," so the chronicle says,
"thus lived Bernard in Paris." In the midst of snares unnumbered, he
only redoubled his austerities--"_in sanctitate persistens, studiosus
valde_," so the record says.
[Illustration: Monks of the Great Saint Bernard.]
His thoughts ran on the misery of humanity, which he measured by the
abasement to which Christ had submitted in order to effect its
redemption. A great influence in his life came from Germain, his
tutor, a man who had lived the life of a scholar in the world, and who
had at last withdrawn to sanctity and prayer. Although Bernard knew
that his father expected a brilliant future for him, and that he hoped
to effect for him a marriage in some family of the great of those days,
yet he took upon himself the vow of celibacy. "God lives in virgin
souls," he said. There is a record of an argument with Germain, in
which his tutor tries to test the strength of his purpose. Germain
tells him that even in a monastery evil cannot be excluded, and that
many even of the most austere monks live lives of petty jealousy and
ignoble ambition. "There are many," Germain says, "who are saved in
the struggle of the world who would be shipwrecked in a monastery."
But Bernard is steadfast in his choice. "Happy are those who have
chosen to dwell in God's court, and to sleep on His estate." Thus day
and night he struggles against all temptations of worldly glory or
pleasure.
Then his father calls him home; and when he has returned to Annécy,
Bernard finds that every preparation has been made for his approaching
wedding with the daughter of the great Lord of Miolans. "_Sponsa
pulchra_," beautiful bride, this young woman was, according to the
record, and doubtless this was true. The attitude of Bernard toward
this marriage his father and mother could not understand. He held back
constantly, and urged all sorts of objections to its immediate
consummation, but on no ground which seemed to them reasonable. So the
wedding-day was set. The house was full of guests. Every gate and
door of the castle was crowded by armed retainers, and there seemed to
be no escape. Bernard retired to his own room, and in the oldest
manuscripts are given the words of his prayer:
"My adorable Creator, Thou who with thy celestial light enlightened
those who invoke with faith and confidence, and Thou my Jesus, Divine
Redeemer of men and Saviour of souls, lend a favorable ear to my humble
prayer; spread on thy servant the treasures of your infinite mercy. I
know that Thou never abandonest those who place in you their hope;
deliver me, I supplicate Thee, from the snares which the world have
offered me. Break these nets in which the world tries to take me;
permit not that the enemy prevail over thy servant, that adulation may
enfeeble my heart. I abandon myself entirely to Thee. I throw myself
into the arms of thy infinite mercy, hoping that Thou wilt save me, and
wilt reject not my demand."
Then to the good Saint Nicholas:
"Amiable shepherd, faithful guide, holy priest, thou who art my
protector and my refuge, together with God, and His holy mother, the
happy Virgin Mary, obtain me, I pray thee, by thy merits, the grace of
triumph over the obstacles the world opposes to my vow of consecrating
myself to God without reserve--in return for the property, the
pleasures, and honors here below, of which I abandon my part, obtain me
spiritual good all the course of my life, and eternal happiness after
my death."
Then Bernard retired to sleep, and in a dream Saint Nicholas stood
before him and uttered these words:
"Bernard, servant of God the Lord, who never betrays those who put
their confidence in Him, calls thee to follow Him. An immortal crown
is reserved for thee. Leave at once thy father's house and go to
Aosta. There in the cathedral thou shalt meet an old man called
Pièrre. He will welcome thee; thou shalt live with him, and he shall
teach thee the road thou should traverse. For my part, I shall be thy
protector, and will not for an instant abandon thee."
Then Bernard opened his eyes and the vision had disappeared. He was
overcome with joy. His resolution was taken. Though he knew no way
out of the castle, nor from the bedroom in the tower, in which he had
been locked by his thoughtful father, yet he was ready to go.
Taking up a pen, he wrote to his father this letter:
"Very dear parents, rejoice with me that the Lord calls me to His
service. I follow Him to arrive sooner at the port of salvation, the
sole object of my vows. Do not worry about me, nor take the trouble to
seek me. I renounce the marriage, which was ever against my will. I
renounce all that concerns the world. All my desires turn toward
heaven, whither I would arrive. I take the road this minute.
"BERNARD DE MENTHON."
Laying the letter on the table, he soon found himself on the way
outside the castle grounds, and along this path he hurried, over the
mountain passes, toward the city of Aosta. So say the oldest
manuscripts; but in the later stories the details are more fully
described. From these it would appear that Bernard leaped from the
window eighteen or twenty feet, his naked feet striking on a bare rock.
On he ran through the night; on over dark and lonely paths in a country
still uninhabited; over the stony fields and wild watercourses of the
Graian Alps, and when the morning dawned he found himself in the city
of Aosta, a hundred miles from Annécy.
In an old painting the manner of his escape is shown in detail. As he
drops from the window he is supported by Saint Nicholas on the one
side, and an angel on the other, and underneath the painting is the
legend "_Emporté par Miracle_." It is said, too, that in former times
the prints of his hands on the stone window-sill, and of his naked feet
on the rock below, were both plainly visible. Eight hundred years
later the good Father Pièrre Verre celebrated mass in the old room in
which Bernard was confined; and he reports at that time there was both
on the window-sill and on the rock below only the merest trace of the
imprints left by Bernard. One could not then "even be sure that they
were made by hand or foot." But the chronicle wisely says: "Time, in
effacing these marks and rendering them doubtful, has never effaced the
tradition of the fact among the people of Annécy."
In the morning, consternation reigned within the castle. The Lord of
Menthon was filled with disgust, shame, and confusion. The Lord of
Miolans thought that he and his daughter were the victims of a trick,
and he would take no explanation or excuse. Only the sword might
efface the stain upon his honor. The marriage feast would have ended
in a scene of blood were it not, according to the chronicle, that "God,
always admirable in His saints," sent as an angel of peace the very
person who had been most cruelly wronged. The Lady of Miolans,
"_sponsa pulchra_" beyond a doubt, took up the cause of her delinquent
bridegroom, whom God had called, she said, to take some nobler part.
When peace had been made, she followed his example, taking the veil in
a neighboring convent, where, after many years of virtuous living, she
died, full of days and full of merits. "_Sponsa ipsius_," so the
record says, "_in qua sancte et religiose dies suos clausit_"; a bride
who in sanctity and religious days closed her life.
Meanwhile, beyond the Graian Alps and beyond the reach of his father's
information, Bernard was safe. In Aosta he was kindly received by
Pièrre, the Archdeacon. He entered into the service of the church, and
there, in spite of his humility and his self-abasement, he won the
favor of all with whom he had to deal. "God wills," the chronicle
says, "that His ministers should shine by their sanctity and their
science." "Saint Paul commends prudence, gravity, modesty,
unselfishness, and hospitality," and to these precepts Bernard was ever
faithful. He lived in the simplest way, like a hermit in his personal
relations, but never out of the life of the world. He was not a man
eager to save his own soul only, but the bodies and souls of his
neighbors. He dressed in the plainest garb. He drank from a rude
wooden cup. Wine he never touched, and water but rarely. The juice of
bitter herbs was his beverage, and by every means possible he strove to
reduce his body to servitude. When he came, years later, to his
deathbed, it was his sole regret that it was a _bed_ where he was to
die, instead of the bare boards on which he was wont to sleep.
His fame as a preacher spread far and wide. There are many traditions
of his eloquence, and the memory of his words was fondly cherished
wherever his sweet, rich voice was heard. "From the mountains of Savoy
to Milan and Turin, and even to the Lake of Geneva," says the
chronicle, "his memory was dear." So, in due time, after the death of
Pièrre, Bernard was made Archdeacon of Aosta.
In these times the high Alps were filled with Saracen brigands and
other heathen freebooters, who celebrated in the mountain fastnesses
their monstrous rites. In the mountains above Aosta the god Pen had
long been worshiped; the word pen in Celtic meaning the highest.
Later, Julius Caesar conquered these wild tribes, and imposed upon them
the religion of the Roman Empire. A statue of Jupiter ("_Jove optimo
maximo_") was set up in the mountain in the place of the idol Pen.
Afterwards, by way of compromise, the Romans permitted the two to
become one, and the people worshiped Jovis Pennius (Jupiter Pen), the
great god of the highest mountains. A statue of Jupiter Pen was set up
by the side of the lake in the great pass of the mountain; and from
Jupiter Pen these mountains took the name of Pennine Alps, which they
bear to this day. The pass itself was called Mons Jovis, the Mountain
of Jove, and this, in due time, became shortened to Mont Joux. Through
this pass of Mont Joux the armies of every nation have marched, the
heroes of every age, from Saint Peter, who, the legend says, came over
in the year 57, down to Napoléon, who passed nearly eighteen centuries
later, on a much less worthy errand. The Hotel "Déjeuner de Napoléon,"
in the little village of "Bourg Saint Pièrre," recalls in its name the
story of both these visits.
In the earliest days a refuge hut was built by the side of the statue
of Jupiter Pen. In the early pilgrimages to Rome this became a place
of some importance. Later on, marauding armies of Goths, Saracens, and
Hungarians, successively passing through, destroyed this refuge. In
the days of Bernard the pass was filled with a horde of brigands,
French, Italians, Saracens, and Jews, who had cast aside all religious
faith of their fathers, and had re-established the worship of the demon
in the temple of Jupiter Pen.
The old manuscripts tell us that in the middle of the tenth century the
demons were in full sway on these mountains; that through the mouth of
the statue of Jupiter the worst of lies and blasphemies were spoken to
those who came to consult it. These worshipers of strange old gods
lived by plunder, and exacted toll of all who came through the pass.
The same conditions existed on the Graian Alps to the southward. On
one of these mountain passes, some fifty miles from Mont Joux, there
lived a rich man named Polycarpe. He, too, did homage to Jupiter, and
on the summit of a tall column which he built in the pass he had placed
a splendid diamond, which he called the "Eye of Jove." People came
from great distances to be healed by its magic glance, and the mountain
on which he dwelt was the mountain of the Columna Jovis. This became
changed, in time, to Colonne Joux, the Mountain of the Column of Jove.
And the demons of these two heights, the Mountain of Jove and the
Column of Jove, sent down their baleful call of defiance to the valley
over which Bernard ruled as Archdeacon of Aosta.
It came to pass that a troop of ten French travelers crossed over the
pass of Mont Joux. In the pass they were attacked by marauders, and
one of their number was carried away captive. When they came down to
Aosta, Bernard, the Archdeacon, fearlessly offered to go back with them
to attack the giant of the mountain, to rescue their friend, and to
replace the standard of the cross over the altar of the demon.
That night, so says the old chronicle, Saint Nicholas appeared to him
in the garb of a pilgrim and said: "Bernard, let us attack these
mountains. We shall put the demon to flight. We shall overturn this
statue of Jupiter, which the demons have taken possession of to bring
trouble among Christians. We will destroy it, and we will destroy the
column and its diamond, and in their place we will build two refuges
for the use of the pilgrims who cross the two mountains. Go thou, as
the tenth one in this band; then wilt thou conjure the demons. Thou
shalt bind the statue with a blessed stole, and its ruins will mingle
with the chaos of the mountains. Thus shalt thou destroy the power of
evil to the day of judgment."
And in proof of the thoroughness with which Bernard performed his work,
it is told that a spiritualist who took pleasure in tipping tables came
through the pass in 1857. The monks were incredulous of his powers,
and he wished to convince them by an actual experience. His efforts
were all in vain. The tables, the record tells us, were quiet as the
rocks. The traveler, astonished, said: "This is the first time they
have failed to obey me." And thus, says the record, the pledge of
Saint Nicholas was accomplished. The enemy had never more an entrance
into the mountain.
When Bernard and his followers reached Mont Joux, they found the
mountain filled with fog and storm, but his heart was undaunted.
Passing boldly between the guards of the temple, he flung, so the story
says, his blessed stole over the neck of the statue of Jupiter. It
changed at once into an iron chain, against which the statue, now
become a huge demon-monster, struggled in vain. The good man
overturned it and flung it at his feet. With the same chain he bound
the high priest who guarded the demon. The struggle was short, but
decisive. In a few minutes, so the chronicle says, Bernard had
banished the demon of Mont Joux and his accomplices to eternal snow and
ice to the end of time, and had commanded them to cease forever their
evil doings on the mountain.
An old painting in the Hospice shows this scene in vivid portrait.
Bernard stands erect and fearless, his fine face lit up by celestial
zeal, his bare head surrounded by a halo, a pilgrim's staff in his
right hand, the stole, now become a chain, in his left, while one foot
is on the breast of the demon, which gasps helpless at his feet. The
demon has the body of a man, covered with a wolf's rough, shaggy hair,
his fingers and toes ending in sharp claws, a long tail, rough and
scaly, like the tail of a rat, coiled snake-like above his legs, the
head and ears of a wolf, the horns of a goat, and on his back an
indefinable outgrowth, perhaps the framework of a horrible pair of
wings, its long tongue thrust out from between its bloody teeth. He
was certainly a gruesome creature.
[Illustration: Saint Bernard and the demon.]
And thus it came to pass in the year 970, in the place of the temple of
Jupiter Pen, but at the other end of the lake, and in the very summit
of the pass, was built the Hospice of the Great Saint Bernard. From
that day to this, almost a thousand years, the work of doing good to
men has been humbly and patiently carried on.
Not long afterward, in a similar way, Bernard attacked the Graian Alps,
overthrew the column of Jupiter, crushed its bright diamond to the
finest dust, which he scattered in the winds, and built in its place a
second Hospice, which, with the pass, has borne ever since the name of
the Little Saint Bernard.
Silver and gold, the builders of this Hospice had none. Ever since the
beginning, they have exercised their charities at the expense of those
who cared for the Lord's work. All who pass by are treated alike.
Those who are received into the Hospice can leave much or
little--something or nothing, whatever they please,--to carry the same
same help to others.
In the book of the good Saint Francis de Sales long ago, so the
chronicle says, these words were written:
"There are many degrees in charity. To lend to the poor, this is the
first degree. To give to the poor is a higher degree. Still higher to
give oneself; to devote one's life to the service of the poor.
Hospitality, when necessity is not extreme, is a counsel, and to
receive the stranger is its first degree. But to go out on the roads
to find and help, as Abraham did, this is a grade still higher. Still
higher is to live in dangerous places, to serve, aid, and save the
passers-by; to attend, lodge, succor, and save from danger the
travelers, who else would die in cold and storm. This is the work of
the noble friend of God, who founded the hospitals on the two
mountains, now for this called by his name, Great Saint Bernard, in the
diocese of Sion, and the Little Saint Bernard, in the Tarentaise."
And so the Hospice was built, and in the enthusiastic words of a
chronicle of the times, "Tears and sorrow were banished, peace and joy
have replaced them; abundance has made there her abode; the terrors
have disappeared, and there reigns eternal springtime. Instead of
hell, you will find there paradise." Not quite paradise, perhaps, so
far as the elements are concerned, but a dozen kindly men, a legion of
dogs, big, cheerful, and noisy, a warm fire, a simple meal, and a
God-speed to all men, whatever their race, or creed, or temper.
I need add but a word more of the history of Bernard himself. One day
an old man and his wife came up to visit the Hospice and to pay their
respects to the monk who had founded it. Bernard met them there, and
at once recognized his father and mother. He received them
sympathetically, and they told him the story of their lost son.
Bernard spoke to them tenderly of the work to which God must have
called him. He told them they should rejoice that their child had been
found worthy of his purposes, and after a time they seemed to become
reconciled, and felt that He doeth all things well. Then Bernard told
them who he was, and when after many days they went away from the
Hospice, they left the money to build in each of them a chapel.
Bernard died in the year 1007, at the age of eighty-three. His last
words were these: "O Lord, I give my soul into thy hands." The words,
"The saint is dead," passed on from mouth to mouth throughout these
Alpine regions. The peasants had canonized him already a hundred years
before the sanctity of his work was officially recognized at Rome.
The story of his burial is again marked by miracles. Rich men vied
with each other in making funeral offerings. One gave him a
magnificent stone coffin, but this man had been a usurer. Usury was a
sin abhorred by Saint Bernard, and the people found that no force or
persuasion could place his body within this coffin. So another tomb,
less pretentious, but more worthy, was found. At the end Bernard's
remains were divided among the churches, each of whom claimed him as
its own. To the Hospice fell his ring and his cup, a tooth, and a few
finger-bones, and, most important of all, his name--the "Great Saint
Bernard."
The chronicles give a long list of miracles which since then have been
wrought in his name. These are for the most part wonderful healings,
the stilling of storms, the bringing of rain, the driving away of
grasshoppers. However, men are prone always to look for the miracle in
the things that are of least moment. The life and work of the man was
the real miracle, not the flight of grasshoppers. The miracle of all
time is the power of humanity when it works in harmony with the laws
and purposes of God. Consecrated to God's work, and by the work's own
severity protected through the centuries from corruption and
temptation, the work of the monk of Aosta has outlasted palaces and
thrones. Through the influence of charity, and piety, and truth, the
demon has been driven from these mountains. When the love of man joins
to the love of God, all spirits of evil vanish as mist before the
morning sun.
[1] St. Bernard de Menthon must not be confounded with Bernard de
Clairvaux, born in 1091, the preacher of the Crusades.
THE LAST OF THE PURITANS.[1]
I have a word to say of Thoreau, and of an episode which brought his
character into bold relief, and which has fairly earned for him a place
in American history, as well as in our literature.
I do not wish now to give any account of the life of Thoreau. In the
preface to his volume called "Excursions" you will find a biographical
sketch, written by the loving hand of Mr. Emerson, his neighbor and
friend. Neither shall I enter into any justification of Thoreau's
peculiar mode of life, nor shall I describe the famous cabin in the
pine woods by Walden Pond, already becoming the Mecca of the Order of
Saunterers, whose great prophet was Thoreau. His profession of
land-surveyor was one naturally adopted by him; for to him every hill
and forest was a being, each with its own individuality. This
profession kept him in the fields and woods, with the sky over his head
and the mold under his feet. It paid him the money needed for his
daily wants, and he cared for no more.
He seldom went far away from Concord, and, in a half-playful way, he
used to view everything in the world from a Concord standpoint. All
the grandest trees grew there and all the rarest flowers, and nearly
all the phenomena of nature could be observed at Concord.
"Nothing can be hoped of you," he said, "if this bit of mold under your
feet is not sweeter to you than any other in this world--in any world."
Although one of the most acute of observers, Thoreau was never reckoned
among the scientific men of his time. He was never a member of any
Natural History Society, nor of any Academy of Sciences, bodies which,
in a general way, he held in not altogether unmerited contempt. When
men band together for the study of nature, they first draft a long
constitution, with its attendant by-laws, and then proceed to the
election of officers, and, by and by, the study of nature becomes
subordinate to the maintenance of the organization.
In technical scientific work, Thoreau took little pleasure. It is
often pedantic, often bloodless, and often it is a source of
inspiration only to him by whom the work is done. Animals and plants
were interesting to him, not in their structure and genealogical
affinities, but in their relations to his mind. He loved wild things,
not alone for themselves, but for the tonic effect of their savagery
upon him.
"I wish to speak a word for nature," he said, "for absolute freedom and
wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil, to
regard man as an inhabitant, a part and parcel of nature, rather than
as a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement; if so, I
may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of
civilization. The minister and the school committees, and every one of
you, will take care of that."
To Thoreau's admirers, he is the prophet of the fields and woods, the
interpreter of nature, and his every word has to them the deepest
significance. He is the man who
"Lives all alone, close to the bone,
And where life is sweetest, constantly eatest."
They resent all criticism of his life or his words. They are impatient
of all analysis of his methods or of his motives, and a word of praise
of him is the surest passport to their good graces.
But the critics sometimes miss the inner harmony which Thoreau's
admirers see, and discern only queer paradoxes and extravagances of
statement where the others hear the voice of nature's oracle. With
most literary men, the power or disposition of those who know or
understand their writings is in some degree a matter of literary
culture. It is hardly so in the case of Thoreau.
The most illiterate man I know who had ever heard of Thoreau, Mr.
Barney Mullins, of Freedom Centre, Outagamie County, Wisconsin, was a
most ardent admirer of Thoreau, while the most eminent critic in
America, James Russell Lowell, does him scant justice. To Lowell, the
finest thoughts of Thoreau are but strawberries from Emerson's garden,
and other critics have followed back these same strawberries through
Emerson's to still older gardens, among them to that of Sir Thomas
Browne.
But, setting the critics aside, let me tell you about Barney Mullins.
Twenty years ago, I lived for a year in the northern part of Wisconsin.
The snow is very deep in the winter there, and once I rode into town
through the snowbanks on a sled drawn by two oxen and driven by Barney
Mullins. Barney was born on the banks of Killarney, and he could
scarcely be said to speak the English language. He told me that before
he came to Freedom Centre he had lived in a town called Concord, in
Massachusetts. I asked him if he had happened to know a man there by
the name of Henry Thoreau. He at once grew enthusiastic and he said,
among other things: "Mr. Thoreau was a land-surveyor in Concord. I
knew him well. He had a way of his own, and he didn't care naught
about money, but if there was ever a gentleman alive, he was one."
Barney seemed much saddened when I told him that Mr. Thoreau had been
dead a dozen years. On parting, he asked me to come out some time to
Freedom Centre, and to spend a night with him. He had n't much of a
room to offer me, but there was always a place in his house for a
friend of Mr. Thoreau. Such is the feeling of this guild of lovers of
Thoreau, and some of you may come to belong to it.
Here is a test for you. Thoreau says: "I long ago lost a hound, a bay
horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the
travelers I have spoken to regarding them, describing their tracks, and
what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who have heard the
hound and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear
behind the cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they
had lost them themselves."
Now, if any of you, in your dreams, have heard the horse, or seen the
sunshine on the dove's wings, you may join in the search. If not, you
may close the book, for Thoreau has not written for you.
This Thoreau guild is composed, as he himself says, "of knights of a
new, or, rather, an old order, not equestrians or chevaliers, not
Ritters, or riders, but walkers, a still more ancient and honorable
class, I trust."
"I have met," he says, "but one or two persons who understand the art
of walking; who had a genius for sauntering, which word is beautifully
derived from idle people who roved about the country in the Middle Ages
and asked charity, under pretense of going '_à la Sainte Terre_'--a
Sainte-terrer, a Holy Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in
their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but
they who go there are saunterers, in the good sense. Every walk is a
kind of crusade preached by some Peter the Hermit within us, to go
forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.
"It is true that we are but faint-hearted crusaders, who undertake no
persevering, never-ending enterprises. Our expeditions are but tours,
and come round again at evening to the old hearthside from which we set
out. Half the walk is but retracing our steps. We should go forth on
the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never
to return, prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to
our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother,
and brother and sister, and wife and child, and friends; if you have
paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and
are a free man, you are ready for a walk."
Though a severe critic of conventional follies, Thoreau was always a
hopeful man; and no finer rebuke to the philosophy of Pessimism was
ever given than in these words of his: "I know of no more encouraging
fact than the unquestionable ability of a man to elevate his life by a
conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular
picture, or to carve a statue, and so make a few objects beautiful; but
it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and
medium through which we look. This, morally, we can do."
But it is not of Thoreau as a saunterer, or as a naturalist, or as an
essayist, that I wish to speak, but as a moralist, and this in relation
to American politics. Thoreau lived in a dark day of our political
history. At one time he made a declaration of independence in a small
way, and refused allegiance and poll-tax to a Government built on a
corner-stone of human slavery. Because of this he was put into jail,
where he remained one night, and where he made some curious
observations on his townspeople as viewed from the inside of the bars.
Emerson came along in the morning, and asked him what he was there for.
"Why are you not in here, Mr. Emerson?" was his reply; for it seemed to
him that no man had the right to be free in a country where some men
were slaves.
"Voting for the right," Thoreau said, "is doing nothing for it; it is
only expressing feebly your desire that right should prevail." He
would not for an instant recognize that political organization as his
government which was the slave's government also. "In fact," he said,
"I will quietly, after my fashion, declare war with the State. Under a
government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man
is also a prison. I know this well, that if one thousand, if one
hundred, or if one honest man in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing
to remain in this co-partnership, should be locked up in the county
jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. It
matters not how small the beginning may seem to be, what is once well
done is done forever."
Thoreau's friends paid his taxes for him, and he was set free, so that
the whole affair seemed like a joke. Yet, as Stevenson says, "If his
example had been followed by a hundred, or by thirty of his followers,
it would have greatly precipitated the era of freedom and justice. We
feel the misdeeds of our country with so little fervor, for we are not
witnesses to the suffering they cause. But when we see them awake an
active horror in our fellow-man; when we see a neighbor prefer to lie
in prison than be so much as passively implicated in their
perpetration, even the dullest of us will begin to realize them with a
quicker pulse."
In the feeling that a wrong, no matter how great, must fall before the
determined assault of a man, no matter how weak, Thoreau found the
reason for his action. The operation of the laws of God is like an
incontrollable torrent. Nothing can stand before them; but the work of
a single man may set the torrent in motion which will sweep away the
accumulations of centuries of wrong.
There is a long chapter in our national history which is not a glorious
record. Most of us are too young to remember much of politics under
the Fugitive Slave Law, or to understand the deference which
politicians of every grade then paid to the peculiar institution. It
was in those days in the Middle West that Kentucky blackguards, backed
by the laws of the United States, and aided not by Northern blackguards
alone, but by many of the best citizens of those States, chased runaway
slaves through the streets of our Northern capitals.
And not the politicians alone, but the teachers and preachers, took
their turn in paying tribute to Caesar. We were told that the Bible
itself was a champion of slavery. Two of our greatest theologians in
the North declared, in the name of the Higher Law, that slavery was a
holy thing, which the Lord, who cursed Canaan, would ever uphold.
In those days there came a man from the West--a tall, gaunt, grizzly,
shaggy-haired, God-fearing man, a son of the Puritans, whose ancestors
came over on the Mayflower. A dangerous fanatic or lunatic, he was
called, and, with the aid of a few poor negroes whom he had stolen from
slavery, he defied the power of this whole slave-catching United
States. A little square brick building, once a sort of car-shop,
stands near the railway station in the town of Harper's Ferry, with the
mountain wall not far behind it, and the Potomac River running below.
And from this building was fired the shot which pierced the heart of
slavery. And the Governor of Virginia captured this man, and took him
out and hung him, and laid his body in the grave, where it still lies
moldering. But there was part of him not in the jurisdiction of
Virginia, a part which they could neither hang nor bury; and, to the
infinite surprise of the Governor of Virginia, his soul went marching
on.
[Illustration: John Brown.]
When they heard in Concord that John Brown had been captured, and was
soon to be hung, Thoreau sent notice through the city that he would
speak in the public hall on the condition and character of John Brown,
on Sunday evening, and invited all to be present.
The Republican Committee and the Committee of the Abolitionists sent
word to him that this was no time to speak; to discuss such matters
then was premature and inadvisable. He replied: "I did not send to you
for advice, but to tell you that I am going to speak." The selectmen
of Concord dared neither grant nor refuse him the hall. At last they
ventured to lose the key in a place where they thought he could find it.
This address of Thoreau, "A Plea for Captain John Brown," should be a
classic in American history. We do not always realize that the time of
American history is now. The dates of the settlement of Jamestown, and
Plymouth, and St. Augustine do not constitute our history. Columbus
did not discover us. In a high sense, the true America is barely
thirty years old, and its first President was Abraham Lincoln.
We in the North are a little impatient at times, and our politicians,
who are not always our best citizens, mutter terrible oaths, especially
in the month of October, because the South is not yet wholly
regenerate, because not all which sprang from the ashes of the
slave-pen were angels of light.
But let us be patient while the world moves on. Forty years ago not
only the banks of the Yazoo and the Chattahoochee, but those of the
Hudson, and the Charles, and the Wabash, were under the lash. On the
eve of John Brown's hanging not half a dozen men in the city of
Concord, the most intellectual town in New England, the home of
Emerson, and Hawthorne, and Alcott, dared say that they felt any
respect for the man or sympathy for the cause for which he died.
I wish to quote a few passages from this "Plea for Captain John Brown."
To fully realize its power, you should read it all for yourselves. You
must put yourselves back into history, now already seeming almost
ancient history to us, to the period when Buchanan was President--the
terrible sultry lull just before the great storm. You must picture the
audience of the best people in Massachusetts, half-sympathizing with
Captain Brown, half-afraid of being guilty of treason in so doing. You
must picture the speaker, with his clear-cut, earnest features and
penetrating voice. No preacher, no politician, no professional
reformer, no Republican, no Democrat; a man who never voted; a
naturalist whose companions were the flowers and the birds, the trees
and the squirrels. It was the voice of Nature in protest against
slavery and in plea for Captain Brown.
"My respect for my fellow-men," said Thoreau, "is not being increased
these days. I have noticed the cold-blooded way in which men speak of
this event, as if an ordinary malefactor, though one of unusual pluck,
'the gamest man I ever saw,' the Governor of Virginia said, had been
caught and was about to be hung. He was not thinking of his foes when
the Governor of Virginia thought he looked so brave.
"It turns what sweetness I have to gall to hear the remarks of some of
my neighbors. When we heard at first that he was dead, one of my
townsmen observed that 'he dieth as the fool dieth,' which, for an
instant, suggested a likeness in him dying to my neighbor living.
Others, craven-hearted, said, disparagingly, that he threw his life
away because he resisted the Government. Which way have they thrown
their lives, pray?
"I hear another ask, Yankee-like, 'What will he gain by it?' as if he
expected to fill his pockets by the enterprise. If it does not lead to
a surprise party, if he does not get a new pair of boots or a vote of
thanks, it must be a failure. But he won't get anything. Well, no; I
don't suppose he could get four-and-sixpence a day for being hung, take
the year around, but he stands a chance to save his soul--and such a
soul!--which you do not. You can get more in your market for a quart
of milk than a quart of blood, but yours is not the market heroes carry
their blood to.
"Such do not know that like the seed is the fruit, and that in the
moral world, when good seed is planted, good fruit is inevitable; that
when you plant or bury a hero in his field, a crop of heroes is sure to
spring up. This is a seed of such force and vitality, it does not ask
our leave to germinate.
"A man does a brave and humane deed, and on all sides we hear people
and parties declaring,' I didn't do it, nor countenance him to do it in
any conceivable way. It can't fairly be inferred from my past career.'
Ye need n't take so much pains, my friends, to wash your skirts of him.
No one will ever be convinced that he was any creature of yours. He
went and came, as he himself informs us, under the auspices of John
Brown, and nobody else.'
"'All is quiet in Harper's Ferry,' say the journals. What is the
character of that calm which follows when the law and the slaveholder
prevail? I regard this event as a touchstone designed to bring out
with glaring distinctness the character of this Government. We needed
to be thus assisted to see it by the light of history. It needed to
see itself. When a government puts forth its strength on the side of
injustice, as ours, to maintain slavery and kill the liberators of the
slave, it reveals itself simply as brute force. It is more manifest
than ever that tyranny rules. I see this Government to be effectually
allied with France and Austria in oppressing mankind.
"The only government that I recognize--and it matters not how few are
at the head of it, or how small its army,--is the power that
establishes justice in the land, never that which establishes
injustice. What shall we think of a government to which all the truly
brave and just men in the land are enemies, standing between it and
those whom it oppresses?
"Treason! Where does such treason take its rise? I cannot help
thinking of you as ye deserve, ye governments! Can you dry up the
fountain of thought? High treason, when it is resistance to tyranny
here below, has its origin in the power that makes and forever
re-creates man. When you have caught and hung all its human rebels,
you have accomplished nothing but your own guilt. You have not struck
at the fountain-head. The same indignation which cleared the temple
once will clear it again.
"I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the
good and the brave ever in the majority? Would you have had him wait
till that time came? Till you and I came over to him? The very fact
that he had no rabble or troop of hirelings about him, would alone
distinguish him from ordinary heroes. His company was small, indeed,
because few could be found worthy to pass muster. Each one who there
laid down his life for the poor and oppressed was a picked man, called
out of many thousands, if not millions. A man of principle, of rare
courage and devoted humanity, ready to sacrifice his life at any moment
for the benefit of his fellow-man; it may be doubted if there were as
many more their equals in the country; for their leader, no doubt, had
scoured the land far and wide, seeking to swell his troop. These alone
were ready to step between the oppressor and the oppressed. Surely
they were the very best men you could select to be hung! That was the
greatest compliment their country could pay them. They were ripe for
her gallows. She has tried a long time; she has hung a good many, but
never found the right one before.
"When I think of him and his six sons and his son-in-law enlisted for
this fight, proceeding coolly, reverently, humanely to work, for
months, if not years, summering and wintering the thought, without
expecting any reward but a good conscience, while almost all America
stood ranked on the other side, I say again that it affects me as a
sublime spectacle.
"If he had had any journal advocating his cause, any organ monotonously
and wearisomely playing the same old tune and then passing around the
hat, it would have been fatal to his efficiency. If he had acted in
such a way as to be let alone by the Government, he might have been
suspected. It was the fact that the tyrant must give place to him, or
he to the tyrant, that distinguished him from all the reformers of the
day that I know.
"This event advertises me that there is such a fact as death, the
possibility of a man's dying. It seems as if no man had ever died in
America before. If this man's acts and words do not create a revival,
it will be the severest possible satire on words and acts that do.
"It is the best news that America has ever heard. It has already
quickened the feeble pulse of the North, and infused more generous
blood in her veins than any number of years of what is called political
and commercial prosperity. How many a man who was lately contemplating
suicide has now something to live for!
"I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead not for his life, but
for his character, his immortal life, and so it becomes your cause
wholly, and it is not his in the least.
"Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified; this morning,
perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of the chain
which is not without its links. He is not Old Brown any longer; he is
an angel of light. I see now that it was necessary that the bravest
and humanest man in all the country should be hung. Perhaps he saw it
himself. I almost fear that I may yet hear of his deliverance,
doubting if a prolonged life, if any life, can do as much good as his
death.
"'Misguided! Garrulous! Insane! Vindictive!' So you write in your
easy chairs, and thus he, wounded, responds from the floor of the
Armory--clear as a cloudless sky, true as the voice of Nature is! 'No
man sent me here. It was my own promptings and that of my Maker. I
acknowledge no master in human form.'
"And in what a sweet and noble strain he proceeds, addressing his
captors, who stand over him.
"'I think, my friends, you are guilty of a great wrong against God and
humanity, and it would be perfectly right for any one to interfere with
you so far as to free those you willfully and wickedly hold in bondage.
I have yet to learn that God is any respecter of persons.
"'I pity the poor in bondage, who have none to help them; that is why I
am here, not to gratify personal animosity, revenge, or vindictive
spirit. It is my sympathy with the oppressed and the wronged that are
as good as you are, and as precious in the sight of God.
"'I wish to say, furthermore, that you had better, all of you people at
the South, prepare yourselves for a settlement of that question, that
must come up for settlement sooner than you are prepared for it. The
sooner you are prepared the better. You may dispose of me now very
easily--I am nearly disposed of already,--but this question is still to
be settled, this negro question, I mean; the end of that is not yet.'"
"I foresee the time," said Thoreau, "when the painter will paint that
scene, no longer going to Rome for his subject. The poet will sing it;
the historian record it; and, with the Landing of the Pilgrims and the
Declaration of Independence, it will be the ornament of some future
national gallery, when at least the present form of slavery shall be no
more here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown.
Then, and not till then, we will take our revenge."
A few years ago, while on a tramp through the North Woods, I came out
through the forests of North Elba, to the old "John Brown Farm." Here
John Brown lived for many years, and here he tried to establish a
colony of freed slaves in the pure air of the mountains. Here, too,
his family remained through the stirring times when he took part in the
bloody struggles that made and kept Kansas free.
The little old brown farmhouse stands on the edge of the great woods, a
few miles to the north of the highest peaks of the Adirondacks. There
is nothing unusual about the house. You will find a dozen such in a
few hours' walk almost anywhere in the mountain parts of New England or
New York. It stands on a little hill, "in a sightly place," as they
say in that region, with no shelter of trees around it.
[Illustration: The John Brown Homestead, North Elba, N.Y.]
At the foot of the hill in a broad curve flows the River Au Sable,
small and clear and cold, and full of trout. It is not far above that
the stream takes its rise in the dark Indian Pass, the only place in
these mountains where the ice of winter lasts all summer long. The
same ice on the one side sends forth the Au Sable, and on the other
feeds the fountain head of the infant Hudson River.
In the little dooryard in front of the farmhouse is the historic spot
where John Brown's body still lies moldering. There is not even a
grave of his own. His bones lie with those of his father, and the
short record of his life and death is crowded on the foot of his
father's tombstone. Near by, in the little yard, lies a huge,
wandering boulder, torn off years ago by the glaciers from the granite
hills that hem in Indian Pass. The boulder is ten feet or more in
diameter, large enough to make the farmhouse behind it seem small in
comparison. On its upper surface, in letters two feet long, which can
be read plainly for a mile away, is cut the simple name--
JOHN BROWN.
This is John Brown's grave, and the place, the boulder; and the
inscription are alike fitting to the man he was.
[Illustration: John Brown's Grave.]
Dust to dust; ashes to ashes; granite to granite; the last of the
Puritans!
[1] Address before the California State Normal School, at San José,
1892.
A KNIGHT OF THE ORDER OF POETS.[1]
"In London I saw two pictures. One was of a woman. You would not
mistake it for any of the Greek goddesses. It had a splendor and
majesty such as Phidias might have given to a woman Jupiter. But not
terrible. The culmination of the awful beauty was in an expression of
matchless compassion. If there had been other figures, they must have
been suffering humanity at her feet.
"The other was also of a woman. Whose face it is hard to say. Not the
Furies, not Lady Macbeth, not Catherine de Medici, not Phillip the
Second, not Nero, not any face you have ever seen, but a gathering up
from all the faces you have seen--the greatness, the splendor, the
savagery, the greed, the pride, the hate, the mercilessness, into one
colossal, terrifyingly Satanic woman-face. The first was clothed in a
simple, soft, white robe; the other in a befitting tragic splendor,
mostly blood-red. I looked from one to the other. What immeasurable
distance between them! What single point have they in common? But as
I look back and forth I seem to see a certain formal similarity. It
grows upon me. I am incredulous. I am appalled. Then one touches me
and whispers: 'They are the same. It is the Church.' In London I saw
this--in the air."--WILLIAM LOWE BRYAN.
Four centuries ago began the great struggle for freedom of thought
which has made our modern civilization possible. I wish here to give
something of the story of a man who in his day was not the least in
this conflict--a man who dared to think and act for himself when
thought and act were costly--Ulrich von Hutten.
Near Frankfort-on-the-Main, on a sharp pinnacle of rock above the
little railway station of Vollmerz, may still be found the scanty ruins
of an old castle which played a brave part in German history before it
was destroyed in the Thirty Years War.
In this castle of Steckelberg, in the year 1488, was born Ulrich von
Hutten. He was the last of a long line of Huttens of Steckelberg,
strong men who knew not fear, who had fought for the Emperor in all
lands whither the imperial eagle had flown, and who, when the empire
was at peace, had fought right merrily with their neighbors on all
sides. Robber-knights they were, no doubt, some or all of them; but in
those days all was fair in love and in war. And this line of warriors
centered in Ulrich von Hutten, and with him it ended. "The wild
kindred has gone out with this its greatest."
Ulrich was the eldest son, and bore his father's name. But he was not
the son his father had dreamed of. Slender of figure, short of
stature, and weak of limb, Ulrich seemed unworthy of his burly
ancestry. The horse, the sword, and the lute were not for him. He
tried hard to master them and to succeed in all things worthy of a
knight. But he was strong only with his books. At last to his books
his father consigned him, and, sorely disappointed, he sent Ulrich to
the monastery of Fulda to be made a priest.
A wise man, Eitelwolf von Stein, became his friend, and pointed out to
him a life braver than that of a priest, more noble than that of a
knight, the life of a scholar. To Hutten's father Eitelwolf wrote:
"Would you bury a genius like that in the cloister? He must be a man
of letters." But the father had decided once for all. Ulrich must
never return to Steckelberg unless he came back as a priest. And the
son took his fate in his own hands, and fled from Fulda, to make his
way as a scholar in a world in which scholarship received scanty
recognition.
At the same time another young man whose history was to be interwoven
with his own, Martin Luther, fled from the wickedness and deceit of
this same world to the solitude of the monastery of Erfurth. By very
different paths they came at last to work in the same cause, and their
modes of action were not less different.
To the University of Cologne Hutten went, and with the students of that
day he was trained in the mysteries of scholasticism, and in the Latin
of the schoolmen and the priests. Wonderful problems they pondered
over, and they used to write long arguments in Latin for or against
propositions which came nowhere within the domain of fact. That
scholarship stood related to reality, and that it must find its end and
justification in action was no part of the philosophy of those times.
But Hutten and his friends cared little for scholastic puzzles and they
gave themselves to the study of the beauties of Latin poetry and to the
newly opened mine of the literature of Greece. They delighted in
Virgil and Lucian, and still more in Homer and Aeschylus.
The Turks had conquered Constantinople, and the fall of the Greek
Empire had driven many learned Greeks to the West of Europe. There
some of the scholars received them with open arms, and eagerly learned
from them to read Homer and Aristotle in the original tongue, and the
New Testament also. Those who followed these studies came to be known
as Humanists. But most of the universities and the monasteries in
Germany looked upon this revival of Greek culture as pernicious and
antichristian. Poetry they despised. The Latin Vulgate met their
religious needs, and Greek was only another name for Paganism. The
party name of Obscurantists ("Dunkelmänner") was given to these, and
this name has remained with them on the records of history.
In the letters of one of Hutten's comrades we find this confession of
faith, which is interesting as expressing the feelings of young men of
that time: "There is but one God, but he has many forms, and many
names--Jupiter, Sol, Apollo, Moses, Christ, Luna, Ceres, Proserpine,
Tellus, Mary. But be careful how you say that. One must disclose
these things in secret, like Eleusinian mysteries. In matters of
religion, you must use the cover of fables and riddles. You, with
Jupiter's grace (that is, the grace of the best and greatest god), can
despise the lesser gods in silence. When I say Jupiter, I mean Christ
and the true God. The coat and the beard and the bones of Christ I
worship not. I worship the living God, who wears no coat nor beard,
and left no bones upon the earth."
Hutten wished to know the world, not from books only, but to see all
cities and lands; to measure himself with other men; to rise above
those less worthy. The danger of such a course seemed to him only the
greater attraction. Content to him was laziness; love of home but a
dog's delight in a warm fire. "I live," he said, "in no place rather
than another; my home is everywhere."
So he tramped through Germany to the northward, and had but a sorry
time. In his own mind he was a scholar, a poet, a knight of the
noblest blood of Germany; to others he was a little sickly and forlorn
vagrant. Never strong of body, he was stricken by a miserable disease
which filled his life with a succession of attacks of fever. He was
ship-wrecked on the Baltic Sea, sick and forlorn in Pomerania, and at
last he was received in charity in the house of Henning Lötz, professor
of law at Greifeswald.
This action has given Lötz's name immortality, for it is associated
with the first of those fiery poems of Hutten which, in their way, are
unique in literature. For Hutten was restless and proud, and was not
to be content with bread and butter and a new suit of clothes. This
independence was displeasing to the professor, who finally, in utter
disgust, turned Hutten out of doors in midwinter. When the boy had
tramped a while in storm and slush, two servants of Lötz overtook him
on the road and robbed him of his money and clothing. In a wretched
plight he reached a little inn in Rostock, in Mecklenberg. Here the
professors in the university received him kindly, and made provision
for his needs. Then he let loose the fury of his youthful anger on
Lötz. As ever, his poetic genius rose with his wrath, and the more
angry he became the greater was he as a poet.
Two volumes he published, ringing the changes of his contempt and
hatred of Lötz, at the same time praising the virtues of those who had
found in him a kindred spirit. A "knight of the order of poets," he
styles himself, and to all Humanists, to the "fellow-feeling among free
spirits" ("_Gemeingeist unter freien Geistern_") he appeals for
sympathy in his struggle with Lötz.
He had, indeed, not found a foeman worthy of his steel, but he had
shown what a finely tempered blade he bore. Foemen enough he found in
later times, and his steel had need of all its sharpness and temper.
And it never failed him to the last.
Meanwhile he wandered to Vienna, giving lectures there on the art of
poetry. But poetry was abhorred by the schoolmen everywhere, and the
students of the university were forbidden to attend his lectures. He
then went to Italy. When he reached Pavia, he found the city in the
midst of a siege, surrounded by a hostile French army. He fell ill of
a fever, and giving himself up for dead, he composed the famous epitaph
for himself, of which I give a rough translation:
Here, also be it said, a life of ill-fortune is ended;
By evil pursued on the water; beset by wrong upon land.
Here lie Hutten's bones; he, who had done nothing wrongful,
Was wickedly robbed of his life by the sword in a Frenchman's hand.
By Fate, decided that he should see unlucky days only;
Decided that even these days could never be many or long;
Hemmed in by danger and death, he forsook not serving the muses,
And as well as he could, he rendered this service in song.
The Frenchman's sword did not rob him of his life. The Frenchman's
hand took only his money, which was not much, and again sent him
adrift. He now set his pen to writing epigrams on the Emperor, wherein
Maximilian was compared to the eagle which should devour the frogs in
the swamps of Venice. Meanwhile he enlisted as a common soldier in
Maximilian's army.
In Italy, the abuses of the Papacy attracted his attention. Officials
of the Church were then engaged in extending the demand for
indulgences. The sale of pardons "straight from Rome, all hot," was
becoming a scandal in Christendom. All this roused the wrath of
Hutten, who attacked the Pope himself in his songs:
"Heaven now stands for a price to be peddled and sold,
But what new folly is this, as though the fiat of Heaven
Needed an earthly witness, an earthly warrant and seal!"
More prosperous times followed, and we find Hutten honored as a poet,
living in the court of the Archbishop of Mainz. At this time a cousin,
Hans Hutten, a young man of great courage and promise, was a knight in
the service of Ulrich, Duke of Wurtemberg. He was a favorite of the
Duke, and he and his young wife were the life of the Würtemburg court.
And Duke Ulrich once came to Hans and threw himself at his feet,
begging that this wife, whom he loved, should be given over wholly to
him. Hans Hutten answered the Duke like a man, and the Duke arose with
murder in his heart. Afterward, when they were hunting in a wood, he
stabbed Hans Hutten in the back with his sword.
All this came to the ear of Ulrich Hutten in Mainz. Love for his
cousin, love for his name and family, love for freedom and truth, all
urged him to avenge the murdered Hans. The wrongs the boy had suffered
from the coarse-hearted Professor Lötz became as nothing beside this
great crime against the Huttens and against manhood.
In all the history of invective, I know of nothing so fierce as
Hutten's appeal against Duke Ulrich In five different pamphlets his
crime was described to the German people, and all good men, from the
Emperor down, were called on to help him in his struggle against the
Duke of Würtemberg.
"I envy you your fame, you murderer," he wrote. "A year will be named
for you, and there shall be a day set off for you. Future generations
shall read, for those who are born this year, that they were born in
the year stained by the ineffaceable shame of Germany. You will come
into the calendar, scoundrel. You will enrich history. Your deed is
immortal, and you will be remembered in all future time. You have had
your ambition, and you shall never be forgotten."
This struggle lasted long. Finally, after many appeals, the German
nobles rose in arms and besieged Stuttgart, and Duke Ulrich was driven
from the land he had disgraced.
[Illustration: Ulrich von Hutten.]
Again Hutten visited Italy, this time by a partial reconciliation with
his father, who would overlook his failure to become a priest if he
would study law at Rome. At about this time Luther visited Rome. He
came, at first, in a spirit of reverence; but, at last, he wrote:
"_Wenn es gibt eine Hölle, Roma ist darauf gebant_." ("If there is a
hell, Rome is built on it.")
The impression on Hutten was scarcely less vivid. Little by little he
began to see in the Pope of Rome a criminal greater that Professor
Lötz, greater than Duke Ulrich, one who could devour not one cousin
only, but the whole German people and nation. "For three hundred
years," said he, "the Pope and the schoolmen have been covering the
teachings of Christ with a mass of superstitious ceremonies and wicked
books." These feelings were poured out in an appeal to the German
rulers to shake off the yoke, and no longer send their money to "Simon
of Rome."
Hutten's friends tried to quiet him. He was a man not of free thought
only, but of free speech, and knew no concealment. Milder men in those
times, as later Melancthon and Erasmus, were full of admiration of
Hutten, and valued his skill and force. But they were afraid of him,
and fearful always that the best of causes should be wrecked in his
hands.
At this time, at the age of twenty-five, Hutten is described as a
small, thin man, of homely features, with blonde hair and black beard.
His pale face wore a severe, almost wild, expression. His speech was
sharp, often terrible. Yet with those whom he loved and respected his
voice had a frank and winning charm. He had but few friends, but they
were fast ones. His personal character, so far as records go, was
singularly pure, and not often in his writings does he strike a coarse
or unclean note.
In these days, the two most learned men in Germany were Erasmus and
Reuchlin. They were leaders of the Humanists, skilled in Greek, and
even in the Hebrew tongue, and were called by Hutten "the two eyes of
Germany." A Jew named Pfefferkorn, who had become converted to
Christianity, was filled with an unholy zeal against his fellow-Jews
who had not been converted. Among other things, he asked an edict from
the Emperor that all Jewish books in Germany should be destroyed.
Reuchlin was a Hebrew scholar. He had written a Hebrew grammar, and
was learned in the Old Testament, as well as in the Talmud, and other
deposits of the ancient lore of the rabbis. The Emperor referred
Pfefferkorn's request to Reuchlin for his opinion. Reuchlin decided
that there was no valid reason for the destruction of any of the
ancient Jewish writings, and only of such modern ones as might be
decided by competent scholars to be hostile to Christianity.
This enraged Pfefferkorn and his Obscurantist associates. Pamphlets
were written denouncing Reuchlin, and these were duly answered. A
general war of words between the Humanists and Obscurantists began,
which, in time, came before the Pope and the Emperor. Reuchlin was
regarded in those days as a man of unusual calmness and dignity. Next
to Erasmus, he was the most learned scholar in Europe. He would never
condescend in his controversies to the coarse terms used by his
adversaries. We may learn something of the temper of the times by
observing that, in a single pamphlet, as quoted by Strauss, the
epithets that the dignified Reuchlin applies to Pfefferkorn are: "A
poisonous beast," "a scarecrow," "a horror," "a mad dog," "a horse," "a
mule," "a hog," "a fox," "a raging wolf," "a Syrian lion," "a
Cerberus," "a fury of hell." In this matter Reuchlin was finally
triumphant. This triumph was loudly celebrated by his friend Hutten in
another poem, in which the Obscurantists were mercilessly attacked.
We have seen with Hutten's growth a gradual increase in the importance
of those to whom he declared himself an enemy. He began as a boy with
the obscure Professor Lötz. He ended with the Pope of Rome.
At this time Reuchlin published a volume called "_Epistolae Clarorum
Virorum_" ("letters of illustrious men"). It was made up of letters
written by the various learned men of Europe to Reuchlin, in sympathy
with him in his struggle. The title of this work gave the keynote to a
series of letters called "_Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum_" ("letters of
obscure men")--that is, of Obscurantists.
These letters, written by different persons, but largely by Hutten, are
the most remarkable of all satires of that time.
They are a series of imaginary epistles, supposed to be addressed by
various Obscurantists to a poet named Ortuinus. They are written with
consummate skill, in the degenerate Latin used by the priests in those
days, and they are made to exhibit all the secret meanness, ignorance,
and perversity of their supposed writers.
The first of these epistles of the "obscure men" were eagerly read: by
their supposed associates, the Obscurantists. Here were men who felt
as they felt, and who were not afraid to speak. The mendicant friars
in England had a day of rejoicing, and a Dominican friar in Flanders
bought all the copies of the letters he could find to present to his
bishop.
But in time even the dullest began to feel the severity of the satire.
The last of these letters formed the most telling blows ever dealt at
the schoolmen by the men of learning. In one of the earlier letters we
find this question, which may serve as a type of many others:
A man ate an egg in which a chicken was just beginning to form,
ignorant of that fact, and forgetting that it was Friday. A friend
consoles him by saying that a chicken in that stage counts for no more
than worms in cheese or in cherries, and these can be eaten even in
fasting-time. But the writer is not satisfied. Worms, he had been
told by a physician, who was also a great naturalist, are reckoned as
fishes, which one can eat on fast-days. But with all this, he fears
that a young chicken may be really forbidden food, and he asks the help
of the poet Ortuinus to a righteous decision.
Another person writes to Ortuinus: "There is a new book much talked of
here, and, as you are a poet, you can do us a good service by telling
us of it. A notary told me that this book is the wellspring of poetry,
and that its author, one Homer, is the father of all poets. And he
said there is another Homer in Greek. I said, 'What is the use of the
Greek? the Latin is much better.' And I asked, 'What is contained in
the book?' And he said it treats of certain people who are called
Greeks, who carried on a war with some others called Trojans. And
these Trojans had a great city, and those Greeks besieged it and stayed
there ten years. And the Trojans came out and fought them till the
whole plain was covered with blood and quite red. And they heard the
noise in heaven, and one of them threw a stone which twelve men could
not lift, and a horse began to talk and utter prophecies. But I can't
believe that, because it seems impossible, and the book seems to me not
to be authentic. I pray you give me your opinion."
Another relates the story of his visit to Reuchlin:
"When I came into his house, Reuchlin said, 'Welcome, bachelor; seat
yourself.' And he had a pair of spectacles ('_unum Brillum_') on his
nose, and a book before him curiously written, and I saw at once that
it was neither in German nor Bohemian, nor yet in Latin. And I said to
him, 'Respected Doctor, what do they call that book?' He answered, 'It
is called the Greek Plutarch, and it treats of philosophy.' And I
said, 'Read some of it, for it must contain wonderful things.' Then I
saw a little book, newly printed, lying on the floor, and I said to
him, 'Respected Doctor, what lies there?' He answered, 'It is a
controversial book, which a friend in Cologne sent me lately. It is
written against me. The theologians in Cologne have printed it, and
they say that Johann Pfefferkorn wrote it.' And I said, 'What will you
do about it? Will you not vindicate yourself?' And he answered,
'Certainly not. I have been vindicated long ago, and can spend no time
on these follies. My eyes are too weak for me to waste their strength
on matters which are not useful.'"
We next find Hutten high in the favor of the Emperor Maximilian, by
whose order he was crowned poet-laureate of Germany. The wreath of
laurel was woven by the fair hands of Constance Peutinger, who was
called the handsomest girl in Germany, and with great ceremony she put
this wreath on his head in the presence of the Emperor at Mainz.
Now, for the first time, Hutten seems to have thought seriously of
marriage. He writes to a friend, Friedrich Fischer: "I am overcome
with a longing for rest, that I may give myself to art. For this, I
need a wife who shall take care of me. You know my ways. I cannot be
alone, not even by night. In vain they talk to me of the pleasures of
celibacy. To me it is loneliness and monotony. I was not born for
that. I must have a being who can lead me from sorrows--yes, even from
my graver studies; one with whom I can joke and play, and carry on
light and happy conversations, that the sharpness of sorrow may be
blunted and the heat of anger made mild. Give me a wife, dear
Friedrich, and you know what kind of one I want. She must be young,
pretty, well educated, serene, tender, patient. Money enough give her,
but not too much. For riches I do not seek; and as for blood and
birth, she is already noble to whom Hutten gives his hand."
A young woman--Cunigunde Glauburg--was found, and she seemed to meet
all requirements. But the mother of the bride was not pleased with the
arrangement. Hutten was a "dangerous man," she said, "a
revolutionist." "I hope," said Hutten, "that when she comes to know
me, and finds in me nothing restless, nothing mutinous, my studies full
of humor and wit, that she will look more kindly on me." To a brother
of Cunigunde he writes: "Hutten has not conquered many cities, like
some of these iron-eaters, but through many lands has wandered with the
fame of his name. He has not slain his thousands, like those, but may
be none the less loved for that. He does not stalk about on yard-long
shin-bones, nor does his gigantic figure frighten travelers; but in
strength of spirit he yields to none. He does not glow with the
splendor of beauty, but he dares flatter himself that his soul is
worthy of love. He does not talk big nor swell himself with boasting,
but simply, openly, honestly acts and speaks."
But all his wooing came to naught; another man wedded the fair
Cunigunde, and the coming storm of Romish wrath left Hutten no
opportunity to turn his attention elsewhere.
The old Pope was now dead, and one of the famous family of Medici, in
Florence, had succeeded him as Leo the Tenth. Leo was kindly disposed
toward the Humanist studies, and Hutten, as poet of the Humanists,
addressed to him directly a remarkable appeal, which made the
turning-point in his life, for it placed him openly among those who
resisted the Pope.
Recounting to the new Pope Leo all the usurpations which in his
judgment had been made, one by one, by his predecessors--all the
robberies, impositions, and abuses of the Papacy, from the time of
Constantine down--he appeals to Leo, as a wise man and a scholar, to
restore stolen power and property, to correct all abuses, to abandon
all temporal power, and become once more the simple Bishop of Rome.
"For there can never be peace between the robber and the robbed till
the stolen goods are returned."
Now, for the first time, the work of Luther came to Hutten's attention.
The disturbances at Wittenberg were in the beginning treated by all as
a mere squabble of the monks. To Leo the Tenth this discussion had no
further interest than this: "Brother Martin," being a scholar, was most
probably right. To Hutten, who cared nothing for doctrinal points, it
had no significance; the more monkish strifes the better--"the sooner
would the enemies eat each other up."
But now Hutten came to recognize in Luther the apostle of freedom of
thought, and in that struggle of the Reformation he found a nobler
cause than that of the Humanists--in Luther a greater than Reuchlin.
And Hutten never did things by halves. He entered into the warfare
heart and soul. In 1520 he published his "Roman Trinity," his gage of
battle against Rome.
He now, like Luther, began to draw his inspiration, as well as his
language, not from the classics, but from the New Testament. A new
motto he took for himself, one which was henceforth ever on his lips,
and which appears again and again in his later writings: "_Jacta est
alea_" ("the die is cast"); or, in the stronger German, in which he
more often gave it, "_Ich hab's gewagt_" ("I have dared it").
"Auf dasz ichs nit anheb umsunst
Wolauf, wir haben Gottes Gunst;
Wer wollt in solchem bleiben dheim?
Ich hab's gewagt! das ist mein Reim!"
"Der niemand grössern Schaden bringt,
Dann mir als noch die Sach gelingt
Dahin mich Gott und Wahrheit bringt,
Ich hab's gewagt."
"So breche ich hindurch, durch breche ich, oder ich falle,
Kämpfend, nach dem ich einmal geworfen das Loos!"
(So break I through the ranks else I die fighting--
Fighting, since once and forever the die I have cast!)
In this motto we have the keynote to his fiery and earnest nature.
Convinced that a cause was right, he knew no bounds of caution or
policy; he feared no prison or death. "I have dared it!"
"To all free men of Germany," he speaks. "Their tyranny will not last
forever; unless all signs deceive me, their power is soon to fail--for
already is the axe laid at the root of the tree, and that tree which
bears not good fruit will be rooted out, and the vineyard of the Lord
will be purified. That you shall not only hope, but soon see with your
eyes. Meanwhile, be of good cheer, you men of Germany. Not weak, not
untried, are your leaders in the struggle for freedom. Be not afraid,
neither weaken in the midst of the battle, for broken at last is the
strength of the enemy, for the cause is righteous, and the rage of
tyranny is already at its height. Courage, and farewell! Long live
freedom! I have dared it!" ("_Lebe die Freiheit; ich hab's gewagt_.")
Warnings and threats innumerable came to Hutten, from enemies who
feared and hated, from friends who were fearful and trembling; but he
never flinched: He had "dared it." The bull of excommunication which
came from the Pope frightened him no more than it did Luther. But at
last he was compelled to retire from the cities, and he took up his
abode in the Castle of Ebernburg, with Franz von Sickingen.
Franz von Sickingen was one of the great nobles of Germany, and he
ruled over a region in the bend of the Rhine between Worms and Bingen.
His was one of the bravest characters of that time. A knight of the
highest order, he became a disciple of Hutten and Luther, and on his
help was the greatest reliance placed by the friends of the growing
reform. His strong Castle of Ebernburg, on the hills above Bingen, was
the refuge of all who were persecuted by the authorities. The "Inn of
Righteousness" ("_Herberge von Gerechtigkeit_"), the Ebernburg was
called by Hutten.
The Humanists who had stood with Hutten in the struggle between
Reuchlin and Pfefferkorn saw with growing concern the gradual transfer
of the field of battle from questions of literature to questions of
religion. Reuchlin, growing old and weak, wrote a letter, disavowing
any sympathy with the new uprisings against the time-honored authority
of the Church. This letter came into Hutten's hands, and, with all his
reverence for his old friend and master, he could not keep silence.
"Eternal Gods!" he writes. "What do I see? Have you sunk so deep in
weakness and fear, O Reuchlin! that you cannot endure blame even for
those who have fought for you in time of danger? Through such shameful
subservience do you hope to reconcile those to whom, if you were a man,
you would never give a friendly greeting, so badly have they treated
you? Yet reconcile them; and if there is no other way, go to Rome and
kiss the feet of Leo, and then write against us. Yet you shall see
that, against your will, and against the will of all the godless
courtesans, we shall shake off the shameful yoke, and free ourselves
from slavery. I am ashamed that I have written so much for you--have
done so much for you,--since when it comes to action you have made such
a miserable exit from the ranks. From me shall you know henceforth
that whether you fight in Luther's cause or throw yourself at the feet
of the Bishop of Rome, I shall never trust you more." The poor old
man, thus harassed on all sides, found no longer any rest or comfort in
his studies. Worn-out in body, and broken in spirit, he soon died.
The great source of Luther's hold on Germany lay in his direct appeal
to the common people. For this he translated the Bible into
German--even now the noblest version of the Bible in existence. For in
translating a work of inspiration the intuition of a man like Luther,
as Bayard Taylor has said, counts for more than the combined
scholarship of a hundred men learned in the Greek and Hebrew. "The
clear insight of one prophet is better than the average judgment of
forty-seven scribes." The German language was then struggling into
existence, and scholars considered it beneath their notice. It was
fixed for all time by Luther's Bible. Luther often spent a week on a
single verse to find and fix the idiomatic German. "It is easy to plow
when the field is cleared," he said. "We must not ask the letters of
the Latin alphabet how to speak German, but the mother in the kitchen
and the plowman in the field, that they may know that the Bible is
speaking German, and speaking to them. Out of the abundance of the
heart the mouth speaketh. No German peasant would understand that. We
must make it plain to him. '_Wess das Herz voll ist, dess geht der
Mund über_.' ('Whose heart is full, his mouth runs over.')"
The same influence acted on Hutten. All his previous writings were in
Latin, and were directed to scholars only. Henceforth he wrote the
language of the Fatherland, and his appeals to the people were in
language which the people could and did read. No Reformation ever came
while only the learned and the noble were in the secret of it.
"Latein, ich vor geschrieben hab
Das war ein jeden nicht bekannt;
Jetzt schrei ich an das Vaterland,
Teutsch Nation in ihrer Sprach
Zu bringen diesen Dingen Rach."
("For Latin wrote I hitherto,
Which common people did not know.
Now cry I to the Fatherland,
The German people, in their tongue,
Redress to bring for all these wrongs.")
A song for the people he now wrote, the "New Song of Ulrich von
Hutten," a song which stands with Luther's "Em feste Burg" in the
history of the Reformation:
"Ich hab's gewagt mit Sinnen,
Und trag des noch kein Reu,
Mag ich nit dran gewinnen,
Noch muss man spüren Treu.
"Darmit ich mein
Mit eim allein,
Wenn Man es wolt erkennen
Dem Land zu gut
Wiewol man thut
Ein Pfaffenfeind mich nennen."
Part of this may be freely translated--
"With open eyes I have dared it;
And cherish no regret,
And though I fail to conquer,
The Truth is with me yet."
Hutten's dream in these days was of a league of nobles, cities, and
people, aided by the Emperor if possible, against the Emperor if
necessary, which should by force of arms forever free Germany from the
rule of the Pope. Luther had little faith in the power of force.
"What Hutten wishes," he wrote to a friend, "you see. But I do not
wish to strive for the Gospel with murder and violence. Through the
power of the Word is the world subdued; through the Word the Church
shall be preserved and freed. Even Antichrist shall be destroyed by
the power of the Word."
Now came the Great Diet at Worms, whither Luther was called before the
Emperor to answer for his heretical teachings, and before which he
stood firm and undaunted, a noble figure which has been a turning-point
in history. "Here I stand. I can do nothing else. God help me."
Hutten, on his sick-bed at Ebernburg, not far away, was full of wrath
at the trial of Luther. "Away!" he shouted, "away from the clear
fountains, ye filthy swine! Out of the sanctuary, ye accursed
peddlers! Touch no longer the altar with your desecrating hands. What
have ye to do with the alms of our fathers, which were given for the
poor and the Church, and you spend for splendor, pomp, and foolery,
while the children suffer for bread? See you not that the wind of
Freedom[2] is blowing? On two men not much depends. Know that there
are many Luthers, many Huttens here. Should either of us be destroyed,
still greater is the danger that awaits you; for then, with those
battling for freedom, the avengers of innocence will make common cause."
I have wished, in writing this little sketch, that I could have a
novelist's privilege of bringing out my hero happily at the end. I
have hitherto had the struggles of a man living before his time to
relate; the voice of one crying in the wilderness. If this were a
romance, I might tell how, with Hutten's entreaties and Luther's
exhortations, and under the wise management of Franz von Sickingen, the
people banded together against foreign foes and foreign domination, and
German unity, German freedom, and religious liberty were forever
established in the Fatherland. But, alas! the history does not run in
that way; at least not till a hundred years of war had bathed the land
in blood.
For Hutten henceforth I have only misery and failure to relate. The
union of knights and cities resulted in a ruinous campaign of Franz von
Sickingen against Trèves. Sickingen's army was driven back by the
Elector. His strong Castle of Landstühl was besieged by the Catholic
princes, and cannon was used in this siege for the first time in
history. The walls of Landstühl, twenty-five feet thick, were battered
down, and Sickingen himself was killed by the falling of a beam. The
war was over, and nothing worthy had been accomplished.
When Luther heard of the death of Sickingen, he wrote to a friend:
"Yesterday I heard and read of Franz von Sickingen's true and sad
history. God is a righteous but marvelous Judge. Sickingen's fall
seems to me a verdict of the Lord, that strengthens me in the belief
that the force of arms is to be kept far from matters of the Gospel."
Hutten was driven from the Ebernburg. He was offered a high place in
the service of the King of France; but, as a true German, he refused
it, and fled, penniless and sick, to Basle, in Switzerland.
Here the great Humanist, Erasmus, reigned supreme. Erasmus disavowed
all sympathy with his former friend and fellow-student. He called
Hutten a dangerous and turbulent man, and warned the Swiss against him.
Erasmus had noticed, with horror, in those who had studied Greek, that
the influence of Lutheranism was fatal to learning; that zeal for
philology decreased as zeal for religion increased. Already Erasmus,
like Reuchlin, was ranged on the side of the Pope. So, in letters and
pamphlets, Erasmus attacked Hutten; and the poet was not slow in giving
as good as he received. And this war between the Humanist and the
Reformer gave great joy to the Obscurantists, who feared and hated them
both.
"Humanism," says Strauss, "was broad-minded but faint-hearted, and in
none is this better seen than in Erasmus. Luther was a narrower man,
but his unvarying purpose, never looking to left nor right, was his
strength. Humanism is the broad mirror-like Rhine at Bingen. It must
grow narrower and wilder before it can break through the mountains to
the sea."
Repulsed by Erasmus at Basle, Hutten fled to Mülhausen. Attacked by
assassins there, he left at midnight for Zürich, where he put himself
under the protection of Ulrich Zwingli. In Zwingli, the purest,
loftiest, and clearest of insight of all of the leaders of the
Reformation, Hutten found a congenial spirit. His health was now
utterly broken. To the famous Baths of Pfaffers he went, in hope of
release from pain. But the modern bath-houses of Ragatz were not built
in those days, and the daily descent by a rope from above into the dark
and dismal chasm was too much for his feeble strength. Then Zwingli
sent him to a kindly friend, the Pastor Hans Schnegg, who lived on the
little Island of Ufnau, in the Lake of Zürich. And here at Ufnau, worn
out by his long, double conflict with the Pope and with disease, Ulrich
von Hutten died in 1523, at the age of thirty-five. "He left behind
him," wrote Zwingli, "nothing of worth. Books he had none; no money,
and no property of any sort, except a pen."
[Illustration: Ulrich Zwingli.]
What was the value of this short and troubled life? Three hundred
years ago it was easy to answer with Erasmus and the rest--Nothing.
Hutten had denounced the Pope, and the Pope had crushed him. He had
stirred up noble men to battle for freedom, and they, too, had been
destroyed. Franz von Sickingen was dead. The league of the cities and
princes had faded away forever. Luther was hidden in the Wartburg, no
one knew where, and scarcely a trace of the Reformation was left in
Germany. Whatever Hutten had touched he had ruined. He had "dared
it," and the force he had defied had crushed him in return.
But, looking back over these centuries, the life of Hutten rises into
higher prominence. His writings were seed in good ground. At his
death the Reformation seemed hopeless. Six years later, at the second
Diet of Spires, half Germany signed the protest which made us
Protestants. "It was Luther alone who said _no_ at the Diet of Worms.
It was princes and people, cities and churches, who said _no_ at the
Diet of Spires."
Hutten's dream of a United German people freed from the yoke of Rome
was for three hundred years unrealized. For the Reformation sundered
the German people and ruined the German Empire, and not till our day
has German unity come to pass. But, as later reformers said, "It is
better that Germany should be half German, than that it should be all
Roman."
For the true meaning of this conflict does not lie in any question of
church against church or creed against creed, nor that worship in
cathedrals with altars and incense and rich ceremony should give way to
the simpler forms of the Lutheran litany. The issue was that of the
growth of man. The "right of private interpretation" is the
recognition of personal individuality.
The death of Hutten was, after all, not untimely. He had done his
work. His was the "voice of one crying in the wilderness." The head
of John the Baptist lay on the charger before Jesus had fulfilled his
mission. Arnold Winkelried, at Sempach, filled his body with Austrian
spears before the Austrian phalanx was broken. John Brown fell at
Harper's Ferry before a blow was struck against slavery. Ulrich von
Hutten had set every man, woman, and child in Germany to thinking of
his relations to the Lord and to the Pope. His mission was completed;
and longer life for him, as Strauss has suggested, might have led to
discord among the Reformers themselves.
For this lover of freedom was intolerant of intolerance. For fine
points of doctrine he had only contempt. When the Lutherans began to
treat as enemies all Reformers who did not with them subscribe to the
Confession of Augsburg, Hutten's fiery pen would have repudiated this
confession. For he fought for freedom of the spirit, not for the
Lutheran confession.
Had he remained in Switzerland, he would have been still less in
harmony with the prevailing conditions. Not long after, Zwingli was
slain in the wretched battle of Kappel, and, after him, the Swiss
Reformation passed under the control of John Calvin. There can be no
doubt that the stern pietist of Geneva would have burned Ulrich von
Hutten with as calm a conscience as he did Michael Servetus.
The idea of a united and uniform Church, whether Catholic, Lutheran, or
Calvinist, had little attraction for Hutten. He was one of the first
to realize that religion is individual, not collective. It is
concerned with life, not with creeds or ceremonies. In the high sense,
no man can follow or share the religion of another. His religion,
whatever it may be, is his own. It is built up from his own thoughts
and prayers and actions. It is the expression of his own ideals. Only
forms can be transferred unchanged from man to man, from generation to
generation; never realities. For whatever is real to a man becomes
part of him and partakes of his growth, and is modified by his
personality.
Hutten was buried where he died, on the little island of Ufnau, in the
Lake of Zürich, at the foot of the mighty Alps. And some of his old
associates put over his grave a commemorative stone. Afterwards, the
monks of the abbey of Einsiedein, in Schwytz came to the island and
removed the stone, and obliterated all traces of the grave.
It was well that they did so; for now the whole green island of Ufnau
is his alone, and it is his worthy sepulcher.
[1] For many of the details of the life of Hutten, and for most of the
quotations from Hutten's writings given in this paper, the writer is
indebted to the excellent memoir by David Friedrich Strauss, entitled
"Ulrich von Hutten." (Fourth Edition: Bonn, 1878.) No attempt has been
made to give here an account of Hutten's writings, only a few of the
more noteworthy being mentioned.
[2] "Sehet ihr nicht dasz die Luft der Freiheit weht?"
NATURE-STUDY AND MORAL CULTURE.[1]
In pleading for nature-study as a means of moral culture, I do not wish
to make an overstatement, nor to claim for such study any occult or
exclusive power. It is not for us to say, so much nature in the
schools, so much virtue in the scholars. The character of the teacher
is a factor which must always be counted in. But the best teacher is
the one that comes nearest to nature, the one who is most effective in
developing individual wisdom.
To seek knowledge is better than to have knowledge. Precepts of virtue
are useless unless they are built into life. At birth, or before, "the
gate of gifts is closed." It is the art of life, out of variant and
contradictory materials passed down to us from our ancestors, to build
up a coherent and effective individual character.
The essence of character-building lies in action. The chief value of
nature-study in character-building is that, like life itself, it deals
with realities. The experience of living is of itself a form of
nature-study. One must in life make his own observations, frame his
own inductions, and apply them in action as he goes along. The habit
of finding out the best thing to do next, and then doing it, is the
basis of character. A strong character is built up by doing, not by
imitation, nor by feeling, nor by suggestion. Nature-study, if it be
genuine, is essentially doing. This is the basis of its effectiveness
as a moral agent. To deal with truth is necessary, if we are to know
truth when we see it in action. To know truth precedes all sound
morality. There is a great impulse to virtue in knowing something
well. To know it well, is to come into direct contact with its facts
or laws, to feel that its qualities and forces are inevitable. To do
this is the essence of nature-study in all its forms.
The claim has been made that history treats of the actions of men, and
that it therefore gives the student the basis of right conduct. But
neither of these propositions is true. History treats of the records
of the acts of men and nations. But it does not involve the action of
the student himself. The men and women who act in history are not the
boys and girls we are training. Their lives are developed through
their own efforts, not by contemplation of the efforts of others. They
work out their problem of action more surely by dissecting frogs or
hatching butterflies than by what we tell them of Lycurgus or Joan of
Arc. Their reason for virtuous action must lie in their own knowledge
of what is right, not in the fact that Lincoln, or Washington, or
William Tell, or some other half-mythical personage would have done so
and so under like conditions.
The rocks and shells, the frogs and lilies always tell the absolute
truth. Association with these, under right direction, will build up a
habit of truthfulness, which the lying story of the cherry-tree is
powerless to effect. If history is to be made an agency for moral
training, it must become a nature-study. It must be the study of
original documents. When it is pursued in this way it has the value of
other nature-studies. But it is carried on under great limitations.
Its manuscripts are scarce, while every leaf on the tree is an original
document in botany. When a thousand are used, or used up, the archives
of nature are just as full as ever.
From the intimate affinity with the problems of life, the problems of
nature-study derive a large part of their value. Because life deals
with realities, the visible agents of the overmastering fates, it is
well that our children should study the real, rather than the
conventional. Let them come in contact with the inevitable, instead of
the "made-up," with laws and forces which can be traced in objects and
forms actually before them, rather than with those which seem arbitrary
or which remain inscrutable. To use concrete illustrations, there is a
greater moral value in the study of magnets than in the distinction
between _shall_ and _will_, in the study of birds or rocks than in that
of diacritical marks or postage-stamps, in the development of a frog
than in the longer or the shorter catechism, in the study of things
than in the study of abstractions. There is doubtless a law underlying
abstractions and conventionalities, a law of catechisms, or
postage-stamps, or grammatical solecisms, but it does not appear to the
student. Its consideration does not strengthen his impression of
inevitable truth. There is the greatest moral value, as well as
intellectual value, in the independence that comes from knowing, and
knowing that one knows and why he knows. This gives spinal column to
character, which is not found in the flabby goodness of imitation or
the hysteric virtue of suggestion. Knowing what is right, and why it
is right, before doing it is the basis of greatness of character.
The nervous system of the animal or the man is essentially a device to
make action effective and to keep it safe. The animal is a machine in
action. Toward the end of motion all other mental processes tend. All
functions of the brain, all forms of nerve impulse are modifications of
the simple reflex action, the automatic transfer of sensations derived
from external objects into movements of the body.
The sensory nerves furnish the animal or man all knowledge of the
external world. The brain, sitting in absolute darkness, judges these
sensations, and sends out corresponding impulses to action. The
sensory nerves are the brain's sole teachers; the motor nerves, and
through them the muscles, are the brain's only servants. The untrained
brain learns its lessons poorly, and its commands are vacillating and
ineffective. In like manner, the brain which has been misued
[Transcriber's note: misused?], shows its defects in ill-chosen
actions--the actions against which Nature protests through her scourge
of misery. In this fact, that nerve alteration means ineffective
action, lying brain, and lying nerves, rests the great argument for
temperance, the great argument against all forms of nerve tampering,
from the coffee habit to the cataleptic "revival of religion."
The senses are intensely practical in their relation to life. The
processes of natural selection make and keep them so. Only those
phases of reality which our ancestors could render into action are
shown to us by our senses. If we can do nothing in any case, we know
nothing about it. The senses tell us essential truth about rocks and
trees, food and shelter, friends and enemies. They answer no problems
in chemistry. They tell us nothing about atom or molecule. They give
us no ultimate facts. Whatever is so small that we cannot handle it is
too small to be seen. Whatever is too distant to be reached is not
truthfully reported. The "X-rays" of light we cannot see, because our
ancestors could not deal with them. The sun and stars, the clouds and
the sky are not at all what they appear to be. The truthfulness of the
senses fails as the square of the distance increases. Were it not so,
we should be smothered by truth; we should be overwhelmed by the
multiplicity of our own sensations, and truthful response in action
would become impossible. Hyperaesthesia of any or all of the senses is
a source of confusion, not of strength. It is essentially a phase of
disease, and it shows itself in ineffectiveness, not in increased power.
Besides the actual sensations, the so-called realities, the brain
retains also the sensations which have been, and which are not wholly
lost. Memory-pictures crowd the mind, mingling with pictures which are
brought in afresh by the senses. The force of suggestion causes the
mental states or conditions of one person to repeat themselves in
another. Abnormal conditions of the brain itself furnish another
series of feelings with which the brain must deal. Moreover, the brain
is charged with impulses to action passed on from generation to
generation, surviving because they are useful. With all these arises
the necessity for choice as a function of the mind. The mind must
neglect or suppress all sensations which it cannot weave into action.
The dog sees nothing that does not belong to its little world. The man
in search of mushrooms "tramples down oak-trees in his walks." To
select the sensations that concern us is the basis of the power of
attention. The suppression of undesired actions is a function of the
will. To find data for choice among the possible motor responses is a
function of the intellect. Intellectual persistency is the essence of
individual character.
As the conditions of life become more complex, it becomes necessary for
action to be more carefully selected. Wisdom is the parent of virtue.
Knowing what should be done logically precedes doing it. Good impulses
and good intentions do not make action right or safe. In the long run,
action is tested not by its motives, but by its results.
The child, when he comes into the world, has everything to learn. His
nervous system is charged with tendencies to reaction and impulses to
motion, which have their origin in survivals from ancestral experience.
Exact knowledge, by which his own actions can be made exact, must come
through his own experience. The experience of others must be expressed
in terms of his own before it becomes wisdom. Wisdom, as I have
elsewhere said, is knowing what it is best to do next. Virtue is doing
it. Doing right becomes habit, if it is pursued long enough. It
becomes a "second nature," or, we may say, a higher heredity. The
formation of a higher heredity of wisdom and virtue, of knowing right
and doing right, is the basis of character-building.
The moral character is based on knowing the best, choosing the best,
and doing the best. It cannot be built up on imitation. By imitation,
suggestion, and conventionality the masses are formed and controlled.
To build up a man is a nobler process, demanding materials and methods
of a higher order. The growth of man is the assertion of
individuality. Only robust men can make history. Others may adorn it,
disfigure it, or vulgarize it.
The first relation of the child to external things is expressed in
this: What can I do with it? What is its relation to me? The
sensation goes over into thought, the thought into action. Thus the
impression of the object is built into the little universe of his mind.
The object and the action it implies are closely associated. As more
objects are apprehended, more complex relations arise, but the primal
condition remains--What can I do with it? Sensation, thought,
action--this is the natural sequence of each completed mental process.
As volition passes over into action, so does science into art,
knowledge into power, wisdom into virtue.
By the study of realities wisdom is built up. In the relations of
objects he can touch and move, the child comes to find the limitations
of his powers, the laws that govern phenomena, and to which his actions
must be in obedience. So long as he deals with realities, these laws
stand in their proper relation. "So simple, so natural, so true," says
Agassiz. "This is the charm of dealing with Nature herself. She
brings us back to absolute truth so often as we wander."
So long as a child is lead from one reality to another, never lost in
words or in abstractions, so long this natural relation remains. What
can I do with it? is the beginning of wisdom. What is it to me? is the
basis of personal virtue.
While a child remains about the home of his boyhood, he knows which way
is north and which is east. He does not need to orientate himself,
because in his short trips he never loses his sense of space direction.
But let him take a rapid journey in the cars or in the night, and he
may find himself in strange relations. The sun no longer rises in the
east, the sense of reality in directions is gone, and it is a painful
effort for him to join the new impressions to the old. The process of
orientation is a difficult one, and if facing the sunrise in the
morning were a deed of necessity in his religion, this deed would not
be accurately performed.
This homely illustration applies to the child. He is taken from his
little world of realities, a world in which the sun rises in the east,
the dogs bark, the grasshopper leaps, the water falls, and the relation
of cause and effect appear plain and natural. In these simple
relations moral laws become evident. "The burnt child dreads the
fire," and this dread shows itself in action. The child learns what to
do next, and to some extent does it. By practice in personal
responsibility in little things, he can be led to wisdom in large ones.
For the power to do great things in the moral world comes from doing
the right in small things. It is not often that a man who knows that
there is a right does the wrong. Men who do wrong are either ignorant
that there is a right, or else they have failed in their orientation
and look upon right as wrong. It is the clinching of good purposes
with good actions that makes the man. This is the higher heredity that
is not the gift of father or mother, but is the man's own work on
himself.
The impression of realities is the basis of sound morals as well as of
sound judgment. By adding near things to near, the child grows in
knowledge. "Knowledge set in order" is science. Nature-study is the
beginning of science. It is the science of the child. To the child
training in methods of acquiring knowledge is more valuable than
knowledge itself. In general, throughout life sound methods are more
valuable than sound information. Self-direction is more important than
innocence. The fool may be innocent. Only the sane and wise can be
virtuous.
It is the function of science to find out the real nature of the
universe. Its purpose is to eliminate the personal equation and the
human equation in statements of truth. By methods of precision of
thought and instruments of precision in observation, it seeks to make
our knowledge of the small, the distant, the invisible, the mysterious
as accurate as our knowledge of the common things men have handled for
ages. It seeks to make our knowledge of common things exact and
precise, that exactness and precision may be translated into action.
The ultimate end of science, as well as its initial impulse, is the
regulation of human conduct. To make right action possible and
prevalent is the function of science. The "world as it is" is the
province of science. In proportion as our actions conform to the
conditions of the world as it is, do we find the world beautiful,
glorious, divine. The truth of the "world as it is" must be the
ultimate inspiration of art, poetry, and religion. The world as men
have agreed to say it is, is quite another matter. The less our
children hear of this, the less they will have to unlearn in their
future development.
When a child is taken from nature to the schools, he is usually brought
into an atmosphere of conventionality. Here he is not to do, but to
imitate; not to see, nor to handle, nor to create, but to remember. He
is, moreover, to remember not his own realities, but the written or
spoken ideas of others. He is dragged through a wilderness of grammar,
with thickets of diacritical marks, into the desert of metaphysics. He
is taught to do right, not because right action is in the nature of
things, the nature of himself and the things about him, but because he
will be punished somehow if he does not.
He is given a medley of words without ideas. He is taught declensions
and conjugations without number in his own and other tongues. He
learns things easily by rote; so his teachers fill him with
rote-learning. Hence, grammar and language have become stereotyped as
teaching without a thought as to whether undigested words may be
intellectual poison. And as the good heart depends on the good brain,
undigested ideas become moral poison as well. No one can tell how much
of the bad morals and worse manners of the conventional college boy of
the past has been due to intellectual dyspepsia from undigested words.
In such manner the child is bound to lose his orientation as to the
forces which surround him. If he does not recover it, he will spend
his life in a world of unused fancies and realities. Nonsense will
seem half truth, and his appreciation of truth will be vitiated by lack
of clearness of definition--by its close relation to nonsense.
That this is no slight defect can be shown in every community. There
is no intellectual craze so absurd as not to have a following among
educated men and women. There is no scheme for the renovation of the
social order so silly that educated men will not invest their money in
it. There is no medical fraud so shameless that educated men will not
give it their certificate. There is no nonsense so unscientific that
men called educated will not accept it as science.
It should be a function of the schools to build up common sense. Folly
should be crowded out of the schools. We have furnished costly lunatic
asylums for its accommodation. That our schools are in a degree
responsible for current follies, there can be no doubt. We have many
teachers who have never seen a truth in their lives. There are many
who have never felt the impact of an idea. There are many who have
lost their own orientation in their youth, and who have never since
been able to point out the sunrise to others. It is no extravagance of
language to say that diacritical marks lead to the cocaine habit; nor
that the ethics of metaphysics points the way to the Higher
Foolishness. There are many links in the chain of decadence, but its
finger-posts all point downward.
"Three roots bear up Dominion--Knowledge, Will, the third, Obedience."
This statement, which Lowell applies to nations, belongs to the
individual man as well. It is written in the structure of his
brain--knowledge, volition, action,--and all three elements must be
sound, if action is to be safe or effective.
But obedience must be active, not passive. The obedience of the lower
animals is automatic, and therefore in its limits measurably perfect.
Lack of obedience means the extinction of the race. Only the obedient
survive, and hence comes about obedience to "sealed orders," obedience
by reflex action, in which the will takes little part.
In the early stages of human development, the instincts of obedience
were dominant. Great among these is the instinct of conventionality,
by which each man follows the path others have found safe. The Church
and the State, organizations of the strong, have assumed the direction
of the weak. It has often resulted that the wiser this direction, the
greater the weakness it was called on to control. The "sealed orders"
of human institutions took the place of the automatism of instinct.
Against "sealed orders" the individual man has been in constant
protest. The "warfare of science" was part of this long struggle. The
Reformation, the revival of learning, the growth of democracy, are all
phases of this great conflict.
The function of democracy is not good government. If that were all, it
would not deserve the efforts spent on it. Better government than any
king or congress or democracy has yet given could be had in simpler and
cheaper ways. The automatic scheme of competitive examinations would
give us better rulers at half the present cost. Even an ordinary
intelligence office, or "statesman's employment bureau," would serve us
better than conventions and elections. But a people which could be
ruled in that way, content to be governed well by forces outside
itself, would not be worth the saving. But this is not the point at
issue. Government too good, as well as too bad, may have a baneful
influence on men. Its character is a secondary matter. The purpose of
self-government is to intensify individual responsibility; to promote
abortive attempts at wisdom, through which true wisdom may come at
last. Democracy is nature-study on a grand scale. The republic is a
huge laboratory of civics, a laboratory in which strange experiments
are performed; but by which, as in other laboratories, wisdom may arise
from experience, and having arisen, may work itself out into virtue.
"The oldest and best-endowed university in the world," Dr. Parkhurst
tells us, "is Life itself. Problems tumble easily apart in the field
that refuse to give up their secret in the study, or even in the
closet. Reality is what educates us, and reality never comes so close
to us, with all its powers of discipline, as when we encounter it in
action. In books we find Truth in black and white; but in the rush of
events we see Truth at work. It is only when Truth is busy and we are
ourselves mixed up in its activities that we learn to know of how much
we are capable, or even the power by which these capabilities can be
made over into effect."
Mr. Wilbur F. Jackman has well said: "Children always start with
imitation, and very few people ever get beyond it. The true moral act,
however, is one performed in accordance with a known law that is just
as natural as the law which determines which way a stone shall fall.
The individual becomes moral in the highest sense when he chooses to
obey this law by acting in accordance with it." Conventionality is not
morality, and may co-exist with vice as well as with virtue. Obedience
has little permanence unless it be intelligent obedience.
It is, of course, true that wrong information may lead sometimes to
right action, as falsehood may secure obedience to a natural law which
would otherwise have been violated. But in the long run men and
nations pay dearly for every illusion they cherish. For every sick man
healed at Denver or Lourdes, ten well men may be made sick. Faith cure
and patent medicines feed on the same victim. For every Schlatter who
is worshiped as a saint, some equally harmless lunatic will be stoned
as a witch. This scientific age is beset by the non-science which its
altruism has made safe. The development of the common sense of the
people has given security to a vast horde of follies, which would be
destroyed in the unchecked competition of life. It is the soundness of
our age which has made what we call its decadence possible. It is the
undercurrent of science which has given security to human life, a
security which obtains for fools as well as for sages.
For protection against all these follies which so soon fall into vices,
or decay into insanity, we must look to the schools. A sound
recognition of cause and effect in human affairs is our best safeguard.
The old common sense of the "un-high-schooled man," aided by
instruments of precision, and directed by logic, must be carried over
into the schools. Clear thinking and clean acting, we believe, are
results of the study of nature. When men have made themselves wise, in
the wisdom which may be completed in action, they have never failed to
make themselves good. When men have become wise with the lore of
others, the learning which ends in self, and does not spend itself in
action, they have been neither virtuous nor happy. "Much learning is a
weariness of the flesh." Thought without action ends in intense
fatigue of soul, the disgust with all the "sorry scheme of things
entire," which is the mark of the unwholesome and insane philosophy of
Pessimism. This philosophy finds its condemnation in the fact that it
has never yet been translated into pure and helpful life.
With our children, the study of words and abstractions alone may, in
its degree, produce the same results. Nature-studies have long been
valued as a "means of grace," because they arouse the enthusiasm, the
love of work which belongs to open-eyed youth. The child _blasé_ with
moral precepts and irregular conjugations turns with delight to the
unrolling of ferns and the song of birds. There is a moral training in
clearness and tangibility. An occult impulse to vice is hidden in all
vagueness and in all teachings meant to be heard but not to be
understood. Nature is never obscure, never occult, never esoteric.
She must be questioned in earnest, else she will not reply. But to
every serious question she returns a serious answer. "Simple, natural,
and true" should make the impression of simplicity and truth. Truth
and virtue are but opposite sides of the same shield. As leaves pass
over into flowers, and flowers into fruit, so are wisdom, virtue, and
happiness inseparably related.
[1] Read before the National Educational Association at Buffalo, New
York, 1896.
THE HIGHER SACRIFICE.[1]
Each man that lives is, in part, a slave, because he is a living being.
This belongs to the definition of life itself. Each creature must bend
its back to the lash of its environment. We imagine life without
conditions--life free from the pressure of insensate things outside us
or within. But such life is the dream of the philosopher. We have
never known it. The records of the life we know are full of
concessions to such pressure.
The vegetative part of life, that part which finds its expression in
physical growth, and sustenance, and death, must always be slavery.
The old primal hunger of the protoplasm rules over it all. Each of the
myriad cells of which man is made must be fed and cared for. The
perennial hunger of these cells he must stifle. This hunger began when
life began. It will cease only when life ceases. It will last till
the water of the sea is drained, the great lights are put out, and the
useless earth is hung up empty in the archives of the universe.
This old hunger the individual man must each day meet and satisfy. He
must do this for himself; else, in the long run, it will not be done.
If others help feed him, he must feed others in return. This return is
not charity nor sacrifice; it is simply exchange of work. It is the
division of labor in servitude. Directly or indirectly, each must pay
his debt of life. There are a few, as the world goes, who in luxury or
pauperism have this debt paid for them by others. But there are not
many of these fugitive slaves. The number will never be great; for the
lineage of idleness is never long nor strong.
When this debt is paid, the slave becomes the man. Nature counts as
men only those who are free. Freedom springs from within. No outside
power can give it. Board and lodging on the earth once paid, a man's
resources are his own. These he can give or hold. By the fullness of
these is he measured. All acquisitions of man, Emerson tells us, "are
victories of the good brain and brave heart; the world belongs to the
energetic, belongs to the wise. It is in vain to make a paradise but
for good men."
In the ancient lore of the Jews, so Rabbi Voorsanger tells us, it is
written, "Serve the Lord, not as slaves hoping for reward, but as gods
who will take no reward." The meaning of the old saying is this: _Only
the gods can serve_.
Those who have nothing have nothing to give. He who serves as a slave
serves himself only. That he hopes for a reward shows that to himself
his service is really given. To serve the Lord, according to another
old saying, is to help one's fellow-men. The Eternal asks not of
mortals that they assist Him with His earth. The tough old world has
been His for centuries of centuries before it came to be ours, and we
can neither make it nor mar it. We were not consulted when its
foundations were laid in the deep. The waves and the storms, the
sunshine and the song of birds need not our aid. They will take care
of themselves. Life is the only material that is plastic in our hand.
Only man can be helped by man.
When they hung John Brown in Virginia, many said, you remember, that in
resisting the Government he had thrown away his life, and would gain
nothing for it. He could not, as Thoreau said at the time, get a vote
of thanks or a pair of boots for his life. He could not get
four-and-sixpence a day for being hung, take the year around. But he
was not asking for a vote of thanks. It was not for the
four-and-sixpence a day that he stood between brute force and its
victims. It was to show men the nature of slavery. It was to help his
fellow-citizens to read the story of their institutions in the light of
history. "You can get more," Thoreau went on to say, "in your market
[at Concord] for a quart of milk than you can for a quart of blood; but
yours is not the market heroes carry their blood to." The blood of
heroes is not sold by the quart. The great, strong, noble, and pure of
this world, those who have made our race worthy to be called men, have
not been paid by the day or by the quart; not by riches, nor fame, nor
power, nor anything that man can give. Out of the fullness of their
lives have they served the Lord. Out of the wealth of their resources
have they helped their fellow-men.
The great man cannot be a self-seeker. The greatness of a Napoléon or
an Alexander is the greatness of gluttony. It is slavery on a grand
scale. What men have done for their own glory or aggrandizement has
left no permanent impress. "I have carried out nothing," says the
warrior, Sigurd Slembe. "I have not sown the least grain nor laid one
stone upon another to witness that I have lived." Napoléon could have
said as much, if, like Sigurd, he had stood "upon his own grave and
heard the great bell ring." The tragedy of the Isle of St. Helena lay
not in the failure of effort, but in the futility of the aim to which
effort was directed. There was no tragedy of the Isle of Patmos.
What such men have torn down remains torn down. All this would soon
have fallen of itself; for that which has life in it cannot be
destroyed by force. But what such men have built has fallen when their
hands have ceased to hold it up. The names history cherishes are those
of men of another type. Only "a man too simply great to scheme for his
proper self" is great enough to become a pillar of the ages.
It is part of the duty of higher education to build up ideals of noble
freedom. It is not for help in the vegetative work of life that you go
to college. You are just as good a slave without it. You can earn
your board and lodging without the formality of culture. The training
of the college will make your power for action greater, no doubt; but
it will also magnify your needs. The debt of life a scholar has to pay
is greater than that paid by the clown. And the higher sacrifice the
scholar may be called upon to make grows with the increased fullness of
his life. Greater needs go with greater power, and both mean greater
opportunity for sacrifice.
In the days you have been with us you should have formed some ideals.
You should have bound these ideals together with the chain of
"well-spent yesterdays," the higher heredity which comes not from your
ancestors, but which each man must build up for himself. You should
have done something in the direction of the life of higher sacrifice,
the life that from the fullness of its resources can have something to
give.
Such sacrifice is not waste, but service; not spending, but
accomplishing. Many men, and more women, spend their lives for others
when others would have been better served if they had saved themselves.
Mere giving is not service. "Charity that is irrational and impulsive
giving, is a waste, whether of money or of life." "Charity creates
half the misery she relieves; she cannot relieve half the misery she
creates."
The men you meet as you leave these halls will not understand your
ideals. They will not know that your life is not bound up in the
present, but has something to ask or to give for the future. Till they
understand you they will not yield you their sympathies. They may jeer
at you because the whip they respond to leaves no mark upon you. They
will try to buy you, because the Devil has always bid high for the
lives of young men with ideals. A man in his market stands always
above par. Slaves are his stock in trade. If a man of power can be
had for base purposes, he can be sure of an immediate reward. You can
sell your blood for its weight in milk, or for its weight in
gold--whatever you choose,--if you are willing to put it up for sale.
You can sell your will for the kingdoms of the earth; and you will see,
or seem to see, many of your associates making just such bargains. But
in this be not deceived. No young man worthy of anything else ever
sold himself to the Devil. These are dummy sales. The Devil puts his
own up at auction in hope of catching others. If you fall into his
hands, you had not far to fall. You were already ripe for his clutches.
When a man steps forth from the college, he is tested once for all. It
takes but a year or two to prove his mettle. In the college high
ideals prevail, and the intellectual life is taken as a matter of
course. In the world outside it appears otherwise, though the
conditions of success are in fact just the same. It is not true,
though it seems so, that the common life is a game of "grasping and
griping, with a whine for mercy at the end of it." It is your own
fault if you find it so. It is not true that the whole of man is
occupied, with the effort "to live just asking but to live, to live
just begging but to be." The world of thought and the world of action
are one in nature. In both truth and love are strength, and folly and
selfishness are weakness. There is no confusion of right and wrong in
the mind of the Fates. It is only in our poor bewildered slave
intellects that evil passes for power. All about us in the press of
life are real men, "whose fame is not bought nor sold at the stroke of
a politician's pen." Such are the men in whose guidance the currents
of history flow.
The lesson of values in life it should be yours to teach, because it
should be yours to know and to act. Men are better than they seem, and
the hidden virtues of life appear when men have learned how to
translate them into action. Men grasp and hoard material things
because in their poverty of soul they know of nothing else to do. It
is lack of training and lack of imagination, rather than total
depravity, which gives our social life its sordid aspect. When a plant
has learned the secret of flowers and fruit, it no longer goes on
adding meaningless leaf on leaf. And as "flowers are only colored
leaves, fruits only ripe ones," so are the virtues only perfected and
ripened forms of those impulses which show themselves as vices.
It is your relation to the overflow of power that determines the manner
of man you are. Slave or god, it is for you to choose. Slave or god,
it is for you to will. It is for such choice that will is developed.
Say what we may about the limitations of the life of man, they are
largely self-limitations. Hemmed in is human life by the force of the
Fates; but the will of man is one of the Fates, and can take its place
by the side of the rest of them. The man who can will is a factor in
the universe. Only the man who can will can serve the Lord at all, and
by the same token, hoping for no reward.
Likewise is love a factor in the universe. Power is not strength of
body or mind alone. One who is poor in all else, may be rich in
sympathy and responsiveness. "They also serve who only stand and wait."
In a recent number of The Dial, Mr. W. P. Reeves tells us the tale,
half-humorous, half-allegorical, of the decadence of a scholar.
According to this story, one Thomson was a college graduate, full of
high notions of the significance of life and the duties and privileges
of the scholar. With these ideals he went to Germany, that he might
strengthen them and use them for the benefit of his fellow-men. He
spent some years in Germany, filling his mind with all that German
philosophy could give. Then he came home, to turn his philosophy into
action. To do this, he sought a college professorship.
This he found it was not easy to secure. Nobody cared for him or his
message. The authority of "wise and sober Germany" was not recognized
in the institutions of America, and he found that college
professorships were no longer "plums to be picked" by whomsoever should
ask for them. The reverence the German professor commands is unknown
in America. In Germany, the authority of wise men is supreme. Their
words, when they speak, are heard with reverence and attention. In
America, wisdom is not wisdom till the common man has examined it and
pronounced it to be such. The conclusions of the scholar are revised
by the daily newspaper. The readers of these papers care little for
messages from Utopia.
No college opened its doors to Thomson, and he saw with dismay that the
life before him was one of discomfort and insignificance, his ideals
having no exchangeable value in luxuries or comforts. Meanwhile,
Thomson's early associates seemed to get on somehow. The world wanted
their cheap achievements, though it did not care for him.
Among these associates was one Wilcox, who became a politician, and,
though small in abilities and poor in virtues, his influence among men
seemed to be unbounded. The young woman who had felt an interest in
Thomson's development, and to whom he had read his rejected verses and
his uncalled-for philosophy, had joined herself to the Philistines, and
yielded to their influence. She had become Wilcox's wife. His friends
regarded Thomson's failure as a joke. He must not take himself too
seriously, they said. A man should be in touch with his times. "Even
Philistia," one said, "has its aesthetic ritual and pageantry." A wise
man will not despise this ritual, because Philistinism, after all, is
the life of the world.
But Thomson held out. "I pledged my word in Germany," he said, "to
teach nothing that I did not believe to be true. I must live up to
this pledge." And so he sought for positions, and he failed to find
them. Finally, he had a message from a friend that a professorship in
a certain institution was vacant. This message said, "Cultivate
Wilcox." So, in despair, Thomson began to cultivate Wilcox. He began
to feel that Wilcox was a type of the world, a bad world, for which he
was not responsible. The world's servant he must be, if he received
its wages. When he secured the coveted appointment, through the
political pull of Wilcox and the mild kindness of Mrs. Wilcox, he was
ready to teach whatever was wanted of him, whether it was truth in
Germany or not. He found that he could change his notions of truth.
The Wilcox idea was that everything in America is all right just as it
is. To this he found it easy to respond. His salary helped him to do
so. And at last, the record says, he became "_laudator temporis
acti_," one who praises the times that are past. As such, he took but
little part in the times that are to be.
So runs the allegory. How shall it be with you? There are many
Thomsons among our scholars. There may be some such among you. When
you pass from the world of thought you will find yourself in the world
of action. The conditions are not changed, but they seem to be
changed. How shall you respond to the seeming difference? Shall you
give up the truth of high thinking for the appearance of speedy
success? If you do this, it will not be because you are worldly-wise,
but because you do not know the world. In your ignorance of men you
may sell yourself cheaply.
One must know life before he can know truth. He who will be a leader
of men must first have the power to lead himself. The world is selfish
and unsympathetic. But it is also sagacious. It rejects as worthless
him who suffers decadence when he comes in contact with its vulgar
cleverness. The natural man can look the world in the face. The true
man will teach truth wherever he is,--not because he has pledged
himself in Germany not to teach anything else, but because in teaching
truth he is teaching himself. His life thus becomes genuine, and,
sooner or later, the world will respond to genuineness in action. The
world knows the value of genuineness, and it yields to that force
wherever it is felt. "The world is all gates," says Emerson, "all
opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be struck."
Thus, in the decadence of Thomson, it was not the times or the world or
America that was at fault; it was Thomson himself. He had in him no
life of his own. His character, like his microscope, "was made in
Germany," and bore not his mark, but the stamp of the German factory.
Truth was not made in Germany; and to know or to teach truth there must
be a life behind it. The decadence of Thomson was the appearance of
the real Thomson from under the axioms and formulae his teachers had
given him.
Men do not fail because they are human. They are not human enough.
Failure comes from lack of life. Only the man who has formed opinions
of his own can have the courage of his convictions. Learning alone
does not make a man strong. Strength in life will show itself in
helpfulness, will show itself in sympathy, in sacrifice. "Great men,"
says Emerson, "feel that they are so by renouncing their selfishness
and falling back on what is humane. They beat with the pulse and
breathe with the lungs of nations."
It is not enough to know truth; one must know men. It is not enough to
know men; one must be a man. Only he who can live truth can know it.
Only he who can live truth can teach it. "He could talk men over,"
says Carlyle of Mirabeau, "he could talk men over because he could act
men over. At bottom that was it."
And at bottom this is the source of all power and service. Not what a
man knows, or what he can say; but what is he? what can he can do? Not
what he can do for his board and lodging, as the slave who is "hired
for life"; but what can he do out of the fullness of his resources, the
fullness of his helpfulness, the fullness of himself? The work the
world will not let die was never paid for--not in fame, not in money,
not in power.
The decadence of literature, of which much is said to-day, is not due
to the decadence of man. It is not the effect of the nerve strain of
over-wrought generations born too late in the dusk of the ages. Its
nature is this--that uncritical and untrained men have come into a
heritage they have not earned. They will pay money to have their
feeble fancy tickled. The decadence of literature is the struggle of
mountebanks to catch the public eye. There is money in the literature
of decay, and those who work for money have "verily their reward." But
these performances are not the work of men. They have no relation to
literature, or art, or human life. These are not in decadence because
imitations are sold on street-corners or tossed into our laps on
railway trains. As well say that gold is in its decadence because
brass can be burnished to look like it; or that the sun is in his
dotage because we have filled our gardens with Chinese lanterns.
"No ray is dimmed, no atom worn,
My oldest force is good as new
And the fresh rose on yonder thorn
Gives back the bending heavens in dew."
Literature has never been paid for. It has never asked the gold nor
the plaudits of the multitude. Job, and Hamlet, and Faust, and Lear,
were never written to fill the pages of a Sunday newspaper. John
Milton and John Bunyan were not publishers' hacks; nor were John
Hampden, John Bright, or Samuel Adams under pay as walking-delegates of
reform.
No man was hired to find out that the world was round, or that the
valleys are worn down by water, or that the stars are suns. No man was
paid to burn at the stake or die on the cross that other men might be
free to live. The sane, strong, brave, heroic souls of all ages were
the men who, in the natural order of things, have lived above all
considerations of pay or glory. They have served not as slaves hoping
for reward, but as gods who would take no reward. Men could not reward
Shakespeare, or Darwin, or Newton, or Helmholtz for their services any
more than we could pay the Lord for the use of His sunshine. From the
same inexhaustible divine reservoir it all comes--the service of the
great man and the sunshine of God.
"Twice have I molded an image,
And thrice outstretched my hand;
Made one of day and one of night,
And one of the salt sea strand
One in a Judean manger,
And one by Avon's stream;
One over against the mouths of Nile,
And one in the Academe."
And in such image are men made every day, not only in Bethlehem or in
Stratford, not alone on the banks of the Nile or the Arno; but on the
Columbia, or the Sacramento, or the San Francisquito, it may be, as
well. All over the earth, in this image, are the sane, and the sound,
and the true. And when and where their lives are spent arises
generations of others like them, men in the true order. Not alone men
in the "image of God," but "gods in the likeness of men."
It is to the training of the genuine man that the universities of the
world are devoted. They call for the higher sacrifice, the sacrifice
of those who have powers not needed in the common struggle of life, and
who have, therefore, something over and beyond this struggle to give to
their fellows. Large or small, whatever the gift may be, the world
needs it all, and to every good gift the world will respond a
thousand-fold. Strength begets strength, and wisdom leads to wisdom.
"There is always room for the man of force, and he makes room for
many." It is the strong, wise, and good of the past who have made our
lives possible. It is the great human men, the "men in the natural
order," that have made it possible for "the plain, common men," that
make up civilization, to live, rather than merely to vegetate.
We hear those among us sometimes who complain of the shortness of life,
the smallness of truth, the limited stage on which man is forced to
act. But the men who thus complain are not men who have filled this
little stage with their action. The man who has learned to serve the
Lord never complains that his Master does not give him enough to do.
The man who helps his fellow-men does not stand about with idle hands
to find men worthy of his assistance. He who leads a worthy life never
vexes himself with the question as to whether life is worth living.
We know that all our powers are products of the needs and duties of our
ancestors. Wisdom too great to be translated into action is an
absurdity. For wisdom is only knowing what it is best to do next.
Virtue is only doing it. Virtue and happiness have never been far
apart from each other. To know and to do is the essence of the highest
service. Those the world has a right to honor are those who found
enough in the world to do. The fields are always white to their
harvest.
Alexander the Great had conquered his neighbors in Greece and Asia
Minor, the only world he knew. Then he sighed for more worlds to
conquer. But other worlds he knew nothing of lay all about him. The
secrets of the rocks he had never suspected. Steam, electricity, the
growth of trees, the fall of snow,--all these were mysteries to him.
The only conquest he knew, the subjection of men's bodies, went but a
little way. All the men who in his lifetime knew the name of Alexander
the Great could find encampment on the Palo Alto farm. The great world
of men in his day was beyond his knowledge. His world was a very small
one, and of this he had seen but a little corner.
For the need of more worlds to conquer is no badge of strength. It is
the stamp of ignorance. It is the cry only of him who knows that the
great earth about him still stands unconquered. No Lincoln ever sighed
for more nations to save; no Luther for more churches to purify; no
Darwin that nature had not more hidden secrets which he might follow to
their depths; no Agassiz that the thoughts of God were all exhausted
before he was born.
And now, a final word to you as scholars: Higher education means the
higher sacrifice. That you are taught to know is simply that you may
do. Knowing the truth signifies that you should do right. Knowing and
doing have value only as translated into justice and love. There is no
man so strong as not to need your help. There is no man so weak that
you cannot make him stronger. There is none so sick that you cannot
bring him to the "gate called Beautiful." There is no evil in the
world that you cannot help turn to goodness. "We could lift up this
land," said Björnson of Norway, "we could lift up this land, if we
lifted as one."
Therefore lift, and lift as one. You are strong enough and wise
enough. You shall seek strength and wisdom, that others through you
may be wiser and stronger. You shall seek your place to work as your
basis for helpfulness. Others will make the place as good as you
deserve. If your lives are sacrificed in helping men, it is to the
market of the ages you carry your blood, not to the milk-market of
Concord town. The honest man will not "pledge himself in Germany to
teach nothing which is not true." Being true himself, he can teach
nothing false. The more men of the true order there are in the world,
the greater is the world's need of men.
As you are men, so will your places in life be secure. Every
profession is calling you. Every walk of life is waiting for your
effort. There will always be room for you, and each of you will make
room for many.
[1] Address to the Graduating Class, Leland Stanford Jr. University,
May 21, 1896.
THE BUBBLES OF SÁKI.
In sad, sweet cadence Persian Omar sings
The life of man that lasts but for a day;
A phantom caravan that hastes away,
On to the chaos of insensate things.
"The Eternal Sáki from that bowl hath poured
Millions of bubbles like us and shall pour,"
Thy life or mine, a half-unspoken word,
A fleck of foam tossed on an unknown shore.
"When thou and I behind the veil are past,
Oh, but the long, long while the world shall last?
Which of our coming and departure heeds,
As the seven seas shall heed a pebble cast."
"Then, my beloved, fill the cup that clears
To-day of past regrets and future fears."
This is the only wisdom man can know,
"I come like water, and like wind I go."
But tell me, Omar, hast thou said the whole?
If such the bubbles that fill Sáki's bowl,
How great is Sáki, whose least whisper calls
Forth from the swirling mists a human soul!
Omar, one word of thine is but a breath,
A single cadence in thy perfect song;
And as its measures softly flow along,
A million cadences pass on to death.
Shall this one word withdraw itself in scorn,
Because 't is not thy first, nor last, nor all--
Because 't is not the sole breath thou hast drawn,
Nor yet the sweetest from thy lips let fall?
I do rejoice that when "of Me and Thee"
Men talk no longer, yet not less, but more,
The Eternal Sáki still that bowl shall fill,
And ever stronger, purer bubbles pour.
One little note in the Eternal Song,
The Perfect Singer hath made place for me;
And not one atom in earth's wondrous throng
But shall be needful to Infinity.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Story of the Innumerable Company,
and Other Sketches, by David Starr Jordan
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