Harry McDonald Walters

“ I have seen beguiling, attractive depravity take away from me the little girl who was born at the mill, marry her, break her heart, and kill her. On the other hand, I have seen my son grow up and make a man of himself, marry the right woman (who is so rarely found) , and prosper. I have seen my Third Beloved grow in beauty and character and mate with a man of heart and mind. All these things have I seen; and my grand-children and I have kept One Beloved at our side; and last, but by no means least, life has spared me Muriel; and the world seems good. Therefore, write me not down a failure. ”

“ In the winter of my sophomore year I was trapped for all time—caught to my undoing in one way, and to my making in a hundred ways.
Paul de la Croix talked beautifully of love in two languages—French and English. He was a past-master in the æsthetic realisation and description of love, although I do not believe he ever really loved any one but himself. He was very artistic, and uncommon looking, for which reasons the women loved him, and his family adored him. Music was his chosen career; an easy career for the pampered son of a wealthy, common, luxury-loving father. ”

“ Many a time I was put out of countenance when one of these juvenile fiends escaped from a keeper and invaded my privacy; for their candour was appalling.
“Hello, Blockhead!” one of the big boys would greet me. “Still hanging around Muriel? She makes us sick.”
I am naturally fond of children, but they need not have the manners of a playful bear.
I went to Riviere du Loup for a short holiday towards the end of the summer, with Mason’s consent, but without the knowledge of my father. My reception by Muriel was all that I dreamed it would be; but that of Mrs. Joseph was frosty and forbidding. ”

“ Perhaps they remembered the day when they married, bride and bridegroom one year younger than Muriel and I; and they treated us as if we were human, foolish, and headstrong. They gave us, moreover, many things of immediate need wherewith to start our housekeeping; and so sent us away to the mill happy.
I have made many grave mistakes in my life which have had far-reaching consequences. My marriage has sometimes appeared to be the gravest of all, but as far as I can yet discover, the outcome on the whole, has been good. The consequences, of course, will reach on for ever ”

“ Forming a character in another is much like teaching music. You cannot teach without learning much yourself, and many things are brought home to you while looking at the instrument in the learner’s hands that you could not have discovered by having the instrument in your own.
Our period of adjustment lasted many years, during which time we often lost patience exactly at the wrong instant, often doubted when we should have trusted each other, and often thought our hasty marriage a dreadful failure. ”

“ One of the day-schools I went to for a brief while as a youngster was that of the Reverend Edmund—“Daddy” we called him. Dear old Daddy he was to every boy who ever knew him. To say that Daddy was good is to say nothing of him. He was good in a wise, broad way, which is very uncommon. So many people become inhuman and small when they become good. Daddy was both good and human. There is no use in being good, virtuous and honourable, if you have no heart and lack the sympathetic understanding of badness. Daddy understood all things both good and bad. He knew humanity as it really is ”

“ I went to the dance in a high fever and when she greeted me I blushed. She looked at me with kind eyes—eyes that understood. How I love people who understand and can let you know without words. The understanding eye is one thing, the knowing eye is another. Muriel had the former, with no gleam of the latter. ”

“ My first impression of Muriel was a disappointment. She was a striking, unusual type, most attractive in her way; but at first she failed to realise the mental picture I had drawn of her; and did not strike me as I had expected she would. After too keen an anticipation of pleasure, the actual realisation is often a disappointment. Muriel, as I remember her the first time we met, was a most uncommon looking girl. ”

“ It is exactly what politicians have made it, and the politician in his turn is the exact logical product of his time. A virtuous and honest people produces virtuous and upright politicians; upright politicians make a clean and efficient Civil Service. The failings of the Civil Service are the failings of the people for whom it works. In short, a country has the government it deserves to have, and what the government is the Civil Service is.
Now, to end the chronicle, if I have any readers, I am quite aware that the large majority of them will declare my tale to be the story of a failure. ”

“ Business has moved up the social scale, and now rubs shoulders with those of the most exclusive circles. The man of business, who regards money as his sole aim, is much more one-sided and undeveloped than he whose end is knowledge of a science or art, for every science and every art is more or less connected with everything. Consequently, the business man cannot be veneered with the veneer of society, but he can be very decently varnished. There is a huge difference between veneer and varnish.
I had never been within the charmed orbit of Miss Muriel Joseph’s soaring. Paul was different. ”

“ I felt a genuine sorrow about grandfather’s death because he was a dear old chap—hale, hearty, and jovial. He was suddenly, and it may seem ruthlessly, killed by having his head crushed by a runaway horse; but sudden death is not, despite the Prayer Book, the worst kind of exit. He was a most cheerful old optimist, caring nothing for the day after to-morrow, or any other day but the one he was living; and his end was in keeping with his life. He was a third husband of my grandmother, who had been a very beautiful Quakeress, and my father was their only son. ”

“ As he sat at his desk in class-room, he was always pawing his bald head with a large bony hand, probing his ear with a lead pencil or pen handle, or investigating his nose. His black waistcoat, which buttoned behind, was always decorated with spots, and his odour was that of a stableman. His voice was harsh and loud, except when speaking from the pulpit; then he subdued it to a monotonous sing-song drone involving four semitones in a chromatic scale; the kind of noise the bass string of a ’cello will make if it is plucked while the peg is turned up and let down again. ”

“ Our civilisation is peculiar, in that it worships morality without being moral, praises honesty and practices dishonesty, honours justice and tolerates injustice, and makes a pretence of believing a great many things that it finds impracticable, inexpedient [Pg 152] and inconvenient to follow. Appearance is the only thing that counts, and the most successful hypocrite is the greatest man among us. It is the opinions you express that mark you, not the actions of your life, provided you care for appearances. We are worshippers of form. Good form is everything; the substance is nothing. ”

“ A newly-married woman may think she needs her husband every instant of his leisure; but really she does not; and he is a very foolish man who attempts to satisfy any such desire. People are just like foods, if you have too much of them they pall upon you. The gratification of my thirst for knowledge gave Muriel a wholesome relief from my constant presence.
I learned chess from a book, and played on my home-made chess-board for years before I ever met an opponent. I tried to teach Muriel, but she had not the patience for it, and preferred a book, music, or letter writing. ”

“ What is success? I reply that I do not know. It is one thing to one man and another to another. And even if the world consider me as a failure, it must recognise that I failed in more things than most men because I tried more things. And if the output [Pg 172] of energy is the measure of a man, these failures were only episodes of a struggle toward a more human ideal of life.
I had a many-sided character to satisfy. I desired all things which seemed good to me: a happy home, love, beautiful children, music, literature, and the stage. I have been great in nothing ”

“ Taking a survey of all the college men I know, and have known, I cannot be sure that the addition of a college education makes much difference in the end. The man who succeeds with a college degree would have succeeded without it. It is personality that counts. Character rules the world, be it educated at college or in the gutter.
I passed into my second year in the following spring, and then in turn from sophomore to third year without distinction, without disgrace or notable incident. I learned to smoke and began to shave, and believed myself to be a thoroughly sophisticated youth. ”

“ The only advantage a Jackass gets by having a college degree is that he can enter the Civil Service and no questions asked. His degree would not pass him unquestioned into any other employment.”
I very soon concluded that the Civil Service involved, if you took it seriously, a form of disease which saps your self-esteem and kills out your originality.
After I had been some months with Mr. Kingdom and a friendly feeling had been established between us, he said to me one day, “Wesblock, I rather like you personally, but you will never make a good Civil servant.” ”

“ The doctor is an old man. She must be over twenty.”
“I have no patience with you,” said Paul. “She looks twenty because she is wonderful. You are blind. You cannot see. It is because her father is an old man that she is so spoiled and so wonderful. Doctor Joseph is twenty years older than his wife and consequently Muriel is precocious.” ”

“ Muriel, a comparative child, was willing and ready to give up her home luxuries and her social opportunities, to forego a brilliant wedding, with all the show and splendour that women worship, and to face the great unknown future with me, seemed a miracle worked for my special benefit—although the same kind of thing happens almost daily. ”

“ Outwardly a book, it is not a book in the ordinary sense. It is only an artless yarn. Wesblock is a common type, and he writes himself down as he knows himself or thinks he knows himself. His tale is not thrilling, except in so far as the understanding reader can see that he escaped being one of the great army of the unfit by a very narrow margin. Wesblock has in fact written as much for himself as for you. His story is an attempt to take stock of himself, and to discover whether life as he has experienced it is really worth while. ”

“ I found that in the West an employee was expected to make himself useful in any capacity in which his employer saw fit to use him, and I adapted myself to the conditions, but I did not like Minnesota, and found it a hard place to live in, and by no means richer in opportunities than the East. Perhaps I did not know an opportunity when I saw one.
When the bottom fell out of the real estate boom, I felt it was time to return to my native city. Muriel would have had me return much sooner, but a move of a thousand miles was a thing too serious to do in a hurry. ”

“ To wear my hair a little long is my taste and Muriel’s. Rex wore his hair cropped like a pork butcher and the beard upon his face trimmed to a pattern. “Chacun à son goût.” He was like a great many other people in thinking that matters of taste are matters of fact, and that style and gait not of this or that type must necessarily be bad taste. ”

“ The Civil Service suffers and will suffer, for many years to come, from the dead weight of the human culls and misfits dumped into it by the official and professional politician. It is really a great deal better than might be expected, considering the handicap under which it does a great work. To say that it is corrupt or inefficient, as if it were the actual cause of its own failings and shortcomings, is foolish. ”

“ I have always noticed that it has ever been the system of organised religion to persecute in mean and small ways all those who disagree with it. All the willingness to go even farther and use the faggot, the stake and the rack still remains in our midst, among a very large class who are enthusiastic and ignorant, but full of faith in some fetish. They only lack the power. I have yet to learn that any man branded as an unbeliever has ever in the smallest way persecuted anybody. ”

“ The tale of my jail experience is very amusing and instructive. It is not generally known that you may go to jail for debt, for the very plain reason that but few men who have had practical experience are willing to admit it. John H. Wesblock is different; he will admit it, and tell you here in cold print that he went to jail for debt in the City of Ottawa, in the year of his time, Forty. It happened that I was worried and excited, and got stubborn and wicked, under the persistent importunities of one particular creditor. ”

“ I must now return to the affairs of my wife’s family, and to my mother-in-law, who had become at length reconciled to me as a member of the family, and almost looked upon me as a son. It appears to be a kind of law in nature or society, that one individual of a family must be sacrificed, in one way or another, for the benefit of the rest. ”