A Man's World. Edwards Albert

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СКАЧАТЬ going to do with this new freedom of mine. I can only recall one plank in my platform—I was going to fight.

      The one time I can remember fighting at home, I had been thrashed by the boy, caned by the school teacher and whipped by the Father, when he noticed my black eye. Fighting was strictly forbidden. After this triple beating I fell into the habit of being bullied. As even the smallest boy in our village knew I was afraid to defend myself, I was the victim of endless tyrannies. The first use I wanted to make of my new freedom was to change this. I resolved to resent the first encroachment.

      It came that very day from one of the boys in the fourth class. I remember that his name was Blake. Just before supper we had it out on the tennis-court. It was hardly fair to him. He fought without much enthusiasm. It was to him part of the routine of keeping the new boys in order. To me it was the Great Emancipation. I threw into it all the bitterness of all the humiliations and indignities of my childhood. The ceremonial of "seconds" and "rounds" and "referee" was new to me. At home the boys just jumped at each other and punched and bit, and pulled hair and kicked until one said he had enough. As soon as they gave the word to begin, I shut my eyes and hammered away. We battered each other for several rounds and then Blake was pronounced victor on account of some technicality.

      They told me, pityingly, that I did not know how to fight. But all I had wanted was to demonstrate that I was not afraid. I had won that. It was the only fight I had in school. Even the bullies did not care to try conclusions with me, and I had no desire to force trouble. I had won a respect in the little community which I had never enjoyed before.

      In a way it was a small matter, but it was portentous for me. It was the first time I had done the forbidden thing and found it good. The Father had been wrong in prohibiting self-defense. It was an entering wedge to realize that his wisdom had been at fault here. In time his whole elaborate structure of morals fell to the ground.

      The school was a religious one, of course. But the teachers, with eminent good sense, realized that other things were more important for growing boys than professions of faith. It seemed that, after my illness, my mind woke up in sections. The part which was to ponder over Mary and Oliver, which was to think out my relation to God, for a long time lay dormant. I puttered along at my Latin and Greek and Algebra, played football and skated and, with the warm weather, went in for baseball.

      In the spring a shadow came over me—the idea of returning home. The more I thought of another summer in the camp, the more fearsome it seemed. At last I went to the doctor.

      He was the first, as he was one of the most important, of the many people whose kindness and influence have illumined my life. He was physical director of the school and also had a small practice in the village. There were rumors that he drank and he never came to church. If there had been another doctor available, he would not have been employed by the school.

      I never knew a man of more variable moods. Some days on the football field he would throw himself into the sport with amazing vim for an adult, would laugh and joke and call us by our first names. Again he would sit on the bench by the side-line scowling fiercely, taking no interest in us, muttering incoherently to himself. One day another boy and I were far "out of bounds" looking for chestnuts. We saw him coming through the trees and hid under some brush-wood. He had a gun under one arm, but was making too much noise for a hunter. He gesticulated wildly with his free arm and swore appallingly. We were paralyzed with fear. I do not think either of us told anyone about it. For in spite of his queer ways, all the boys, who were not sneaky nor boastful, liked him immensely.

      One Saturday afternoon I found courage to go to his office. There were several farmers ahead of me. I had a long wait, and when at last my turn came I was mightily frightened.

      "If I go home this summer," I blurted out, "I'll be sick again."

      Oliver had told him about my illness. At first he laughed at me, but I insisted so doggedly that he began to take me seriously. He tried to make me tell him my troubles but I could not. Then he examined me carefully, tapping my knee for reflexes and doing other incomprehensible things which are now commonplace psychological tests. But for a country doctor in those days they were very progressive.

      "Why are you so excited?" he asked suddenly, "Are you afraid I'll hurt you?"

      "No," I said, "I'm afraid I'll have to go home."

      "You're a rum chap."

      He sat down and wrote to the Father. I do not know what argument he used, but it was successful. A letter came in due course giving me permission to accept an invitation to pass the summer with one of my schoolmates.

      It was a wonderful vacation for me—my first taste of the sea. The boy's family had a cottage on the south shore of Long Island. The father who was a lawyer went often to the city. But the week ends he spent with us were treats. He played with us! He really enjoyed teaching me to swim and sail. I remember my pride when he would trust me with the main-sheet or the tiller. The mother also loved sailing. That she should enjoy playing with us was even a greater surprise to me than that my friend's father should. Whatever their winter religion was, they had none in the summer—unless being happy is a religion. I gathered some new ideals from that family for the home which Margot and I were to build.

      In the spring-term of my second and last year in the school, we were given a course on the "Evidences of Christianity." It was a formal affair, administered by an old Congregationalist preacher from the village, whom we called "Holy Sam." He owed the nickname to his habit of pronouncing "psalm" to rhyme with "jam." He always opened the Sunday Vesper service by saying: "We will begin our worship with a holy sam." I think he took no more interest in the course than most of the boys did. It was assumed that we were all Christians and it was his rather thankless task to give us "reasonable grounds" for what we already believed.

      It had the opposite effect on me. The book we used for a text was principally directed against atheists. I had never heard of an atheist before, it was a great idea to me that there were people who did not believe in God. I had not doubted His existence. I had hated Him. The faith and love I had given Mary and Oliver had turned to disgust and loathing. Their existence I could not doubt, and God was only the least of this trinity.

      It would be an immense relief if I could get rid of my belief in God. The necessity of hate would be lifted from me. And so—with my eighteen-year-old intellect—I began to reason about Deity.

      The pendulum of philosophy has swung a long way since I was a youth in school. To-day we are more interested in the subjective processes of devotion—what Tolstoi called the kingdom of God within us—than in definitions of an external, objective concept. The fine spun scholastic distinctions of the old denominational theologies are losing their interest. Almost all of us would with reverence agree with Rossetti:

      To God at best, to Chance at worst,

      Give thanks for good things last as first.

      But windstrown blossom is that good

      Whose apple is not gratitude.

      Even if no prayer uplift thy face

      Let the sweet right to render grace

      As thy soul's cherished child be nurs'd.

      The Father's generation held that a belief in God, as defined by the Westminster confession was more important than any amount of rendering grace. I thought I was at war with God. Of course I was only fighting against the Father's formal definition. Our text book, in replying to them, quoted the arguments of Thomas Paine. The logic employed against him was weak and unconvincing. It was wholly based on the Bible. This was manifestly begging the question for СКАЧАТЬ