The Man of Flesh and Blood

by Susan Glaspell

The elements without were not in harmony with the spirit which itwas desired should be engendered within. By music, by gaydecorations, by speeches from prominent men, the board in charge ofthe boys' reformatory was striving to throw about this dedication ofthe new building an atmosphere of cheerfulness and good-will--anatmosphere vibrant with the kindness and generosity which emanatedfrom the State, and the thankfulness and loyalty which it was feltshould emanate from the boys.Outside the world was sobbing. Some young trees which had beenplanted along the driveway of the reformatory grounds, and whichwere expected to grow up in the way they should go, were rockingback and forth in passionate insurrection. Fallen leaves were beingspit viciously through the air. It was a sullen-looking landscapewhich Philip Grayson, he who was to be the last speaker of theafternoon, saw stretching itself down the hill, across the littlevalley, and up another little hill of that rolling prairie state. Inhis ears was the death wail of the summer. It seemed the spirit ofout-of-doors was sending itself up in mournful, hopeless cries.The speaker who had been delivering himself of pedanticencouragement about the open arms with which the world stood readyto receive the most degraded one, would that degraded one but cometo the world in proper spirit, sat down amid perfunctory applauseled by the officers and attendants of the institution, and the boysrose to sing. The brightening of their faces told that their work asperformers was more to their liking than their position as auditors.They threw back their heads and waited with well-disciplinedeagerness for the signal to begin. Then, with the strength andnative music there are in some three hundred boys' throats, thererolled out the words of the song of the State.There were lips which opened only because they must, but as a wholethey sang with the same heartiness, the same joy in singing, that hehad heard a crowd of public-school boys put into the song only theweek before. When the last word had died away it seemed to PhilipGrayson that the sigh of the world without was giving voice to thesigh of the world within as the well-behaved crowd of boys sat downto resume their duties as auditors.And then one of the most important of the professors from the StateUniversity was telling them about the kindness of the State: theState had provided for them this beautiful home; it gave themcomfortable clothing and nutritious food; it furnished that finegymnasium in which to train their bodies, books and teachers totrain their minds; it provided those fitted to train their souls, towork against the unfortunate tendencies--the professor stumbled alittle there--which had led to their coming. The State gaveliberally, gladly, and in return it asked but one thing: that theycome out into the world and make useful, upright citizens, citizensof which any State might be proud. Was that asking too much? theprofessor from the State University was saying.The sobbing of the world without was growing more intense. Manypairs of eyes from among the auditors were straying out to where thesummer lay dying. Did they know--those boys whom the State classedas unfortunates--that out of this death there would come again life?Or did they see but the darkness--the decay--of to-day?The professor from the State University was putting the case veryfairly. There were no flaws--seemingly--to be picked in his logic.The State had been kind; the boys were obligated to goodcitizenship. But the coldnessof it all. Theopen arms of the world!--how mocking in its abstractness. What didit mean? Did it mean that they--the men who uttered the phrase soeasily--would be willing to give these boys aid, friendship whenthey came out into the world? What would they say, those boys whoseears were filled with high-sounding, non-committal phrases, if someman were to stand before them and say, "And so, fellows, when youget away from this place, and are ready to get your start in theworld, just come around to my office and I'll help you get a job?"At thought of it there came from Philip Grayson a queer, partlyaudible laugh, which caused those nearest him to look his way insurprise.But he was all unconscious of their looks of inquiry, absorbed in thethoughts that crowded upon him. How far away the world--his kind ofpeople--must seem to these boys of the State Reform School. Thespeeches they had heard, the training that had been given them,had taught them--unconsciously perhaps, but surely--to divide theworld into two great classes: the lucky and the unlucky, those whomade speeches and those who must listen, the so-called good and theso-called bad; perhaps--he smiled a little at his own cynicism--thosewho were caught and those who were not.There came to him these words of a poet of whom he used to be fond:In men whom men pronounce as ill,
I find so much of goodness still;
In men whom men pronounce divine,
I find so much of sin and blot;
I hesitate to draw the line
Between the two, when God has not.
When God has not! He turned and looked out at the sullen sky,returning--as most men do at times--to that conception of hischildhood that somewhere beyond the clouds was God. God! Did Godcare for the boys of the State Reformatory? Was that poet of thewestern mountains right when he said that God was not a drawer oflines, but a seer of the good that was in the so-called bad, and ofthe bad in the so-called good, and a lover of them both?If that was God, it was not the God the boys of the reformatory hadbeen taught to know. They had been told that God would forgive thewicked, but it had been made clear to them--if not in words, inimplications--that it was they who were the wicked. And theso-called godly men, men of such exemplary character as had beenchosen to address them that afternoon, had so much of the spirit ofGod that they, too, were willing to forgive, be tolerant, and--helooked out at the bending trees with a smile--disburse generalitiesabout the open arms of the world.What would they think--those three hundred speech-tired boys--ifsome man who had been held before them as exemplary were to rise andlay bare his own life--its weaknesses, its faults, perhaps itscrimes--and tell them there was weakness and there was strength inevery human being, and that the world-old struggle of life was toovercome one's weakness with one's strength.The idea took strange hold on him. It seemed the method of theworld--at any rate it had been the method of that afternoon--for themen who stood before their fellows with clean hands to plantthemselves on the far side of a chasm of conventions, or narrowself-esteem, or easily won virtue, and cry to those beings whostruggled on the other side of that chasm--to those human beingswhose souls had never gone to school: "Look at us! Our hands areclean, our hearts are pure. See how beautiful it is to be good! Comeye, poor sinners, and be good also." And the poor sinners, theuntaught, birthmarked human souls, would look over at theself-acclaimed goodness they could see far across the chasm, andeven though attracted to it (which, he grimly reflected, would notseem likely) the thing that was left with them was a sense of thewidth of the chasm.He had a sense of needless waste, of unnecessary blight. He lookeddown at those three hundred faces and it was as if looking at humanwaste; and it was human stupidity, human complacency and cowardicekept those human beings human drift.With what a smug self-satisfaction--under the mask ofbenevolence--the speakers of that afternoon had flaunted theirvirtue--their position! How condescendingly they had spoken of thehome which we, the good, prepare for you, the bad, and whatnamby-pambyness there was, after all, in that sentiment which all ofthem had voiced--and now you must pay us back by being good!Oh for a man of flesh and blood to stand up and tell how he himselfhad failed and suffered! For a man who could bridge that chasm withstrong, broad, human understanding and human sympathies--a man whowould stand among them pulse-beat to pulse-beat and cry out, "Iknow! I understand! I fought it and I'll help you fight it too!"The sound of his own name broke the spell that was upon him. Helooked to the centre of the stage and saw that the professor fromthe State University had seated himself and that the superintendentof the institution was occupying the place of the speaker. And thesuperintendent was saying:"We may esteem ourselves especially fortunate in having him with usthis afternoon. He is one of the great men of the State, one of themen who by high living, by integrity and industry, has raisedhimself to a position of great honour among his fellow men. A greatparty--may I say the greatest of all parties?--has shown itsunbounded confidence in him by giving him the nomination for thegovernorship of the State. No man in the State is held in higheresteem to-day than he. And so it is with special pleasure that Iintroduce to you that man of the future--Philip Grayson."The superintendent sat down then, and he himself--Philip Grayson--wasstanding in the place where the other speakers had stood. It was witha rush which almost swept away his outward show of calm that it cameto him that he--candidate for the governorship--was well fitted to bethat man of flesh and blood for whom he had sighed. That he himselfwas within grasp of an opportunity to get beneath the jackets and intothe very hearts and souls of those boys, and make them feel that aman of sins and virtues, of weaknesses and strength, a man who hadhad much to conquer, and for whom the fight would never be finallywon, was standing before them stripped of his coat of conventionsand platitudes, and in nakedness of soul and sincerity of heart wastalking to them as a man who understood.Almost with the inception of the idea was born the consciousness ofwhat it might cost. And as in answer to the silent, blunt question,Is it worth it? there looked up at him three hundred pairs ofeyes--eyes behind which there was good as well as bad, eyes whichhad burned with the fatal rush of passion, and had burned, too, withthe hot tears of remorse--eyes which had opened on a hostile world.And then the eyes of Philip Grayson could not see the eyes whichwere before him, and he put up his hand to break the mist--littlecaring what the men upon the platform would think of him, littlethinking what effect the words which were crowding into his heartwould have upon his candidacy. But one thing was vital to him now:to bring upon that ugly chasm the levelling forces of a commonhumanity, and to make those boys who were of his clay feel that abeing who had fallen and risen again, a fellow being for whom lifewould always mean a falling and a rising again, was standing beforethem, and--not as the embodiment of a distant goodness, not as apattern, but as one among them, verily as man to man--was tellingthem a few things which his own life had taught him were true.It was his very consecration which made it hard to begin. He wasfearful of estranging them in the beginning, of putting between themand him that very thing he was determined there should not be."I have a strange feeling," he said, with a winning little smile,"that if I were to open my heart to-day, just open it clear up theway I'd like to if I could, that you boys would look into it, andthen jump back in a scared kind of way and cry, 'Why--that's me!'You would be a little surprised--wouldn't you?--if you could lookback and see the kind of boy I was, and find I was much the kind ofboy you are?"Do you know what I think? I think hypocrisy is the worst thing inthe world. I think it's worse than stealing, or lying, or any of theother bad things you can name. And do you know where I think lots ofthe hypocrisy comes from? I think it comes from the so-calledself-made men--from the real good men, the men who say 'I haven'tgot one bad thing charged up to my account.'"Now the men out campaigning for me call me a self-made man. Yoursuperintendent just now spoke of my integrity, of the confidencereposed in me, and all that. But do you know what is the honesttruth? If I am any kind of a man worth mentioning, if I am deservingof any honour, any confidence, it is not because I was born with myheart filled with good and beautiful things, for I was not. It isbecause I was born with much in my heart that we call the bad, andbecause, after that bad had grown stronger and stronger through theyears it was unchecked, and after it had brought me the great shock,the great sorrow of my life, I began then, when older than you boysare now, to see a little of that great truth which you can putbriefly in these words: 'There is good and there is bad in everyhuman heart, and it is the struggle of life to conquer the bad withthe good.' What I am trying to say is, that if I am worthy any one'sconfidence to-day, it is because, having seen that truth, I havebeen able, through never ceasing trying, through slow conquering, tocrowd out some of the bad and make room for a little of the good."You see," he went on, three hundred pairs of eyes hard upon himnow, "some of us are born to a harder struggle than others. Thereare people who would object to my saying that to you, even if Ibelieved it. They would say you would make the fact of being bornwith much against which to struggle an excuse for being bad. Butlook here a minute; if you were born with a body not as strong asother boys' bodies, if you couldn't run as far, or jump as high, youwouldn't be eternally saying, 'I can't be expected to do much; Iwasn't born right.' Not a bit of it! You'd make it your business toget as strong as you could, and you wouldn't make any parade of thefact that you weren't as strong as you should be. We don't likepeople who whine, whether it's about weak bodies or weak souls."I've been sitting here this afternoon wondering what to say to youboys. I had intended telling some funny stories about things whichhappened to me when I was a boy. But for some reason a serious moodhas come over me, and I don't feel just like those stories now. Ihaven't been thinking of the funny side of life in the lasthalf-hour. I've been thinking of how much suffering I've enduredsince the days when I, too, was a boy."He paused then; and when he went on his voice tested to the utmostthe silence of the room: "There is lots of sorrow in this old world.Maybe I'm on the wrong track, but as I see it to-day human beingsare making a much harder thing of their existence than there is anyneed of. There are millions and millions of them, and year afteryear, generation after generation, they fight over the same oldbattles, live through the same old sorrows. Doesn't it seem allwrong that after the battle has been fought a million times it can'tbe made a little easier for those who still have it before them?"If a farmer had gone over a bad road, and the next day saw anotherfarmer about to start over the same road, wouldn't he send him back?Doesn't it seem too bad that in things which concern one's wholelife people can't be as decent as they are about things whichinvolve only an inconvenience? Doesn't it seem that when we humanbeings have so much in common we might stand together a littlebetter? I'll tell you what's the matter. Most of the people of thisworld are coated round and round with self-esteem, and they'reafraid to admit any understanding of the things which aren't good.Suppose the farmer had thought it a disgrace to admit he had beenover that road, and so had said: 'From what I have read in books,and from what I have learned in a general way, I fancy that roadisn't good.' Would the other farmer have gone back? I rather thinkhe would have said he'd take his chances. But you see the farmersaid he knew; and how did he know? Why, because he'd beenover the road himself."As he paused again, looking at them, he saw it all with a clarifyingsimplicity. He himself knew life for a fine and beautiful thing. Hehad won for himself some of the satisfactions of understanding,certain rare delights of the open spirit. He wanted to free thespirits of these boys to whom he talked; wanted to show them thatspirits could free themselves, indicate to them that self-controland self-development carried one to pleasures which sordidself-indulgences had no power to bestow. It was a question ofgetting the most from life. It was a matter of happiness.It was thus he began, slowly, the telling of his life's story:"I was born with strange, wild passions in my heart. I don't knowwhere they came from; I only know they were there. I resentedauthority. If someone who had a right to dictate to me said,'Philip, do this,' then Philip would immediately begin to think howmuch he would rather do the other thing. And," he smiled a little,and some of the boys smiled with him in anticipation, "it was theother thing which Philip usually did."I didn't go to a reform school, for the very good reason that therewasn't any in the State where I lived." Some of he boys smiledagain, and he could hear the nervous coughing of one of the partymanagers sitting close to him. "I was what you would call a very badboy. I didn't mind any one. I was defiant--insolent. I did badthings just because I knew they were bad, and--and I took a greatdeal of satisfaction out of it."The sighing of the world without was the only sound which vibratedthrough the room. "I say," he went on, "that I got a form ofsatisfaction from it. I did not say I got happiness; there is a vastdifference between a kind of momentary satisfaction and thatthing--that most precious of all things--which we call happiness.Indeed, I was very far from happy. I had hours when I was so moroseand miserable that I hated the whole world. And do you know what Ithought? I thought there was no one in all the world who had thesame kind of things surging up in his heart that I did. I thoughtthere was no one else with whom it was as easy to be bad, or as hardto be good. I thought that no one understood. I thought that I wasall alone."Did you ever feel like that? Did you ever feel that no one elseknew anything about such feelings as you had? Did you ever feel thathere was you, and there was the rest of the world, and that the restof the world didn't know anything about you, and was just generallydown on you? Now that's the very thing I want to talk away from youto-day. You're not the only one. We're all made of the same kind ofstuff, and there's none of us made of stuff that's flawless. We allhave a fight; some an easy one, and some a big one, and if you haveformed the idea that there is a kind of dividing-line in the world,and that on the one side is the good, and on the other side the bad,why, all I can say is that you have a wrong notion of things."Well, I grew up to be a man, and because I hadn't fought againstany of the stormy things in my heart they kept growing stronger andstronger. I did lots of wild, ugly things, things of which I ambitterly ashamed. I went to another place, and I fell in with thekind of fellows you can imagine I felt at home with. I had been toldwhen I was a boy that it was wrong to drink and gamble. I think thatwas the chief reason I took to drink and gambling."There was another cough, more pronounced this time, from the partymanager, and the superintendent was twisting uneasily in his seat.It was the strangest speech that had ever been delivered at theboys' reformatory. The boys were leaning forward--self-forgetful,intent. "One night I was playing cards with a crowd of my friends,and one of the men, the best friend I had, said something that mademe mad. There was a revolver right there which one of the men hadbeen showing us. Some kind of a demon got hold of me, and without somuch as a thought I picked up that revolver and fired at my friend."The party manager gave way to an exclamation of horror, and thesuperintendent half rose from his seat. But before any one could saya word Philip Grayson continued, looking at the half-frightenedfaces before him: "I suppose you wonder why I am not in thepenitentiary. I had been drinking, and I missed my aim; and I waswith friends, and it was hushed up."He rested his hand upon the table, and looked out at the sullenlandscape. His voice was not steady as he went on: "It's not an easything to talk about, boys. I never talked about it to any one beforein all my life. I'm not telling it now just to entertain you or tocreate a sensation. I'm telling it," his voice grew tense in itsearnestness, "because I believe that this world could be made abetter and a sweeter place if those who have lived and sufferedwould not be afraid to reach out their hands and cry: 'I know thatroad--it's bad! I steered off to a better place, and I'll help yousteer off, too.'"There was not one of the three hundred pairs of eyes but was rivetedupon the speaker's colourless face. The masks of sullenness anddefiance had fallen from them. They were listening now--not becausethey must, but because into their hungry and thirsty souls was beingpoured the very sustenance for which--unknowingly--they had yearned."We sometimes hear people say," resumed the candidate for Governor,"that they have lived through hell. If by that they mean they'velived through the deepest torments the human heart can know, then Ican say that I, too, have lived through hell. What I suffered afterI went home that night no one in this world will ever know. Wordscouldn't tell it; it's not the kind of thing words can come anywherenear. My whole life spread itself out before me; it was not apleasant thing to look at. But at last, boys, out of the depths ofmy darkness, I began to get a little light. I began to get someunderstanding of the battle which it falls to the lot of some of ushuman beings to wage. There was good in me, you see, or I wouldn'thave cared like that, and it came to me then, all alone thatterrible night, that it is the good which lies buried away somewherein our hearts must fight out the bad. And so--all alone, boys--Ibegan the battle of trying to get command of my own life. And do youknow--this is the truth--it was with the beginning of that battle Igot my first taste of happiness. There is no finer feeling in thisworld than the sense of coming into mastery of one's self. It islike opening a door that has shut you in. Oh, you don't do it all ina minute. This is no miracle I'm talking about. It's a fight. Butit's a fight that can be won. It's a fight that's gloriously worththe winning. I'm not saying to you, 'Be good and you'll succeed.'Maybe you won't succeed. Life as we've arranged it for ourselvesmakes success a pretty tough proposition. But that doesn't alter thefact that it pays to be a decent sort. You and I know about how muchhappiness there is in the other kind of thing. And there ishappiness in feeling you're doing what you can to develop what's inyou. Success or failure, it brings a sense of having done yourpart,--that bully sense of having put up the best fight you could."He leaned upon the table then, as though very weary. "I don't know,I am sure, what the people of my State will think of all this.Perhaps they won't want a man for their Governor who once tried tokill another man. But," he looked around at them with that smile ofhis which got straight to men's hearts, "there's only one of me, andthere are three hundred of you, and how do I know but that intelling you of that stretch of bad road ahead I've made a dozenGovernors this very afternoon!"He looked from row to row of them, trying to think of some last wordwhich would leave them with a sense of his sincerity. What he didsay was: "And so, boys, when you get away from here, and go out intothe world to get your start, if you find the arms of that worldaren't quite as wide open as you were told they would be, if thereseems no place where you can get a hold, and you are saying toyourself, 'It's no use--I'll not try,' before you give up justremember there was one man who said he knew all about it, and givethat one man a chance to show he meant what he said. So look me up,if luck goes all against you, and maybe I can give you a littlelift." He took a backward step, as though to resume his seat, andthen he said, with a dry little smile which took any suggestion ofheroics from what had gone before, "If I'm not at the State-house,you'll find my name in the directory of the city where yourprogramme tells you I live."He sat down, and for a moment there was silence. Then, full-souled,heart-given, came the applause. It was not led by the attendantsthis time; it was the attendants who rose at last to stop it. Andwhen the clapping of the hands had ceased, many of those hands wereraised to eyes which had long been dry.The exercises were drawn to a speedy close, and he found the partymanager standing by his side. "It was very grand," he sneered, "veryhigh-sounding and heroic, but I suppose you know," jerking his handangrily toward a table where a reporter for the leading paper of theopposition was writing, "that you've given them the winning card."As he replied, in far-off tone, "I hope so," the candidate forGovernor was looking, not at the reporter who was sending out a newcry for the opposition, but into those faces aglow with the light ofnew understanding and new-born hopes. He stood there watching themfiling out into the corridor, craning their necks to throw him alast look, and as he turned then and looked from the window it wasto see that the storm had sobbed itself away, and that along thedriveway of the reformatory grounds the young trees--unbroken andunhurt--were rearing their heads in the way they should go.

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