Search-Light Letters. Grant Robert

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СКАЧАТЬ ("horse-sense," as our drummer would call it) is a useful virtue, but it would keep civilization ordinary to the crack of doom.

      Ah! now we are likely to have trouble. Notice, please, the lady coming this way. How graceful and elegant she is. A delicate, refined face and bearing. See how she sidles off from the third and second-class passengers with an expression of distaste for them which suggests pain. She cannot bear coarse people. She believes herself to be an intellectual woman with serious tastes. She aims to be a spiritual person and she reads many essays—by Emerson, Matthew Arnold, Pater, and others. She is fond of history and politics; not of this country, because she claims that it is vulgar and lacks picturesqueness. But she can tell you all about the governments of Europe, and who is prime minister of or in authority in each of them. Democracy does not interest her. It seems to her to concern the affairs of dirty or common people; and she cares nothing for the great social questions of the age. They appear to her to clash with personal spirituality and culture. She is very sensitive. She has made a study of music, especially Wagner. She is very particular as to what she has to eat, but the grossness of men, as she calls it, offends her seriously. She believes herself to be not very strong physically, and she is nervous on the subject of arsenic in wall-papers and germs in drinking-water. She has retained her maidenly instincts to the last.

      What is that you ask, madam? A seat in a first-class carriage. Excuse me, you cannot go in there. You belong in the second-class section of the train. Mistake? There is no mistake. I understand perfectly. I'm ready to take your word for it that you have read Dante in the original, and I know that you are

      Chaste as the icicle

      That's curded by the frost from purest snow,

      And hangs on Dian's temple.

      (Doubtless you recall the quotation.) But you must stay out. Your ticket reads "Personal culture and individual salvation," and it entitles you to ride in any of those second-class cars. You don't like the passengers? I am very sorry, I'm sure, but my instructions are explicit. I was told to keep out all ladies of your kind, who think that the ideal is to be attained by hugging themselves to themselves (excuse the coarseness of the metaphor, madam) all their days in a hot-house atmosphere, and playing bo-peep with their own souls. You intend to write a letter about it to the Boston Evening——? Oh, very well. You will have to ride second-class, all the same.

      Enter a clergyman. This seems more promising.

      Clergyman. Is this the first-class section? I think my seat must be in here.

      Philosopher. First-class here, sir. Tickets, please. (Aside to correspondent.) A modest gentleman, forsooth.

      Clergyman (stops fumbling in his pocket for his tickets and sniffs suspiciously). I smell tobacco. Is there a smoking-car on the first-class train?

      Philosopher. There is for those who smoke.

      Clergyman. An outrage, sir. An unchristian outrage. I suppose next that you will tell me that intoxicating fluids are sold there.

      Philosopher. Yes, sir, to those who use them. All the first-class passengers understand the use of such things in moderation. They are not injured by them.

      Clergyman. A flimsy argument, sir. Think of the example. I repeat it, sir; think of the example. I protest against it, sir, as a crime against our highest civilization. I—I will have you removed from office. You are not fit to hold your position. I will see the governor about it immediately. I—I——

      Philosopher (to correspondent). He fancies that he is arguing on the liquor question before a board of police commissioners. (To clergyman.) The gentleman will come to order.

      Clergyman. I insist on having the smoking and drinking car detached, or I will not ride on the train.

      Philosopher. You will not ride in the first-class portion of it, in any event. Your ticket reads "Well-intentioned but overbearing visionary enthusiast." Come, sir, pass on, or, in spite of your cloth, I shall be obliged to put you in charge of an officer for disturbing the peace.

      I was interrupted here by my wife, Josephine. "Of course I understand," said she, "that he was very overbearing, and I have heard you say before that clergymen are more apt to lose their temper before committees than most other people. But the poor man was desperately in earnest. The whole thing means so much to him. He believes that the world will never be redeemed until liquor and tobacco are no longer used in it. Do you mean that you really think this will never come to pass?"

      "Never is a long time, my dear," said I.

      "But you were discussing the ideal."

      "To be sure. Have you ever considered the matter from the moderate-drinker and smoker's point of view? Brain-weary, muscle-tired men have, from generation to generation, found a glass of wine or spirit and a cigar a refreshment and a comfort. Neither agrees with some, and many abuse the use of both. Drunkenness among the poor and tippling among the rich are, perhaps, the greatest enemies of civilization; and, consequently, there is a corps of many women and some men who cry out upon the use of alcohol as incompatible with the world's progress. This sentiment at the polls expresses itself chiefly in very small minorities, unless the voters are reasonably near to some large city or town. The failure of the movement to make important headway might be ascribed to the fact that the mass of people are still unenlightened, were there any signs that the intelligent workers of the world are disposed to side with the wearers of the white ribbon. The use of champagne, claret, brandy, and whiskey continues unabated over the civilized world, if one is to judge by economic statistics and trade circulars. They are quaffed on state and festal occasions, generally with moderation, by lords and ladies, statesmen, lawyers, doctors, bankers, soldiers, poets, artists, and often by bishops and clergymen. At ninety-nine out of every hundred formal dinner-parties in London, Paris, Berlin, or New York, alcohol is offered in some form to the guests as a stimulus to conversation, and, were it not so, there would be ninety-nine grumblers to every one man or woman who, at present, turns his or her glasses down with an ill-bred, virtuous air."

      "And yet," said Josephine, "I have heard you say constantly that it would be no particular deprivation to you to give up wine."

      "No more it would. In this country, with its stimulating climate, most nervous people are better for a very little if any alcohol, and many men are apt to find that it is simpler not to drink at all. But, remember, we are considering the question whether there is any reason why the man or woman in perfect health, and in search of the ideal, should be a teetotaler, and if there is any probability that the world will banish alcohol and cigars from the dignified occasions of the future. In other words, when the world has learned not to drink and smoke too much, will it cease to drink and smoke altogether? I know that the advocates of total-abstinence argue about the serenity and sane joy of a cold-water banquet, and it may be that we are a trifle hysterical in our declarations that conversation must lag until one has had a glass of champagne; but is not much of the light, masculine laughter of life associated with the fruit of the grape and the aroma of tobacco? Have you ever tried to picture to yourself a world as it would be if there were well-enforced, rigid prohibition everywhere, and the tobacco-plant were no more?"

      Josephine gave a little laugh. "You say the masculine laughter of the world. I assure you that much of the masculine laughter which you associate with the fruit of the grape is associated in the feminine mind with conjugal or maternal tears. I quite understand your appeal to the imagination from the masculine point of view. That is, I suppose the words wine and tobacco bring in their train for man many pleasing and even inspiriting images; that under their influence the soldier believes himself more brave and wins battles СКАЧАТЬ