Mince Pie Part 11

It is rather important to understand the technique of rumors. The wise man does not scoff at them, for while they are often absurd, they are rarely baseless. People do not go about inventing rumors, except for purposes of hoax; and even a practical joke is never (to parody the proverb) hoax et praeterea nihil. There is always a reason for wanting to perpetrate the hoax, or a reason for believing it will be believed.

Rumors are a kind of exhalation or intellectual perfume thrown off by the news of the day. Some events are more aromatic than others; they can be detected by the trained pointer long before they happen. When things are going on that have a strong vibration--what foreign correspondents love to call a "repercussion"--they cause a good deal of mind-quaking.

An event getting ready to happen is one of the most interesting things to watch. By a sort of mental radiation it fills men's minds with surmises and conjectures. Curiously enough, due perhaps to the innate perversity of man, most of the rumors suggest the exact opposite of what is going to happen. Yet a rumor, while it may be wholly misleading as to fact, is always a proof that something is going to happen. For instance, last summer when the news was full of repeated reports of Hindenburg's death, any sane man could foresee that what these reports really meant was not necessarily Hindenburg's death at all, but Germany's approaching military collapse. Some German prisoners had probably said "Hindenburg ist kaput," meaning "Hindenburg is done for," i.e., "The great offensive has failed." This was taken to mean that he was literally dead.

In the same way, while probably no one seriously believes that Lenine is in Barcelona, the mere fact that Madrid thinks it possible shows very plainly that something is going on. It shows either that the Bolshevik experiment in Petrograd has been such a gorgeous success that Lenine can turn his attention to foreign campaigning, or that it has been such a gorgeous failure that he has had to skip. It does not prove, since the rumor is "unconfirmed," that Lenine has gone anywhere yet; but it certainly does prove that he is going somewhere soon, even if only to the fortress of Peter and Paul. There may be some very simple explanation of the rumor. "You go to Barcelona!" may be a jocular Muscovite catchword, similar to our old saying about going to Halifax, and Trotzky may have said it to Lenine. At any rate it shows that the gold dust twins are not inseparable. It shows that Bolshevism in Russia is either very strong or very near downfall.

When we were told not long ago that Berlin was strangely gay for the capital of a prostrate nation and that all the cafes were crowded with dancers at night, many readers were amazed and tried to console their sense of probability by remarking that the Germans are crazy anyway. And yet this rumor of the dancing mania was an authentic premonition of the bloodier dance of death led by the Spartacus group. If Berlin did dance it was a cotillon of despair, caused by infinite war weariness, infinite hunger to forget humiliation for a few moments, and foreboding of troubles to come. Whether true or not, no one read the news without thinking it an ominous whisper.

Coming events cast their rumors before. From a careful study of rumors the discerning may learn a good deal, providing always that they never take them at face value but try to read beneath the surface. People sometimes criticize the newspapers for printing rumors, but it is an essential part of their function to do so, provided they plainly mark them as such. Shakespeare speaks of rumors as "stuffing the ears of men with false reports," yet if so this is not the fault of the rumor itself, but of the too credible listener. The prosperity of a rumor is in the ear that hears it. The sagacious listener will take the trouble to sift and winnow his rumors, set them in perspective with what he knows of the facts and from them he will then deduce exceedingly valuable considerations. Rumor is the living atmosphere of men's minds, the most fascinating and significant problem with which we have to deal.

The Fact, the Truth, may shine like the sun, but after all it is the clouds that make the sunset beautiful. Keep your eye on the rumors, for a sufficient number of rumors can compel an event to happen, even against its will.

No one can set down any hard and fast rules for reading the rumors. The process is partly instinctive and partly the result of trained observation. It is as complicated as the calculation by which a woman tells time by her watch which she knows to be wrong--she adds seventeen minutes, subtracts three, divides by two and then looks at the church steeple. It is as exhilarating as trying to deduce what there is going to be for supper by the pervasive fragrance of onions in the front hall.

And sometimes a very small event, like a very small onion, can cast its rumors a long way. Destiny is unlike the hen in that she cackles before she lays the egg.

The first rule to observe about rumors is that they are often exactly opposite in tendency to the coming fact. For instance, the rumors of secrecy at the Peace Conference were the one thing necessary to guarantee complete publicity. Just before any important event occurs it seems to discharge both positive and negative currents, just as a magnet is polarized by an electric coil. Some people by mental habit catch the negative vibrations, others the positive. Every one can remember the military critics last March who were so certain that there would be no German offensive. Their very certainty was to many others a proof that the offensive was likely. They were full of the negative vibrations.

An interesting case of positive vibrations was the repeated rumor of the Kaiser's abdication. The fact that those rumors were premature was insignificant compared with the fact that they were current at all. The fact that there were such rumors showed that it was only a matter of time.

It is entertaining, if disconcerting, to watch a rumor on its travels.

A cla.s.sic example of this during the recent war is exhibited by the following clippings which were collected, I believe, by Norman Hapgood:

From the _Koelnische-Zeitung_:

"When the fall of Antwerp became known the church bells were rung."

(Meaning in Germany.)

[Ill.u.s.tration]

From the Paris _Matin_:

"According to the _Koelnische-Zeitung_, the clergy of Antwerp were compelled to ring the church bells when the fortress was taken."

From the London _Times_:

"According to what the _Matin_ has heard from Cologne, the Belgian priests, who refused to ring the church bells when Antwerp was taken, have been driven away from their places."

From the _Corriere Della Sera_, of Milan:

"According to what the _Times_ has heard from Cologne, via Paris, the unfortunate Belgian priests, who refused to ring the church bells when Antwerp was taken, have been sentenced to hard labor."

From the _Matin_ again:

"According to information received by the _Corriere Della Sera_, from Cologne, via London, it is confirmed that the barbaric conquerors of Antwerp punished the unfortunate Belgian priests for their heroic refusal to ring the church bells by hanging them as living clappers to the bells with their heads down."

Be hospitable to rumors, for however grotesque they are, they always have some reason for existence. The Sixth Sense is the sense of news, the sense that something is going to happen. And just as every orchestra utters queer and discordant sounds while it is tuning up its instruments, so does the great orchestra of Human Events (in other words, The News) offer shrill and perhaps misleading notes before the conductor waves his baton and leads off the concerted crash of Truth.

Keep your senses alert to examine the odd sc.r.a.ps of hearsay that you will often see in the news, for it is in just those eavesdroppings at the heart of humanity that the press often fulfills its highest function.

OUR MOTHERS

[Ill.u.s.tration]

When one becomes a father, then first one becomes a son. Standing by the crib of one's own baby, with that world-old pang of compa.s.sion and protectiveness toward this so little creature that has all its course to run, the heart flies back in yearning and grat.i.tude to those who felt just so toward one's self. Then for the first time one understands the homely succession of sacrifices and pains by which life is transmitted and fostered down the stumbling generations of men.

Every man is privileged to believe all his life that his own mother is the best and dearest that a child ever had. By some strange racial instinct of taciturnity and repression most of us lack utterance to say our thoughts in this close matter. A man's mother is so tissued and woven into his life and brain that he can no more describe her than describe the air and sunlight that bless his days. It is only when some Barrie comes along that he can say for all of us what fills the eye with instant tears of gentleness. Is there a mother, is there a son, who has not read Barrie's "Margaret Ogilvy?" Turn to that first chapter, "How My Mother Got Her Soft Face," and draw aside the veils that years and perplexity weave over the inner sanctuaries of our hearts.

Our mothers understand us so well! Speech and companionship with them are so easy, so un.o.bstructed by the thousand teasing barriers that bar soul from eager soul! To walk and talk with them is like slipping on an old coat. To hear their voices is like the shake of music in a sober evening hush.

There is a harmony and beauty in the life of mother and son that brims the mind's cup of satisfaction. So well we remember when she was all in all; strength, tenderness, law and life itself. Her arms were the world: her soft cheek our sun and stars. And now it is we who are strong and self-sufficing; it is she who leans on us. Is there anything so precious, so complete, so that return of life's pendulum?

And it is as grandmothers that our mothers come into the fullness of their grace. When a man's mother holds his child in her gladdened arms he is aware (with some instinctive sense of propriety) of the roundness of life's cycle; of the mystic harmony of life's ways. There speaks humanity in its chord of three notes: its little capture of completeness and joy, sounding for a moment against the silent flux of time. Then the perfect span is shredded away and is but a holy memory.

The world, as we tread its puzzling paths, shows many profiles and glimpses of wonder and loveliness; many shapes and symbols to entrance and astound. Yet it will offer us nothing more beautiful than our mother's face; no memory more dear than her encircling tenderness. The mountain tops of her love rise as high in ether as any sun-stained alp.

Lakes are no deeper and no purer blue than her bottomless charity. We need not fare further than her immortal eyes to know that life is good.

How strangely fragmentary our memories of her are, and yet (when we piece them together) how they erect a comfortable background for all we are and dream. She built the earth about us and arched us over with sky.

She created our world, taught us to dwell therein. The pa.s.sion of her love compelled the rude laws of life to stand back while we were soft and helpless. She defied gravity that we might not fall. She set aside hunger, sleep and fear that we might have plenty. She tamed her own spirit and crushed her own weakness that we might be strong. And when we pa.s.sed down the laughing street of childhood and turned that corner that all must pa.s.s, it was her hand that waved good-bye. Then, smothering the ache, with one look into the secret corner where the old keepsakes lie hid, she set about waiting the day when the long-lost baby would come back anew. The grandchild--is he not her own boy returned to her arms?

Who can lean over a crib at night, marveling upon that infinite innocence and candor swathed in the silk coc.o.o.n of childish sleep, without guessing the throb of fierce gentleness that runs in maternal blood? The earth is none too rich in compa.s.sion these days: let us be grateful to the mothers for what remains. It was not they who filled the world with spies and quakings. It was not a cabal of mothers that met to decree blood and anguish for the races of men. They know that life is built at too dear a price to be so lathered in corruption and woe. Those who create life, who know its humility, its tender fabric and its infinite price, who have cherished and warmed and fed it, do not lightly cast it into the pit.

Mothers are great in the eyes of their sons because they are knit in our minds with all the littlenesses of life, the unspeakably dear trifles and odds of existence. The other day I found in my desk a little strip of tape on which my name was marked a dozen times in drawing ink, in my mother's familiar script. My mind ran back to the time when that little band of humble linen was a kind of pa.s.sport into manhood. It was when I went away from home and she could no longer mark my garments with my name, for the confusion of rapacious laundries. I was to cut off the autographed sections of this tape and sew them on such new vestments as came my way. Of course I did not do so; what boy would be faithful to so feminine a trust? But now the little tape, soiled by a dozen years of wandering, lies in my desk drawer as a symbol and souvenir of that endless forethought and loving kindness.

They love us not wisely but too well, it is sometimes said. Ah, in a world where so many love us not well but too wisely, how tremulously our hearts turn back to bathe in that running river of their love and ceaseless charm!

GREETING TO AMERICAN ANGLERS

_From Master Isaak Walton_

My Good Friends--As I have said afore time, sitting by a river's side is the quietest and fittest place for contemplation, and being out and along the bank of Styx with my tackle this sweet April morning, it came into my humor to send a word of greeting to you American anglers. Some of your fellows, who have come by this way these past years, tell me notable tales of the sport that may he had in your bright streams, whereof the name of Pocono lingers in my memory. Sad it is to me to recall that when writing my little book on the recreation of a contemplative man I had made no mention of your rivers as delightsome places where our n.o.ble art might be carried to a brave perfection, but indeed in that day when I wrote--more years ago than I like to think on--your far country was esteemed a wild and wanton land. Some worthy Pennsylvania anglers with whom I have fished this water of Styx have even told me of thirty and forty-inch trouts they have brought to basket in that same Pocono stream, from the which fables I know that the manners of our ancient sport have altered not a whit. I myself could tell you of a notable catch I had the other morning, when I took some half dozen brace of trouts before breakfast, not one less than twenty-two inches, with bellies as yellow as marigold and as white as a lily in parts. That I account quite excellent taking for these times, when this stream hath been so roiled and troubled by the pa.s.sage of Master Charon's barges, he having been so pressed with traffic that he hath discarded his ancient vessel as incommodious and hasteneth to and fro with a fleet of ferryboats.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

My Good Friends, I wish you all the comely sport that may be found along those crystal rivers whereof your fellows have told me, and a good honest alehouse wherein to take your civil cup of barley wine when there ariseth too violent a shower of rain. I have ever believed that a pipe of tobacco sweeteneth sport, and I was never above hiding a bottle of somewhat in the hollow root of a sycamore against chilly seizures. But come, what is this I hear that you honest anglers shall no longer pledge fortune in a cup of mild beverage? Meseemeth this is an odd thing and contrary to our tradition. I look for some explanation of the matter.

Mayhap I have been misled by some waggishness. In my days along my beloved little river Dove, where my friend Mr. Cotton erected his fishing house, we were wont to take our pleasure on the bowling green of an evening, with a cup of ale handy. And our sheets used to smell pa.s.sing sweet of lavender, which is a pleasant fragrance, indeed.

One matter lies somewhat heavy on my heart and damps my mirth, that in my little book I said of our n.o.ble fish the trout that his name was of a German offspring. I am happy to confess to you that I was at fault, for my good friend Master Charon (who doth sometimes lighten his labors with a little casting and trolling from the p.o.o.p of his vessel) hath explained to me that the name trout deriveth from the antique Latin word _tructa_, signifying a gnawer. This is a gladsome thing for me to know, and moreover I am bounden to tell you that the house committee of our little angling club along Styx hath blackballed all German members henceforward. These riparian pleasures are justly to be reserved for gentles of the true sportsman blood, and not such as have defiled the fair rivers of France.

And so, good friends, my love and blessing upon all such as love quietness and go angling.

IZAAK WALTON.