Backlog Studies Part 11

It is quite unnecessary to say that the talk about clothes ran into the question of dress-reform, and ran out, of course. You cannot converse on anything nowadays that you do not run into some reform. The Parson says that everybody is intent on reforming everything but himself. We are all trying to a.s.sociate ourselves to make everybody else behave as we do.

Said--

OUR NEXT DOOR. Dress reform! As if people couldn't change their clothes without concert of action. Resolved, that n.o.body should put on a clean collar oftener than his neighbor does. I'm sick of every sort of reform.

I should like to retrograde awhile. Let a dyspeptic ascertain that he can eat porridge three times a day and live, and straightway he insists that everybody ought to eat porridge and nothing else. I mean to get up a society every member of which shall be pledged to do just as he pleases.

THE PARSON. That would be the most radical reform of the day. That would be independence. If people dressed according to their means, acted according to their convictions, and avowed their opinions, it would revolutionize society.

OUR NEXT DOOR. I should like to walk into your church some Sunday and see the changes under such conditions.

THE PARSON. It might give you a novel sensation to walk in at any time.

And I'm not sure but the church would suit your retrograde ideas.

It's so Gothic that a Christian of the Middle Ages, if he were alive, couldn't see or hear in it.

HERBERT. I don't know whether these reformers who carry the world on their shoulders in such serious fashion, especially the little fussy fellows, who are themselves the standard of the regeneration they seek, are more ludicrous than pathetic.

THE FIRE-TENDER. Pathetic, by all means. But I don't know that they would be pathetic if they were not ludicrous. There are those reform singers who have been piping away so sweetly now for thirty years, with never any diminution of cheerful, patient enthusiasm; their hair growing longer and longer, their eyes brighter and brighter, and their faces, I do believe, sweeter and sweeter; singing always with the same constancy for the slave, for the drunkard, for the snufftaker, for the suffragist,--"There'sa-good-time-com-ing-boys (nothing offensive is intended by 'boys,' it is put in for euphony, and sung pianissimo, not to offend the suffragists), it's-almost-here." And what a brightening up of their faces there is when they say, "it's-al-most-here," not doubting for a moment that "it's" coming tomorrow; and the accompanying melodeon also wails its wheezy suggestion that "it's-al-most-here," that "good-time" (delayed so long, waiting perhaps for the invention of the melodeon) when we shall all sing and all play that cheerful instrument, and all vote, and none shall smoke, or drink, or eat meat, "boys." I declare it almost makes me cry to hear them, so touching is their faith in the midst of a jeer-ing world.

HERBERT. I suspect that no one can be a genuine reformer and not be ridiculous. I mean those who give themselves up to the unction of the reform.

THE MISTRESS. Does n't that depend upon whether the reform is large or petty?

THE FIRE-TENDER. I should say rather that the reforms attracted to them all the ridiculous people, who almost always manage to become the most conspicuous. I suppose that n.o.body dare write out all that was ludicrous in the great abolition movement. But it was not at all comical to those most zealous in it; they never could see--more's the pity, for thereby they lose much--the humorous side of their performances, and that is why the pathos overcomes one's sense of the absurdity of such people.

THE YOUNG LADY. It is lucky for the world that so many are willing to be absurd.

HERBERT. Well, I think that, in the main, the reformers manage to look out for themselves tolerably well. I knew once a lean and faithful agent of a great philanthropic scheme, who contrived to collect every year for the cause just enough to support him at a good hotel comfortably.

THE MISTRESS. That's identifying one's self with the cause.

MANDEVILLE. You remember the great free-soil convention at Buffalo, in 1848, when Van Buren was nominated. All the world of hope and discontent went there, with its projects of reform. There seemed to be no doubt, among hundreds that attended it, that if they could get a resolution pa.s.sed that bread should be b.u.t.tered on both sides, it would be so b.u.t.tered. The platform provided for every want and every woe.

THE FIRE-TENDER. I remember. If you could get the millennium by political action, we should have had it then.

MANDEVILLE. We went there on the Erie Ca.n.a.l, the exciting and fashionable mode of travel in those days. I was a boy when we began the voyage. The boat was full of conventionists; all the talk was of what must be done there. I got the impression that as that boat-load went so would go the convention; and I was not alone in that feeling. I can never be grateful enough for one little scrubby fanatic who was on board, who spent most of his time in drafting resolutions and reading them privately to the pa.s.sengers. He was a very enthusiastic, nervous, and somewhat dirty little man, who wore a woolen m.u.f.fler about his throat, although it was summer; he had nearly lost his voice, and could only speak in a hoa.r.s.e, disagreeable whisper, and he always carried a teacup about, containing some sticky compound which he stirred frequently with a spoon, and took, whenever he talked, in order to improve his voice. If he was separated from his cup for ten minutes, his whisper became inaudible. I greatly delighted in him, for I never saw any one who had so much enjoyment of his own importance. He was fond of telling what he would do if the convention rejected such and such resolutions. He'd make it hot for them. I did n't know but he'd make them take his mixture. The convention had got to take a stand on tobacco, for one thing. He'd heard Gid-dings took snuff; he'd see.

When we at length reached Buffalo he took his teacup and carpet-bag of resolutions and went ash.o.r.e in a great hurry. I saw him once again in a cheap restaurant, whispering a resolution to another delegate, but he did n't appear in the convention. I have often wondered what became of him.

OUR NEXT DOOR. Probably he's consul somewhere. They mostly are.

THE FIRE-TENDER. After all, it's the easiest thing in the world to sit and sneer at eccentricities. But what a dead and uninteresting world it would be if we were all proper, and kept within the lines! Affairs would soon be reduced to mere machinery. There are moments, even days, when all interests and movements appear to be settled upon some universal plan of equilibrium; but just then some restless and absurd person is inspired to throw the machine out of gear. These individual eccentricities seem to be the special providences in the general human scheme.

HERBERT. They make it very hard work for the rest of us, who are disposed to go along peaceably and smoothly.

MANDEVILLE. And stagnate. I 'm not sure but the natural condition of this planet is war, and that when it is finally towed to its anchorage--if the universe has any harbor for worlds out of commission--it will look like the Fighting Temeraire in Turner's picture.

HERBERT. There is another thing I should like to understand: the tendency of people who take up one reform, perhaps a personal regeneration in regard to some bad habit, to run into a dozen other isms, and get all at sea in several vague and pernicious theories and practices.

MANDEVILLE. Herbert seems to think there is safety in a man's being anch.o.r.ed, even if it is to a bad habit.

HERBERT. Thank you. But what is it in human nature that is apt to carry a man who may take a step in personal reform into so many extremes?

OUR NEXT DOOR. Probably it's human nature.

HERBERT. Why, for instance, should a reformed drunkard (one of the n.o.blest examples of victory over self) incline, as I have known the reformed to do, to spiritism, or a woman suffragist to "pantarchism"

(whatever that is), and want to pull up all the roots of society, and expect them to grow in the air, like orchids; or a Graham-bread disciple become enamored of Communism?

MANDEVILLE. I know an excellent Conservative who would, I think, suit you; he says that he does not see how a man who indulges in the theory and practice of total abstinence can be a consistent believer in the Christian religion.

HERBERT. Well, I can understand what he means: that a person is bound to hold himself in conditions of moderation and control, using and not abusing the things of this world, practicing temperance, not retiring into a convent of artificial restrictions in order to escape the full responsibility of self-control. And yet his theory would certainly wreck most men and women. What does the Parson say?

THE PARSON. That the world is going crazy on the notion of individual ability. Whenever a man attempts to reform himself, or anybody else, without the aid of the Christian religion, he is sure to go adrift, and is pretty certain to be blown about by absurd theories, and shipwrecked on some pernicious ism.

THE FIRE-TENDER. I think the discussion has touched bottom.

III

I never felt so much the value of a house with a backlog in it as during the late spring; for its lateness was its main feature. Everybody was grumbling about it, as if it were something ordered from the tailor, and not ready on the day. Day after day it snowed, night after night it blew a gale from the northwest; the frost sunk deeper and deeper into the ground; there was a popular longing for spring that was almost a prayer; the weather bureau was active; Easter was set a week earlier than the year before, but nothing seemed to do any good. The robins sat under the evergreens, and piped in a disconsolate mood, and at last the bluejays came and scolded in the midst of the snow-storm, as they always do scold in any weather. The crocuses could n't be coaxed to come up, even with a pickaxe. I'm almost ashamed now to recall what we said of the weather only I think that people are no more accountable for what they say of the weather than for their remarks when their corns are stepped on.

We agreed, however, that, but for disappointed expectations and the prospect of late lettuce and peas, we were gaining by the fire as much as we were losing by the frost. And the Mistress fell to chanting the comforts of modern civilization.

THE FIRE-TENDER said he should like to know, by the way, if our civilization differed essentially from any other in anything but its comforts.

HERBERT. We are no nearer religious unity.

THE PARSON. We have as much war as ever.

MANDEVILLE. There was never such a social turmoil.

THE YOUNG LADY. The artistic part of our nature does not appear to have grown.

THE FIRE-TENDER. We are quarreling as to whether we are in fact radically different from the brutes.

HERBERT. Scarcely two people think alike about the proper kind of human government.

THE PARSON. Our poetry is made out of words, for the most part, and not drawn from the living sources.

OUR NEXT DOOR. And Mr. c.u.mming is uncorking his seventh phial. I never felt before what barbarians we are.

THE MISTRESS. Yet you won't deny that the life of the average man is safer and every way more comfortable than it was even a century ago.

THE FIRE-TENDER. But what I want to know is, whether what we call our civilization has done any thing more for mankind at large than to increase the ease and pleasure of living? Science has multiplied wealth, and facilitated intercourse, and the result is refinement of manners and a diffusion of education and information. Are men and women essentially changed, however? I suppose the Parson would say we have lost faith, for one thing.

MANDEVILLE. And superst.i.tion; and gained toleration.

HERBERT. The question is, whether toleration is anything but indifference.