Irving Bacheller

“ I’m a bit of a Puritan myself, although I understood Harry better than did the Deacon. The young people have been captured by the frankness of the Latin races. They call it emancipation. Travel and the higher education have opened the storage vats of foreign degeneracy and piped them into our land. Certain young men who have been ‘finished’ abroad, where they filled their souls with Latin lewdness, have turned it into fiction and a source of profit. Women buy their books and rush through them, and only touch the low places. ”

“ If I were living in a foreign land and needed evidence of my respectability, I’d have a crest, if it was likely to prove my case. But America was founded by the sons of the yeomen, and the yeomen established their respectability with other evidence. Their brains were so often touched by the battle-ax that some of us have an hereditary shyness about the head, and we dodge at every baronial relic. ”

“ There are the venerable and neatly fashioned houses of the old-time Yankee––the peaked roofs and gables, the columns, the cozy verandas, the garden spaces. But the old-time Yankees are gone. The well-kept gardens are no more. Many of the houses are going to ruin. One is an Italian tenement. The others are inhabited by coachmen, chauffeurs, gardeners, mill-hands, and degenerate Yankees. The inn is a mere barroom. ”

“ The Fifth Avenue farmer has begun to raise his own vegetables at a dollar apiece and a crop of criminals second to none. In his hands farming becomes agriculture and the farm a swarming nest of parasites. ”

“ Marie had a failing, for which, I am sorry to say, she was in no way distinguished. She talked too much, as Harry 56 had said. There are too many American women who talk too much. Marie’s mother used to talk about six-thirds of the time. You had to hear it, and then you had to get over it. She had a way of spiking the shoes of Time so that every hour felt like a month while it was running over you. You ought to have seen her climb the family tree or the sturdy old chestnut of her own experience and shake down the fruit! Marie had one more tree in her orchard. ”

“ The church here is dying of anemia for want of fresh food. The new world must have new thought to fit new conditions. Its outlook has been utterly changed. If a man who had never seen a locomotive or a motor-car or a tandem or a telephone or an electric light or the sons and daughters of a new millionaire or the home and crest of the same or a bill of a modern merchant were to come down out of the backwoods and try to tell us how to run the world, we should think him an ass, and wisely. ”

“ Such was the condition of things when we entered the church of my fathers. We sat down in the Potter pew a few minutes before the service began. There were, by actual count, forty-nine people gathered around the altar of the old church, and behind us a great emptiness and the ghosts of the dead. In my boyhood I had sat in its dim light, with six hundred people filling every seat to the doors and a man of power and learning in the pulpit.
“Faces long forgotten were there in those pews––old faces, young faces. ”

“ Our purpose is to regulate our talk supply very strictly to the demand.’
“‘It’s a grand idea!’ I exclaimed. ‘The Ladies’ Talk and Information Trust! Why, it will soon control the entire product of Pointview, and can fix the price. Marie, it’s only a matter of time when the conversation of you girls is going to be in the nature of a luxury and as much desired as diamonds. It won’t be long before some young fellow will offer his life for one word from you.’
“‘Oh, I’m hopeless! Nobody cares for me––not a soul!’ said Marie. ”

“ Almost everybody had something charged against Harry. He was highly unpopular, but a good fellow at heart.
“I got the judge to release him on his promise to abandon motoring for three years.
“Thus he rushed out of the motor-car stage of his career into that of the drag and tandem.
“He had had more narrow escapes and suffered greater perils than Rob Roy.
“Yes, bulls are a good thing––a comparatively soft thing. I recommend them to every motorist who may have to look for a place to land. Don’t ever throw yourself on the real estate of New England. It can hit harder than you can.” ”

“ One lady has shown us a sample of concentrated hair, and it looks good to me. Why all this striving, all this trouble about the problems of life and death, when the straight, broad way of concentration is open to us? Why shouldn’t we have concentrated bread and meat and shoes and socks and silks.
“‘Now the subject of concentration is by no means new. It has been a success for centuries. The late Dr. Guph tells in his memoirs of a singular race of people known as the Flub Dubs who once dwelt on the lost isle of Atlantis. They were the greatest concentrators that ever lived. ”

“ In Pointview even Time has quickened his pace. Last year is ancient history. Lizzie has been succeeded by Miss Elizabeth, who needs a maid, a chauffeur, a footman, and a house-party to maintain her spirits. Harry and his drag have taken the place of Dan and his runabout.
“The enemy has arrived in force. We are surrounded by country-houses and city abdomens of appalling size and arrogance. Mansions crown the slopes and line the water-front. The dialect of the lazy Yankee and his industrious hens are heard no more in the hills of Pointview. ”

“ Harry was taken by surprise.
“‘But I can pay for my folly,’ he said.
“‘Yes; but when it becomes another man’s 42 folly it’s stolen property, and as much yours as ever. The goods have your mark on ’em, and, by and by, they’re dumped at your door. They may be damaged by dirt and vermin, but you’ve got to take ’em.
“‘After all, Harry, why should a young man whose education has cost a hundred thousand dollars, if a cent, be giving up his life to folly? You’re too smart to spend the most of your time looking beautiful––trying to excite the admiration of women and the envy of men. ”

“ I’m convinced now that you have a conscience, 114 and that you will be likely to make some use of it in the future. I’m particularly grateful to your wife. She has shown me that she is just a woman, and not an angel. I don’t believe that it was at all necessary for you to have groveled in aristocratic crimes in order to win her heart. The yacht cruise and the tandem and the violets and the Fifth Avenue clothes and the ton of candy were quite superfluous. You needed only to tell her the truth, like a man, and say that you loved her.’
“‘It is true, Roger,’ said the girl as she broke down again. ”

“ Tell them that too much conversation has created more old maids and grass and parlor widows than any other cause. Give them a little lecture on the old law of supply and demand. Show them that it applies to conversation as well as to cabbages––that if one’s talk is too plentiful, it becomes very cheap. ”

“ Some member of the family used to go to market every morning with his basket and carry the goods home with him.’
“‘It would be ridiculous for me to do that,’ said Harry. ‘We’re able to pay the bills.’
“‘But you’re doing a great injustice to those who are not. You make the delivery system a necessary thing, and those who can’t afford it have to help you stand the expense––a gross injustice. I want you to help me in this cause of the hand and foot. Your example would be full of inspiration. Excuse me a moment.’
“I went for the wheelbarrow and rolled it up to the front door. ”

“ In Harry it’s broken.’
“‘You’re right––it was busted long ago,’ said Henry Delance.
17
“‘Some one has got to contrive a new mainspring for the sons of millionaires––they’re so plenty these days.’
“‘There’s the desire to be respectable,’ he suggested.
“‘But it is not nearly so universal as the love of money. If it were possible to have millionaire carpenters and shoemakers there’d be more hope! But I’ll try to invent a mainspring for Harry. If he doesn’t marry some fool woman there’s a chance for the boy––a good chance. ”

“ Where the hoe and the sickle were stirred by the 13 fear of hunger, the golf-club and the tennis-racket are moved by the fear of fat. The sweat of toil is now the perspiration of exercise. The chatter of society has succeeded that of the goose and the polliwog. Land has gone up. Rocks have become real estate even while they belonged to Christian Scientists. Ledges, smitten by the modern Moses, have gushed a stream of gold. Once the land supported its owner. Now wealth supports land and landlord and the fullness thereof. ”

“ Coming home, I limbered up my imagination and outlied Harry.
“I was forced to invent that cheerful, handy liar the late Dr. Godfrey Vogeldam Guph, Professor of the Romance Languages in the University of Brague and the intimate friend of any great man you may be pleased to mention. With his help I have laid low even the most authoritative, learned, and precise liars in the State of Connecticut. I do it by quoting from his memoirs. ”

“ The old village of Trent lies back in the hills, a little journey from Pointview, on the shores of a pleasant river. To the unknowing traveler, who approaches from either hilltop, it has a peaceful and inviting look. But the rutted, rocky road begins at once to excite suspicion. A bad road is an indication and a producer of degeneracy in man and beast. It tends to profanity, and if it went far would probably lead to hell. Trent itself is one of the little 171 modern hells of New England. ”

“ Betsey and I were giving a dinner-party at our house. Mr. and Mrs. Henry Delance and the Warburtons and Dan and Lizzie had come over to discuss a plan for the correction of the greatest folly and extravagance in the village––namely, the waste of its spiritual energy.
“At first we had to discuss a fact related to another folly, for the Delances told how Harry’s pet collie had come up to the back door that day with a human skull in his mouth. Of course I knew that Harry’s Bishop had returned, but held my peace about it. To them it had suggested murder, and they had consulted the chief of police. ”

“ They have led to a vast amount of unnecessary buying. They have developed a talent for extravagance in our people. They have created a large and growing sisterhood and brotherhood of dead-beats. They have led to bankruptcy and slow pay and bad debts. They have raised the cost of everything we require because the tradesman compels us to pay his uncollected accounts. They are added to your bills and mine, and the merchant prince suffers no impairment of his fortune. ”

“ I knew that the books had cost at least a thousand dollars. Grandpa Smead looked awfully stern in his gold frame on the wall.
“‘Now don’t think too badly of me,’ she urged. ‘Every poor family within twenty miles is eating dinner at my expense this Christmas Day.’
“‘You are the dearest girl in all the land!’ I said. ‘There’s nobody like you.’
“‘I knew that you were fond of the classics,’ said Betsey, ‘so I consulted Harry Delance, and he suggested that I should give you a set of Smollett; said it would renew your youth. ”

“ He is going to chuck the battle-ax and saw the royal branches off our family tree and I am going to sell the drag, cart, and horses.’
“‘That’s a great treaty,’ I said. ‘The settlement of the Alaskan frontier is not more important than fixing the boundaries of our social life. Let us surrender the tools of idiocy; especially, let us abandon all 124 claim to the helmet and battle-ax. They’re all right in their place, but they aren’t ours. The plowshare and the pruning-hook are our symbols.’
“‘By Jove! you know, the old Bishop of St. Clare agrees with you exactly,’ said Harry. ”

“ It crosses a morass to avoid going around. When you reach the high ground you are covered with mud and slime. You need to be washed and disinfected, and perhaps you’ve caught a 122 fever that will last as long as you live. Many a boy and girl have got mired in this swamp fiction that you enjoy so much. There are many of us who prefer to go around the swamp and keep on a decent footing even if it takes longer.’
“‘We want to know all sides of life,’ said Harry. ”

“ I intend that every family within ten miles shall be visited at least once a week. We shall not 160 only let our light shine, but we shall make it shine into every human heart in this community. If they’re too callous we’ll punch a hole with our trusty blade and let the light in. The lantern and the rapier shall be our weapons.’
“Harry was full of enthusiasm. He had met Marie on the street, and she was glad to learn that he was going to work.
“‘Incidentally, I hope to win your grandfather’s consent,’ he had said to her. ”

“ Of course, all that began to react on the young men: if that was the kind of thing the girls liked, they must try to be in it. Slowly but surely a Pointview aristocracy began its line of cleavage and a process of integration. Crests appeared on the letter-heads and limousine doors of the newly rich. In a month or so people of brain and substance degenerated into a condition of hardened shameless idiocy.
“Some of our best citizens went abroad, each to find his place among the descendants of William the Conqueror. ”