Daniel Wright Kittredge

“ I have sat sipping this beverage until my brain is aroused to false action. Listen! There comes a band of music, marching. It is coming nearer and nearer until I can hear the human shouts of applause. I can see the crowd swaying and forging up the street past my window. I can see that they are escorting a chief to a rostrum where they may proclaim him leader! How grand and humble must he feel, knowing their expectations and his limitations. ”

“ He died even before I lost Susanne. He rode off one day on a new stallion. I climbed on the zig-zag fence and watched him disappear down the plantation road. When he reached the creek, the stallion threw him against the rocks and broke his neck. Uncle Robert and Sandy and I brought him home.
Don’t pity me. Call me a mad dog, say that I am a peculiar idiot, say that I have been a fool and wasted my life; but don’t pity me! And if there is one thing more abhorrent to me than self-praise, it is self-pity. I am disgusted with myself, who might have amounted to some one. ”

“ These eyes show it. They see failure, utter, bleak, barren failure. The Great Gambler gives us the dice to throw once, and only once. We lose or we win. I lost.
Ah God, must I once more be wakeful with hot tears? I think of the men and the women I know—of you—of you; how did the dice come up for you? What have the figures read?
As I am gazing thus in the mirror, my eyes wander to the other part of the reflection which shows the darkness of the opposite end of the room, for the lamp is beginning to flicker. ”

“ Sodom, Babylon and the Rome of the Caesars followed in the fated cycle of Troy—in the perversion of love. Paris, London, Berlin and New York will follow them, too. Nemesis takes time, plenty of time, too much time, yet follows as surely as the stars shine out of the sky. But the turtle doves of Solomon, without our vain intelligence, waste their little lives in love, or rather because of love, natural, untrammelled love, not one of them was wasted. Turtle doves do not sell their daughters in marriage for convenience, nor in harlotry for necessity. Marriage does not make love sacred. ”

“ Courage! courage! Bring in the pitcher and the bowl, Sandy; I need more courage. My doctor is right. The mind is the whole thing. The memory and the imagination can conjure up the few supreme moments of my buried life when she sat beside me and rested over me, looking down into my eyes, as we were stretched at full length beneath the crab-tree blossoms. There is her father’s house upon the hill, a white house with the old balcony porch ”

“ Bring me that book with the worn, sheepskin covers, Sandy. Ah, how I love this recent child, who longed to make people do their own thinking and their own believing by giving them bits of our vast heritage of philosophy which only a few have the time or the inclination to read. But readers will not endure moralizing, said my tactful self. Therefore, give them bits of philosophy in action! ”

“ In them, for indefinite periods, Dunlevy was accustomed to walk, his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the distant wooded valleys of the Blue Ridge Mountains. We wondered what sort of man he might be, who was as sufficient unto himself as the fixed stars in the sky which radiate no other light than their own. ”

“ My mother withdrew into herself, she became sad and more sad as time went on; and during this sorrow, she conceived and bore me. Is it any wonder that I, a man, should at times weep like a girl?
Now I am back to where I left off about Tim’s death. It was after he was gone that my mother used to take me daily into the spare room and console me with poetry. Then one day the blinds were drawn close in my mother’s room. She had another of her terrible heart attacks. O God, how I have seen her suffer! ”

“ Instead of allowing Nature to run her beautiful course, he set up laws out of his own little brain. In order to protect himself as a selfish egoist, in order to gain power over his fellow men, in order to be able to own any woman whom he might desire under the guise of divine right, he had the assurance to say that these laws were God-given, and that therefore his wilful possession of a woman was a sacrament! That is what I mean by his tinkering, mental juggling with elemental truths which he did not understand and had no right to touch. ”

“ Once again I am in the company of my royal host, His Excelsior. The Great Axilla is showing me another section of his collection of men. We are in a vast inclosure which resembles a city park. Crossing it are shaded walks with benches at intervals, and at the intersection of these various paths, that is at the centre of the park, is a fountain. Upon the benches are seated men of different ages, some with chins almost beardless, others in the evening of life, with the harsh furrows of experience upon their features, and many who are worn into greyness. ”

“ Aye, but how can we have the heart right when superstition makes us believe that we do wrong. Here, then, is the key, and that old sinner, William Shakespeare, found it when he said that there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. We think love a sin, when it is as natural as breathing and as beautiful as the warm birth of sunrise. ”

“ But this time it seems I was mistaken.
“I take it that you are a failure in your native land,” quoth the ruler, “for those who are failures are usually ‘bored’, to use your tongue. Is it not so, thou parasite of the warm ocean land?”
“True it is, O Excelsior,” I replied, “but my failure is due not to me; it is the fault of——” Here he cut me short with an interruption:
“Those who are failures,” quoth he, “ever place the cause of their failure upon others, while those who attain success always accredit it to themselves.” ”

“ Seriously, my friend, it is this theological tinkering that has caused most of the trouble in this world. Long ago when the world was young, men wanted to do certain things; so they invented gods and told their people that it was the gods, not themselves, who wanted these things done. Then began the tinkering with what was beyond man’s sphere. Then man began to tinker with elements over which he had no control, with elements which he was never meant to comprehend. He segregated men and women apart, and made the distance between them contrary to natural laws. ”

“ I may be a trifle long, but if you knew how I am enjoying myself, yes, how I am relieving my brain by detaining you! I say relieving my brain, for it is about pent-up brains that I am about to speak. Have you ever thought that when each one of us dies, how many facts, memories, griefs, joys, are enclosed in the folds of our brain? How our skull is literally the storehouse of all we knew, felt and experienced. That in there, it was; and that in there, it must be? I have spent hours roaming through museums in which mummies were exposed ”

“ Perhaps it will not do for me to go no deeper into the meaning of Dunlevy’s documents, if I propose to offer them for public scrutiny, even though I personally feel that the moment one begins to analyze their meaning, the meaning disappears. So it is with pleasure. The moment you become conscious of pleasure and try to handle it and to label it, the pleasure vanishes, and you pursue a flying goal. Spontaneous happiness is never conscious. ”

“ Love makes true marriage sacred. But what of marriage without love, or where love is killed?
Turtle doves do not mate after they cease to love. And so their love dies only with death, for they have no dogmas which call love a vice, no laws which call love illegitimate. Turtle doves have no prudery, for they are not foul-minded. ”

“ I give at once the name of this writer—William Wirt Dunlevy.
It is essential to begin by relating what little is known of the man himself. Otherwise these fragments of his work would be even more inexplicable than if they were presented without comment. Indeed, it is best to admit at the outset that the character of this man and the outcome of his life are subjects which seem destined to remain quite as inscrutable as the meaning of his manuscript. ”

“ But the boulders that interest and amuse me most are those which are sheer bulks of matter or rather hulks of space, having their own way, always getting the place they want, boulders which are proud and satisfied with being exactly the sort of boulders that they are. I think that they like being big boulders chiefly because they catch the eye.
Can that coarse, man-made cement hold these elemental things together? Yes, for a while, but not forever. This sea-wall will have to be torn down and rebuilt again by coming nations; for that cement, Sandy, is civilization trying to weld men together ”

“ The mate in the tree screams with exultation, the offspring leaps to her bosom, and both descend to embrace their upright spouse and father in a perfect whirl of chattering. Inarticulate chattering, most unlike speech, but still chattering—for Love was born. ”

“ Tumble-bugs roll from rut to rut, clinging to their eggs, never knowing that they are tumble-bugs. I would rather be unhappy than be the man with illusions, snug in his own pettiness. If contentment comes only from rolling in a rut, then I choose discontent. ”

“ But Dunlevy does not allow us to dismiss him with the trite conclusion that because sentiments are personal, they are necessarily autobiographical. He makes us go further, and asks: “Why should I have been a failure? I admit that it was because I had a weak will. But how did it happen that my will was weak? Does the onus of the blame fall upon my ancestors and myself or upon civilization?” He makes both share the responsibility, but he brings his stronger indictment against our civilization; because he proves that he started out with clean instincts and a desire to do good. ”

“ What a relief to be without those biting colors once more. What did cause that trouble? He sits upon his haunches and ponders until his mind hurts. He is hungry. Where is the animal that he killed? He looks over at the rock pile with trepidation. Yes, there is the little carcass, but its fur is gone! He can hardly recognize it. He summons up courage and snatches it. But it hurts so that he lets it fall. He sucks his thumb in pain. The new smell! The new taste! Those biting colors made that rich odor and delicious flavor. ”

“ You have shone upon a mighty host of leaders and their followers. You shine indifferently upon our passing shows and remain to shine when we are gone, mocking our longest efforts. Ah, how does that Eternity of the Past outdo the little Eternity of the Future of which poor man has dreamed! ”

“ If you do not wish to believe me, may I prove my position to you by a discovery for which I searched a lifetime, an invention on which I lavished the slavery of years, an invention whose workings may warp your credulity until you doubt my sanity and your own. Can I trust you with my secret? I have the instrument in that valise. That is why I have walked up the seven flights of stairs, because the elevator’s motion would upset its delicate mechanism. Can I trust you? ”

“ I have won. I have triumphed! At last I have come into my own. Life is not a failure! My forehead beats with the inspiration of fame, of music, of triumphal progress. The bells are ringing for me, and every clash of their tongues sends a quiver through my blood. The whistles shriek! Each blast makes the hair on my head tingle. And the shouts: ‘Huzzah! Huzzah! Tiger! Three cheers for Me! And three times three! Huzzah! Huzzah!’”
The band, the crowd and the leader have passed my window, and the music has died away. I sit [Pg 76] looking up into the star-lighted heavens, sipping my sangaree. ”

“ And as to humbug, I tried to show silly women and foolish men how unhappy and strained they make their lives by assuming emotions which they think they possess, and by expressing thoughts which mean nothing, because they have never thought them out. How easy this world would be if we could all of us simply be ourselves, as a dachshund is only a dog, a donkey a donkey, and a cat a cat. ”

“ And woman, like the silly she has always been, said it [Pg 130] was grand, and acquiesced; while all other animals have, without man’s arrogance, remained true to their elemental nature, and so are spared our trials and shortcomings. I am right, I am right, I know I am right! That is why civilization is a failure, caused by man’s tinkering with the fundamental, basic operations of the ordinary course of the perpetuation of the species.”
When the strange professor finished speaking, I confess that I was at a loss for words, and asked:
“Do you really believe that civilization is a failure?” ”

“ No, no, it will not do to dismiss Dunlevy as a bitter, bad-minded egoist. No, no, that will not do. The man was utterly dissatisfied with the outcome of his life. You can be no more disgusted with him than he is disgusted with himself. ”

“ Sandy is always reluctant to leave me alone. I am sorry now that I allowed him to go out, for I have a prescience that an unusual coma is about to fall upon me. But why worry about the unknown? Where death is, said a philosopher, we are not. And where we are, death is not.
I arose and thought that I ought to lie down in an attempt to sleep, when I thought that I heard a knock upon a door. Oddly enough, it was not upon my outer chamber door, but upon the closet door within. ”