The Ways of Men Part 17

The young man who expects to succeed in business to-day must be a "hustler," have a snap-shot style in conversation, patronize rapid transit vehicles, understand shorthand, and eat at "breathless breakfasts."

Being taken recently to one of these establishments for "quick lunch," as I believe the correct phrase is, to eat buckwheat cakes (and very good they were), I had an opportunity of studying the ways of the modern time-saving young man.

It is his habit upon entering to dash for the bill-of-fare, and give an order (if he is adroit enough to catch one of the maids on the fly) before removing either coat or hat. At least fifteen seconds may be economized in this way. Once seated, the luncher falls to on anything at hand; bread, cold slaw, crackers, or catsup. When the dish ordered arrives, he gets his fork into it as it appears over his shoulder, and has cleaned the plate before the sauce makes its appearance, so that is eaten by itself or with bread.

Cups of coffee or tea go down in two swallows. Little piles of cakes are cut in quarters and disappear in four mouthfuls, much after the fashion of children down the ogre's throat in the mechanical toy, mastication being either a lost art or considered a foolish waste of energy.

A really accomplished luncher can a.s.similate his last quarter of cakes, wiggle into his coat, and pay his check at the desk at the same moment.

The next, he is down the block in pursuit of a receding trolley.

To any one fresh from the Continent, where the entire machinery of trade comes to a standstill from eleven to one o'clock, that _dejeuner_ may be taken in somnolent tranquillity, the nervous tension pervading a restaurant here is prodigious, and what is worse-catching! During recent visits to the business centres of our city, I find that the idea of eating is repugnant. It seems to be wrong to waste time on anything so unproductive. Last week a friend offered me a "luncheon tablet" from a box on his desk. "It's as good as a meal," he said, "and so much more expeditious!"

The proprietor of one down-town restaurant has the stock quotations exhibited on a black-board at the end of his room; in this way his patrons can keep in touch with the "Street" as they hurriedly stoke up.

A parlor car, toward a journey's end, is another excellent place to observe our native ways. Coming from Washington the other day my fellow-pa.s.sengers began to show signs of restlessness near Newark. Books and papers were thrown aside; a general "uprising, unveiling" followed, accompanied by our objectionable custom of having our clothes brushed in each other's faces. By the time Jersey City appeared on the horizon, every man, woman, and child in that car was jammed, baggage in hand, into the stuffy little pa.s.sage which precedes the entrance, swaying and staggering about while the train backed and delayed.

The explanation of this is quite simple. The "influence" was at work, preventing those people from acting like other civilized mortals, and remaining seated until their train had come to a standstill.

Being fresh from the "other side," and retaining some of my acquired calm, I sat in my chair! The surprise on the faces of the other pa.s.sengers warned me, however, that it would not be safe to carry this pose too far. The porter, puzzled by the unaccustomed sight, touched me kindly on the shoulder, and asked if I "felt sick"! So now, to avoid all affectation of superiority, I struggled into my great-coat, regardless of eighty degrees temperature in the car, and meekly joined the standing army of martyrs, to hurry, scampering with them from the still-moving car to the boat, and on to the trolley before the craft had been moored to its landing pier.

In Paris, on taking an omnibus, you are given a number and the right to the first vacant seat. When the places in a "bus" are all occupied it receives no further occupants. Imagine a traction line attempting such a reform here! There would be a riot, and the conductors hanged to the nearest trolley-poles in an hour!

To prevent a citizen from crowding into an over-full vehicle, and stamping on its occupants in the process, would be to infringe one of his dearest privileges, not to mention his chance of riding free.

A small boy of my acquaintance tells me he rarely finds it necessary to pay in a New York car. The conductors are too hurried and too preoccupied pocketing their share of the receipts to keep count. "When he pa.s.ses, I just look blank!" remarked the ingenious youth.

Of all the individuals, however, in the community, our idle cla.s.s suffer the most acutely from lack of time, though, like Charles Lamb's gentleman, they have all there is.

From the moment a man of leisure, or his wife, wakens in the morning until they drop into a fitful slumber at night, their day is an agitated chase. No matter where or when you meet them, they are always on the wing.

"Am I late again?" gasped a thin little woman to me the other evening, as she hurried into the drawing-room, where she had kept her guests and dinner waiting. "I've been so driven all day, I'm a wreck!" A glance at her hatchet-faced husband revealed the fact that he, too, was chasing after a stray half-hour lost somewhere in his youth. His color and most of his hair had gone in its pursuit, while his hands had acquired a twitch, as though urging on a tired steed.

Go and ask that lady for a cup of tea at twilight; ten to one she will receive you with her hat on, explaining that she has not had time to take it off since breakfast. If she writes to you, her notes are signed, "In great haste," or "In a tearing hurry." She is out of her house by half-past eight on most mornings, yet when calling she sits on the edge of her chair, and a.s.sures you that she has not a moment to stay, "has only run in," etc.

Just what drives her so hard is a mystery, for beyond a vague charity meeting or two and some calls, she accomplishes little. Although wealthy and childless, with no cares and few worries, she succ.u.mbs to nervous prostration every two or three years, "from overwork."

Listen to a compatriot's account of his European trip! He will certainly tell you how short the ocean crossing was, giving hours and minutes with zest, as though he had got ahead of Father Time in a transaction. Then follows a list of the many countries seen during his tour.

I know a lady lying ill to-day because she would hurry herself and her children, in six weeks last summer, through a Continental tour that should have occupied three months. She had no particular reason for hurrying; indeed, she got ahead of her schedule, and had to wait in Paris for the steamer; a detail, however, that in no way diminished madame's pleasure in having done so much during her holiday. This same lady deplores lack of leisure hours, yet if she finds by her engagement book that there is a free week ahead, she will run to Washington or Lakewood, "for a change," or organize a party to Florida.

To realize how our upper ten scramble through existence, one must also contrast their fidgety way of feeding with the bovine calm in which a German absorbs his nourishment and the hours Italians can pa.s.s over their meals; an American dinner party affords us the opportunity.

There is an impression that the fashion for quickly served dinners came to us from England. If this is true (which I doubt; it fits too nicely with our temperament to have been imported), we owe H.R.H. a debt of grat.i.tude, for nothing is so tiresome as too many courses needlessly prolonged.

Like all converts, however, we are too zealous. From oysters to fruit, dinners now are a breathless steeplechase, during which we take our viand hedges and champagne ditches at a dead run, with conversation pushed at much the same speed. To be silent would be to imply that one was not having a good time, so we rattle and gobble on toward the finger-bowl winning-post, only to find that rest is not there!

As the hostess pilots the ladies away to the drawing-room, she whispers to her spouse, "You won't smoke long, will you?" So we are mulcted in the enjoyment of even that last resource of weary humanity, the cigar, and are hustled away from that and our coffee, only to find that our appearance is a signal for a general move.

One of the older ladies rises; the next moment the whole circle, like a flock of frightened birds, are up and off, crowding each other in the hallway, calling for their carriages, and confusing the unfortunate servants, who are trying to help them into their cloaks and overshoes.

Bearing in mind that the guests come as late as they dare, without being absolutely uncivil, that dinners are served as rapidly as is physically possible, and that the circle breaks up as soon as the meal ends, one asks one's self in wonder why, if a dinner party is such a bore that it has to be scrambled through, _coute que coute_, we continue to dine out?

It is within the bounds of possibility that people may have reasons for hurrying through their days, and that dining out _a la longue_ becomes a weariness.

The one place, however, where you might expect to find people reposeful and calm is at the theatre. The labor of the day is then over; they have a.s.sembled for an hour or two of relaxation and amus.e.m.e.nt. Yet it is at the play that our restlessness is most apparent. Watch an audience (which, be it remarked in pa.s.sing, has arrived late) during the last ten minutes of a performance. No sooner do they discover that the end is drawing near than people begin to struggle into their wraps. By the time the players have lined up before the footlights the house is full of disappearing backs.

Past, indeed, are the unruffled days when a heroine was expected (after the action of a play had ended) to deliver the closing _envoi_ dear to the writers of Queen Anne's day. Thackeray writes:-

_The play is done_! _The curtain drops_, _Slow falling to the prompter's bell_!

_A moment yet the actor stops_, _And looks around_, _to say farewell_!

A comedian who attempted any such abuse of the situation to-day would find himself addressing empty benches. Before he had finished the first line of his epilogue, most of his public would be housed in the rapid transit cars. No talent, no novelty holds our audiences to the end of a performance.

On the opening night of the opera season this winter, one third of the "boxes" and orchestra stalls were vacant before Romeo (who, being a foreigner, was taking his time) had expired.

One overworked matron of my acquaintance has perfected an ingenious and time-saving combination. By signalling from a window near her opera box to a footman below, she is able to get her carriage at least two minutes sooner than her neighbors.

During the last act of an opera like _Tann-hauser_ or _Faust_, in which the inconsiderate composer has placed a musical gem at the end, this lady is worth watching. After getting into her wraps and overshoes she stands, hand on the door, at the back of her box, listening to the singers; at a certain moment she hurries to the window, makes her signal, scurries back, hears Calve pour her soul out in _Anges purs_, _anges radieux_, yet manages to get down the stairs and into her carriage before the curtain has fallen.

We deplore the prevailing habit of "slouch"; yet if you think of it, this universal hurry is the cause of it. Our cities are left unsightly, because we cannot spare time to beautify them. Nervous diseases are distressingly prevalent; still we hurry! hurry!! hurry!!! until, as a diplomatist recently remarked to me, the whole nation seemed to him to be but five minutes ahead of an apoplectic fit.

The curious part of the matter is that after several weeks at home, much that was strange at first becomes quite natural to the traveller, who finds himself thinking with pity of benighted foreigners and their humdrum ways, and would resent any attempts at reform.

What, for instance, would replace for enterprising souls the joy of taking their matutinal car at a flying leap, or the rapture of being first out of a theatre? What does part of a last act or the "star song"

matter in comparison with five minutes of valuable time to the good?

Like the river captains, we propose to run under full head of steam and get there, or b--- explode!

CHAPTER 33-The Spirit of History

Buildings become tombs when the race that constructed them has disappeared. Libraries and ma.n.u.scripts are catacombs where most of us might wander in the dark forever, finding no issue. To know dead generations and their environments through these channels, to feel a love so strong that it calls the past forth from its winding-sheet, and gives it life again, as Christ did Lazarus, is the privilege only of great historians.

France is honoring the memory of such a man at this moment; one who for forty years sought the vital spark of his country's existence, striving to resuscitate what he called "the great soul of history," as it developed through successive acts of the vast drama. This employment of his genius is Michelet's t.i.tle to fame.

In a sombre structure, the tall windows of which look across the Luxembourg trees to the Pantheon, where her husband's bust has recently been placed, a widow preserves with religious care the souvenirs of this great historian. Nothing that can recall either his life or his labor is changed.

Madame Michelet's life is in strange contrast with the ways of the modern spouse who, under pretext of grief, discards and displaces every reminder of the dead. In our day, when the great art is to forget, an existence consecrated to a memory is so rare that the world might be the better for knowing that a woman lives who, young and beautiful, was happy in the society of an old man, whose genius she appreciated and cherished, who loves him dead as she loved him living. By her care the apartment remains as it stood when he left it, to die at Hyeres,-the furniture, the paintings, the writing-table. No stranger has sat in his chair, no acquaintance has drunk from his cup. This woman, who was a perfect wife and now fills one's ideal of what a widow's life should be, has const.i.tuted herself the vigilant guardian of her husband's memory. She loves to talk of the ill.u.s.trious dead, and tell how he was fond of saying that Virgil and Vico were his parents. Any one who reads the _Georgics_ or _The Bird_ will see the truth of this, for he loved all created things, his ardent spiritism perceiving that the essence which moved the ocean's tides was the same that sang in the robin at the window during his last illness, which he called his "little captive soul."

The author of _La Bible de l'Humanite_ had to a supreme degree the love of country, and possessed the power of reincarnating with each succeeding cycle of its history. So luminous was his mind, so profound and far-reaching his sympathy, that he understood the obscure workings of the mediaeval mind as clearly as he appreciated Mirabeau's transcendent genius. He believed that humanity, like Prometheus, was self-made; that nations modelled their own destiny during the actions and reactions of history, as each one of us acquires a personality through the struggles and temptations of existence, by the evolving power every soul carries within itself.

Michelet taught that each nation was the hero of its own drama; that great men have not been different from the rest of their race-on the contrary, being the condensation of an epoch, that, no matter what the apparent eccentricities of a leader may have been, he was the expression of a people's spirit. This discovery that a race is transformed by its action upon itself and upon the elements it absorbs from without, wipes away at a stroke the popular belief in "predestined races" or providential "great men" appearing at crucial moments and riding victorious across the world.

An historian, if what he writes is to have any value, must know the people, the one great historical factor. Radicalism in history is the beginning of truth. Guided by this light of his own, Michelet discovered a fresh factor heretofore unnoticed, that vast fermentation which in France transforms all foreign elements into an integral part of the country's being. After studying his own land through the thirteen centuries of her growth, from the chart of Childebert to the will of Louis XVI., Michelet declared that while England is a composite empire and Germany a region, France is a personality. In consequence he regarded the history of his country as a long dramatic poem. Here we reach the inner thought of the historian, the secret impulse that guided his majestic pen.

The veritable hero of his splendid Iliad is at first ignorant and obscure, seeking pa.s.sionately like dipus to know himself. The interest of the piece is absorbing. We can follow the gradual development of his nature as it becomes more attractive and sympathetic with each advancing age, until, through the hundred acts of the tragedy, he achieves a soul.

For Michelet to write the history of his country was to describe the long evolution of a hero. He was fond of telling his friends that during the Revolution of July, while he was making his translation of Vico, this great fact was revealed to him in the blazing vision of a people in revolt. At that moment the young and unknown author resolved to devote his life, his talents, his gift of clairvoyance, the magic of his inimitable style and creative genius, to fixing on paper the features seen in his vision.