Class 'PS 7>5ZJ Book - rjy& m^ Copyright]^"__ f^/S COPYRIGHT deposit: NEIGHBOURS BY HERBERT KAUFMAN Neighbours Do Something! Be Something! The Efficient Age The Clock That Had No Hands Poems GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY NEW YORK NEIGHBOURS By HERBERT KAUFMAN NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY Copyright, 1909, By associated SUNDAY MAGAZINES Copyright, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1912, 1913, 1914, By HERBERT KAUFMAN Copyright, 1911, 1912, By currier PUBLISHING COMPANY Copyright, 1912, 1913, By WOMAN'S WORLD PUBLISHING COMPANY Copyright, 1915, By GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION into FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN ^'>V/- APR 19 1915 ©C!,A397642 To My Best Neighbour — MY FATHER CONTENTS PAGE The Man Who Sneered at Santa Claus i i "Maggie" 21 The Household Bully 29 Once Upon a Time ........ 35 His Father Owned the Candy Shop . . 41 How Mary Went Wrong 47 Lest You Forget Too Long! 53 The Passing of the Fairy Tale ... 59 Is Your Name Scrooge? 65 A Fair Man 7i Tommy's Mother and the Needle Gate 79 Anybody Can Be a Gentleman .... 85 The Windows of Hope and Memory . . 91 Who Threw the Brick? 97 The Five-cent Dollar i03 Somebody's Daughter i09 7 CONTENTS PAGB To A Poor Boy 115 The Little Brothers of Destruction . 121 Esau, the Beggarman 127 Johnnie 135 NOT AN Ode tq Spring 141 s THE MAN WHO SNEERED AT SANTA CLAUS THE MAN WHO SNEERED AT SANTA CLAUS YOU'RE the man who drove the fairies out of their dells; the gnomes hide as you enter the woods; the squirrels won't talk to you; you don't understand what the wind says at night; and you can't even see the face of the man in the moon. You weren't content to have the but- terflies flutter past in the sunlight; you caught them to feel the spangles on their wings, and the moment you touched the gauze all the purple and the gold rubbed off and they died in your hands. You set a snare for the rainbow and after you'd trapped it in your prism it stopped being a rainbow and just turned into a haze of coloured lights. Oh, the fortunes and fortunes you've lost — all your dreams — all your faiths! You've sold your birthrights. And now II NEIGHBOURS you're alone and miles and miles and miles away from home! You set forth in the wrong direction through the Gate of Years — down the Path of Tears. Why, already there's grey in your hair; so how can you know about Santa Claus? You went hunting for him, just as you searched for the pixies and elves and of course you couldn't find him because Doubt blurred your eyes. Your name is on his blacklist. He never stops at your chimney. At which you probably shrug your shoulders and sniff and sneer and want us to think that he doesn't exist. But Way down in your heart (in a little lonesome corner which belonged to a for- lorn boy who got lost inside of you) you know that Christmas is real, that there is 2l Santa Claus, and that he rides over all the world in a single night — in a wonder- ful sleigh that simply can't be emptied, no matter how many guns and drums and dolls and blocks and books he takes from it. 12 NEIGHBOURS You've heard the bells on his reindeer when they champed on the gables as he wheezed and puffed and squeezed down the tight old chimney place. (You never could understand how he managed to get through it, because it wasn't really a chimney, but just a hole, no bigger than the stovepipe. But the chimney didn't pinch at all — you believed that he would come and Faith widened the way for him.) He always brought the very things for which you wrote, too. Mother helped you with the letter — ^you and she com- posed it. She guided your hand and even suggested what to ask for. But you sealed the envelope all by yourself and mother took it out with her the next morning, because she knew the exact letter box from which he received his mail. Where are your sneers now? You know you'd give half the world to go back to-night and crawl upstairs to the bedroom under the eaves and wish things 13 NEIGHBOURS again — half the world to sleep at "home" one more Christmas Eve! No boy ever truly slept on the Eve ; but you pretended to, with all your might and main. And when mother and father tip- toed into the room and stood beside the cot, you peeped through one half-opened lid and wondered why he kissed her. And once a moonbeam slipped in and fell on her face and you saw tears on her lashes. And as it grew later and the wind growled and howled and the branches of the old locust slapped against the win- dow, you moved over and pinched broth- er to keep him awake as you had prom- ised. It seemed like a whole year of nights before you heard the sleigh-bells. My! You lay still and squeezed your eyes shut and you gave a snorty snore, for fear that Santa Claus might come upstairs and catch you waiting. And you didn't move again until you heard father lock his door. Then you crept downstairs. The par- NEIGHBOURS lour was dark ; but the stove was redhot, and its glow showed the ghostly row of stockings on the mantel. The big lump at the bottom of yours was an apple — ^you knew that without touching it; and the thing sticking out was a jumping jack, which he'd put in the top for good meas- ure, without your even asking for it. (He must have had plenty of jumping jacks, to be so liberal with them!) And over in the corner stood the tree. You never did figure how he got it down the chimney without smudging the angel with soot. The angel stood at the very top, and she had silver wings that glistened like snow, and all over the branches were gt)lden whirlimajigs and glass balls and red-striped peppermint canes and cornu- copias with pictures pasted on them and festoons of popcorn and chains of red and blue and green and yellow and white shiny paper. The toys were spread around on the floor. Your gun with the bayonet was resting against a "real-skin" horse, and on the 15 NEIGHBOURS other side was a soldier set, mounted on a big red card with gold edges. Sister's doll, which could open and shut its eyes (just as she asked), was resting, as comfortably as you please, in a blue rock- ing chair that was meant to be used. And the baby's shoo-fly had a rattle and a closed box on the tray that hung between the heads of the dappled greys. You had no business to touch that box, and it served you right when you got a scare when an impudent red-nosed Jack with carrot-coloured whiskers popped up and shook his cap in your face. Besides all these gorgeous gifts from Santa Claus were the two handkerchiefs for mother, and the carpet slippers for father, and the "Sanford and Merton" that Aunt Theresa sent you and the drum from Uncle George. They don't make drums like that nowa- days. The new ones haven't anything like the right sound. You couldn't wait until you had slipped the tape around your neck and i6 NEIGHBOURS pulled the sticks from the sides — and then— "Rub-a-dub-dub . . ." Why, it isn't the drum at all — it's the steam radiator sounding "Tapsl" — call- ing you to come back — back over the Road of Years — back to now. But you're lonely and wistful, and you want to stay and hear the sleigh-bells ring — you want one more real Christmas, The things you can buy in the shops are all wrong. You can't get any fun out of them. Christmas gifts don't count if they aren't brought down the chimney. 17 "MAGGIE" "MAGGIE" THAT'S right— dive on through the crowd and get in front or you won't find a seat. It's six o'clock and the shops are out. If you wait for the women to get aboard, you'll have to stand up all the way home. There's a vacant place! Shoulder past that girl — you're stronger. You did it! Now, lean back and have a comfortable half-hour with the news. Why does she moon at you with such tired eyes? It's unfair to make you un- comfortable — mask your face with the paper — she can stand as well as you — better. She's had more practice — that's all she has done all day long. So a little while longer won't make much difference to her. If women will insist on going home just at the time men leave their offices, they mustn't be querulous if they find the cars crowded. 21 NEIGHBOURS The old ideas about courtesy and chiv- alry are getting to be moss-grown poppy- cock. They were well enough in the ro- mantic age, but this is the business epoch. We haven't time to pause for such foolish notions nowadays. Besides, now that women are competing with men, they must forego some of the privileges of the sex and not hope to be coddled — there's no sex in business. Dollars and cents and sentimentality can't be blended. Meanwhile Maggie hangs onto the strap and wearily shifts her weight from one tired foot to the other. She doesn't resent your boorishness — she's growing used to it — lots of ideals get nicked when women go to work. She left home yesterday morning, three hours earlier than your wife arose. It was dark in the room when her ninety- nine-cent alarm clock tattooed her out of bed. She had to light the gas to find her clothes — the water in the pitcher wore a skin of ice — (they don't build stationary 22 NEIGHBOURS wash basins with hot and cold water faucets in three-dollar-a-week "bou- doirs"). All day long (and all days are long in the shops) she was standing, stretching, bending, smiling — please don't forget the smile — perhaps you noticed it the last time you came to her counter. You smiled, too. Hers, however, was a differ- ent sort — it's one of the requirements — Rule 27— "Be cheerful." Yours was more of a social grin — a knowing, engaging, subtle, inviting affair. Oh, "they can't tell you anything about these shop-girls." But it may be worth while to learn something about them. And when you do, chances are that you won't smile in quite the same way. They're women who must make good — good women, or they wouldn't be drudging out their lives for a crust and a sup and a strip of bed. Just as frail as your women, with the same sort of souls and hearts and with the same yearning 23 NEIGHBOURS hunger for care and tenderness. Young women growing old at the rate of 24- months-a-year — ^women without chances or with lost chances. Some marry — some were married — most of them hope to be. Usually they're strong. But sometimes the half-starvation and the half-warmth and the longing for better shelter and all the food they'd like to eat and But most of them keep on. Keep on playing by the rules — harder rules than yours — in a tougher game and for smaller stakes. Women just as wholesome as your own — often with as good blood in their veins. Women who haven't lost anything except protection. They're paying the fiddler because their fathers didn't pay their in- surance premiums. The grey mists veil the brightest of their days — the menace of to-morrow is always between — a to-morrow whose hope fades with their fading and whose approach may only be provided against by the hoarded piece of silver wrenched 24 NEIGHBOURS out of a ten-dollar bill from which must also come board and lodging and carfare and clothes and doctor's bills and vaca- tions and Why aren't you smiling? 25 THE HOUSEHOLD BULLY THE HOUSEHOLD BULLY WHEN your family is afraid of you, it's time to be afraid for your family. Fear breeds deceit, not respect. The household bully soon turns his wife into a hypocrite and his children into sneaks and liars. Affection is a better monitor than harshness. Intolerance always incites revolt. The only family ties that hold are heart strings. You pride yourself on your justice, but we can find justice in the courts of law. You have no right to bandage your eyes and weigh your own flesh and blood upon impartial scales. You should be a haven of refuge, a merciful confidant in hours of error and terror. When a father is not "the best friend" 29 NEIGHBOURS of his children, it is because he is their worst enemy. The slums of the world are packed with women exiled to degradation by the false pride and relentlessness of men such as you. The prisons of the land are choked by felons whose criminal careers began in the evasions and defaults of a browbeaten boyhood. You forget that you are an adult, and demand an equal intelligence and realisa- tion of right and wrong from those who have neither the reasoning faculty nor the experience to see life as plainly as you behold it. Punishment without sympathetic ex- planation is not correction, but revenge. Girls do not prefer the hardships and uncertainties of adventure, unless the un- happiness they leave behind them is more definite than that which lies ahead. Boys do not betray fathers who have taught them loyalty and self-respect. The sins of your children be on your stubborn, unyielding head! 30 NEIGHBOURS God gave them into your keeping, to guide and guard and cherish — to inspire with ideals, to rear in kindness and com- prehension. Your sternness is not strength, but stu- pidity. Your harshness is not a mark of char- acter, but of callousness. You're an ignoramus — a bigoted, blus- tering bucko, cheating yourself of the joys of tenderness — robbing your family of the opportunity to develop its finest and noblest traits. The animal trainer eventually pays the penalty of his cruelty — the whipped and prodded tiger is cowed, not tamed — soon- er or later he strikes. Beware of the day when your son or your daughter, sullen and hardened by your uprearing, will rend your peace and stain your name and break your stiff pride. There is but one ruling power, and it is love. Fear of the law, fear of the hereafter, 31 NEIGHBOURS fear of the world's condemnation, are not morality's great protecting forces But fear of losing the love, fear of de- stroying the faith, fear of violating the confidence of those who are nearest and dearest — this is by far the most potent in- fluence in the lives of good men and women. If you would save the child, spare the rod rather than the love. A father is the man to come to, when a child can't confide in anyone else." 32 ONCE UPON A TIME ONCE UPON A TIME ONCE upon a time— how the years do fly — when you were a mere mite of a girlie, and believed in fairy spells and pots of gold under April rainbows — ^when every attic held a gob- lin, and four-leaf clovers were shrines of fortune, and lady-bugs were harbin- gers of luck — you dreamed a wonderful dream of the day-to-be, when Prince Goldenlocks would come riding by But why waste time on such tommyrot? This is the year 191 2. You are a woman. You've lost the road to the Castles of Spain (no grown-up ever did find the path), and all the whimsies and phanta- sies of long ago have blown away into the Never-Never-Land. The Prince rode north and met Gwen- dolyn Snuggs, the banker's snub-nosed daughter — and, if you keep on reading, the soup will be boiling all over the stove, 35 NEIGHBOURS and your boy will be home from school before the lunch-table is set. Why, bless us, this brings us back again to the dream, and now you must finish, because it was him that your imagination fondled — this son that would be born to you — straight and strong- thewed, proud of soul — a man-child, splendid with gifts of mind and person. But since you are not a banker's snub- nosed daughter and your child was born with a bawl in his mouth instead of a sil- ver spoon — which latter must be an extremely uncomfortable experience — somehow you've lost the habit of gilding to-morrows with futile longings. You've become a very matter-of-fact person, in whose calculations washtubs and cake- tins and dust-cloths play such an impor- tant part that you haven't time to go snooping through the garrets of memory. You sniff with bitter incredulity when you hear of wishing-rings, and such like bosh, and even if you won't acknowledge it, you've lost a mighty lot of faith, sim- 36 NEIGHBOURS ply because things didn't happen the way you had planned. And you won't look up and see how much more wonderful the world has be- come since the Grimms and Hans Chris- tian Andersen went out of style and Edi- son and Tesla and Marconi have come into fashion. If truth be told, the first real fairy spells are just beginning to glorify the world. There never was an era of magic before. But now, all things can be— your dreams can still come true — the maddest, farthest, fairest dreams ever flung to the stars. Any son of woman can achieve the ul- timate, in this century of far-hurled dares. Manger or mansion — cradle of gold or trundle of husk— predestine nothing. We have begun to look truths fair in the eye and to measure humans by the standard of fitness, not by the moss-grown, moth-eaten traditions of creed and breed. The meanest lie that ever blighted the universe— the lie of caste, of superiority by birth— is gasping under the throttling heel of Progress. 37 NEIGHBOURS East and West the thrones are toppling. The sovereignty of ignorance is ending. The Golden Age has dawned. This is the mighty moment. This is the most brilliant hour among all the illustrious sands of time. The genii have returned, but they no longer serve the lamp of Alad- din — instead they are the slaves of the lamp of learning. The Titans reincar- nated, flail with arms of steel, swing the trip-hammer, spin the turbine in the wa- terfall, shovel mountains off the map, and bore pathways through a hundred miles of granite. Sons of labourers, farmers, and clerks — < grandsons of peasants, serfs, and foun- dlings, are sawing continents in half, changing water into light, making corn out of desert sand. Your old dream was not big enough. If the seed of deed is in your son, if he is dogged and patient and self-respecting and courageous — wholesome of mind, stalwart and bold — he bears keys that un- lock every gate. 38 HIS FATHER OWNED THE CANDY SHOP HIS FATHER OWNED THE CANDY SHOP THE boy whose father owned the candy store missed all the fun of wishing that his father owned it. He never knew what it was to flatten his nose against the shop window, while he hesitated over the relative advantage of investing his penny in a lemon sucker (which would last for an hour) or a marshmallow peach (which would de- light his palate for one fleeting moment, but leave him with a greater longing than before). No matter how wisely or well he chose, he invariably decided that the se- lection had been ill-advised, and so there were always to-morrows with their un- realised hopes. Wishing for things is by far the best part of possessing them. The man who 41 NEIGHBOURS has too much at the outset finds too little at the end — nothing possesses value until there are standards of measurement. We cannot find the true weight of wealth, ex- cept upon the scales of poverty. Deprivation breeds appreciation. Am- bition shrivels where luxury flourishes. Energy grows poorly, in rich soil. Men are awakened and quickened and spurred on by need. We learn to know the worth of what we win by contrast with a period when we possessed less. The man who has all, has little; is in the midst of riches but not enriched by them. He is like the merboy whose whole life is spent in the water but who cannot ex- perience the thrill which runs through a hot, tired, dusty youngster who has trudged half a morning over sun-baked roads and stubblefields, for the momen- tary delight of his dive into the swim- ming-hole. You see Fortune isn't so lopsided in her division of bounties as she sometimes seems. If she gives away lavishly in one 42 NEIGHBOURS direction, she usually takes away a com- pensating something, to make up for it. The labourer envies the clerk because his duties are lighter ; the clerk envies his employer because he is master of his own business ; the employer envies the dawdler because he is master of his own time ; the dawdler envies the peer because his stat- us is assured ; the peer envies the monarch because his position is supreme — and the king envies the labourer and the clerk and the employer and the dawdler and the peer, because they possess rights as indi- viduals which he can never own. The circle is complete — it touches every hu- man of every caste and class. There is no such thing as complete happiness through mere possession of goods or po- sition. Happiness lies only in contentment. Envy and dissatisfaction find fruitful soil all the way from the ditch to the throne- room. The want of things inspires progress. The necessities of existence produce Men. 43 NEIGHBOURS The most important word in the lexicon of success is "must." It is in the striving and the struggling that the sinews of initiative and determi- nation are developed. The most useless as well as the most unhappy people on the face of the earth are those who have no needs. Workers get far more out of life than shirkers. 44 HOW MARY WENT WRONG HOW MARY WENT WRONG SUDDENLY, as the wakening of the orchards in the soft, sweet rains of an April night, so love blos- somed in Mary's heart. But to you (who may be or might have been her father) the miracle was hidden — the transition from childhood to wom- anhood is swift, subtle, even unconscious — and Mary herself did not realise the change. You still saw the child of a day ago. Your vision, dulled by the hard, tense years of a wage-chasing life, was not quick enough to sense the transfiguration. And so when Mary's first sweetheart "called," you were annoyed and angered ; you made up your mind to put a stop to such nonsense, at once. There was nothing wrong. They were simply two children playing the oldest game of make-believe under the stars. Your frowns, side remarks and general 47 NEIGHBOURS hostility, humiliated the lad and with- ered the girl with shame. You forgot that a guest had entered your door. You might have greeted him kindly and gained his respect and liking. A boy's code is a clean, fine thing — a trusted youth generally becomes trust- worthy. But you drove him away, hot with resentment, insulted and afraid to return to your home. A common wrong inspired them to a common cause of deceit. Thereafter they met clandestinely. Mary began to spend evenings "studying with her school friends," and what began as a harmless, little cub courtship, became warped, and Mary with it — another good girl turned into the wrong path by the folly of a father. Successful in eluding detection, she slowly grew bolder. Her tongue quickly became glib with protecting lies. Within a few months all fear of you and your au- thority disappeared, and contempt for 48 NEIGHBOURS your perception and credulity succeeded love and reverence. Before her second long skirt, she had graduated into the love school of the street corner, adept in all the dangerous, reckless arts of the prowling flirt, an inti- mate of pool-room loafers, a by-word to the town's rotters — and finally . . . The same old story, the same old father, the same old Mary, the same old tragedy. 49 LEST YOU FORGET TOO LONG! LEST YOU FORGET TOO LONG! THE winds sang to you last night — they crooned around the windows and called through the chimney and sobbed the oldest music of the spheres. Out of the unknown they came to you, laden with such melodies as only great hearts and brave souls can understand — wistful and eerie largos of the what-has- been and the what-can-never-be. There aren't words with which to phrase the burden of their lays — at sound of which old wounds dulled with the chill of Time ache to open and voices call from the Never-Never-Land, asking the why and the wherefore of things that shame you and make the best in you blush for the worst of you. Oh, the irreparable Yesterdays — the steps that can never be retraced — the roses that can't be picked from the gutters 53 NEIGHBOURS of wantonness and cleansed of their soil I And it isn't so much the things which you did — the reckless impulse or the meditated wrong — as what you have neg- lected. There are flowers that have withered these many, many years in the Gardens of Memory. There are sweet, clean vis- ions of the Past toward which your mind has long since ceased to turn. There are lonely mounds in quiet acres, marked by rain-stained shafts, around which the grass grows wild and the weeds find root. The wind is trying to tell you — trying to say to you that there's still time — time to remember. Not with ostenta- tion and parade of things that men can see. Real monuments can't be built of stone. Memorials of tinted glass are tab- lets to your vanity, by which a mob can learn the lavishness, not the depth of your emotion. If you would build windows to memory, set them up within a soul. A woman is lying in a bald, bare room, tossing with fever, stung between pride and grief, shuddering for fear that she 54 NEIGHBOURS must plead at the doors of Charity. There's a bed in a wholesome, sun-swept hospital, to which a Memory might send her, in token of love for another woman who would have been glad to know that recollection of Her made you pause in the blind grind long enough to place a monu- ment of gratitude in a stranger's heart and to rear it there in Her name. A boy will shiver in the early cold to- morrow morning — and go slipping on through the slush while you are snug within your blankets — a wee bit of a lad — one of the pitiful cogs in the wheels that turn to earn your leisure. There was a child in the Long Ago — about the same age. And when the light died out of his bonnie eyes and he went — but what's the use of trying to bring it back to you? The winds have sung it until they are a-weary. You never did know — you never will. You wept for a day and you moaned for a night. Then back into the whirling, swirling, pleasure-glad, money-mad throng — back 55 NEIGHBOURS into the fight where Might prevails as Right — back to the selfish striving — back to smug content — back to gross and blunt- ing indulgence. And, meanwhile, the mound stays hid- den under the ragged grasses and the shaft beneath the cypress grows thicker with moss. And luckless women toss in their cheerless rooms. And boys, so like the Other, draw thin, cheap jackets tight- er around their miserable frost-stung chests, and you Oh, well, you just keep on forgetting and wish that the infernal wind would stop rattling the shutters. 56 THE PASSING OF THE FAIRY TALE THE PASSING OF THE FAIRY TALE ''Tp ISN'T at all the same world it I used to be. Boys nowadays don't even have freckles. They dress like Sunday all through the week. Their pants are strapped at the knee, and even in summer they go 'round in shoes. Sitting Bull is dead, and all the other Indians are football players or market gardeners. The only train robbers left are on the Pullmans. It's against the law for anybody but a congressman, a college professor, a mayor, or some similar professional elocutionist to make a noise on the Fourth of July. The best prevailing substitute for "shinny" is a fat man's game called golf. To-morrow morning, as you walk down town ask the first ten youngsters you meet if they know of a good "swim- ming-hole," and you'll be lucky to find 59 NEIGHBOURS one who ever dived oft' of anything but a dock. The candy stores wouldn't know what you meant if you asked for an "all-day sucker." "Uncle Tom's Cabin" hasn't been in the neighbourhood since the year you came to town. And as for a circus — a real one, with actual pink lemonade and seats close enough to see the missing span- gles on the acrobats' tights "Once upon a time" is already an ob- solete phrase. Children gape with ennui as they read the adventures of Aladdin. "The Ogre with the Five-Mile Voice" seems to be an idiotic book to the twelve- year-old who constructs his own Marconi station and picks up messages from a hun- dred miles around. Imagination, grown grey in nursery service, has deserted to Industry. Fancy has become practical and is earning an independent income as chief adviser and architect to Commerce. Grimm Brothers and the Hans Chris- tian Andersen Company now invent things instead of thrills. They still have 60 NEIGHBOURS the story habit, but they write their new fairy tales with the compass and the tri- square, and illustrate them with the elec- tric crane and the pneumatic tool. The story of "Hop-o'-My-Thumb" isn't half so improbable as the tale of the "Canned Song." And the "Adventures of the Sleeping Beauty" are common- place beside the exploits of the "Giant Who Lives in a Wire." As for Jules Verne! His laurels have faded. Romance repudiates him! "Around the World in Eighty Days" is an out-of-date railroad and steamship time-table and the submarine boat com- panies have for some years utilised "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" for catalogue purposes. We are stretching our hands farther than our fathers stretched their visions. Science, the great Locksmith, supplies us with new keys every day. We have learned to read the Diary of Nature in the stratified rock — ^we have eyes to see ten thousand miles — one scale 6i NEIGHBOURS that weighs the stars and another that vibrates at the tread of a microbe's foot But 62 IS YOUR NAME SCROOGE? IS YOUR NAME SCROOGE? WHAT follows is confessedly im- pertinent — and there are those who will consider it decidedly unpleasant. To begin with and to end with, it's about Christmas, yet not about holly and mistletoe and plum pudding and pleasant things, but about another side, the under side, the outside — (call it what you please) — a side that never bothered you and which probably won't even after you know about it — for, after all, if there were that in you which can be stirred by words, you would have been different all along. Of course it's disturbing, when you are in the midst of bright holiday contempla- tions — just when you are settling down into your annual Christmas complacency — flattering yourself with kindliness and whole-souled generosity — thinking of the happiness you will bring to near and 65 NEIGHBOURS dear ones, to have come trooping a lot of miserable, wan, unpleasant visions — images of pitiful misery — women out of work — men out-at-elbows — fathers and mothers without the price of a Christmas breakfast, much less a Christmas hearth. Come, face the question: What have you planned to do for the poverty- stricken? Own up; have you even thought of them? Glance over your mental list for so much as one memorandum about a hungry child. Why, you don't know what Christmas means! You've missed its real spirit. You've simply considered your own pros- perous circle — gifts to people with filled purses don't count at all. You probably consider yourself a man of sentiment and beyond doubt you have salted the pages of "The Christmas Carol" with many a maudlin tear. But have you ever reflected that you are more or less a Scrooge yourself and that up to date there is not a single entry 66 NEIGHBOURS on the Great Book crediting you with one starveling's happiness? No excuses — you haven't any. You have seen and heard enough of evictions and bread-lines to know that there is al- ways a nearby chance for the man with a little bit more than the rest to equalise the good luck of the world by at least one annual kindness. (So now, keenly alive to your past irre- sponsibility, you have, of course, deter- mined to visit the toyshop and the gro- cer's, or at least send a check to the Salva- tion Army — that's what always happens in the Christmas stories — the hero simply needs a reminder and then he can't rest until he has trailed poverty to its lair.) But Since this isn't fiction and as you have probably agreed that these remarks are impertinent, you will follow your usual Christmas custom, making only those ex- penditures which will protect you from the criticism of relatives and social inti- mates — postpone your purchases until Christmas Eve — drive a half-dead shop 67 NEIGHBOURS girl from pillar to post and insist upon immediate delivery of your selections, so as to keep a poor devil of a teamster and some miserable wisp of a boy driving about until dawn dims the star that pro- claimed to Bethlehem "Peace on earth, good will toward men." 68 A FAIR MAN A FAIR MAN HE gazes at life through a window- pane and does not view it through a lens. He sees all things clearly, since he does not permit prejudice to dis- tort his vision. He continually guards himself against the error of diminishing the value of any man's works because of a personal antipa- thy. And on the other hand, he is just as careful not to make the equally great mistake of exaggerating the virtues and attainments of those whom he loves or likes. He measures facts with honest tapes and weighs folks as he finds them, not as he hopes or hears or wishes them to be. He forms no definite opinion on any subject until he is qualified by the pos- session of information sufficient to reach a sane, unbiased conclusion. He heeds neither gossip nor slander. 71 NEIGHBOURS The one is bred of thoughtlessness and the other is the bread of malice. He despises the anonymous attack. Honesty never wears the mark of the bravo. Truth does not lurk in ambush. He v^aits to hear both sides of a quar- rel and insists upon maintaining ii neutral attitude until he knows enough to judge fairly. He admires many whose essentially personal characteristics and inclinations do not appeal to him: admiration is the approval of deeds. It is a calm, clear sum total of abilities, in the addition of which the symbols of friendship do not figure. He approves of the achievements of many men in whose company he finds no pleasure and whom he does not desire to meet upon an intimate social basis. He searches beneath dress and under address for ability and stability. He knows that tailors cannot change the cut of a man's character and that talent is not always glib in its expression. He does not make the common error of 72 NEIGHBOURS confusing education with intelligence. The world is filled with good brains which have missed the opportunity of training. Intelligence is an instinct and an experience, while culture is largely a schooling — a memorising of facts and rules and incidents. He remembers his own mother, and is therefore considerate in thought and deed of all her sex. He neither degrades them by act nor by word. He will not utter a lie against a woman, but, if need arise and he may thereby spare her hurt, he will gladly lie in her cause. He is never a snob. He exercises his right to choose for associates those with whose views and habits he is in sympathy; but he does not assume that the rest of the world is thereby wrong, inferior and foolish. His given word is his pledged bond, and the bad faith of another never justi- fies its default, any more than the theft of his own property by a neighbour would lead him to retaliate in kind. 73 NEIGHBOURS He obtrudes neither his religion nor his politics, recognising the right of every man to his sincere beliefs. He bestows charity with a smile and seeks to erase the sense of obligation in those whom he assists. He advertises neither his good works nor his attainments. He is gracious to all of lowly station or of advanced years, and never flaunts his better fortune before his inferiors. He makes ostentation neither of his possessions nor his culture, realising that his opportunities may have given him ad- vantages which less favourable surround- ings might not have produced. He discusses his grievances with no one, not wishing to inflict his essentially personal worries upon his fellows. He trades neither upon his name nor his birth, nor does he traffic in the power or influence of his friends. He does not prostitute his honour to business profit, nor does he permit his women to sacrifice their personal inclina- tions in the cause of his advancement. 74 NEIGHBOURS He asks no man to perform any serv- ice which he could not and would not per- form without smirch to his -own self-re- spect He regards wealth as a pleasant pos- session, but one which does not justify the cancellation of a single attribute of honour. There are countless things which he will not do for the sake of money, because he knows how few real things money can do in return. Above all else he is a gentle man. 7^ TOMMY'S MOTHER AND THE NEEDLE GATE TOMMY'S MOTHER AND THE NEEDLE GATE THERE was a camel — a very foolish camel — and there was a needle, with a very small eye, and the camel tried to thread his way through — eh, you know that old tale? Well, after all, it isn't really our story, which is about Tommy — the snub-nosed, red-headed Tommy who works for you. Perhaps you don't know him by name — but maybe this will identify him: the shabby boy whose cuffs never peep out and whose toes sometimes do. It is unpleasant to have such an un- kempt youngster about the place. Call him in and call him down, or, better still, send for his mother and insist upon more care in his appearance. Tommy's mother is worth meeting; she's quite a wonderful person; a most remarkable mathematician. It would 79 NEIGHBOURS amuse you to see her figure out of her three weekly washings and Tommy's three weekly dollars, rent and clothes and food and coal and wood and doctor's bills, besides the world of other things that peo- ple must have if they must live. Why, it might pay you to have Tommy's mother come and work for you; her system, if applied to your expense accounts, would save thousands of dollars in the course of a year. She takes a great interest in figures; she practices all day long — "six pairs of socks — forty-seven towels — eight sheets " But then Tommy's mother is able in so many ways — a veritable admirable Crich- toness: laundry proprietress (and also de- livery wagon for the laundry), cook, nurse-maid, seamstress, upstairs-down- stairs-and-general-utility-maid — but no woman ever knows what is in her until the heel of poverty begins to grind it out of her. And then a very strange thing happens: she grows so healthy that she doesn't go to bed on account of headaches or feel that it's at all necessary to run to 80 NEIGHBOURS the mountains and unprostrate her nerves. It's really more wonderful than the faith cure — this poverty cure. (Next time your wife complains, look her over and consider how much good it might do her.) Any mother who can perform so many other marvels of industry has no excuse for neglecting the hole in Tommy's pants. She's growing careless — that's it. She's probably wasting her time planning Easter costumes. Oh, these women — they require so much reflection before they can decide between a mauve messaline over grey taffeta or a pale lavender Panama cloth with baby Irish. (This spring's tints, if unwisely chosen, are apt to play havoc with the complexion.) But it's quite possible that Tommy's mother is really made of the same meat and strung with the same nerves as your wife; and sixteen hours of day-after-day drudging to half-feed and half-clothe her babies, may have so numbed and blinded her that she misses sight of such a big thing as a little rent in a boy's suit. 8i NEIGHBOURS All of which foregoing dribble is rank sentimentality, in which neither of us be- lieves. But (for argument sake) suppose you were sentimental and did believe in things and suppose you took Tommy down the street and made ten dollars behave like a complete wardrobe (the same kind of a ten-dollar bill which paid for the wine after theatre last night) , and suppose But, as we just agreed, neither of us is sentimental. Still, if we were and there is a needle-eyed gate somewhere between here and hereafter, mightn't it be possi- ble that you could squirm through it more readily if your pockets were thinned out occasionally for Tommy? In which case his mother might know a prayer that would help out, if the eye squeezed very hard. 82 ANYBODY CAN BE A GENTLEMAN ANYBODY CAN BE A GENTLEMAN GENTLEMEN are made and not born. Every good family had to have its founder. Scratch any coat of arms hard enough and you'll find a common strain and a coarse grain under the gold and azure emblazonment. The ancestors of the highest nobility manhandled fields of grain and fodder before their descendants could decorate their heraldic fields with armorial de- vices. Legend has whispered many a weird tale, but the flightiest old wife never heard of a babe born with aught but a hairy crown. Czars, kings, dukes, earls, and cotillon leaders are purely human invention. The grandsires of the haughtiest and 85 NEIGHBOURS naughtiest of aristocrats were malt deal- ers, and cattle stealers, and shoemakers, and undertakers, and rag pickers, and pig stickers, and stone breakers. Good breeding is not an inheritance, but a habit. Kindness, consideration, repose, cour- tesy, unselfishness, and self-control have nothing in common with money or mono- grams. Decorous bearing, quiet demeanour, and soft speech are within any man's reach. Poverty does not necessitate coarseness. Vulgarity cannot excuse itself on any ground. Wealth cannot hide bad manners. Rich bounders are all the more notice- able. Gilded gaucherie is advertised by its very lavishness. No degree of affluence can alter the character of a rotter. A refined servant is the social superior of an offensive master. The type of your employment, the wage at which you work, the street in 86 NEIGHBOURS which you live, offer no extenuation for rudeness or crudeness. Misfortune may have barred you from a competent schooling — poverty may temporarily block you from your ambi- tions — but neither capital nor education are requisite to good behaviour. More than once a fighter, endowed with strong and vital impulses, has forced his way to the top without regard to the finer usages, but the road is always shorter and the path is always smoother for those who remember to be decent and considerate. Accident, illness, disasters, drought, panic, and competition can singly or in combination abort advancement, check achievement and paralyse action — phys- ical frailty and need of training can re- tard progress, but every man, everywhere, has the time, the place, and the oppor- tunity to be a gentleman. 87 THE WINDOWS OF HOPE AND MEMORY THE WINDOWS OF HOPE AND MEMORY THE wardrobe mistress lingers at Nellie's door. She's waiting for her peacock costume. One of the pony ballet caught her foot in it before Nellie could swish the train aside and the rent will have to be repaired. Managers are very considerate — of gowns. The stage is a place where lots of things get wrecked, if one is thoughtless — and cos- tumes costing up to $175 must be pains- takingly guarded. Nellie wears seven imported creations in the new revue. Her salary is twenty "per." Perhaps you've noticed Nellie — she stood fifth in the line — the last line. For the past five years she's been moving back — at a distance crow's-feet and loosening chins don't show. (And then, too, grease paint and rice powder help some.) From where you sit, Nellie looks stun- 91 NEIGHBOURS ning — almost as pretty as when she be- longed in the front line, right up near the stage boxes. But in fifteen years lines come and go — and some stay. Hazel has Nellie's old place now. Hazel has only "been on" fifteen days. She's wholesome and young and rosy. Her eyes sparkle — her limbs are all life as she whirls and swirls through the dances. This is such a gay world — with its calcium and tinsel and crashing music and brightness and cheer — without any of the worries and sorrows — with none of the grinding, blinding duties, but just freedom and independence — the maddest make-believe all come true. Why, only a month ago she was wasting her days in the routine of matter-of-fact home life — an ordinary, usual person, no better than you or I. But now At last, Nellie has changed the sequined robe for a street suit and is mak- ing ready to leave. Hazel walks back to the hotel with her. Hazel is pouting with disappointment — at the last moment 92 NEIGHBOURS the little wine supper is ofif. And so to- night she has time to lie and think of things. And Nellie, across the hall, is thinking, too — both are thinking of their roads — of the same road, but neither knows that, nor would you or I, if we were peeping at it through Hazel's eyes or Nellie's. This is the road that Nellie sees: A long, winding, twisted way which runs through years of tears and of shattered hopes. There is mud underfoot and blasted ideals are strewn about. The road is bathed in sunlight where it starts, but keeps getting darker and harder and the farther it runs the more the grade waxes. There are wonderful dreams foundered in the ruts and wrecked things in the dirt and, somewhere towards the outset, a heart-hurt and — memories. But Hazel doesn't see any of these things on her road. It's covered with a golden haze and has a golden pave and it's hedged with rose fantasies. In the distance dashing princes are prancing towards her (at least they would prance 93 NEIGHBOURS if they weren't motor-car princes), and almost within reach is a castle (which might stand upon a terraced hill if this weren't an age when castle building is done nearer to the ground). And all along the road are wonderful things wait- ing for her — fame and triumph, lavish luxury, happiness and Poor Hazel and poor Nellie — ^it's actually the same road — only the years have changed it for you. We all see the road differently at the end of fifteen days and after fifteen years. We begin, by gazing at it through a case- ment of hope and then when we've lived and suffered and are a'weary, we look back at it through the window of memory. The windows do it all — the road never changes. 94 WHO THREW THE BRICK? WHO THREW THE BRICK? AS folks go you're just as kindly and gentle and sympathetic and chari- table as the next man. Tucked away in odd corners of your heart, there are all sorts of sentimental impulses. Chances are, in your whole life-time you never sat down and delib- erately schemed a cold-blooded campaign against your worst enemy. And it's just because you are so, that you're such a menace to the community. Irresponsible fools cause more trouble to the world than all the organised forces of malice and disorder and crime. There now, don't begin to sputter and protest. We expected you to grow ex- cited when you were indicted. You quite honestly believe that this is an undeserved arraignment; you're quite sincere in your belief that you're harm- less. 97 NEIGHBOURS And when you sent Brown down the slope of ruin— ^even then you didn't realise the ultimate consequences of your thoughtless assault upon his reputation. It happened in this wise: One morn- ing Jones and you were riding down town, and having no better subject for conversation you indulged in the usual banalities — the market, police, the weather — and then quite accidentally Brown's name came up and you suddenly remembered, without recalling when or where or from whom you had heard it, that Brown was "wandering from the straight and narrow path." You didn't pause to consider the source of your in- formation. You just reached down casu- ally — and for lack of something better to do or say, picked up a handful of mud and smeared it all over his name — and then forgot all about it and went on your way without one qualm of conscience. Now Brown is down and out — credit and business gone to pot. Rumour did it — rumour, inspired by a babbling, blithering ass. 98 NEIGHBOURS We've been trailing the fatal lie back to its author. We've picked up the brick that did the trick. We don't blame the man who hurled it, but the man who made it. You're the responsible party. Within an hour after Jones left you, he'd passed the slander on to Wilson; and week after week and month after month — exaggerated by the seeming corrobora- tion of this man and that, gossip grew into murder. You talk too much. You accept too many uninvestigated bits of hearsay as conclusive evidence. You hold the honour of other men far too lightly. Every day a knowing wink, or a sug- gestive shrug or an insinuating smile from fools of your sort brings disaster to hon- est citizens and shame upon decent womanhood. We're all occasional busybodies. It's a far cry back to the days of the Roman Coliseum, but once in a while we revert to the ancient instincts of our dis- tant forbears, and ere we can check our- 99 NEIGHBOURS selves down goes the thumb, and along with it somebody's reputation. There'd be far less suffering and pessi- mism on earth if we'd set out to find the best in folks half as hard as we search for the worst. lOO THE FIVE-CENT DOLLAR THE FIVE-CENT DOLLAR DUN AND BRADSTREET rate him rich. His name works magic at the bank. His check is good for millions. His vaults are stuffed with stocks and bonds. But his dollars have an actual value of five cents each. He is bloated in riches and writhing in poverty — he's, at the same time, a plutocrat and a pauper. Fate has made an ass of him — she has given him all the cash he asked for, but she has omitted the formula that gives it value. He has the lock, but he can't find the key — he doesn't know what to do with his money. He is a lineal descendant of King Midas — he learned the golden touch, but he can't control its power. In his mad- ness for millions he has transmuted all the realities of life into useless trash. 103 NEIGHBOURS He placed his Springtime in the mint- ing press — he turned all his hopes and all his visions into coin — stamped all the tenderness out of his heart and milled the peace ofif his soul. Year by year he went on amassing wealth and just as steadily losing all that was best in him. All that was kindly — all that was joyous — he turned to dross. Now in his silver age he is yearning for his golden youth. There's an ache that he doesn't under- stand — a hungry hole in his breast where godly heritages shrivelled and died from disuse. He can't enjoy himself — he isn't trained for the job. His rapacity destroyed his capacity to comprehend the Big Message. He owns a yacht, but it's a drifting argosy with dead sails — with all his wealth he can't make it carry him into the Land of Dreams. He can't see — he can't hear — greed has dulled his eye — made him colour-blind 104 NEIGHBOURS — none of the wonders of life have a meaning. For him the mountain summits are bare — the flowers have died on the slopes and the north winds have locked the brooks and silenced the waterfall. He is a man without illusions — a moral cripple — a Croesus starving in his treas- ure vaults. When you are wrapping yourself in ideals, he was rapping out ideas. You have only sold your services — he has put every drop of blood into the mar- ket place — and the joke of it all is that he had to wait until now before he found that every dollar is not the same size — that its purchasing power varies with the individual. He has overpaid. No man gets out of existence more than his legitimate allot- ment. If he has gains in one direction, he loses a compensating something in another way. The price of the king's crown is heavy with heart-ache. The meanest subject in his kingdom can marry as he wills, but 105 NEIGHBOURS the mightiest of monarchs must mate at the dictate of the state. The embezzler defaults with property that he did not earn, but from that mo- ment every hour of every day is haunted with the dread of detection. The roisterer indulges himself in every whim and wilfulness, but settles the bill when his wasted vitality exposes him to diseases against which the continent man has stored sufficient energy to defend himself. Old John Moneybags has the price of every form of enjoyment, but he can't locate the trails that lead to happiness. It isn't the size of a man's roll, but the size of a man's soul that finally counts. 1 06 SOMEBODY'S DAUGHTER SOMEBODY'S DAUGHTER I DO not know her name ; perhaps you do. I have never seen her face; maybe her picture hangs on your bedroom wall. By some strange chance her head might some day have rested on your shoulder. She's somebody's daughter; pray God, not yours. To-night the claws of the city are rip- ping at her soul. Loneliness and hunger have sapped her will and false pride has blinded her. She is not a bad girl, just tired, numb. The dice were loaded. The game was crooked. The odds were too great for her wisdom and strength. The road was strange and the guide-posts lied. Back home, life was a drab thing and sober-faced. The petty tyrannies of the little town, the eternal sameness of the years, starved her imagination. 109 NEIGHBOURS Romance was hungry within her, and cried for beauty and mystery and adven- ture. And out of deprivation sprang reckless yearning. You did not understand, mother-of- hers, wherever you are. You could not see with her eyes. Your own were filled with pictures of family wash and cooking and mending and brooms and dust cloths. Fate has paid you in stingy and bitter pence. But that is just what she saw, that and the thankless yoke under which the wives of poor men struggle and strain and sur- render. The wings of her fancy kept beating across the miles and carried her into a dreamland of joy and gayety, with real money, all her own, to spend as she chose — to buy what she wished. But the wage shrank when it reached her — its purchasing power shrivelled. . Five dollars a week (six, seven if you insist) — just enough to give shelter and sustenance. At first she was straight — it was in her no NEIGHBOURS blood — in her traditions. The women of your family never contemplated the easier way. But young girls who live alone can sel- dom protect themselves. Few have the intuition to comprehend until it is too late — some are too weak to fight it out — and some are too weary. And now she has paid the price — she has crossed the dead line. The city has dropped its mask and she sits staring into its brutal, relentless, in- exorable face. At last she realises all that she has lost — all that might have been — the happiness that patience could have won. She sees "the man back home" who one day would have brought his love and the children that love would have brought III TO A POOR BOY TO A POOR BOY. THERE are two great sources of power — ^wealth and brains. The mind is a mint. Money doesn't make a man strong, but strong men make money. Dollars don't improve intellect, but in- telligence does create wealth. It isn't nearly so important to have something to start with as to choose the right thing to start for. It is a bigger advantage to begin with empty hands than an empty head — more lucky to be born with a clever tongue than with a silver spoon in your mouth. Determination is a richer asset than a rich father — health, honesty and courage the only needed capital for success. Everybody has a chance every day to prove himself, and boys who enter the fight earliest can try for the top oftenest. Education shortens the struggle, but 115 NEIGHBOURS schools only teach orderly habits of think- ing. They develop brains but do not sup- ply them. Theory is based upon the record of past performances, but to-day's practice in- vents, discovers and develops the facts upon v^hich to-morrow's instructions will be based. You think that you are handicapped by the circumstances which forced you to work, before you could complete your schooling, but there is a compensating advantage in entering the game years ahead of older boys, who must undergo your practical experiences at a far more advanced age. An A.B. or a Ph.D. are of little use to an ASS. Three-fourths of the most important positions in every community are promo- tions from the ranks. Originality doesn't require guide-posts — it sets them. Loyalty, will-power and reliability quite counterbalance affluence and influ- ence. ii6 NEIGHBOURS Common sense and health are far more essential than capital. Fools and weaklings can't hold what they have. Keep your body sound; exercise fre- quently; read good books. Choose some one subject; gather all the data that you can find in relation to it; devote at least one hour per night to its study. Be sure that not one day passes which has not added to your knowledge of the trade or profession or business you have selected as a life work. Put all your heart and attention into your tasks. Inspire your employers with confi- dence in your truthfulness and faith. Make few promises, but once made, keep your pledges at any cost. Go straight. Dishonesty is always discov- ered ; lies are always detected ; sneaks are always unmasked. It's a far finer thing to be right than to be bright. Everything that was ever accomplished on the face of this earth was achieved 117 NEIGHBOURS with the same equipment that you possess. Michelangelo, Arkwright, Lincoln, Edison and Ford had no more and no better tools. With their example staring you in the face, poverty will always be a poor ex- cuse for failure. ii8 THE LITTLE BROTHERS OF DESTRUCTION THE LITTLE BROTHERS OF DESTRUCTION LITTLE habits destroy great men. Big mistakes seldom wreck. Great cliffs do not menace the mariner, but hidden reefs and sunken rocks send many a good ship to the bot- tom. The redwood climbs into the skies, brushing the clouds with his century- laden branches, contemptuous of hurri- cane and earthquake and fire — defiant of disaster — impregnable to every force ex- cept the gnaw of worm and the bore of beetle. The Titans that tear fortresses from their seats and fling tidal waves across an empire are impotent against the masters of the grove. But the Little Brothers of Destruction, born to die within a puny hour, relent- lessly and doggedly persisting in their 121 NEIGHBOURS mission, unreckoning of time, pursue without pause the task that is never abated until the lord of the forest, eaten to the core, totters and crashes under his own weight No man is stronger than his petty weak- nesses. No career is invulnerable. Carelessness, recklessness and self-com- placency expose the heel of every Achilles. The monsters of mythology and ro- mance were just big bluffs ; they brought no peril to humanity — they advertised themselves too prominently. The enemy, marching with blare of trumpet and beat of drum, stands no show because he makes too much show. It's the ambuscaded regiment, the troop in the trenches, that play havoc. All the dragons and salamanders in legend weren't one whit as terrible as the germs and microbes and bacilli rioting through the rotten blood of one infected vagrant. A solitary rat, laden with the couriers of plague, frowns more darkly upon civil- 122 NEIGHBOURS isation than a thousand herds of ram- pageous, blatant, bellowing dinosaurs. We can deal with anything that we can manhandle. Glaring follies are only temporarily distressing. The instant they become suf- ficiently prominent to attract attention they invite timely criticism. It's the little things that you hide — the mean, tricky, selfish, secret, soul-biting, heart-eating, brain-draining microbe hab- its — which you alone know, and which none but you can deal with — that drag you down in your prime and your pride. Self-control is the key to the cure. Anybody can withstand a colossal temp- tation. True mastery lies in the battle with ridiculous and infinitesimal indulgences — none important by itself, but, like coral insects^ pitilessly, unflaggingly combining their harmful mites, until they erect a reef within your nature upon which op- portunity and hope founder and are for- ever lost. 123 ESAU, THE BEGGARMAN ESAU, THE BEGGARMAN THIS is the oldest story in the world — the tale of Esau, the Beggarman. He hungered at the threshold of Paradise, starved in the streets of Chal- dea, stole bones from the dogs of Bagdad, whimpered at the kitchen door of Lucul- lus, whined for crumbs in the House of Dives, and gleaned gobbets from the slop pails of de Guise and the Medici. He was at Delhi when Islam Shah smeared ignominy on the Rajput face. He saw the hordes of Ghengis Khan come limping back to Tartary, and Sobieski's pride undone and the French eagle fall broken-winged upon the Belgian plain. But all of this was in the long ago — in the brutal ages — in the torch-lit cen- turies, before schools ended the rule of fools and brutes and Borgias. Then Power fattened on men's souls and 127 NEIGHBOURS swung the knout, and robbed the peasant of his groat, and slit the purse of trade. But we are f reedmen — sovereign lords. Ours is a different creed and ours a nobler breed. We are children of the New Dawn — the People of the Light. We build high and fare and dare and do beyond the farthest limit of the ancient dream. Where Babel bungled, we pile our towers up to the clouds. We smite the mountains with a drill and streams gush forward to bear life to dead and sterile wastes. We do not pray beside the Red Sea for a miracle, but work our own, and move unharmed be- low the waters. We talk with men four thousand miles away. We estimate the distance to the farthest star and set the hour for the com- et's dash. We measure mountain heights upon the moon. We read the coming of the storm and transplant bones and eyes and straighten twisted spines and minds. These things have we done and won by the might of our minds and the skill of our hands. 128 NEIGHBOURS We have changed the soldier's sword into the surgeon's knife and made steel heal. We have ground the fabled crystal of the seer into a lens that tears the mask from every hideous plague — but the curse of Esau yet persists— the heritage of hun- ger still defies our mastery. The ghostly wolf pack prowls the lanes of poverty and howls before tenement and hovel. Daily we rise and face our splendid tasks; our wheels spin, our hammers pound; higher and higher mount our works. Then the sun signals rest. The derrick drops its tired head. The chattering song of the riveter ends. The chimney gives its last gasp. The city robes herself with flashing jewels. The crowds pour into playhouse and ride to the dance. One by one the lights fade, and only the stars are left — the same stars that shone at Babylon, and gleamed on Cleo- 129 NEIGHBOURS patra's revels — sad with olden memories of cruelty and want and woe. And in the paling dawn they blink down on the parks where broken things lie homeless on the grass — an awful fruit- age, under trees that rain a pitying dew upon the outcast brotherhood. Our boasted civilisation is a lie. We still have far to go before we have ful- filled our destiny on earth. We have learned many things, but we do not know mercy. We do not pay our tithe. This very night a hundred thousand beings will beg in vain for crusts and shelter. I have seen vagrants dig dinners out of garbage pails. I have seen a father wrap his coat about a little girl and use a park bench for a bed. I have seen gnarled old women snoring in damp areaways, and boys lie huddled on the cobblestones. How dare you brag of progress in the light of horrors such as these? If we are truly great, if we are super- men, if we can create airship, telephone, and printing press, if we can trail the mi- 130 NEIGHBOURS crobe to his death and tunnel river-beds — then all the more our blame and shame. Our past proves vv^hat v^^e can do when we set truly to a task. If one-tenth the means and time we have expended upon art and diversion were bent to the elimination of dire dis- tress, then crime, prostitution, and kin- dred evils would soon diminish. We can keep folks out of jails and hos- pitals at half the cost of maintaining them there. We do not understand philanthropy. Economists and experts have laid down scientific formulas for dispensing char- ity. But science is all brain and cannot comprehend. We must do some work with our hearts. We can well afford to postpone the founding of additional colleges, libraries, and museums. Let the next plutocrat who wishes to endow the nation with a five hundred thousand dollar painting translate his generosity into five million nourishing plates of soup. Let the next millionaire who offers us 131 NEIGHBOURS a collection of old masters erect instead a dormitory with a thousand free beds. Cold Reason protests against pauperi- sation and pleads justly, that so long as generosity extends succour, parasites will multiply. But while we are analysing and criticising and permitting theory to guide us, garbage cans are being turned into supper pails. It is far better to make humane mistakes than to commit cruel errors. Until we reach the millennium, we shall have drones and idlers, but human- ity must always stand ready to cast the life-line whenever and wherever a fellow creature is battling against the undertow. 132 JOHNNIE JOHNNIE AND now let us consider Johnnie. We've discussed his case before. Nothing new about it. He's still underfed, still underread, still under the heel of necessity. Besides knowing no law, necessity knows no pity. What else can you ex- pect from the daughter of Hunger? Personally, you've never met Hunger — except, perhaps, as an amateur. But Johnnie, who runs your errands, and car- ries your bundles, and rides on your deliv- ery wagon, is quite familiar with her hab- its. There's always a woman in the back- ground when a child is shoved into the foreground. (If the father is alive he is generally an invalid or a loafer — in either case, the woman and the boy are bur- dened, instead of blessed by the man.) 135 NEIGHBOURS You can't understand this cry of "un- derpaid help.'* Why, when you were his age, five dol- lars a week lodged and boarded a grown man, and still left enough for clothes and tobacco. But you forget that dollars stay the same size all the while that dollar's worth keeps shrinking. Even you can remember when your mother bought a competent hen for less than your wife can purchase a dozen of impeccable eggs. Because you were poor then, you think that you can put yourself in Johnnie's place now. Your breakfast seldom amounted to more than an egg, a rasher of bacon, and a cup of coffee. You carried your own luncheon — a few sandwiches, a bit of cake, an apple or two, and a bottle of milk. But look at the produce quotations this morning, and figure how often Johnnie's mother will purchase fresh eggs, and ap- 136 NEIGHBOURS pies, and pork, and coffee, not to mention the fuel to cook 'em. If you try hard enough, you'll recall sundry youthful determinations to treat a working boy better than your employer did. And you sincerely believe that you've kept that pledge, but you don't pause to consider that buying power alone estab- lishes the size of a wage. And the five dollars that you put into his pay envelope won't command nearly so much food and clothes as it could fur- nish twenty years ago. When Greed meets Need, the eternal record is blistered with divine tears. The hereafter is not apt to be pleasant for men whose business motto is "Suffer little children, who come unto me." 137 NOT AN ODE TO SPRING NOT AN ODE TO SPRING THE new year found the maple in despair — a gaunt, creaking, rheu- matic wreck, stripped to its battered limbs. Then Spring whispered courage into the desolate heart — again it felt the throb of youth and forgotten ambitions sped from branch to branch, harking them back to duty, until every twig gave an- swer to the call. The winter barrens, too, are gone, and in their stead are magic tapestries in green and rose and golden yellow. Here, a clump of violets shyly lifts above the grasses. There, a gay company of daisies race up the hillside, and yon- der, a crimson clover nods her dainty head to a foraging bumble-bee. The vagrant winds bring with them the fragrance of distant orchards, the pas- 141 NEIGHBOURS tures are lush and the roadside is hedging with mullein and sumac and berries in flower. (For further details, refer to the works of Algernon Charles Swinburne, or any seedsman's catalogue.) No, this isn't a song to spring; on the contrary, it's a hard-hitting, prosaic talk to quitters — to men who've stopped be- lieving in themselves, and therefore, pos- sibly, to you. All nature is trying to make you under- stand that you can begin again — trying to tell you that few losses are so utter but that they can be replaced — trying to teach you that failures are fertilisers for growth. The sapling does not bear fruit at the first try, but, with hope undiminished, it strives and strives until it fulfils its mis- sion. Are you inferior to a chestnut? Will you let a crab-apple cover you with shame? Society does not demand that you win immediately, but we do insist that you 142 NEIGHBOURS maintain faith so long as you have the strength with which to attempt. There is no hour so splendid as that which proves that you can surmount de- feat. Hardship is hurtful merely to cowards. It can't break a real man's back — it only stiffens his backbone. Fortune frowns on weaklings. But if you resist and persist, if you can "come back" with undiminished determination. Few hopes are vain. You are more competent with your misfortunes behind you than those whose storms and setbacks are yet before them. If your former place is filled, don't worry — there's ample room somewhere else. At the outset of their careers, most of the leading men in history had to be kicked out of their complacency and pun- ished for contentment with third-class certainties. Put doubt aside — aim high — and take a first-rate dare. Even if you miss the mark, you can't 143 NEIGHBOURS fall farther than the bottom and you're there already. Spring is not only a season — but also an attitude of mind — it's always the right moment to blossom out anew. ^44