Robert J. Shores

“ A man may be without land or money and still be happy; he may endure the loss of friends and fortune, and he may preserve his courage even in the face of shame and disgrace; but, Sir, a man who has not a good bed is no more than half a man. Without this refuge from the trials and troubles of the world, a man is robbed of the one consolation which it should be the right of every man to enjoy. Without a bed, his vitality is sapped, his courage is broken down and his moral sense is impaired. ”

“ THE BLESSINGS OF THE BLIND To the Editor of The Idler.
Dear Sir: Those who are blessed, as the saying is, with two eyes and the gift of sight, are much given to expressing sympathy with, and sorrow for, the blind. It would be churlish to quarrel with so unselfish a sentiment, for it is, indeed, very good-natured of those who are busily engaged in seeing the sights of the world to spare the time and the thought which they give to the sightless. Yet I often wonder if the blind do not sometimes question, as I do, if a great deal of this sympathy is not wasted? ”

“ Sir, I have taken it upon myself to raise my voice in protest against the prevalent craze for originality and to say a word, which needs to be said, in defense of imitation. If in so doing I am unintentionally original, I can only crave your indulgence.
If I read the signs of the times aright, we are in imminent danger of falling into the ways of the Greeks, “ever seeking some new thing”; considering in our art, music and literature not the qualities of beauty, sense and melody, but only the quality of newness, which is to say, novelty. We do not ask of a musician, is his work harmonious? ”

“ Coarse people do not prepare dainty dishes. A cook may strike a discord as surely as a musician.
To be a good cook, a cook worthy of one’s calling, one must have the soul of an artist. One must be clean, self-respecting, industrious, ambitious, earnest, quick to learn and trained to remember. Do other professions require more?
The cook wields a tremendous influence for good or for evil. Over a good dinner the most cynical or the most brutal man must relax into something like human kindness. ”

“ Why should we be content with relieving the convicts of their shameful uniforms? Why not go a step further and institute a constructive reform in their dress? Why not array them in such a fashion that their self-respect must be reawakened and their sense of responsibility quickened into life? Why not bring to bear upon their characters the influence of clean linen and a respectable wardrobe?
What I propose, Mr. Idler, is just this: Let every convict and prisoner be clad in clothing suitable for a substantial citizen and a respected member of the community. ”

“ Where, indeed, but from that Inner Man, that Unknown Self whose power we feel but can not comprehend? Where else but from that second and stronger, if submerged, personality—the human soul? Is it not, indeed, this unanswerable argument, this inexplicable conviction of another and better Self within, joined with and yet distinct from, the ordinary self, which persuades men that mankind is immortal, no matter how ably the Brain may play the Infidel, nor how aptly the Tongue may second him? ”

“ People sometimes grow up to learn that they are changelings; that they are not at all the people they had thought they were. Is it not possible, then, that here and there may live a man who was never born at all? I should not be so bold as to deny the possibility. There have always been legends of men who can not die—men who live on in spite of age and accident. I see no reason why one man should not escape birth if another may escape death. I do not, therefore, insist that Mr. Chesterton prove himself to have been born. ”

“ I do not ask the pity of my fellows; I consider myself in much better case than many men who have straight backs and smooth shoulders; and certainly I can not see why I should deserve the contempt of any one merely because I happen to have been born with a body unlike that of the majority of men. Yet I find the hump upon my back a hindrance in every venture that I undertake.
A few years ago when I was younger and more sanguine than I am now, when I still had faith in the innate fairness of human nature and in the spirituality of the love of women, I fell in love. ”

“ I do not believe a perfect social state will ever be attained until it shall be a crime for a chambermaid to make a bed improperly or for a merchant to sell an imperfect spring or a lumpy mattress. I do not believe a perfect social state can ever be reached until every man in the world, and every woman and child, is guaranteed a good night’s rest every night in the year. ”

“ To be brief, Sir, I am of the opinion that my present poverty and obscurity is nothing more nor less than the reward of merit.
It has been my observation that most of the favorite theories of the human race are erroneous. They come into being as mere suggestions, they grow into convictions, they thrive as platitudes, and they die as superstitions. There have been millions of them since the world began, and I have no doubt there will be millions of others before the last man has vanished from the face of the earth. ”

“ No religion can live without first enduring persecution; no government can survive without the patriotism bred of the fear of enemies and the hatred of foes; no general can become great without war; no author becomes a classic without criticism; no prophet can conquer without opposition. Nothing great can be done without enemies.
For generations, for ages, men have been proceeding upon an entirely erroneous theory that friends are more necessary to success than enemies. ”

“ Man is civilized when he is well-fed and uncivilized when he is ill-fed. This is a truth which you need not accept upon my unsupported authority; any housewife will tell you as much. If the earth were to be visited by a plague which attacked only those who could cook and carried them off all at one time, I believe that the world would relapse into anarchy in the space of thirty days.
It seems to me that the profession of cooking is not at all incompatible with the study of philosophy. As I apply my philosophy to my cooking, so I apply my cooking to my philosophy. ”

“ It is hard, in any case, to have the child grow up and go out into the world. But it is infinitely more hard to know that he is almost as though he were of another race of beings, and that he must endure the sight of pain, of misery, of squalor, of poverty and of age! That he must be subject to temptations for which I can not prepare him, having never met with them myself. ”

“ We must have an apartment fitting for an author already notable and soon to take a well-deserved place among the foremost writers of the day; an apartment which should be expensive without being pretentious, furnished in such a fashion that any one could discern at a glance the touch of the man of taste and refinement, the natural aristocrat, the man of temperament; in a word, the artist. Having settled the question of the apartment, she next turned her attention to my wardrobe, which was, I confess, sadly in need of attention. I must no longer go about in ready-made clothing. ”

“ I would make dishes so delicious and enticing that men upon the brink of suicide would turn back to life with new hope in their hearts. I would impart energy to the weary, peace to the troubled in mind and happiness to the discontented. I would become such a cook as might have won the praise of Lucullus; I would become an artist worthy to take the hand of Epicurus. ”

“ Now if men are disturbed, as they are, at the prospect of becoming ideas, why should not ideas be disturbed at the prospect of becoming men? Is it likely that an idea, immune from all the evils of mortal existence, superior to the weaknesses of the flesh and possessing, at least, a potential immortality, would be pleased with the prospect of becoming mere man? Would an idea willingly abandon the clear atmosphere of a purely intellectual plane for the muggy mists and murky fogs of London? ”

“ In me, Sir, you may behold a man who has become an abject slave to good Reputation. Totally unknown to the great majority of my millions of fellow countrymen, and having but a modest degree of celebrity among the members of my own profession, I am yet compelled to be as careful of my speech and as circumspect in my actions as if I were the Czar of all the Russias! I am bound hand, foot and tongue by the ties of a lifetime; I am manacled at the cart-tail of Respectability ”

“ I, Sir, am a school-teacher—an instructor in English literature—and since the school where I am employed is a public high school, it is hardly necessary to add, I am a woman. Or perhaps it would be more truthful to say I was a woman once upon a time. When I was young and fairly pretty, there was no more womanly woman than I in all this section of the country, but let me tell you, Sir, ten years of teaching school is an experience calculated to unsex any person, man or woman. We veteran school-teachers constitute what a magazine writer recently referred to as “an indeterminate sex.” ”

“ Here were men and women after my own heart; men and women who saw the world as a whole, unbounded by the petty lines of counties, states and nations. Here the names of the masters of art and literature were bandied about as familiarly as the names of our local professors were at home. Here were lights, here music, and here the good glad laughter of youth! Here were women—not the slim spinsters and prim matrons that I had known, but hearty healthy women who seemed to be alive. ”

“ I do not believe, as many seem to believe, that any man or woman who can juggle a skillet or wield an egg-beater is a cook. Merely to follow a formula in a cookery book does not make one a cook any more than the compounding of a prescription makes one a physician. Cooking is an art as well as a science. The violinist can not express his personality in the strains of his instrument more fully than can the cook in his cooking. ”

“ When poor and writing for posterity, the author is at his best; when rich and writing for more money, he is usually so anxious to make hay while the sun shines that his work suffers in proportion to his output. No, poverty has never spoiled a good poet—even the youthful Chatterton might have lost his magic with the disillusionment which follows on the heels of affluence. ”

“ But, Sir, I am a practical man and I can plainly see that the beggar, so far from being a mere nuisance and eyesore, as charity-workers would have you believe, is a very useful and necessary member of the social order.
Beggars, Mr. Idler, are the natural scavengers170 of the human race. They live upon the scraps we throw from our tables; they dress in our cast-off garments. In short, Sir, they make to serve a useful purpose, that which would otherwise be sheer waste. These humble people are the economists of humanity. They save what we squander. ”

“ A complete and certain revelation of a man’s folly to himself would, without a doubt, result in an immediate and lasting loss of self-respect. And to lose one’s self-respect is to lose one’s identity and become a stranger to one’s self. The inmost mind, however the outward actions of the body may seem to contradict it, still clings to the noblest principles, so that no man can be truly said to be unprincipled. He may be debauched and depraved, but he is not without principle so long as his subconscious personality has the power to arise and accuse his conscious person. ”

“ But confine that idea in a human body; transform that idea into a human being—and what is the result? Why, the result is an immediate loss of liberty. The man, who was formerly an idea, can no longer flit about with lightning-like rapidity. If he wishes to travel from Overroads to London, he must go by train or motor-car. He can by no ingenuity contrive to be in both places at the same time. He must wear the same face wherever or in whatever company he may be. Whether the body which he inhabits is known to its neighbors as Smith or Chesterton, the result is the same—he has lost his liberty. ”

“ Let every community erect as many of these lodging-houses as its financial condition will permit. Let the vast sums that are now being wasted upon futile missions and piffling soup-kitchens be diverted to this legitimate end. Once we have our criminals and our outcasts in bed, we shall have them out of the streets, out of the parks, out of the gambling hells, out of the brothels and out of mischief! ”

“ We dream of the earth as fair as other men may dream of heaven. Because we have never seen beauty, to us all things are beautiful. When I walk in the garden, the scent of the rose rises to my nostrils with a sweetness which is but intensified because I can not see the blossom whence it springs. I finger its fragile petals, and I rejoice in its beauty of form, for you219 must know that one can feel beauty as well as see it. ”

“ Like most practical men, I have a positive horror of appearing queer. I shun eccentricity in dress as assiduously as I shun eccentricity in manners. I sometimes envy poets and artists, not for their poetry or their art, but for that sublime egotism which enables them to take pleasure in making themselves ridiculous. ”