Eugene Rhodes - Stepsons of Light

Let the dullest man tell of the thing he knows at first hand, and his speech shall tingle with battle and luck and loss, purr for small comforts of cakes and ale or sound the bell note of clean mirth; his voice shall exult with pride of work, tingle and tense to speak of hard-won steeps, the burden and heat of the day and “the bright face of danger”; it shall be soft as quiet water to tell of shadows where winds loiter, of moon magic and far-off suns, friendship and fire and song. There will be more, too, which he may not say, having no words. We prate of little things, each to each; but we fall silent before love and death.

It was once commonly understood that it is not good for a man to whine. Only of late has it been discovered that a thinker is superficial and shallow unless he whines; that no man is wise unless he views with alarm. Eager propaganda has disseminated the glad news that everything is going to the demnition bowwows. Willing hands pass on the word. The method is simple. They write very long books in which they set down the evil on the one side – and nothing on the other. That is “realism.” Whatsoever things are false, whatsoever things are dishonest, whatsoever things are unjust, whatsoever things are impure, whatsoever things are of ill report; if there be any vice, and if there be any shame – they think on these things. They gloat upon these things; they wallow in these things.

The next time you hanker for a gripping, stinging, roaring romance, try the story of Eddystone Lighthouse. There wasn’t a realist on the job – they couldn’t stand the gaff. For any tough lay like this of Winstanley’s dream you want a gang of idealists – the impractical kind. It is not a dismal story; it is a long record of trouble, delay, setbacks, exposure, hardship, death and danger, failure, humiliation, jeers, disaster and ruin. Crippled idealists were common in Plymouth Harbor. The sea and the wind mocked their labor; they were crushed, frozen and drowned; but they built Eddystone Light! And men in other harbors took heart again to build great lights against night and storm; the world over, realists fare safelier on the sea for Winstanley’s dream.

There is the great distinction between realism and reality: It is the business of a realist to preach how man is mastered by circumstances; it is the business of a man to prove that he will be damned first.

You may note this curious fact of dismal books – that you remember no passage to quote to your friends. Not one. And you perceive, with lively astonishment, that despairing books are written by the fortunate. The homespun are not so easily discouraged. When crows pull up their corn they do not quarrel with Creation. They comment on the crows, and plant more corn.

This trouble in King Charles’ head may be explained, in part, on a closer looking. As for those who announce the bankruptcy of an insolvent and wildcat universe, with no extradition, and who proclaim God the Great Absconder – they are mostly of the emerged tenth. Their lips do curl with scorn; and what they scorn most is work – and doers. For what they deign to praise – observe, sir, for yourself, what they uphold, directly or by implication. See if it be not a thing compact of graces possible only to idleness. See if it be not their great and fatal mistake that they regard culture as an end in itself, and not as a means for service. Aristocracy? Patricians? In a world which has known the tinker of Bedford, the druggist’s clerk of Edmonton, the Stratford poacher, backwoods Lincoln, a thousand others, and ten thousand – a carpenter’s son among them?

Returning to the Provisional Government: Regard its members closely, these gods ad interim . The ground of their depression is that everybody is not Just like Them. They have a grievance also in the matter of death; which might have been arranged better. It saddens them to know that so much excellence as theirs should perish from the earth. The skeptic is slacker, too; excusing himself from the hardships of right living by pleading the futility of effort.

Unfair? Of course I am unfair; all this is assumption without knowledge, a malicious imputation of the worst possible motives, judgment from a part. It is their own method.

A wise word was said of late: “There are poor colonels, but no poor regiments.” It would be truer to change a word; to say that there are poor soldiers, but no poor regiments. The gloomster picks the poorest soldier he can find, and holds him up to our eyes as a sample. “This is life!” says the pessimist, proud at last. “Now you see the stuff your regiments are made of!”

If one of these pallbearers should write a treatise on pomology he would dwell lovingly on apple-tree borers, blight and pest and scale. He would say no word of spray or pruning; he would scoff at the glory of apple blossoms as the rosy illusion of romance; and he would resolutely suppress all mention of – apples. But he would feature hard cider, for all that; and he would revel in cankerworms.

These blighters and borers – figuratively speaking – when the curse of the bottle is upon them – the ink bottle – they weave ugly words to ugly phrases for ugly books about ugly things; with ugly thoughts of ugly deeds they chronicle life and men as dreary, sordid, base, squalid, paltry, tawdry, mean, dismal, dull and dull again, interminably dull – vile, flat, stale, unprofitable and insipid. No splendid folly or valiant sin – much less impracticable idealisms, such as kindness, generosity, faith, forgiveness, courage, honor, friendship, love; no charm or joy or beauty, no ardors that flame and glow. They show forth a world of beastliness and bankruptcy; they picture life as a purposeless hell.

I beg of you, sir, do not permit yourself to be alarmed. What you hear is but the backdoor gossip of the world. And these people do not get enough exercise. Their livers are torpid. Some of them, poor fellows, are quite sincere – and some are merely in the fashion. It isn’t true, you know; not of all of us, all the time. Nothing is changed; there is no shadow but proves the light; in the farthest world of any universe, in the latest eternity you choose to mention, it will still be playing the game to run out your hits; and there, as here, only the shirker will lie down on the job.

In the meantime, now and here, there are two things, and two only, that a man may do with his ideals: He may hold and shape them, or tread them under foot; ripen or rot.

What, sir, the hills are steep, the sand heavy, the mire is Despond-deep; for that reason will you choose a balky horse? Or will you follow a leader who plans surrender?

The bookshelviki have thrown away the sword before the fight. They shriek a shameful message: “All is lost! Save yourselves who can!”

The battle is sore upon us; true. But there is another war cry than this. It was born of a bitter hour; it was nobly boasted, and brave men made it good. Now, and for all time to come, as the lost and furious fight reels by, men will turn and turn again for the watchword of Verdun: “They shall not pass! They shall not pass!”

Pardon the pontifical character of these remarks. They come tardy off. For years I have kept a safe and shameful silence when I should have been shouting, “Janet! Donkeys!” and throwing things. I will be highbrow-beaten no longer. I hereby resign from the choir inaudible. Modesty may go hang and prudence be jiggered; I wear Little Miss Brag’s colors for favor; I have cut me an ellum gad, and I mean to use it on the seat of the scorner.

“Everything in Nature is engaged in writing its own history.” So says Emerson or somebody. Here is the roll call of that lonesome bit between the Rio Grande and Caballo Mountain. Salem, Garfield, Donahue’s, Derry and Shandon; those were the hamlets of the east side. Sound Irish, don’t they? They were just what they sound like, at first. A few Irish families, big families, half of them girls – Irish girls; young gentlemen with a fancy to settle down settled right there or thereabouts. That’s a quick way to start settlements. There was also a sardonic Greenhorn, to keep alive a memory of the old-time Texans, before the fences. A hundred years older than Greenhorn was the old Mexican outpost, San Ysidro; ruthlessly changed to Garfield when the Mississippi Valley moved in. Transportation was the poorest ever; this was the last-won farm land of New Mexico.