The Forerunner Part 7

WHERE THE HEART IS

I.

A small stone city, very old, built upon rock, rock-paved, rock-bound with twenty centuries of walls.

A Ghetto, an age-old Ghetto, crowded into a stony corner of the crowded stony city; its steep and narrow confines not more a boundary than the iron prejudices that built them.

In the Ghetto--life, human life; close-pressed, kept to its elemental forms, with a vitality purchased at nature's awful price--by surviving slow extinction.

This life, denied all larger grouping, finds its sole joy in fierce deep love of family and home. This home a room, a low and narrow room, unwholesome, dark, incredibly filled up, yet overflowing most with love.

Here was peace. Here was Honor wherewith to face the outer Scorn. Here was Safety--the only safety known. Here, most of all was Love, Love, wound and interwound with the blood-tie, deepened by religion, intensified by centuries of relentless pressure, strengthened a thousandfold by the unbroken cruelty of the environment. Love, one with the family; the family one with the home; the home, for generation after generation--one room!

A miracle! Some daughter of this house, strayed as a child, found by eccentric travellers, taken to England, reared with love and care to strange exotic beauty, marrying a great landowner so lost in pa.s.sionate devotion that he gave her all he had, and, dying, left her heir to vast estates.

She following, her family inherit the estate, and come to take possession.

They enter the tall pillared gates; they wander up the shaded avenue, a little group, huddled and silent, timid, ill at ease. They mount the wide, white marble-terraced steps, the children crowding close, the mother frightened, the father striving to hold up this new strange pride under his time-swollen burden of humility and fear.

These towering halls, these broad-curved stairways, these lofty chambers, even the great kitchens and their cl.u.s.tering offices, are to this timid group as wide and desolate as deserts or the sea.

They seek a room, a room that shall be small enough and low enough and dark enough; they reach at last one friendly sheltering little room--crowd into it with tumultuous affection, and find a home!

It is home where the heart is!

II.

A new age where new power has conquered a new element, and sky-sailors seek for large discoveries compared to which the old "new world" was but a dooryard venture. Our little world now known from coast to coast and pole to pole; its problems solved, its full powers mastered; its sweet serviceableness and unfailing comfort the common joy of all.

Later science, piling wonder upon wonder, handling radiant energy, packing compressed air for long excursions into outer s.p.a.ce, sends out some skyship on tremendous errands of interstellar search. Days, weeks, they flit, with speed incredible, our earth a speck, our moon invisible, our sun a star among the others now; then having done their work, turn the sharp prow and study their vast charts for the return.

Out of that blackness, wider than our minds, back from the awful strangeness of new stars, they turn and fly. All know their charts, all have their telescopes, all see that old familiar system swinging nearer.

They greet the sun as we Fire Island--the moon like Sandy Hook.

But that small star, bigger and bigger now, its heavenly radiance fading softly down to the warm glow of earthly beauty, coming out round and full at last--ah! how they choke, how they cry out to see it!

Nearer--the blue skin of the all-enclosing sea, the green of interrupting continents; now they can recognize the hemisphere--the tears come--this is home!

It is home where the heart is.

THANKSGIVING

I never thought much of the folks who pray The Lord to make them thankful for a meal Expecting Him to furnish all the food And then provide them with the grat.i.tude They haven't grace to feel.

I never thought much of this yearly thanks, Either for what once happened long ago, Or for "our constant mercies." To my mind If we're to thank a Power that's daily kind, Our annual's too slow.

Suppose we spread Thanksgiving--hand it round-- Give G.o.d an honest heartful every day; And, while we're being thankful, why not give Some grat.i.tude to those by whom we live-- As well as stingy pay?

OUR ANDROCENTRIC CULTURE, or THE MAN-MADE WORLD

I.

AS TO HUMANNESS.

Let us begin, inoffensively, with sheep. The sheep is a beast with which we are all familiar, being much used in religious imagery; the common stock of painters; a staple article of diet; one of our main sources of clothing; and an everyday symbol of bashfulness and stupidity.

In some grazing regions the sheep is an object of terror, destroying gra.s.s, bush and forest by omnipresent nibbling; on the great plains, sheep-keeping frequently results in insanity, owing to the loneliness of the shepherd, and the monotonous appearance and behavior of the sheep.

By the poet, young sheep are preferred, the lamb gambolling gaily; unless it be in hymns, where "all we like sheep" are repeatedly described, and much stress is laid upon the straying propensities of the animal.

To the scientific mind there is special interest in the sequacity of sheep, their habit of following one another with automatic imitation.

This instinct, we are told, has been developed by ages of wild crowded racing on narrow ledges, along precipices, chasms, around sudden spurs and corners, only the leader seeing when, where and how to jump. If those behind jumped exactly as he did, they lived. If they stopped to exercise independent judgment, they were pushed off and perished; they and their judgment with them.

All these things, and many that are similar, occur to us when we think of sheep. They are also ewes and rams. Yes, truly; but what of it?

All that has been said was said of sheep, _genus ovis,_ that bland beast, compound of mutton, wool, and foolishness. so widely known. If we think of the sheep-dog (and dog-ess), the shepherd (and shepherd-ess), of the ferocious sheep-eating bird of New Zealand, the Kea (and Kea-ess), all these herd, guard, or kill the sheep, both rams and ewes alike. In regard to mutton, to wool, to general character, we think only of their sheepishness, not at all of their ramishness or eweishness. That which is ovine or bovine, canine, feline or equine, is easily recognized as distinguishing that particular species of animal, and has no relation whatever to the s.e.x thereof.

Returning to our muttons, let us consider the ram, and wherein his character differs from the sheep. We find he has a more quarrelsome disposition. He paws the earth and makes a noise. He has a tendency to b.u.t.t. So has a goat--Mr. Goat. So has Mr. Buffalo, and Mr. Moose, and Mr. Antelope. This tendency to plunge head foremost at an adversary--and to find any other gentleman an adversary on sight--evidently does not pertain to sheep, to _genus ovis;_ but to any male creature with horns.

As "function comes before organ," we may even give a reminiscent glance down the long path of evolution, and see how the mere act of b.u.t.ting--pa.s.sionately and perpetually repeated--born of the beliggerent spirit of the male--produced horns!

The ewe, on the other hand, exhibits love and care for her little ones, gives them milk and tries to guard them. But so does a goat--Mrs. Goat.

So does Mrs. Buffalo and the rest. Evidently this mother instinct is no peculiarity of _genus ovis,_ but of any female creature.

Even the bird, though not a mammal, shows the same mother-love and mother-care, while the father bird, though not a b.u.t.ter, fights with beak and wing and spur. His compet.i.tion is more effective through display. The wish to please, the need to please, the overmastering necessity upon him that he secure the favor of the female, has made the male bird blossom like a b.u.t.terfly. He blazes in gorgeous plumage, rears haughty crests and combs, shows drooping wattles and dangling blobs such as the turkey-c.o.c.k affords; long splendid feathers for pure ornament appear upon him; what in her is a mere tail-effect becomes in him a ma.s.s of glittering drapery.

Partridge-c.o.c.k, farmyard-c.o.c.k, peac.o.c.k, from sparrow to ostrich, observe his mien! To strut and languish; to exhibit every beauteous lure; to sacrifice ease, comfort, speed, everything--to beauty--for her sake--this is the nature of the he-bird of any species; the characteristic, not of the turkey, but of the c.o.c.k! With drumming of loud wings, with crow and quack and bursts of glorious song, he woos his mate; displays his splendors before her; fights fiercely with his rivals. To b.u.t.t--to strut--to make a noise--all for love's sake; these acts are common to the male.

We may now generalize and clearly state: That is masculine which belongs to the male--to any or all males, irrespective of species. That is feminine which belongs to the female, to any or all females, irrespective of species. That is ovine, bovine, feline, canine, equine or asinine which belongs to that species, irrespective of s.e.x.

In our own species all this is changed. We have been so taken up with the phenomena of masculinity and femininity, that our common humanity has largely escaped notice. We know we are human, naturally, and are very proud of it; but we do not consider in what our humanness consists; nor how men and women may fall short of it, or overstep its bounds, in continual insistence upon their special differences. It is "manly" to do this; it is "womanly" to do that; but what a human being should do under the circ.u.mstances is not thought of.