Samuel McChord Crothers

“ All the old Christmas cheer is in these reciprocities of friendship that have lost every touch of condescension. We need some genial imagination to picture to us all the happiness that is being diffused by people who have come to look upon themselves not as God's almoners, but as sharers with others in the Common Good. I wish we had a new Dickens to write it up."
"If you are waiting for that, you will wait a long time," said Scrooge. ”

“ He has become a man, and yet in his mind fancies are still [Pg 184] rife. They throng upon him and crave expression. The things he sees, the people he meets, are all symbols to him, just as the one eagle which "wheeled slow as in sleep" was to the shepherd lad the symbol of a great unknown world. That which he sees of the actual world seems still to him only a strip "'twixt the hill and the sky,"—all the rest he imagines. He fills it with vivid color and absorbing life. He peoples it with his own thoughts. ”

“ We are not troubled by the suspicion that some busybody of a planet is only waiting its chance to do us an ill turn. We are inclined to take the dark of the moon with equanimity.
But when it comes to moral questions we are still dominated by the idea of the fatalistic power of inanimate things. We cannot think it possible to be just or good, not to speak of being cheerful, without looking at some physical fact and saying humbly "By your leave." We personify our tools and machines, and the occult symbols of trade, and then as abject idolaters we bow down before the work of our own hands. ”

“ When the imagination is in its first freshness, a story is almost without connective tissue. There seems hardly enough to hold it together. There is nothing to take our minds off the successive happenings. If it is deemed desirable that a little boy should be a cock-a-doodle-doo, [Pg 145] then he is a cock-a-doodle-doo. All else is labor and sorrow.
As a listener my Philosopher is no less successful than as an improviser. He is not one of those fickle hearers whose demands for some new thing are the ruination of literary art. ”

“ Growing is like falling,—it is all right so long as you keep on; the trouble comes when you stop.
What I object to is the fatalistic way in which people acquiesce in the arrest of their own mental development. Adolescence is exciting. All sorts of things are happening, and more are promised. Life rushes on with a sweet tumult. All things seem possible. It seems as if a lot of the unfinished business of the world is about to be put through with enthusiasm. ”

“ Of the niceties of science my Philosopher takes little account, yet he loves to frequent the Museum of Natural History, and is on terms of intimacy with many of the stuffed animals. He walks as a small Adam in this Paradise, giving to each creature its name. His taste is catholic, and while he delights in the humming birds, he does not therefore scorn the less brilliant hippopotamus. He has no repugnance to an ugliness that is only skin deep. He reserves his disapprobation for an ugliness that seems to be a visible sign of inner ungraciousness. The small monkeys he finds amusing ”

“ There is something worse than to be a Doctrinaire who pursues an ideal without regard to practical consideration; it is worse to be a Philistine so immersed in practical considerations that he doesn't know an ideal when he sees it. ”

“ The march of invention is irresistible, and we are being swept along toward a great catastrophe.
We should like very much to do business according to the Golden Rule. It strikes us as being the only decent method of procedure. We have no ill feeling toward our competitors. We should be pleased to see them prosper. We have a strong preference for fair play. But of course we can't have it, because the corporations, those impersonal products of modern civilization, won't allow it. ”

“ This ebbing and flowing mind with its ever-changing expression is the charm of early childhood. It is the [Pg 186] charm of all genius as well. Turn to Shelley's "Skylark." The student of Child Psychology never found more images chasing one another through the mind. The fancies follow one another as rapidly as if Shelley had been only four years old. Frank's father would have been troubled at the lack of business-like grasp of the subject. What was the skylark like? It was
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. ”

“ There is nothing unusual about my Philosopher. He is not a prodigy or a genius. He is what a normal human being is at the age of four, when he is still in possession of all his faculties. Having eyes he sees with them, and having ears he hears with them. ”

“ When we inquire too curiously about the origin of the things which we hold most precious, we come to suspect that we are little better than the receivers of stolen goods. How could it be otherwise with the descendants of a long line of freebooters? How are we to uphold the family fortunes if we forsake the means by which they were obtained? Are we not fated by our very constitutions to continue a predatory life? ”

“ There are not only words denoting the obvious differences between the good and the bad, the false and the true, the beautiful and the ugly, but there are words which indicate the delicate shades of goodness and truth and beauty as they are curiously blended with variable quantities of badness and falseness and ugliness. ”

“ The argument against Christmas has taken a menacingly scientific form. A deluge of cold water in the form of unwelcome facts has been thrown upon our enthusiasm for humanity.
"Peace on earth," it is said, "is against Nature. It flies in the face of the processes of evolution. You have only to look about you to see that everything has been made for a quite different purpose. For ages Mother Nature has been keeping house in her own free-and-easy fashion, gradually improving her family by killing off [Pg 7] the weaker members, and giving them as food to the strong. ”

“ The bayonet-poker fits into the philosophy of Christmas, at least into the way I find it easy to philosophize. It seems a better symbol of what is happening than the harps of gold and the other beautiful things of which the hymn-writers sing, but which [Pg 5] ordinary people have never seen. The golden harps were made for no other purpose than to produce celestial harmony. They suggest a scene in which peace and good-will come magically and reign undisturbed. Everything is exquisitely fitted for high uses. It is not so with the bayonet that was, and the poker that is. ”

“ But we cannot, in a democracy, expect to have expert service. The tendency of politics is to develop a Machine. The Machine is not constructed to serve us. Its purpose is simply to keep itself going. When it once begins to move, it is only prudent in us to keep out of the way. It would be tragical to have it run over us.
So, in certain moods, we sit and [Pg 25] grumble over our formidable fetiches. Like all idolaters, we sometimes turn iconoclasts. In a short-lived fit of anger we smash the Machine. ”

“ We attribute to the Thing a malignant purpose and an irresistible potency, and we crouch before it as if it were our master. When the Thing is set going, we observe its direction with awe-struck resignation, just as people once drew omens from the flight of birds. ”

“ Having an imagination, he imagines things, and his imagination being healthy, the things he imagines are very pleasant. In this way he comes to have a very good time with his own mind. Moreover, he is a very little person in a very big world, and he is wise enough to know it. So instead of confining himself to the things he understands, which would not be enough to nourish his life, he manages to get a good deal of pleasure out of the things he does not understand, and so he has "an endless fountain of immortal drink." ”

“ It is a world of natural law, as he understands natural law. There are no exceptions, no deviation from general principles, no shadings off, no fascinating obscurities, no rude practical jokes, no undignified by-play, no "east windows of divine surprise," no dark unfathomable abysses. ”

“ Let us take realism in literature for what it is and no more. It is, at best, only a description of an infinitesimal bit of reality. The more minutely accurate it is, the more limited it must be in its field. You must not expect to get a comprehensive view through a high-powered microscope. The author is severely limited, not only by his choice of a subject, but by his temperament and by his opportunities for observation. He is doing us a favor when he focuses our attention upon one special object and makes us see it clearly. ”

“ Thus the Good ranges all the way from the good to eat to the good to sacrifice one's self for; the Beautiful ascends from the most trifling prettiness to the height of the spiritually sublime; while the True takes in all manner of verities, great and small. ”

“ The world is in their eyes ever fresh and sparkling. Life is full of possibilities. They see no reason to give up the habit of wonder. They never outgrow the need of asking questions, though the final answers do not come. ”

“ It is all right to give a poor devil a turkey. But are you anxious that he shall have as good a chance as you have to buy a turkey for himself? Are you really enthusiastic about so equalizing opportunities that by and by you shall be surrounded by happy, self-reliant people who have no need of your benefactions?
"Do you know, Scrooge, I sometimes think that it is time for some one to write a new 'Christmas Carol,' a carol that will make the world know how people are feeling and some of the best things they are doing in these days. ”

“ By Nature, men endowed with highest gifts,
The vision and the faculty divine.
But with this broad-sowing of the highest gifts it is astonishing how few come to maturity. I imagine that the Educational Man with the Hoe is responsible for a good deal of the loss. In his desire for clean culture he treats any sproutings of the faculty divine as mere weeds, if they come up between the rows.
If the Educational Man with the Hoe is to be feared, the Educational Man with the Pruning Shears is an equal menace.
There is an art, once highly esteemed, called topiary. ”

“ The author of Ecclesiastes made the gloomy comment upon the civilization of his own day: "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, [Pg 37] neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill." In so far as that is true to-day, things are working badly. It must be within our power to remedy such an absurd situation. We have to devise more efficient means for securing fair play, and for enforcing the rules of the game. We want to develop a better breed of men. ”

“ When we are presented with a poor and shabby world, peopled only with sordid self-seekers, we need not be unduly depressed. We take the thing for what it is, a fragment. We are not looking directly at the world, but only at so much of it as has been mirrored in one particular mind. ”

“ One of the rights and privileges of a good neighbor is to give neighborly advice. But there is a corresponding right on the part of the advisee, and that is to take no more of the advice than he thinks is good for him. There is one thing that a man knows about his own business better than any outsider, and that is how hard it is for him to do it. The adviser is always telling him how to do it in the finest possible way, while he, poor fellow, knows that the paramount issue is whether he can do it at all. ”

“ Gratitude is not so easily won as it was in your day, and it takes longer to transform a clutching, covetous old sinner into a serviceable philanthropist. But I do not think, Scrooge, that the Christmas Spirit has really vanished. He is only a little chastened and subdued by the Spirit of Democracy. ”

“ The Doctrinaire, when he has conceived certain ideals, is not content that they should be cast upon the [Pg 55] actual world, to take their chances in the rough-and-tumble struggle for existence, proving their right to the kingdom by actually conquering it, inch by inch. He cannot endure such tedious delays. He must have the satisfaction of seeing his ideals instantly realized. The ideal life must be lived under ideal conditions. And so, for his private satisfaction, he creates for himself such a world into which he retires. ”