Chapter XXIX

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

　　It was a hard summer for Martin. Manuscript readers and editorswere away on vacation, and publications that ordinarily returned adecision in three weeks now retained his manuscript for threemonths or more. The consolation he drew from it was that a savingin postage was effected by the deadlock. Only the robber-publications seemed to remain actively in business, and to themMartin disposed of all his early efforts, such as "Pearl-diving,""The Sea as a Career," "Turtle-catching," and "The NortheastTrades." For these manuscripts he never received a penny. It istrue, after six months' correspondence, he effected a compromise,whereby he received a safety razor for "Turtle-catching," and thatThe Acropolis, having agreed to give him five dollars cash and fiveyearly subscriptions: for "The Northeast Trades," fulfilled thesecond part of the agreement.For a sonnet on Stevenson he managed to wring two dollars out of aBoston editor who was running a magazine with a Matthew Arnoldtaste and a penny-dreadful purse. "The Peri and the Pearl," aclever skit of a poem of two hundred lines, just finished, whitehot from his brain, won the heart of the editor of a San Franciscomagazine published in the interest of a great railroad. When theeditor wrote, offering him payment in transportation, Martin wroteback to inquire if the transportation was transferable. It wasnot, and so, being prevented from peddling it, he asked for thereturn of the poem. Back it came, with the editor's regrets, andMartin sent it to San Francisco again, this time to The Hornet, apretentious monthly that had been fanned into a constellation ofthe first magnitude by the brilliant journalist who founded it.But The Hornet's light had begun to dim long before Martin wasborn. The editor promised Martin fifteen dollars for the poem,but, when it was published, seemed to forget about it. Several ofhis letters being ignored, Martin indicted an angry one which drewa reply. It was written by a new editor, who coolly informedMartin that he declined to be held responsible for the old editor'smistakes, and that he did not think much of "The Peri and thePearl" anyway.But The Globe, a Chicago magazine, gave Martin the most crueltreatment of all. He had refrained from offering his "Sea Lyrics"for publication, until driven to it by starvation. After havingbeen rejected by a dozen magazines, they had come to rest in TheGlobe office. There were thirty poems in the collection, and hewas to receive a dollar apiece for them. The first month four werepublished, and he promptly received a cheek for four dollars; butwhen he looked over the magazine, he was appalled at the slaughter.In some cases the titles had been altered: "Finis," for instance,being changed to "The Finish," and "The Song of the Outer Reef" to"The Song of the Coral Reef." In one case, an absolutely differenttitle, a misappropriate title, was substituted. In place of hisown, "Medusa Lights," the editor had printed, "The Backward Track."But the slaughter in the body of the poems was terrifying. Martingroaned and sweated and thrust his hands through his hair.Phrases, lines, and stanzas were cut out, interchanged, or juggledabout in the most incomprehensible manner. Sometimes lines andstanzas not his own were substituted for his. He could not believethat a sane editor could be guilty of such maltreatment, and hisfavorite hypothesis was that his poems must have been doctored bythe office boy or the stenographer. Martin wrote immediately,begging the editor to cease publishing the lyrics and to returnthem to him.He wrote again and again, begging, entreating, threatening, but hisletters were ignored. Month by month the slaughter went on tillthe thirty poems were published, and month by month he received acheck for those which had appeared in the current number.Despite these various misadventures, the memory of the White Mouseforty-dollar check sustained him, though he was driven more andmore to hack-work. He discovered a bread-and-butter field in theagricultural weeklies and trade journals, though among thereligious weeklies he found he could easily starve. At his lowestebb, when his black suit was in pawn, he made a ten-strike - or soit seemed to him - in a prize contest arranged by the CountyCommittee of the Republican Party. There were three branches ofthe contest, and he entered them all, laughing at himself bitterlythe while in that he was driven to such straits to live. His poemwon the first prize of ten dollars, his campaign song the secondprize of five dollars, his essay on the principles of theRepublican Party the first prize of twenty-five dollars. Which wasvery gratifying to him until he tried to collect. Something hadgone wrong in the County Committee, and, though a rich banker and astate senator were members of it, the money was not forthcoming.While this affair was hanging fire, he proved that he understoodthe principles of the Democratic Party by winning the first prizefor his essay in a similar contest. And, moreover, he received themoney, twenty-five dollars. But the forty dollars won in the firstcontest he never received.Driven to shifts in order to see Ruth, and deciding that the longwalk from north Oakland to her house and back again consumed toomuch time, he kept his black suit in pawn in place of his bicycle.The latter gave him exercise, saved him hours of time for work, andenabled him to see Ruth just the same. A pair of knee ducktrousers and an old sweater made him a presentable wheel costume,so that he could go with Ruth on afternoon rides. Besides, he nolonger had opportunity to see much of her in her own home, whereMrs. Morse was thoroughly prosecuting her campaign ofentertainment. The exalted beings he met there, and to whom he hadlooked up but a short time before, now bored him. They were nolonger exalted. He was nervous and irritable, what of his hardtimes, disappointments, and close application to work, and theconversation of such people was maddening. He was not undulyegotistic. He measured the narrowness of their minds by the mindsof the thinkers in the books he read. At Ruth's home he never meta large mind, with the exception of Professor Caldwell, andCaldwell he had met there only once. As for the rest, they werenumskulls, ninnies, superficial, dogmatic, and ignorant. It wastheir ignorance that astounded him. What was the matter with them?What had they done with their educations? They had had access tothe same books he had. How did it happen that they had drawnnothing from them?He knew that the great minds, the deep and rational thinkers,existed. He had his proofs from the books, the books that hadeducated him beyond the Morse standard. And he knew that higherintellects than those of the Morse circle were to be found in theworld. He read English society novels, wherein he caught glimpsesof men and women talking politics and philosophy. And he read ofsalons in great cities, even in the United States, where art andintellect congregated. Foolishly, in the past, he had conceivedthat all well-groomed persons above the working class were personswith power of intellect and vigor of beauty. Culture and collarshad gone together, to him, and he had been deceived into believingthat college educations and mastery were the same things.Well, he would fight his way on and up higher. And he would takeRuth with him. Her he dearly loved, and he was confident that shewould shine anywhere. As it was clear to him that he had beenhandicapped by his early environment, so now he perceived that shewas similarly handicapped. She had not had a chance to expand.The books on her father's shelves, the paintings on the walls, themusic on the piano - all was just so much meretricious display. Toreal literature, real painting, real music, the Morses and theirkind, were dead. And bigger than such things was life, of whichthey were densely, hopelessly ignorant. In spite of theirUnitarian proclivities and their masks of conservativebroadmindedness, they were two generations behind interpretativescience: their mental processes were mediaeval, while theirthinking on the ultimate data of existence and of the universestruck him as the same metaphysical method that was as young as theyoungest race, as old as the cave-man, and older - the same thatmoved the first Pleistocene ape-man to fear the dark; that movedthe first hasty Hebrew savage to incarnate Eve from Adam's rib;that moved Descartes to build an idealistic system of the universeout of the projections of his own puny ego; and that moved thefamous British ecclesiastic to denounce evolution in satire soscathing as to win immediate applause and leave his name anotorious scrawl on the page of history.So Martin thought, and he thought further, till it dawned upon himthat the difference between these lawyers, officers, business men,and bank cashiers he had met and the members of the working classhe had known was on a par with the difference in the food they ate,clothes they wore, neighborhoods in which they lived. Certainly,in all of them was lacking the something more which he found inhimself and in the books. The Morses had shown him the best theirsocial position could produce, and he was not impressed by it. Apauper himself, a slave to the money-lender, he knew himself thesuperior of those he met at the Morses'; and, when his one decentsuit of clothes was out of pawn, he moved among them a lord oflife, quivering with a sense of outrage akin to what a prince wouldsuffer if condemned to live with goat-herds."You hate and fear the socialists," he remarked to Mr. Morse, oneevening at dinner; "but why? You know neither them nor theirdoctrines."The conversation had been swung in that direction by Mrs. Morse,who had been invidiously singing the praises of Mr. Hapgood. Thecashier was Martin's black beast, and his temper was a trifle shortwhere the talker of platitudes was concerned."Yes," he had said, "Charley Hapgood is what they call a risingyoung man - somebody told me as much. And it is true. He'll makethe Governor's Chair before he dies, and, who knows? maybe theUnited States Senate.""What makes you think so?" Mrs. Morse had inquired."I've heard him make a campaign speech. It was so cleverly stupidand unoriginal, and also so convincing, that the leaders cannothelp but regard him as safe and sure, while his platitudes are somuch like the platitudes of the average voter that - oh, well, youknow you flatter any man by dressing up his own thoughts for himand presenting them to him.""I actually think you are jealous of Mr. Hapgood," Ruth had chimedin."Heaven forbid!"The look of horror on Martin's face stirred Mrs. Morse tobelligerence."You surely don't mean to say that Mr. Hapgood is stupid?" shedemanded icily."No more than the average Republican," was the retort, "or averageDemocrat, either. They are all stupid when they are not crafty,and very few of them are crafty. The only wise Republicans are themillionnaires and their conscious henchmen. They know which sidetheir bread is buttered on, and they know why.""I am a Republican," Mr. Morse put in lightly. "Pray, how do youclassify me?""Oh, you are an unconscious henchman.""Henchman?""Why, yes. You do corporation work. You have no working-class norcriminal practice. You don't depend upon wife-beaters andpickpockets for your income. You get your livelihood from themasters of society, and whoever feeds a man is that man's master.Yes, you are a henchman. You are interested in advancing theinterests of the aggregations of capital you serve."Mr. Morse's face was a trifle red."I confess, sir," he said, "that you talk like a scoundrellysocialist."Then it was that Martin made his remark:"You hate and fear the socialists; but why? You know neither themnor their doctrines.""Your doctrine certainly sounds like socialism," Mr. Morse replied,while Ruth gazed anxiously from one to the other, and Mrs. Morsebeamed happily at the opportunity afforded of rousing her liegelord's antagonism."Because I say Republicans are stupid, and hold that liberty,equality, and fraternity are exploded bubbles, does not make me asocialist," Martin said with a smile. "Because I questionJefferson and the unscientific Frenchmen who informed his mind,does not make me a socialist. Believe me, Mr. Morse, you are farnearer socialism than I who am its avowed enemy.""Now you please to be facetious," was all the other could say."Not at all. I speak in all seriousness. You still believe inequality, and yet you do the work of the corporations, and thecorporations, from day to day, are busily engaged in buryingequality. And you call me a socialist because I deny equality,because I affirm just what you live up to. The Republicans arefoes to equality, though most of them fight the battle againstequality with the very word itself the slogan on their lips. Inthe name of equality they destroy equality. That was why I calledthem stupid. As for myself, I am an individualist. I believe therace is to the swift, the battle to the strong. Such is the lessonI have learned from biology, or at least think I have learned. AsI said, I am an individualist, and individualism is the hereditaryand eternal foe of socialism.""But you frequent socialist meetings," Mr. Morse challenged."Certainly, just as spies frequent hostile camps. How else are youto learn about the enemy? Besides, I enjoy myself at theirmeetings. They are good fighters, and, right or wrong, they haveread the books. Any one of them knows far more about sociology andall the other ologies than the average captain of industry. Yes, Ihave been to half a dozen of their meetings, but that doesn't makeme a socialist any more than hearing Charley Hapgood orate made mea Republican.""I can't help it," Mr. Morse said feebly, "but I still believe youincline that way."Bless me, Martin thought to himself, he doesn't know what I wastalking about. He hasn't understood a word of it. What did he dowith his education, anyway?Thus, in his development, Martin found himself face to face witheconomic morality, or the morality of class; and soon it became tohim a grisly monster. Personally, he was an intellectual moralist,and more offending to him than platitudinous pomposity was themorality of those about him, which was a curious hotchpotch of theeconomic, the metaphysical, the sentimental, and the imitative.A sample of this curious messy mixture he encountered nearer home.His sister Marian had been keeping company with an industriousyoung mechanic, of German extraction, who, after thoroughlylearning the trade, had set up for himself in a bicycle-repairshop. Also, having got the agency for a low-grade make of wheel,he was prosperous. Marian had called on Martin in his room a shorttime before to announce her engagement, during which visit she hadplayfully inspected Martin's palm and told his fortune. On hernext visit she brought Hermann von Schmidt along with her. Martindid the honors and congratulated both of them in language so easyand graceful as to affect disagreeably the peasant-mind of hissister's lover. This bad impression was further heightened byMartin's reading aloud the half-dozen stanzas of verse with whichhe had commemorated Marian's previous visit. It was a bit ofsociety verse, airy and delicate, which he had named "The Palmist."He was surprised, when he finished reading it, to note no enjoymentin his sister's face. Instead, her eyes were fixed anxiously uponher betrothed, and Martin, following her gaze, saw spread on thatworthy's asymmetrical features nothing but black and sullendisapproval. The incident passed over, they made an earlydeparture, and Martin forgot all about it, though for the moment hehad been puzzled that any woman, even of the working class, shouldnot have been flattered and delighted by having poetry writtenabout her.Several evenings later Marian again visited him, this time alone.Nor did she waste time in coming to the point, upbraiding himsorrowfully for what he had done."Why, Marian," he chided, "you talk as though you were ashamed ofyour relatives, or of your brother at any rate.""And I am, too," she blurted out.Martin was bewildered by the tears of mortification he saw in hereyes. The mood, whatever it was, was genuine."But, Marian, why should your Hermann be jealous of my writingpoetry about my own sister?""He ain't jealous," she sobbed. "He says it was indecent, ob -obscene."Martin emitted a long, low whistle of incredulity, then proceededto resurrect and read a carbon copy of "The Palmist.""I can't see it," he said finally, proffering the manuscript toher. "Read it yourself and show me whatever strikes you as obscene- that was the word, wasn't it?""He says so, and he ought to know," was the answer, with a waveaside of the manuscript, accompanied by a look of loathing. "Andhe says you've got to tear it up. He says he won't have no wife ofhis with such things written about her which anybody can read. Hesays it's a disgrace, an' he won't stand for it.""Now, look here, Marian, this is nothing but nonsense," Martinbegan; then abruptly changed his mind.He saw before him an unhappy girl, knew the futility of attemptingto convince her husband or her, and, though the whole situation wasabsurd and preposterous, he resolved to surrender."All right," he announced, tearing the manuscript into half a dozenpieces and throwing it into the waste-basket.He contented himself with the knowledge that even then the originaltype-written manuscript was reposing in the office of a New Yorkmagazine. Marian and her husband would never know, and neitherhimself nor they nor the world would lose if the pretty, harmlesspoem ever were published.Marian, starting to reach into the waste-basket, refrained."Can I?" she pleaded.He nodded his head, regarding her thoughtfully as she gathered thetorn pieces of manuscript and tucked them into the pocket of herjacket - ocular evidence of the success of her mission. Shereminded him of Lizzie Connolly, though there was less of fire andgorgeous flaunting life in her than in that other girl of theworking class whom he had seen twice. But they were on a par, thepair of them, in dress and carriage, and he smiled with inwardamusement at the caprice of his fancy which suggested theappearance of either of them in Mrs. Morse's drawing-room. Theamusement faded, and he was aware of a great loneliness. Thissister of his and the Morse drawing-room were milestones of theroad he had travelled. And he had left them behind. He glancedaffectionately about him at his few books. They were all thecomrades left to him."Hello, what's that?" he demanded in startled surprise.Marian repeated her question."Why don't I go to work?" He broke into a laugh that was onlyhalf-hearted. "That Hermann of yours has been talking to you."She shook her head."Don't lie," he commanded, and the nod of her head affirmed hischarge."Well, you tell that Hermann of yours to mind his own business;that when I write poetry about the girl he's keeping company withit's his business, but that outside of that he's got no say so.Understand?"So you don't think I'll succeed as a writer, eh?" he went on."You think I'm no good? - that I've fallen down and am a disgraceto the family?""I think it would be much better if you got a job," she saidfirmly, and he saw she was sincere. "Hermann says - ""Damn Hermann!" he broke out good-naturedly. "What I want to knowis when you're going to get married. Also, you find out from yourHermann if he will deign to permit you to accept a wedding presentfrom me."He mused over the incident after she had gone, and once or twicebroke out into laughter that was bitter as he saw his sister andher betrothed, all the members of his own class and the members ofRuth's class, directing their narrow little lives by narrow littleformulas - herd-creatures, flocking together and patterning theirlives by one another's opinions, failing of being individuals andof really living life because of the childlike formulas by whichthey were enslaved. He summoned them before him in apparitionalprocession: Bernard Higginbotham arm in arm with Mr. Butler,Hermann von Schmidt cheek by jowl with Charley Hapgood, and one byone and in pairs he judged them and dismissed them - judged them bythe standards of intellect and morality he had learned from thebooks. Vainly he asked: Where are the great souls, the great menand women? He found them not among the careless, gross, and stupidintelligences that answered the call of vision to his narrow room.He felt a loathing for them such as Circe must have felt for herswine. When he had dismissed the last one and thought himselfalone, a late-comer entered, unexpected and unsummoned. Martinwatched him and saw the stiff-rim, the square-cut, double-breastedcoat and the swaggering shoulders, of the youthful hoodlum who hadonce been he."You were like all the rest, young fellow," Martin sneered. "Yourmorality and your knowledge were just the same as theirs. You didnot think and act for yourself. Your opinions, like your clothes,were ready made; your acts were shaped by popular approval. Youwere cock of your gang because others acclaimed you the real thing.You fought and ruled the gang, not because you liked to, - you knowyou really despised it, - but because the other fellows patted youon the shoulder. You licked Cheese-Face because you wouldn't givein, and you wouldn't give in partly because you were an abysmalbrute and for the rest because you believed what every one aboutyou believed, that the measure of manhood was the carnivorousferocity displayed in injuring and marring fellow-creatures'anatomies. Why, you whelp, you even won other fellows' girls awayfrom them, not because you wanted the girls, but because in themarrow of those about you, those who set your moral pace, was theinstinct of the wild stallion and the bull-seal. Well, the yearshave passed, and what do you think about it now?"As if in reply, the vision underwent a swift metamorphosis. Thestiff-rim and the square-cut vanished, being replaced by mildergarments; the toughness went out of the face, the hardness out ofthe eyes; and, the face, chastened and refined, was irradiated froman inner life of communion with beauty and knowledge. Theapparition was very like his present self, and, as he regarded it,he noted the student-lamp by which it was illuminated, and the bookover which it pored. He glanced at the title and read, "TheScience of Aesthetics." Next, he entered into the apparition,trimmed the student-lamp, and himself went on reading "The Scienceof Aesthetics."