Robert Grant

“ If it had been Josie, I should have been rather pleased—which shows, Fred, that I am not altogether hostile to the spirit of the age. But I am not prepared as yet to see my only really handsome daughter—and such a handsome one, Fred—fly in the face of convention and custom merely—merely to please Miss Jacket and the people who never have a chance to go anywhere."
All Josephine's combativeness and pride of opinion seemed to ooze suddenly away, and she buried her face on my shoulder, murmuring—
"Oh, yes, the whole system of society for girls is ridiculous and degenerating. ”

“ Harvard has lost the ball and Yale has it. And now before my bewildered eyes scrimmage follows scrimmage with fierce iteration, and one pile of bodies, arms, and legs succeeds another. The player, fortunate enough to carry or force the ball a yard or more toward the rival goal by a frantic rush before he is overwhelmed and squashed, reaps a whirlwind of applause from the absorbed multitude. Every inch of ground is disputed. Once in a long interval when the ball gets dangerously near a goal, someone on the imperiled side kicks it half the length of the field, and the scrimmages are renewed. ”

“ For an instant she stared, then she gasped as though some one had struck her, and she fiercely started to raise the window.
"What are you trying to do, Josephine?"
"Let me go, Fred. I will, I will. How dare they?"
"Pooh, dear! All is fair in politics. It's no worse than the Swamp of Civil Service Reform," I said, as I tore away her vindictive grasp from the window which she had succeeded in opening a foot or two, and shut it hastily.
"How dare they? You had no right to prevent me from hissing, Fred. I should like to fling something at them too. ”

“ No more gingerbread education, no more treatment as dolls and nincompoops, no more discrimination between one sex and the other as to knowledge of this world's wickedness, no more curtailment of personal liberty on the score of that bugaboo, propriety—all these, if you like, ladies; but we men, we fathers and philosophers, ask that you retain, for our sakes, beauty of face and form, beauty of raiment, low, modulated voices, and a graceful carriage, faith, hope, and charity, even though you continue to reveal these last-named as at present with sweet, illogical inconsequence. ”

“ As I sat down amid a tumult of approbation, my darling's confused but happy smile shone like a beam from heaven athwart my misty gaze. I see it still as I sit here to-night, with her hand in mine in our silent but joyous home. The mystery of mysteries, life! Why were we born? We do not know. What is to become of us when we go hence? We have no knowledge, but we live in hope. I live in hope. When the last trump sounds, and the graves give up their dead; when the myriads of souls are brought face to face with God to learn the solution of all mysteries, I shall seek only for Josephine. ”

“ Hence, certain that the work of emancipation is to continue, my philosophical glance follows fondly and almost proudly the course of my second daughter, who is making a fool of herself at the moment by practising Christian Science, because she has beauty and grace and a knowledge of the value of colors, purity and tenderness and aspiring faith, as her mother had before her, while at the same time she has forsaken the beaten path of convention and turned her brow to the morning. All of which, Josephine informs me, is charming reasoning, provided Winona does not fall in love with somebody. ”

“ No, Fred, though I agree that everything has worked out a great deal more satisfactorily than I deserve, and that we are infinitely better off than we have ever been before in point of comfort and general happiness, I look back on the last year and a half as a sort of nightmare. You were content to live along steadily in the dear old house and to toil unselfishly for us all, and I was perpetually prodding you. It has made me feel myself to be a perfect ogre of a woman. ”

“ But for this untoward circumstance, my dear Josie would still be the light of my house, and I should not be gnawing at my mustache in the throes of misanthropy.
Jim is slight and not very tall, and he does not look especially strong. They tell me that he has worked very hard, and that he has won his way purely by his own energy and talent. He does not smoke, which rather prejudiced me against him, in spite of the fact that I believe we should all be the healthier if we did not use tobacco. This, as Josephine would say, only shows what an inconsistent creature I am. And I a philosopher, too! ”

“ How could I afford to move? Why should we move? The dear old house where we had passed so many joyous years and which Josephine used to say was extraordinarily convenient! I remember that I became successively irate, pathetic, and bumptious in my secret soul. I said to myself stoutly that it was all nonsense, and that by means of a little fresh paint and new coverings for the dining-room chairs, we should be happy where we were for another five years. ”

“ Said Josephine to me some three months ago: "Fred, we shall have been married twenty-five years on the twenty-first of next November. We ought to celebrate it in some way."
"How better than by having a silver wedding?"
"Because so many people would feel obliged to give us silver," she replied. "I am perfectly willing, Fred, that people, should send me flowers when I'm dead, but I will not have them send silver to my silver wedding." ”

“ Although we are jointly and severally aware that the years have been slipping away, and that our turns to bid farewell to this dear earth may come any day now despite the fact that we feel young as ever, we choose still to regard death as a shy visitor which is likely to prefer others to us. I say to myself that people rarely die of rheumatism, which is Josephine's only cross, and though pneumonia is a fell destroyer, I know that Josephine is firmly convinced that the colds to which I am subject never attack my lungs. ”

“ To have the wind stamped out of one is a mere bagatelle, of course, and I have forgotten it in another moment under the spur of excitement. A Harvard player has the ball, and no one seems to be able to stop him. He throws off his antagonist and dodges two others, and races down the field like a deer, while the wearers of the crimson scream his name with transport and flourish their banners like madmen. It is Fred, it is Fred, it is Fred! ”

“ I have altogether too many faults to be one, and should constantly be flying in the face of my own theories. Barring the aforesaid weakness for whiskey and water, it is fair to assume that the average real philosopher lives up to his own lights and by them; whereas I, at least according to Josephine, am liable to be frightfully inconsistent. She has never forgotten my profanity on the occasion when we discovered after dinner that the soot had come down in the drawing-room and was over everything in spite of the fact that the chimney had been swept three weeks before. ”

“ All summer she sails, floats, glides, sits, perches, sprawls, walks, meanders, talks, climbs, rides, saunters, or dances madly as her mood or circumstances suggest. There is her life, varying a little according to clime and disposition, according to whether she is daughter of a duke or of a successful grocer. It is what everyone expects of her, so no one is surprised; and she is expected also to keep up the pace until she is married, which is likely to come to pass any day, but which, as in the case of poor Julia, may not be until she is thirty. ”

“ The ruffians look still more ruffianly from frequent contact with mother-earth and the clutches of one another. Ominous gloom and depressing silence take possession of the friends of Harvard; their very cheers are anxious, and with good reason. Yale has kicked another goal from the field in the first twenty minutes and the crimson is being gradually and steadily outplayed. My heart bleeds for my son; he will be so disappointed if he loses. And I shall be so happy when the game is over and I am sure that he is not maimed for life. He is doing wonders still, dear boy. ”

“ My wife Josephine declares that I have become a philosopher in my old age, and perhaps she is right. Now that I am forty, and a trifle less elastic in my movements, with patches of gray about my ears which give me a more venerable appearance, I certainly have a tendency to look at the world as through a glass. ”

“ Winona folded her hands. "I said that, father, because we Christian Scientists are not yet certain as to what is the precise nature of death. There are some who deem death also an hallucination, and the apparent annihilation of matter consequent upon it merely a reflex confirmation of the truth that there is no matter, only spirit; and it may well be that as the world grows in faith, death will disappear in that we shall cease to think we see matter. Mrs. Titus holds this view, but I am not yet sufficiently free from error to be sure that I believe it." ”

“ There is no doubt, though, that woman has been kept down for generations, and has only just begun to bob up serenely, to hazard a coloquial metaphor. The eyes of civilization are upon her, and there is legitimate curiosity from Christiania to Yokohama to discover what she is going to do. To me as a philosopher, and taking into account one consideration with another, including Josephine's plaint, it seems as though woman would have much plainer sailing in her progress toward reconstruction if it were not that she is so exceedingly good-looking in spots and bunches. ”

“ What was the use of accepting if you didn't intend to win if you could?"
"So I do intend, but I can't."
"You can't certainly if you hobnob with the rival candidate and call him a good fellow."
"You ought to have been a politician, Josephine."
"No, I'm only crazy to have you win, Fred, and I'm convinced you can win if you only think so yourself and pitch in as if you thought so. I dare say Mr. Spinney may be well enough apart from politics, but it is politics we are interested in at present, and it seems to me it is your duty to hate him—until the election is over, anyway. ”

“ Barring the single blue necktie and the pajamas, I drifted into and have stuck to blacks and browns and the least ostentatious cuts until my own wife and children have felt called upon to proclaim me fusty.
To tell the truth, I had been more or less conscious for some time of my degeneration in this respect, but it is no easy matter to escape from a rut when one is middle-aged. ”

“ I should like to understand why it is glorious or sensible for an honest, strapping fellow, who has been sent to college by dint of some economy on the part of his parents, to devote his entire energies to a course of training which will entitle him to run the risk of having his legs, arms, or ribs broken in fighting for a leather ball before several thousand people. Of one thing I am certain already, even at the risk of seeming to agree with Horace Plympton, which is, that if I had another son with like proclivities, I should put a stop to it. ”

“ The Yale eleven have arrived and are stripping off their jerseys. They career over the arena in dirt color and dark blue, while the dark blue benches surge tumultuously. There is no more delay. The umpire calls the game, and the two sides line up for action. I feel Josephine, who is on my other side, clutch my arm and sigh. There is only one object for her on the field, as I well know. ”

“ However, just as the mongoose of the bag-man's story was not a real mongoose, neither am I a real philosopher.
You will remember that Diogenes, who was a real philosopher, occupied a tub as a permanent residence. He would roll in hot sand during the heat of summer, and embrace a statue of snow in winter, just to show his superiority to ordinary human conventions and how much wiser he was than the rest of the world. The real philosophers of the present day are not quite so peculiar; but they are apt to be fearfully and wonderfully superior to the weaknesses of humanity. ”

“ When, however, Josephine asked me the other day to specify the field, I was obliged to admit that my ideas were a trifle hazy. My state of mind doubtless proceeds from a rooted conviction that the emancipation of woman has only just begun, and a certain sympathetic curiosity with her each and every effort to advance. To realize her progress, I have only to glance up at my ancestor with the mended eye and consider what a doll and a toy she was to him. ”

“ I did not consider that I was called upon to unfold more particularly to my wife the cynical estimate of the case which I entertained in my secret soul, especially in view of the fact that the committee which had waited upon me comprised not merely politicians, but some of our best citizens. Although a man who is invited to run for Congress in a district hopelessly hostile is likely to cherish secret suspicions as to the sincerity of those who offer him the nomination, the bait of self-sacrifice for the public good has lured many a cleverer man than I to his destruction. ”

“ It is rather on the system I am pondering than on the individual, though the vision of Josie at thirty unwedded, and a little hard and worn, haunts my retina and makes me feel philosophical. Away down in the bottom of my boots or my soul, or wherever a man can most safely harbor a secret reflection, has long lain a feeling of wonder that the world continues to put its daintiest, most cherished, and most carefully tended daughters through the peculiar social programme in vogue. ”

“ Now, I do not regard the matter from quite such a personal point of view as Josephine, though I agree with her that I should not have picked out Christian Science as the most desirable loop-hole of escape from the trammels of convention. To be sure, as Josephine says, it is her loss rather than mine, for a father is much less completely estranged from a daughter who is peculiar than is a mother, in that the bond of clothes and parties and all the hitherto traditional tastes of woman does not exist between a father and daughter. ”

“ Fancy living on mushrooms with a rich gray gravy and successively waltzing, meandering, or floating with the Tom, Dick, and Harry of the workaday social world from eighteen to thirty! And yet we fathers and philosophers ask ourselves why in thunder (or even more vehemently) our daughters have nervous prostration. Why should they? And yet I hear Josephine ask, for the discussion is uppermost in our thoughts at the moment:
"Do you wish Winona to become a second Miss Jacket?" ”

“ And yet, as Winona finished speaking, I made the imp of a reflection that she was sending for a doctor in spite of Christian Science, and that the scales of hallucination had fallen from her eyes at the wail of her own flesh and blood. I was even tempted for an instant to hazard the suggestion that, as there is no such thing as matter, there could be nothing the matter with baby, but I bit my tongue in the throes of my disgust at my involuntary levity. ”

“ It is true there are times when the sweet onslaught of the sons and daughters of my house and their mother has brought the old man to terms on the spot, and wrung from him an immediate permission to do or to spend; but, on the other hand, Josephine, who in spite of her cunning is no philosopher, and her offspring little realize how often their feelings have been saved from laceration by this trick of mine (she calls it a trick) of saying nothing until I have had time for reflection. No man is so wise as his wife and children combined, but it takes him a little while to find it out ”

“ It makes him look like a prize-fighter," cried Josephine.
"They've no right to print his picture at all; it'll do the boy a serious injury by leading him to believe there is nothing else in the world worth thinking about but foot-ball," I asserted. "What right have they to do it?"
"Pooh, Cousin Fred," said Sam. "It's nothing but ordinary newspaper enterprise. They print everybody's portrait nowadays, from the common murderer up. Your ox is gored this time, that's all. Cheer up, old man—Rah! rah! rah! Harvard!" ”