 INTRODUCTION of FACES IN THE FIRE AND OTHER FANCIES It was a chilling experience, that first glimpse of New Zealand. Hour after hour, the great ship held on her way up the Cook Straits, a mid-senary that made me shudder and that scowled me out of countenance. Rugged, massive, inhospitable and bare, how sternly those wild and mountainous landscapes contrasted with the quiet beauty that I had surveyed from the same decks as the ship had dropped down Channel. I shaded my eyes with my hands and swept the strange horizon at every point, but nowhere could I see a sign of habitation. No man, no beast, no sheltering roof, no winding road, no welcoming column of smoke. And when in the twilight of that still autumn evening I had length descended the gangway and set foot for the first time on the land of my adoption, I found myself twelve thousand miles from home, in a country in which not a soul knew me and in which I knew no single soul. It was not an exhilarating sensation. That was on March 11, 1895, twenty-one years ago to-night. Those one and twenty years have been almost evenly divided between the old manse at Mosquil in New Zealand and my present Tasmanian home. As I sit here and let my memory play among the years, I smile at the odd way in which these southern lands have belied that first austere impression. In my fire to-night I see such crowds of faces, the faces of those with whom I have laughed and cried and camped and played and worked and worshipped in the course of these one and twenty years. There are fancy faces too, the folk of other latitudes, the faces I have never seen, the friends my pen has brought me. I cannot write to all to-night, so I set aside this book as a memento of the times we have spent together. If by good hap it reaches any of them, let them regard it as a shake of the hand for the sake of old Langzine. And if, in addition to cementing old friendships, it creates new ones, how doubly happy I shall be. Frank W. Borum, Hobart, Tasmania End of Introduction Part 1, Chapter 1 of Faces in the Fire and Other Fancies. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Campbell Shelp. Faces in the Fire and Other Fancies by Frank W. Borum. Part 1, Chapter 1, The Baby Among the Bombshells Everything depends on keeping up the supply of bombshells. It will be a sad day for us all when there are no more bombs to burst, no more shocks to be sustained, no more sensations to be experienced, no more thrills to be enjoyed, fancy being condemned to reside in a world that is bankrupt of astonishments, a world that no longer has it in its power to startle you, a world that has nothing up its sleeve. It would be like occupying a seat at a conjuring entertainment at which the conjurer had exhausted all his tricks, but did not like to tell you so. When I was a small boy, I used to be mildly amused by the antics of a performing bear that occasionally visited our locality. A sickly looking foreigner led the poor brute by a string, its claws were cut, and its teeth drawn. By dint of a few kicks and cuffs it was persuaded to dance a melancholy kind of jig, and then shamble round with a basket in search of a few half-pence. I remember distinctly that, as I watched the unhappy creature's dismal performance, I tried to imagine what the animal would have looked like had no cruel captor removed him from his native lair. The mental contrast was a very painful one, yet it was not half so painful as the contrast between the world as it is and a world that had run out of bombshells. A world that could no longer surprises would be a world with its claws cut and its teeth drawn. Half the fun of waking up in the morning is the feeling that you have come upon a day that is brand new, a day that the world has never seen before, a day that is certain to do things that no other day has ever done. Half the pleasure of welcoming a newborn baby is the absolute certainty that here you have a packet of amazing surprises, an individuality is here, a thing that never was before. You cannot argue from any other child to this one. The only thing that you can predict with confidence about this child is that it will do things that were never done, or were never done in the same way, since this old world of ours began. Hero's novelty, originality, and infinity of bewildering possibility. Each mother thinks that there never was a baby like her baby, and most certainly there never was. As long as the stock of days keeps up, and as long as the supply of babies does not peter out, there will be no lack of bombshells. I visited the other day the ruins of an old prison. I saw among other things the dark cells in which, in the bad old days, prisoners languished in solitary confinement. Charles Reid and other writers have told us how, in these black holes, convicts adopted all kinds of ingenious expedience to secure themselves against losing their reason in the desolate darkness. They tossed buttons about and groped after them. They tore up their clothes and counted the pieces. They did a thousand other things and went mad in spite of all their pains. Now what is this horror of the darkness? Let us analyze it. Where and does it differ from blindness? Why did insanity overtake these solitary men? The horror of the darkness was not fear. A child dreads the dark because he thinks that wolves and hobgoblins infested. But these men had no such terrors. The thing that imbalanced them was the maddening monotony of the darkness. Nothing happened. In the light something happens every second. A thousand impressions are made upon the mind in the course of every minute. Each sensation there would be of no more importance than the buzz of a fly at the window pane, the flutter of a paper to the floor, or the sound of a footfall on the street represents a surprise. It is a mental jolt. It transfers the attention from one object to an entirely different one. We pass in less than a second from the buzz of the fly to the flutter of the paper and again from the flutter of the paper to the sound of the footfall. Any man who could count the separate objects that occupied his attention in the course of a single moment would be astonished at their variety and multiplicity. But in the dark cell there are no sensations. The eye cannot see. The ear cannot hear. Not one of the senses is appealed to. The mind is accustomed to flit from sensation to sensation like a butterfly flitting from flower to flower, but infinitely faster. But in this dark cell it languishes like a captive butterfly in a cardboard box. If you hold me underwater I shall die because my lungs can no longer do the work they have always been accustomed to do. In the dark cell the mind finds itself in the same predicament. It is drowned in inky air. The mind lives on sensations, but here there are no sensations. And if the world gets shorn of its surprise power, it will become a maddening place to live in. We only exist by being continually startled. We are kept alive by the everlasting bursting of bombshells. I am not so much concerned, however, with the ability of the world to afford us a continuous series of thrills as with my own capacity to be surprised. The tendency is to lose the power of astonishment. I am told that in battle the moment in which a man finds himself for the first time under fire is a truly terrifying experience. But after a while the newcomer settles down to it. And with shells bursting all around him, he goes about his tasks as calmly as on parade. The idiosyncrasy of ours may be a very fine thing under such circumstances, but under other conditions it has the gravest elements of danger. As I sit here writing a baby crawls upon the floor. It is good fun watching him. He plays with a paper band that fell from a packet of envelopes. He puts it round his wrist like a bracelet. He tears it and slow. The bracelet of a moment ago is a long ribbon of colored paper. He is astounded. His wide open eyes are a picture. The telephone rings. He looks up with approval. Anything that rings or rattles is very much to his taste. I go over to his newfound toy and begin talking to it. He is dumbfounded. My altercation with the telephone completely bewilders him. Whilst I am thus occupied, he moves towards my vacant chair. He tries to pull himself up by it, but pulls it over onto himself. The savagery of the thing appeals him. He never dreamed of an attack from such a source. In what a world of wonder is he living? Bombs are bursting all around him all day long. A baby's life must be a thrillingly sensational affair. But the pity of it is that he will grow out of it. He may be surrounded with the most amazing contrivances on every hand, but the wonder of it will make little or no appeal to him. He will be like the soldier in the trenches who no longer notices the roar and crash of the shells. When Living Stones set out for England in 1856, he determined to take with him Sekwaboo, the leader of his African escort. But when the party reached Mauritius, the poor African was so bewildered by the steamers and other marvels of civilization that he went mad, threw himself into the sea, and was seen no more. I only wished that an artist had sketched the scene upon which poor Sekwaboo gazed so nervously as he stood on the deck of the frolic that day sixty years ago. I suspect that the marvels of civilization that so terrified him would appear to us to be very ramshackle and antiquated affairs. We lie back in our sumptuous motor cars and yawn whilst surrounded on every hand with astonishments compared with which the things that Sekwaboo saw are not worthy to be compared. That is the tragic feature of the thing. In the midst of marvels we tend to become blasé. It is not that we are occupying a seat at a conjuring entertainment at which the conjurer has exhausted all his tricks, and does not like to tell you so. On the contrary it is like occupying a seat at a conjuring entertainment and falling fast asleep just as the performer is getting to his misbaffling and masterly achievements. I like to watch this baby of mine among his bombshells. The least thing electrifies him. What a sensational world this would be if I could only contrive to retain unspoiled that childish capacity for wonder. I shall be told that it is the baby's ignorance that makes him so susceptible to sensation. It is nothing of the kind. Ignorance does not create wonder, it destroys it. I walked along the track through the bush one day in company with two men. One was a naturalist, the other was an ignoramus. Twenty times at least the naturalist swooped down upon some curious grass, some novel fern or some rare orchid. The walk that morning was, to his knowing eyes, as sensational as a hair-raising film at a cinematograph. Which to my other companion was absolutely uneventful, and the only thing at which he wondered was the enthusiasm of our common friend. When Alfred Russell Wallace was gathering in South Africa his historic collection of botanical and zoological specimens, the natives of the Amazon Valley thought him mad. He paid them handsomely to catch creatures for which they could discover no use at all. To him the great forests of Bolivia and Brazil were alive with sensation. They fascinated and enthralled him. But the black men could not understand it. They saw no reason for his rapture. Yet his wonder was not the outcome of ignorance, it was the outcome of knowledge. Depend upon it, the more I learn, the more sensational the world will become. If I can only become wise enough, I may recapture the glorious amazement of the baby among his bombshells. Now let me come to a very practical application. Half the art of life lies in possessing effective explosives and in knowing how to use them. In the best of his books, Jack London tells us that the secret of White Fang's success in fighting other dogs was his power of surprise. When dogs fight, there are usually preliminaries, snarlings and bristlings and stiff-legged shreddings. But White Fang omitted these. He gave no warning of his intention. He rushed in and snapped and slashed on the instant without notice before his foe could prepare to meet him. Thus he exhibited the value of surprise. A dog taken off its guard, its shoulder slashed open or its ear ripped in ribbons before it knew what was happening, was a dog half whipped. Here is the strategy of surprise in the wild. Has it nothing to teach me? I think it has. I remember going for a walk one evening in New Zealand many years ago with a minister whose name was at one time famous throughout the world. I was just beginning then, and was hungry for ideas. I shall never forget that towards the close of our conversation. My companion stopped, looked me full in the face and exclaimed with tremendous emphasis. Keep up your surprise power, my dear fellow, the pulpit musts never, never lose its power of startling people. I have very often since recalled that memorable walk, and the farther I leave the episode across the years behind me, the more the truth of that fine saying gains upon my heart. Let me suggest a really great question. Is it enough for a preacher to preach the truth? In a place where I was quite unknown I turned into a church one day and enjoyed the rare luxury of hearing another man preach. But much as I appreciated the experience, I found when I came out that the preacher had started a rather curious line of thought. He was a very gracious man and was a genuine pleasure to have seen and heard him, and yet there seemed to be a something lacking. The sermon was absolutely without surprise. Every sentence was splendidly true, and yet not a single sentence startled me. There was no sting in it. I seemed to have heard it all over and over and over again. I could even see what was coming. Surely it is the preacher's duty to give the truth such a setting and present it in such a way that the oldest truths will appear newer than the latest sensations. He must arouse me from my torpor. He must compel me to open my eyes and pull myself together. He must make me sit up and think. Keep up your surprise power, my dear fellow, said my companion that evening in the bush, speaking out of his long and rich experience. The pulpit, he said, must never, never lose its power of startling people. The preacher, that is to say, must keep up his talk of explosives. The bishop of London declared the other day that the church is suffering from too much, dearly beloved brethren. She would be better judiciously to mix it with a few bombshells. And yet after all I suppose it was largely my own fault that the sermon of which I have spoken seemed to me to be so ineffective. There are tremendous astonishments in the Christian evangel which, however boldly stated, should fire my sluggish soul with wonder and fill it with amazement. The fact that I listened so blandly shows that I have become bosse. I am like the soldier in the trenches who no longer notices the bursting shells about him. I am like the auditor who occupies a seat at the conjuring entertainment but has fallen asleep just as the thing is getting sensational. In one of his latest books, Harold Begby gives us a fine picture of John Y. Cliff reading from his own translation of the Bible to those who had never before listened to those stately and wonderful cadences. The hearers look at each other with wide open eyes and are almost incredulous in their astonishment. Every sentence is a sensation. They can scarcely believe their ears. They are like the baby on the floor. The simplicities startle them. If only I can renew the romance of my childhood and recapture that early sense of wonder, the world will suddenly become as marvelous as the Princess Palace and the fairy stories and the ministry of the church will become life's most sensational sensation. End of Part 1, Chapter 1, Recording by Campbell Schelp Part 1, Chapter 2 of Faces in the Fire and Other Fancies. This is a LibriVox recording all. LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Eva Stays Faces in the Fire and Other Fancies by Frank W. Borum Part 1, Chapter 2, Strawberries and Cream Strawberries are delicious as everyone knows. It may be, says Dr. Boteller, a quaint old English writer. It may be that God can make a better berry than a strawberry, but most certainly He never did. Yes, strawberries are delicious, but I am not going to write about strawberries. Cream is also very nice. Very nice indeed, but nothing shall induce me to write about cream. I have promised myself a chapter on neither strawberries, nor on cream, but on strawberries and cream. The distinction, as I shall endeavor to show, is a vitally important one. Now the theme was suggested on the wines. I was walking through the city this afternoon, when I met a gentleman from whom only this morning, I received an important letter. We shook hands, and were just plunging into the subject matter of his letter when a tall policeman reminded us of the illegality of laudering on the pavement. Yet it was too hot to walk about. Come in here, my companion suggested, pointing to a cafe nearby, and have a cup of afternoon tea. No, thank you. I replied, I had a cup, not long ago. Well, strawberries and cream, then? The temptation was too strong for me. He attached a vulnerable point, and I succumbed. The afternoon was very oppressive. The restaurant looked invitingly cool. A quiet corner among the fern seemed to beckon us, and the strawberries and cream faintly served. Soon completed our felicity. Strawberries and cream. It is an odd conjunction when you come to think of it. The gardener goes off to his well-cut beds, and brings back a big basket, lined with cabbage leaves, and fill to the brim with fine, fresh strawberries. The maid slips off to the dairy and returns with a jug of rich and foamy cream. To what different realms they belong. The gardener lives, moves, and has his being in one world. The milkmaid spends her life in quite another. The cream belongs to the animal kingdom, the strawberries to the vegetable kingdom. But here, on these pretty little plates in the fern grot, are the gardener's world and the milkmaid's world beautifully blended. Here, on the table before us, are the animal and the vegetable kingdoms, perfectly supplementing and complementing each other. It is another phase of the wonder which suggested the nursery rhyme, Flower of England, Fruit of Spain, met together in a shower of rain. Empires confront each other within the compass of a plum pudding. Continents salute each other in a teacup. The great subdivisions of the universe greet each other in a plate of strawberries and cream. What on taunts and raprochements and international conferences take places every day among the plates and dishes that adorn our tables. It is a thousand pennies that we have no authentic record of the discoverer of strawberries and cream. For ages the world enjoyed its strawberries and for ages the world enjoyed its cream, but strawberries and cream was an unheard of mixture. Then, there dawned one of the great days of this planet's little story, a day that ought to have been carefully recorded and annually commemorated. History, as it is written, betrays a sad lack of perspective. It has no true sense of proportion. There came a fateful day on which some audacious dyadic adventurer took the cream that had been brought from his dairy, poured it on the strawberries that had been plucked from his garden, and discovered with delight that the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. Yet, of that memorable day, the historian takes no notice. With the amours of kings, the intrigues of court, and the squabbles of statements, he has filled countless pages. Yet only in very rare instances have these things contributed to the sum of human happiness, anything comparable to the pleasures afforded by strawberries and cream. We have never done justice to the intellectual prowess of the men who first tried some of the mixtures that are, to us, a matter of course. Salt and potatoes, for example, I heard the other day of a little girl who defined salt as that which makes potatoes very nasty if you have none of it with them. It is not a bad definition, but surely something is due to the memory of the man who discovered that the incipity might be removed, and the potato be made a staple article of diet by the simple addition of a pinch of salt. Then, too, there are the men who found out that horseradish is the thing to eat with roast beef, that applesauce lends an added charm to a joint of pork, that red current jelly enhances the flavor of juggered hair, that mint sauce blends beautifully with lamb, that boiled mutton is all the better for capersauce, and that butter is the natural corollary of bread. The man's superior intellect, says Tennyson, in vindication of his weakness for boiled beef and new potatoes, knows what is good to eat. And George Gerson, in reference to these self-same new potatoes, add a corroborative word, our cook, he says, when dressing these new potatoes put into the saucepan, the sprig of mint. This is genius, not otherwise could the flavor of the vegetable be so perfectly yet so delicately emphasized. The mint is there, and we know it, yet our palate knows only the young potato. There have been thousands of statues erected to the memory of men who have done far less to promote the happiness of mankind than did any of these. Every great invention is preceded by thousands and thousands of fruitless attempts. Think of the nauseous conglomerations that must have been tried and tasted, not without a shutter, before these happy combinations were at length launched upon the world. Think of the jeers of derision that greeted the first announcement of the preposterous concoctions. Imagine the goffoffs when a man told his companions that he had been eating red currant jelly with jagged hair. Imagine the nameless dyadic atrocities that ingenious epicure must have perpetuated before he hit upon his ultimate triumph. I have not the initiative to attempt it, I lack this splendid daring of the pioneer. In a thousand years time men will smack their lips over all kinds of mixtures of which I should shudder to hear. I am content to go on eating this by itself and that by itself, just as for ages men were content to eat strawberries by itself and cream by itself, never dreaming that this thing and that thing as much belong to each other as do strawberries and cream. Now this genius for mixing things is one of the hallmarks of our humanity. Strawberry leaves are a part of the crests of a duchess, but strawberries and cream might be regarded as a suitable crest for the race. Man is an animal, but he is more than an animal and he proves his superiority by mixing things. His poor relatives of the brute creation never do it, they eat strawberries and they are fond of cream, but it would never have occurred to any of them to mix the strawberries with the cream. An animal, even the most intelligent and domesticated animal, will eat one thing and then he will eat another thing. But the idea of mixing the first thing with the second thing before eating either never enters into his comprehension. The strawberries and cream represent, therefore, in a pleasant and attractive way, our human genius for mixing things. There is nothing surprising about it. Indeed, it is eminently fitting and characteristic, for we are ourselves such extraordinary meddlies. Not any man think his way back across the ages and mark the ingredients that have woven themselves into his makeup and he will not be surprised at the extraordinary miscellany of passions that he sometimes discover within the recesses of his own soul. I remember, Rudyard Kiplings makes the times to sigh. I remember, like yesterday, the earliest cockney who came my way, when he pushed through forests that lined the strand with paint on his face and a club in his hand. He was deaf to feather and fin and fur. He trapped my beavers at Westminster. He netted my salmon, he hunted my deer. He killed my herons off Lambeth Pier. He fought his neighbor with axes and swords, flint or bronze, at my upper forwards, while down at Greenwich for slaves and tin, the tall Phoenician ships stolen. Men of the island, Taves, mixed our blood with the men of the great continental forest. It was an extraordinary agglomeration. Norsemen and Negro and Gaul and Greek drank with the Britons in Burking Creek, and the Romans came with heavy hand and bridged and rodent and rolled the land, and the Romans left and the Danes blew in, and that's where your history books begin. Is it any wonder that sometimes I feel mangling with the emotions inspired by a recent communion service, the savagery of some long forgotten caveman ancestor? Civilization is so very young, and barbarism was so very old, that it is not surprising that I occasionally hark back involuntarily to the days of which my blood was most accustomed. I am an odd mixture considered from any point of view. There are very few human actions, says Mark Rutherford, of which it can be said that this or that, taken by itself, produced them without inborn tendency to abstract, to separate mentally the concrete into factors which do not exist separately, we are always disposed to assign causes which are too simple, nothing in nature is propelled or impeded by one force acting alone. There's no such thing, save in the brain of the mathematician. I see no reason why even motives diametrically opposed should not unite in one resulting deed. Of course not, it is my duty, that is to say, to take myself to pieces as little as possible. It does not really matter how much of my present temperament I got from the communion service and how much I got from the caveman with the club in his hand. Here I am, a present entity, with the caveman, the tribesman, the Roman, and the Dane all mixed together in me, and it is my business instead of taking the complex mechanisms to pieces, to make it as a united and harmonious whole, do the work for which I have been sent into the world. I am not to talk one moment of the strawberries on my plate, and then in the next breath to speak of the cream. It is not so much a matter of strawberries and cream as of strawberries and cream. There is, I fancy, a good deal in that. We are too fond of taking the cream from the strawberries and the strawberries from the cream. I have on my plate here not two things, but one thing, and that one thing is strawberries and cream. One of the oldest and one of the silliest mistakes that men have made is their everlasting inclination to divide strawberries and cream into strawberries and cream. Think of the toothless chatter concerning the sexes, have men or women done most for the world? Is a husband or is the wife most essential to the home? It will be quite time enough to attempt to answer such ridiculous questions when the waitresses at restaurants begin to ask us whether we will have strawberries or cream. In the beginning we are told God created man in his own image, male and female created he them. It is not so much a matter of male and female. It is male and female, just as it is strawberries and cream. The thing takes other forms, which do you prefer, summer or winter? As though we should appreciate summer if we never had a winter or winter if we never had a summer. Is song or speech the most effective even dualistic agency? As though there would be anything to sing about if the gospel had never been preached or anything worth preaching if the gospel had never set anybody singing. It is so very ridiculous to try to separate the strawberries from the cream. Miss Rosalind Masson in commenting upon words worth beautiful sonnet on Westminster Bridge says it is the outcome of Dorothy words worth divine power of perception and her brother's divine power of expression, but who would dare take the sonnet to pieces and say how much is Dorothy's and how much is William's. It is Dorothy's and William's. It is strawberries and cream. I always feel extremely sorry for the man who tries to move a vote of thanks at the close of a pleasant and successful function. Not for worlds could I be persuaded to attempt it. It is a most difficult and complicated business and I should collapse utterly. It consists in taking the whole performance to pieces and allocating the praise so much for the decorator so much for the singer so much for the allocutionist so much for the speaker so much for the chairman so much for the pianist so much for the secretary and so on. To me it would be like furnishing a statistical table on leaving the restaurant showing how much of my enjoyment I owe to the strawberries and how much to the cream. Dissection is not in my line. I only know that I thoroughly enjoyed the strawberries and cream. In selecting strawberries and cream as emblems of mixed things of life I fancy that my choice is a particularly happy one. That cream must be mixed with other foods go without saying and in Shakespeare's most notable reference to strawberries it is the same peculiarity that seems to have impressed him. He has a very pleasing allusion to the facility with which the strawberry mixes with other things. The passage occurs at the beginning of King Henry V. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Ely are discussing the new king. They are astonished at the change which has overtaken him since his ascension. As a prince he was wild and desolate and broke his father's heart. But as soon as he became king he instantly sent for his boon companions told them that he intended by God's good grace to live an entirely new life and begged them to follow his example as the Archbishop of Canterbury puts it. The breath no sooner left his father's body but that his wildness mortified in him seemed to die too. Ye at the very moment consideration like an angel came and whipped the offending Adam out of him leaving his body as a paradise to envelop and contain celestial spirits. To which the Bishop of Ely replies the strawberry growth underneath the nettle and wholesome berries thrive and ripen best neighbor by fruit of baser quality. It is a suggestive passage considering from any point of view we live mixed lives in a mixed world and we do not come upon the strawberries by themselves or all at once. We may find strawberries tomorrow where we can discover nothing but stinging nettles today. Madcap Harry was not the only son whose life at first yielded nothing but nettles that stung and lacerated his father's soul and yet afterwards produced strawberries at word that delight not only of the church but of the world at large. End of Part One, Chapter Two Part One, Chapter Three Of Faces in the Fire and Other Fancies This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by April 690, California, United States of America Faces in the Fire and Other Fancies by Frank W. Borum Part One, Chapter Three The Conquest of the Cracks I was strolling one still evening along a lonely New Zealand shore when I made a grim discovery that has often set me thinking. I had been walking along the wet and crinkled sands, the tide being out and had amused myself with the shells and the seaweed that had been left flying about by the receding waters. There is always a peculiar charm about such a stroll. It holds such infinite possibilities. One seems to be exploiting the surprise packet of the universe. Jane Barlow in her Bogdan studies made one of her characters say, What use is one's life without chances? You've always a chance with the tide. For you never can tell what to take in its head to strew round on the shore. Maybe driftwood or grain bits of boards that come handy for splicing an ore. Or a crab's gaiting back over the shine or the wet. Sure, whatever you've found. It's a sort of diversion, then wilds, when you're starving and you're strolling around. Absorbed in so delightful an occupation the passage of time escaped my attention, until suddenly I noticed that twilight was rapidly falling. And I thought of my return. Before retracing my steps, however, I sat down for a moment's rest among the sand dunes. The possibility of making a discovery among those arid mounds did not occur to me. But as I sat absentmindedly poking the soft sand with my stick, I suddenly struck something hard. I proceeded to dig it out and found a couple of human skulls. They adorned the top shelf of my bookcase before me at this moment. They always looked down upon me as I write. I often catch myself leaning back in my chair, staring up at them and trying to read their secret. Who were they, I wonder? These two bony companions of mine. To meories finishing among the lonely dunes their last fierce fatal feud. Two travelers hopelessly lost who threw themselves down here to die. A couple of sailors who ship had struck the cruel reefs out yonder and whose bodies were tossed up here by the pitiless waves. A pair of levers trapped by the treacherous tide. I cannot tell. What a tantalizing mystery they seem to hold, as they grin down at me from this high shelf of mine. It is part of the ghostly sense of mystery that always hunts the sea and its tragedies. On the land when disaster occurs all the wreckage is left to tell its own tale. But on the ocean fate instantly obliterates all her tracks. The magnificent vessel lurches over, plunges with a roar into the deep, and the waves close over the frightful ruin. Compared with the silence of the sea the sphanks is voluble. The deep dark icy ocean bed guards its secrets and guards them well. Sometimes, however, it is more easy to read the riddle here in Tasmania with an easy reach of this quiet study of mine. There is a battlefield that I love to visit. It extends for miles and miles and the whole place is strewn with the wreckage that tells of the titanic conflict. I do not mean that the place is littered with dead men's bones. It was a far finer and far fiercer fight than men could have waged and lasted longer than any war recorded in the angles of history. It is the battlefield on which the land fought the sea. It is a rocky and precipitous coast. Sometimes I like to walk along the top of the cliff and look down upon the pile of massive boulders that lie tembled in picturesque and bewildering confusion about the beach below. Or at low tide I like to make my way among those monstrous piles of broken rock that lie higgedly-peagedly all along the shore. What a fight it was, day and night, summer and winter, year in and year out, age after age. Occasionally the attacks slackened down and the rippling waters merely lapped softly against the rocks. But there was no real truth. The sea was only gathering up its forces in secret for the majestic assault that was to come. Then the great breakers came rushing in, like regiments of cavalry in full career, and each huge wave hurled itself upon the crags with such fury that the spray dashed up sky high. It was a titanic struggle and the waters won. That is the extraordinary thing the waters won. The water seemed so soft, so yielding, so fluid, and the rocks seemed so impregnable, so adamantine, so immutable. Yet the waters always won. The land makes no impression on the sea, but the sea grinds the land to powder. I know that the sea is often spoken of as the natural emblem of all that is fickle and changeful. But it is a pure illusion. There are, of course, superficial variations of tone and tint and temper. But, as compared with the kaleidoscopic changes that overtake the land, the ocean is eternally and everywhere the same. It, and not the rocks, is the symbol of immutability. Look at the sea, exclaims Max Pemberton in Redmore. How I love it! I like to think that those great rolling waves will go leaping by a thousand years from now. There's never any change about the sea. You never come back to it and say how it's changed, or who's been building here, or where's the old place I love? No, it is always the same. I suppose if one stood here for a million years, the sea would not be different. You're quite sure of it, and it never disappoints you. The land, on the contrary, is forever changing. Man is always working his transformations, and nature is toiling to the same end. When the Romans come to England, says Frank Buckland, the naturalist, Julius Caesar probably looked upon an outline of cliff very different from that which holds our gaze to-day. First, there comes a sun crack along the edge of the cliff. The rainwater gets into the crack. Then comes the frost. The rainwater in freezing expands, and by degrees wedges off a great slice of chalk cliff. Down this tumbles into the water, and Neptune sets his great waves to work to tidy up the mess. No man can know the various rudiments of geology without recognizing that it is the land and not the sea that is constantly changing. We may visit some historic battlefield today, and finding it a network of bustling streets and crowded alleys may hopelessly fail to repeal the scene with the battalions that wheeled and charged, wavered and rallied. There in the brave days of old. But when, from the deck of a steamer, I surveyed the blue and tossing waters off Cape Trevacar. I knew that I was gazing upon this scene just as it presented itself to the eye of Nelson on the day of his immortal victory and glorious death more than a century ago. Now, beneath this triumph of the ocean, the triumph that leaves the land in fragments whilst the sea itself sustains no injury, there lies a deeper significance than at first appears. Job saw it. No lucid secret lurking in the universe around him escaped his restless eye. The waters wear the stones, he cried, and it was a shout of victory that rose from his heart when he said it. The waters wear the stones, he explained, and thou washest away the things which grow out of the dust of the earth. It is the death knell of the material. It is the triumph of the eternal. A little child looks upon the great granite cliffs, and it seems impossible that the lapping waves can ever pound them to pieces. But they do. And in the same way Job says, man seems so impregnable, and the world so mighty, that it appears a thing incredible that God can finally prevail. But he shall. The quiet waters conquer the frowning cliffs at length. The walls of Jericho fall down. This is the victory that overcomeeth the world. And so here on this battlefield where the land and the sea fought for mastery, I find Job sitting, and he interprets for me the pain that the waves are singing. It is the laughter of their triumph. The waters wear away the stones. That was the heartening message that gave to Spain one of her very greatest teachers. Saint Isidore of Seville was only a boy at the time. He found his lessons hard to learn. Study was a drudgery, and he was tempted to give up. The huge obstacles against which he, like the waves at the base of the cliff, was beating out his life seemed to add man time. So he ran away from school. But in the heat of the day he sat down to rest beside a little spring that trickled over a rock. He noticed that the water fell in drops, and only one drop at a time. Yet those drops had worn away a large stone. It reminded him of the tasks he had forsaken. And he returned to his desk, diligent. Application overcame his dullness, and made him one of the first scholars of his time. He never forgot the drops of water, dripping, dripping, dripping, on the rock that they were conquering. Those drops of water, says his biographer, gave to Spain a brilliant historian and to the church a famous doctor. It is always the gentle things of life that conquer us. The moving waters, to quote Keith's beautiful phrase. The moving waters at their preached-like task of pure abulation round earth's human shores, wear down the towering cliffs along the coast. It is Aesop's fable of the north wind, and the sun over again. The north wind, with its violence and bluster, only makes the traffic button his coat tighter. It is the genial warmth of the sun that makes them take it off. It is always by gentleness that the admin-time world is master. That is one of life's most lovely secrets. We are not ruled as much as we think by parliaments, and commandments, and enactments. The proportion of our lives that is governed by such things is very small. But the proportion that is dominated by gentler and more winsome forces is very great. The voices that sway us with a regal authority are soft and tender voices. The voices of those whose genial goodness compels us to love them. The imperial tones to which we capitulate unconditionally are very rarely stern official tones. Who does not remember in the Rosary the honorary Jane Champion asks Garth Daumann why he does not marry? And Garth tells her of Old Marjorie, his childhood's friend and nurse, now his housekeeper and general-mender and tender, Old Marjorie, with her black satin apron, long kerchief, and lavender ribbons. No doubt, Miss Champion, it will seem absurd to you that I should sit here on the Duchess's lawn and confess that I have been held back from proposing marriage to the women I most admired because of what would have been my old nurse's opinion of them. Yet so it invariably is. Our servants are often our masters. Life's loftiest authorities never derive. They're sanctions from rank, office or station. The soul has enthronedments and coronations of its own. A little child often leads in it. A carpenter becomes its king. Out of Nazareth comes the conqueror of the world. The pure and cleansing waters wear down the giant crags at last. But with purity and gentleness must go patience. The lapping waters do not reduce the rocky strata at a blow. It is always by means of patience that the finest conquests are won. Who that has read Jack London's Call of the Wild will ever forget the great fight at the end of the book, between Buck, the dog hero, and the huge bulldoze. Three hundred, wait, more than half a ton, he weighed the old bull. He had lived a long, strong life full of fight and struggle, and at the end he faced death at the teeth of a creature whose head did not reach beyond his great knuckled knees. How was it done? There is a patience in the wild. Jack London says, a patience dogged tireless, persistent as life itself. And it was by means of this patience that Buck brought down his stately antlered prey. Night and day, Buck never left him, never gave him a moment's rest, never permitted him to browse on the leaves of the trees, or the shoots of the young birch or a willow. Nor did he give the old bull one single opportunity to slake his burning thirst in the slender, trickling strange they crossed. For four days Buck hung piteously at the huge beast's heels, and at the end of the fourth day he pulled the bull moose down. Buck looked so little, but he wore the monarch out. The waters seemed so feeble, but they beat the rocks to powder. If it is thus that the foolish things of this world always confound the wise, the weak things conquer the mighty, and the things that are not burn to not the things that are. CHAPTER IV LENOLIUM True love is never utilitarian. I am well aware that in novels and in plays the fair heroine considerably falls in love with the brave man who, at a critical moment, saves her from a watery grave or from the lurid horrors of a burning building. It is very good of the lady in the novel. I admire the gratitude which prompts her romantic affection, and, nine times out of ten, my judgment cordially approves her taste. I know, too, that in fiction the sick or wounded hero invariably falls desperately in love with the devoted nurse whose patient and untiring attention ensures his recovery. It is very good of the hero. Again, I say I admire his gratitude and almost invariably endorse his choice, but it must be distinctly understood that this sort of thing is strictly confined to novels and theatricals, and real life men and women do not fall in love out of gratitude as a matter of fact. I am much more likely to fall in love with somebody for whom I have done something than with somebody who has done something for me. I was talking the other day with a nurse in a children's hospital. It is a heartbreaking business, she told me. You get into the way of nursing them, and comforting them, and playing with them, and mothering them until you feel that they belong to you. And then, just as you have come to love the little thing as though he were your own, out he goes. And he always goes out with his father or his mother, clapping his hands for very joy at the excitement of going home, and you are left with a big lump in your throat and perhaps a tear in your eye, at the thought that you will never see him again. Clearly, therefore, we do not fall in love as a matter of gratitude. The people who cling to us and depend upon us are much more likely to win our hearts than the people who have placed us under an obligation to them. If instead of telling us that the heroine fell in love with the man who had saved her from drowning, the novelist had told us that the man who risks his life by plunging into the river fell in love with the white and upturned face, as he laid it gently on the bank. Or if, instead of telling us that the patient fell in love with the nurse, he had told us that the nurse fell in love with the patient upon whom she had lavished such beautiful devotion, he would have been much more true to nature and to real life. It is indisputable, of course, that the rescuer having fallen in love with the rescued, she may soon discover his secret, and since love begets love, reciprocates his affection. It is equally true that, the nurse having conceived so tender a passion for her patient, he may soon read the meaning of the light in her eye and of the tone in her voice, and feel towards her as she first felt towards him. But that is quite another matter, and is beside our point at present. Just now I am only concerned with challenging the novelist's unwarrantable assumption that we fall in love out of gratitude. We do nothing of the kind. Love, I repeat, is never utilitarian. We may fall hopelessly in love with a thing that is a very little use to us, and we may feel no sentimental attractions at all towards a thing that is almost indispensable. If any man dares to dispute these conclusions, I shall simply produce a roll of linoleum in support of my arguments, and he will be promptly crushed beneath the weight of argument that the linoleum will furnish. The linoleum is the most conspicuous feature of the domestic establishment. It is impertinent, self-assertive, and loud. If you visit a house in which there is a linoleum, the thing rushes at you, and you see it even before the front door has been opened. Every minister who spends his afternoons in knocking at people's doors knows exactly what I mean. The very sound of the knock tells you a good deal. Such sounds are of three kinds. There is the echoing and reverberating knock that tells you of bareboards. There is the dead and somber thud that tells of linoleum on the floor, and there is the softened and muffled tap that tells of a hallwell carpeted. And so I say that the linoleum, if there be one, rushes at you and you seem to see it even before the door has been opened. Perhaps it is this immodesty on its part that prevents your liking it. It is always with the koi shy, modest things that we fall in love most readily. But, however, that may be the fact remains. Since this queer old world of ours began, men and women have fallen in love with all sorts of strange things, but there is no record of any man or woman yet having really fallen in love with a roll of linoleum. Of everything else about the house you get very fond. I can understand a man shedding tears when his armchair has to go to the sail room or the scrap heap. Robert Louis Stevenson once told the story of his favorite chair until he moved his schoolboy audience to tears. And everybody knows how Dickens makes you laugh and cry at the drollery and pathos with which, in all his books, he invests chairs, tables, clocks, pictures, and every other article of furniture. I fancy I should feel life to be less worth living if I were deprived of some of the household odds and ends with all my felicity seems to be mysteriously associated. But I cannot conceive of myself as yielding to even a momentary sensation of tenderness over the sail, destruction, or exchange of any of the linoleums. I feel perfectly certain that neither Stevenson nor Dickens would ever have felt an atom of sentiment concerning linoleum. Yet why? Few things about the house are more serviceable. I could point offhand to a hundred things no one of which has earned its right to a place in the home one hundredth part as nobly as has the linoleum. Yet I am very fond of each of those hundred things, whilst I am not at all fond of the linoleum. I appreciate it, but I do not love it. So there it is. Said I not truly that love is never utilitarian. We grow fond of things because we grow fond of things. We never grow fond of things simply because they are of use to us. But we cannot in decency let the matter rest at that. There must be some reason for the failure of the linoleum to stir my affections. Why does it alone among my household goods and chattels kindle no warmth within my soul? The linoleum is both pretty and useful. What more can I want? Many things pretty, but not useful, have swept me off my feet. Many things useful, but not pretty, have captivated my heart. And more than one things neither pretty nor useful have completely enslaved me. Yet here is the linoleum both pretty and useful, and I feel for it no fondness whatsoever. I remain as cold as ice and as hard as adamant. Why is it? To begin with I fancy the pattern has something to do with it. I do not now refer to any particular pattern, but to all the linoleum patterns that were ever designed. Those endless squares and circles and diamonds and stars could anything be more repelling? Here for instance on the linoleum I find a star. I know at once that if I look I shall see hundreds of similar stars. They will all be in perfectly straight lines, not one-a-quarter of an inch out of its place. They will all be mathematically equidistant. They will be of exactly the same size, of identically the same color, and their angles will all point in precisely the same direction. If the stars in the firmament above us were arranged on the same principle, they would drive us mad. The beauty of it is that there one star differs from another star in glory, but on the linoleum they do nothing of the sort. Or perhaps the pattern is a floral one. It thinks to coax me into a feeling that I am in the garden among the roses, the rotodendrons, or the chrysanthemums. But it is a hopeless failure. Whoever saw roses, rotodendrons, or chrysanthemums, all of exactly the same size, of precisely the same color and hanging in rows at mathematically identical levels. The beauty of the garden is that having looked at this rose, I am the more eager to see that one. Having admired this chrysanthemum, I am the more curious to mark the variety presented by the next. No two are precisely the same, and because this infinite diversity is the essential charm both of the heavens above and of the earth beneath, I am shocked and repelled by the monotony of the pattern on the linoleum. In the old days it was customary to plaster the walls, even of sick rooms, with papers of patterns equally pronounced, and many a poor patient was tortured almost to death by the glaring geometric abominations. The doctor said that the sufferer was to be kept perfectly quiet, yet the pattern on the wall is allowed to scream at him and shout at him from night until morning, and from morning until night. He has counted those awful stars or roses perpendicularly, horizontally, diagonally, from right to left, from left to right, from top to bottom, and from bottom to top, until the hideous monstrosities are reproduced in frightful duplicate upon the feathered tissues of his throbbing brain. He may close his eyes, but he sees them still. It was a form of torture worthy of an inquisitor general. The pattern on the linoleum is happily not quite so bad. When we are ill we do not see it, and when we are well we may to some extent avoid it, not altogether, for even if we do not look at it we have an uncanny feeling that it is there. Between the hearth rug and the table I catch sight of the bright, flaunting head of a scarlet poppy, or of the tossing petals of a huge chrysanthemum, and my imagination instantly flashes to my mind the horrible impression of tantalizing rows of exactly similar blossoms running off with mathematical precision in every conceivable direction. For some reason or other we instinctively recoil from these monotonous regularities. I once heard a friend observe that the average woman would rather marry a man whose life was painfully irregular than a man whose life was painfully regular. It may have been an overstatement of the case, but there is something in it. We fall in love with good people and we fall in love with bad people, but with the man who is too proper and the woman who is too straight laced, we very very rarely fall in love. It is the problem of Tennyson's mod. As a girl mod was irregular and lovable. Mod with her venturous climings and tumbles and childish escapes. Mod the delight of the village, the ringing joy of the hall. Mod with her sweet purse mouth when my father dangled the grapes. Mod the beloved of my mother, the moon-faced darling of all. But later on mod was regular and as unattractive as linoleum. Mod she has neither savor nor salt, but a cold and clear cut face, as I found her when her carriage passed. Perfectly beautiful let it be granted her where is the fault. All that I saw for her eyes were downcasts not to be seen. Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendid linole, dead of perfection no more. Shall I be told that this is high doctrine and hard to bear this doctrine of the lovableness of irregularity? I think not. Towering above all our biographies, a snow-clad heights tower above dusty little millhills, there stands the life story of one who, alone among the sons of men, was altogether good. It is the most charming and the most varied life story that has ever been rich since this little world began. Its lovely deeds and graceful speech, its tender pathos and its awful tragedy, have won the hearts of men all over the world and all down the ages, but find monotony there if you can. It is like a sky full of stars or a field of fairest flowers. The life that repels of the linoleum repels by the very severity of its regularity has something wrong with it somewhere. If I have outraged the sensibilities of any well meaning champion of a geometrical and mathematical in linoleum like regularity, let me hasten to conciliate him. I know that even regularity, the regularity of the linoleum pattern, may have its advantages. Dr. George McDonald and Robert Falconer says that there is a well authenticated story of a notorious convict who was reformed by entering in one of the colonies, a church where the matting along the aisle was of the same pattern as that in the church to which he had gone with his mother as a boy. Bravo! It is pleasant, extremely pleasant, to find that even monotony has its compensations. Let me but get to know my two proper and straight-laced friends a little better, and I shall doubtless discover even there a few redeeming features. But for all that the linoleum is cold, and we do not fall in love with cold things. A volcano is a much more dangerous affair than an iceberg, but it is much more easy to fall in love with the things that make you shudder than with the things that make you shiver. That was the trouble with Maude. She was so chilly and chilling, her cold and clear cut face, faultily faultless, icely regular, splendidly null, and that is precisely the trouble with every system of religion, morality, or philosophy, save one, that has ever been presented to the minds of men. Plato and Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius were splendid, simply splendid. But they were frigid, frigid as Maude, and their councils of perfection could never have unchanged my heart. Buddha, Confucius, Muhammad, the stars of the East were wonderful, but oh, so cold, I turn from these icy regularities to the lovely life I have already mentioned, and to use Whittier's expressive word, it is warm. Yes, warm, sweet, tender even yet, a present help is he, and faith has yet its Olivet, and love its Galilee. Warm, love, here are words that touch my soul to tears. We love him because he first loved us. The monotony and frigidity of the linoleum have given way to the beauty and the brightness of flowery fields all bathed in summer sunshine. End of Part 1, Chapter 4, Recording by Campbell Shalp. Considerable Diffidence For reasons obvious, and for reasons obscure. For one thing, I was for some years an editor myself, and I cannot satisfy myself that the experiment was even a moderate success. Everything went splendidly so far as I was concerned, as long as I wrote everything myself, but I was terribly pestered by other people. They worried me year in and year out, morning, noon and night. They would insist on sending me manuscripts that I had neither the grace to accept nor the courage to decline. They wrote the most learned treatises, the most pathetic stories, and the most affecting little sonnets. The letter they explained were for poets' corner. They actually deluged me with letters intended for publication, dealing with all sorts of subjects in which I took not the slightest glimmer of interest. They sometimes even presumed, in some carping or captious way, to criticize or review things that I had written myself, as though such things were open to question. At other times they wrote to applaud the sentiments I had expressed, as though I needed their corroboration. They were an awful nuisance. The stupid thing was only a monthly, and how they imagined that there would be any room for their contributions by the time I had been a whole month writing passes my comprehension. Then came the awakening, and it was a rude one. I suddenly realized that I was a fraud, a delusion, and a snare. I was not an editor at all. I was simply masquerading, playing a great game of bluff and make-believe. As a matter of fact, I was nothing more than an objectionably garrulous contributor who had gained possession of the editor's sanctum, usurped the editor's authority, and commandeered the editor's chair. I felt so ashamed of myself that I precipitately fled, and although I have several times since been invited to assume editorial responsibilities, I have shown my profound respect for journalism, bi-politely, but firmly declining. It does not at all follow that because a man can make a few bricks, he can therefore build a mansion. A chemist may be very clever at making up prescriptions, but that does not prove his ability to prescribe. During the years to which I have referred, that paper really had no editor. An editor would have done three things. He would have written a few wise words himself. He would have pitilessly repressed my unconscionable volubility, and he would have given the public the benefit of some of those carefully prepared contributions, which I, with savage satisfaction, hurled into the waste-paper basket. It would have been a good thing for the paper if the editorials had been so few, and so brief, that people could have been reasonably expected to read them. They would then have attached to them the gravity and authority that such contributions should normally carry. And it would have been good for the world in general, and for me in particular, if liberal quantities of my manuscript had been substitutionally sacrificed, in redemption of some of those roles of paper, whose destruction I now deplore, which I consign to limbo with so light a heart. Since then I have had a fairly wide experience of editors, and the years have increased my respect. Oh Lord! An up-country supplyant once exclaimed at the weeknight prayer meeting. Oh Lord! The more I seize of other people the more I likes myself. I do not quite share the good man's feeling, at any rate so far as editors are concerned. The more I have seen of the ways of other editors, the less am I pleased with the memory of my own attempt. The way in which these other editors have treated my own manuscript makes me blush for very shame as I remember my editorial intolerance of such packages. Very occasionally, an editor has found it necessary to delete some portion of my contribution, and nine times out of ten I have admired the perspicacity which detected the excrescence and strengthened the whole by removing the part. I say nine times out of ten, but I hint at the tenth case in no spirit of resentment or bitterness. I am young yet, and the years may easily teach me that, even in the instances that still seem doubtful to me, I am under a deep and lasting obligation to the editorial surgery. The editor is the emblem of all those potent, elusive, invisible forces that control our human destinies. We are clearly living in an edited world. We may not always agree with the editor. It would be passing strange if we did. We may see lots of things admitted that we, had we been editor, would have vigorously excluded. The venom of the cobra, the cruelty of the wolf, the anguish of a sickly babe, and the flaunting shame of the street corner. Had I been editor, I should have ruthlessly suppressed all these contributions. But my earlier experience of editorship haunts my memory to warn me. I was too fond of rejecting things in those days. I was too much attached to the waste paper basket, and I have been sorry for it ever since. And perhaps when I have lived a few eons longer, and have had experience of more worlds than one, I shall feel ashamed of my present inclination to doubt the editor's wisdom. Knowing as little as I know, I should certainly have rejected these contributions with scorn and impatience. The fangs of the viper, the teeth of the crocodile, and all things hideous and hateful, I should have intolerantly excluded. And some ages later with the experience of a few millenniums and the knowledge of many worlds to guide me, I should have lamented my folly, even as I now deplore my old editorial exclusiveness. And on the other hand, we sometimes catch a glimpse of the editor's waste paper basket, and the revelation is an astounding one. The waste of the world is terrific. And among these rejected manuscripts, I see some most exquisitely beautiful things. The other day, not far from here, a snake bit a little girl and killed her. Now here was a curious freak of editorship. On the editor's table, there laid two manuscripts. There was the snake, a loathsome scaly brute, with wicked little eyes and venomous fangs, a thing that made your flesh creep to look at it. And there was the little girl, a sweet little thing with curly hair and soft blue eyes, a thing that you could not see without loving. Had I been there, I should have tried to kill the snake and save the child. That is to say, I should have accepted the child manuscript and rejected the snake manuscript. But the editor does exactly the opposite. The snake manuscript is accepted. The horrid thing glides through the bush at this moment as a recognized part of the scheme of the universe. The child manuscript is rejected. It is thrown away. Have we not seen it like a crumpled poem in the editor's waste paper basket? How differently I should have acted had I been editor. And then, when I afterwards reviewed my editorship, as I today review that other editorship of mine, I should have seen that I was wrong. And that reflection makes me very thankful that I am not the editor. We shall yet come to see, in spite of all present appearances to the contrary, that the editor adopted the kindest, wisest, best course with each of the manuscripts presented. We shall see that nothing walks with aimless feet, that not one life shall be destroyed or cast as rubbish to the void when God have made the pile complete, that not a worm is cloven in vain, that not a moth with vain desire is shriveled in a fruitless fire, or but subserves in others gain. Everybody feels at liberty to criticize the editor, but depend upon it. When all the information is before us, that is before him, we shall see that our paltry judgment was very blind. And we shall recognize with profound admiration that we have been living in a most skillfully edited world. For after all, that is the point. The editor knows so much more than I do. He has eyes and ears in the ends of the earth. His sanctum seems so remote from everything. And yet, it is an observatory from which he beholds all the drama of the world's great throbbing life. When I was a boy, I was very fond of a contrivance that was called a camera obscura. I usually found it among the attractions of a seaside town. You paid a penny, entered a room, and sat down beside a round white table. The operator followed and closed the door. The place was then in total darkness. You could not see your hand before you. It seemed incredible that in this black hole one could get a clearer view of all that was happening in the neighborhood than was possible out in the sunlight. Yet, as soon as the lens above you was open, the whole scene appeared like a moving colored photograph on the white table. The waves breaking on the beach, the people strolling on the promenade. Everything was faithfully depicted there. Not a dog could wag his tail, but there, in the darkness, you saw him do it. An observer who watched you enter and saw the door close after you could be certain that now, for a while, you were cut off from everything. And yet, as a fact, you only went into the darkness that you might see the whole scene in the more perfect perspective. What is this, but the editors sank him? He enters it, and to all appearances he leaves the world behind him as he does so. But it is a mere illusion. He enters it that he may see the whole world more clearly from its quiet seclusion. In the same way, when I look round upon the world and see the things that are allowed to happen, the editor seems fearfully aloof. He seems to have gone into his heaven and closed the door behind him. Clouds and darkness are round about him, says the psalmist. And if clouds and darkness are round about him, is it any wonder that his vision is obscure? If clouds and darkness are round about him, is it any wonder that he acts so strangely? If clouds and darkness are round about him, is it any wonder that he rejects the child manuscript and accepts the snake manuscript? And yet, and yet, what if the darkness that envelops him be the darkness of the camera obscura? The psalmist declares that it is just because clouds and darkness are round about him that righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne. It is a darkness that obscures him from me, without in the slightest degree concealing me from him. So there the editor sits in his seclusion. Nobody is so unobtrusive. You may read your paper day after day, year in and year out, without even discovering the editor's name. You would not recognize him if you met him on the street. He may be young or old, tall or short, stout or slim, dark or fair, shabby or genteel. You have no idea. There is something strangely mysterious about the elusive individuality of that potent personage who every day draws so near to you, and yet of whom you know so little. One of these days I shall be invited to preach a special sermon to editors, and in view of so dazzling an opportunity, I have already selected my text. I shall speak of that ideal servant of humanity of whom the Prophet tells. He shall not scream, nor be loud, nor advertise himself, Isaiah says, but he shall never break a bruised reed nor quench a smoldering wick. That would make a great theme for a sermon to editors. There he is, so mysterious, and yet so mighty, so remote, and yet so omniscient, so invisible, and yet so eloquent, so slow to obtrude himself, and yet so swift to discern any flickering spark of genius in others. He shall not advertise himself, nor quench a single smoldering wick. There are two great moments in the history of a manuscript. The first is the moment of its preparation. The second is the moment of its appearance. And in between the two comes the editors' censorship and revision. I said just now that I had noticed that editorial emendations are almost invariably distinct improvements. The article as it appears is better than the article as it left my hands. Now let me think. I spoke a moment ago of the child manuscript and the snake manuscript, but what about myself? Am not I too a manuscript? And shall not I also fall into the editor's hands? What about all the blots and the smudges and the erasures and the alterations? Will they all be seen when I appear? When I appear? The editor sees to that. The editor will take care that none of the smudges on this poor manuscript shall be seen when I appear. For we know, says one of the editor's most intimate friends, we know that when we appear we shall be like him, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. It is a great thing to know that before I appear I shall undergo the editor's revision. Charlie was very excited. His father was a sailor. The ship was homeward bound and dad would soon be home. Thinking so intently and exclusively of his father's coming, Charlie determined to carve out a ship of his own. He took a block of wood and set to work, but the wood was hard and the knife was blunt and Charlie's fingers were very small. Dad may be here when you wake up in the morning, Charlie, his mother said to him one night. That night Charlie took his ship and his knife to bed with him. When his father came at midnight, Charlie was fast asleep. The blistered hand on the counterpane, not far from the knife and the ship. The father took the ship and with his own strong hand and his own sharp knife, it was soon a trim and shapely vessel. Charlie awoke with the lark next morning and proudly seizing his ship, he ran to greet his father. And it is difficult to say which of the two was the more proud of it. It is an infinite comfort to know that however blotted and blurred this poor manuscript may be when I lay down my pen at night, the editor will see to it that I have nothing to be ashamed of when I appear in the morning. End of Part One, Chapter Five Part One, Chapter Six of Faces in the Fire and Other Fancies This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org recording by Larry Wilson. Faces in the Fire and Other Fancies by Frank W. Bourne Part One, Chapter Six The Peacemaker Things had come to a pretty pass up at Corinth when Paul felt it incumbent upon him to write to the members of the church, imploring them to be reconciled to God. Now then, Paul said to those recalcitrant believers, now then we are ambassadors for Christ as though God did beseech you by us. We pray you, in Christ's dead, be ye reconciled to God. I used to wonder what he can possibly have meant, but now I think I understand. Claudius was wealthy. He dwelt in a beautiful house on the top of the hill. On the eastern side of the city of Corinth. From his spacious balconies he looked down upon the blue, blue waters of the Adriatic as they leapt caressingly the sands of the bay on the one side and on the spreading sapphire of the island studded Aegean, gleaming most charmingly upon the other. Away in the distance he commanded a magnificent prospect and could clearly make out the towers and domes of Athens as they pierced the sky on the far horizon. The Acropolis could be seen distinctly. It was a delightful home, delightfully situated. Claudius was a member of the church, but he was not very happy about it. Claudius had prospered amazingly of late years and his prosperity had involved him in commercial and social entanglements from which it would be very difficult now to escape. The life that Claudius had set before himself in the early days of his spiritual experience seemed to him later on like a beautiful dream. That is to say, it seemed to him like a dream when he thought about it, but he did not think about it more often than he could help. Claudius knew perfectly well that the life of which he used to dream was worth some sacrifice, and he knew that he was really the poor and not the richer for having abandoned the radiant ideal. He occasionally attended the assembly of worshipers, it is true, but he derived small satisfaction from the exercise. It seemed like exposing his poor withered emaciated soul to the limelight, and he saw with a start how starved and famished it had become. And so the inner experience of poor Claudius became a perpetual battleground. At times the old dreams seemed within an ace of being victorious. He was more than half inclined to break away from all his later entanglements. And to renew with the ardour of his youthful aspirations. But he had scarcely reached this devout determination when the glamour of his later life once more began to dazzle him. Alluring invitations, temptingly frays poured in upon him. It is horrid to be discourteous. How could he bring himself to offend people from whom he had received nothing but kindness? Surely a man owes something to the proprieties of life. And so the fight went on. But in the depths of his secret soul Claudius knew that the fight was a fight between Claudius on the one hand and God on the other. He knew too that in that stern conflict Claudius was altogether wrong, and God was altogether right. And he knew that if he persisted in the unequal struggle nothing but shame and humiliation awaited him. Claudius knew it and Paul knew it. Paul knew it and proffered his good offices as mediator. Now then, he wrote, with Claudius in his eye, Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us, we pray you, in Christ's dead, be ye reconciled to God. And the words brought to the heart of poor Claudius such a surge of vehement emotion as a lover feels at the prospect of once more embracing the beloved form with which he had so angrily and hastily parted. Polonius and Phoebe were in a very different case. Polonius felt close to the city in order to be near his work, and his windows commanded no view of any kind. He was not a slave, but sometimes he said bitterly that the slaves were as happy as he. The world had gone hardly with Polonius. The stars in their courses seemed to be fighting against him. He had tried hard to be brave, but circumstances sometimes conspire against courage. Polonius, in spite of the most commendable endeavors, was poor. Yet if poverty had been his only misfortune, he could have borne it with a smile. But in addition to poverty, troubles came thick and fast upon him. Like Claudius he was a member of the church at Corinth, and it was in connection with his labors of love for the sanctuary that he had first met Phoebe. She was young and fair in those days, and her loveliness was glorified by her devotion, but his love for her had fallen upon her tender spirit like a malediction. It was as though his fondness for his sweet young wife had woven a malignant spell about her early womanhood. He would have died a thousand deaths to make her happy. Yet since first they linked their lives they had known nothing but incessant struggle and ceaseless grief. Phoebe herself had been ill again and again. Poor little children had stolen like sunbeams into their home, only like sunbeams to vanish again, and give place to tempests of tears. Then came a long blank, and they fancied they were doomed to spend the rest of their sad lives childlessly. But at length to their unspeakable delight their little home once more resounded with a shout of baby merriment and a patter of baby footsteps. It was as if the four children who had perished had bequeathed to this new treasure all the affection that they had excited in the breasts of their poor parents. And then, after seven happy years, it too faded and died. Polonius and Phoebe were broken-hearted. Never again, they said, would they go to the assembly at Corinth. How could they believe in the love of God after this? And so their hearts grew hard, and their souls were soured, and all sweetness departed from their spirits. There is a story very like this in our own literature. In the old house at Kettering Andrew Fuller was lying ill in one room, whilst his only surviving daughter, a child of six, lay at the point of death in the next. He tried hard to reconcile himself and his poor wife to the impending calamity, but their spirits revolted. The thought that after having buried first one child and then another, this one too might be snatched from them, was more than they could bear. But on Tuesday, May 30th, says Fuller in his diary, on Tuesday, May 30th, as I lay ill in bed in another room, I heard a whispering. I inquired, and all were silent. All were silent. But all as well, I feel reconciled to God. That is a fine saying. I feel reconciled to God. But poor Polonius and Phoebe, good as yet, enter no such brave words in their domestic record. Wherefore, writes Paul with a thought, perhaps of Polonius and Phoebe, wherefore we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us, we pray you, in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. And when Polonius and Phoebe heard that touching appeal, they resolved no longer to kick against the pricks. Renew my will, they prayed, anticipating the language of a later hymn. Renew my will from day to day, blended with thine and take away all that now makes it hard to say, thy will be done. And like Andrew Fuller in his wife at Kettering, Polonius and his wife at Corinth were able to say, I feel reconciled to God. To the south of Corinth, just where the great main road begins, to ascend the ridge of the mountains, lived Julia. Julia was a widow, comfortably circumstance'd. Her husband had died years before, leaving her with the charge of their one young son. And as the days had gone by, and time had sprinkled strands of silver into Julia's hair, she had built her hopes more and more upon the future of her boy. Julia's husband had died before either he or she had so much as heard the name of Jesus. But after his death, Paul came over from Athens to Corinth, in the course of that first memorable visit to Europe, and Julia had been among his earliest converts. After her conversion, Julia had often thought of her husband, and was ill at ease. But like a wise woman, she determined to work for the things that remained, rather than to weep over those that were lost to her. And so she devoted all her love, and all her thought, and all her energy, and all her time to her little son. When Paul's first letter to the Christians at Corinth was read to the church, she caught a phrase about being baptized for the dead. She did not quite know what Paul meant by the words, but at any rate she would try to instill in her heart of her boys the lovely faith that she felt certain her husband would cheerfully have embraced. And wonderfully she succeeded. The boy listened with eyes wide open to the tender stories that Julia told him, and his heart acknowledged their profound significance. At the same age at which Jesus went with Mary to the temple, and was found in the midst of the doctors, young Amplius went with Julia up to the church at Corinth, and was found in the midst of the deacons. From the very first the soul of Amplius prospered, he was like those trees of which the psalmist sings, planted in the courts of the Lord, flourishing the house of our God. From the time of his baptism and reception into the sacred fellowship, the child Amplius grew like the child Jesus, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom and the grace of God was upon him. Then after about six years of happy Christian experience, Amplius confided a wonderful secret to Julia. He told her that he had resolved with her consent to devote himself to the sacred office of the ministry. And at that word the soul of Julia died within her. She knew that those early preachers and teachers had suffered. She knew of the martyrdom of all those first apostles. She had heard that even Paul himself had been in journeans often, in perils of rivers and in perils of robbers, in perils by his own countrymen, and in perils of the heathen, in perils of the city and in perils of the desert, in perils of the sea and in perils among false brethren. And Julia's heart failed her as she thought of Amplius faced by such dangers. Moreover Julia had other plans for Amplius. She had fondly dreamed of him as holding a great place in the city of Corinth, when she had seen rulers and governors performing exalted functions on synod occasions. She had said within herself, some day perhaps Amplius will wear those robes. Or some day perhaps Amplius will make that speech. And now all such dreams were rudely shattered. Her son would feign be a minister, an outcast, perhaps even a martyr. And at that thought the soul of Julia rebelled, and she began to fight against God. There is a case like this also in our own literature. Gray Hazelreg was the only child of Lady Hazelreg of Carleton Hall. Her ladyship intended her son for the army, but he failed to pass the tests. She then sent him to Cambridge University. There he came under deep religious influences. He began as opportunities presented themselves to preach the gospel. His efforts met with immediate acceptance, and he wrote to his astonished mother to say that he desired to become a minister of the old strict Baptist Communion. The request struck Carleton Hall like a thunderbolt, and the spirit of Lady Hazelreg rose in instant revolt. But Gray prayed in secret, and preached in public and pleaded with his mother whenever a suitable opportunity occurred. Then came an experience of which the Reverend Y. W. Holiton says he spoke with sparkling eyes seventy years afterwards. He was on a journey when his mind was suddenly and strangely arrested by the words of Jeremiah. Verily it shall be well with I remnant. He took it to refer to Lady Hazelreg's opposition to his call. And surely enough the very next letter that he received from his mother bore the joyful tidings that she was, as she herself phrased it, reconciled to God. Mr. Gray Hazelreg lived to be nearly a hundred, and his work both as a writer and a preacher will be remembered in England with thankfulness for many a day to come. There can be no doubt, therefore, that in those earlier days Lady Hazelreg was fighting against God. And there can be no doubt either that in those early days Julia was fighting against God. And therefore Paul wrote as he did, perhaps with Julia especially in mind. Now then, he said, we are ambassadors for Christ. As though God did beseech you by us, we pray you, in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. And like Lady Hazelreg, Julia made her peace with God, and her son adorned the Christian ministry for many a long day. Be ye reconciled to God. Paul, the peacemaker, wrote to the Corinthians at Corinth. It is vastly important. We so easily drift away from early attachments and early friendships, and even the divine friendship is not immune from this cruel and heartless treatment. We often drift away from it, and must need be reconciled. Be ye reconciled to God, says Paul the peacemaker, for unless you yourselves are reconciled to God, how can you reconcile to God those who are without? How can I reconcile hearts that are alienated if between either of those hearts and mind there exists some embarrassing estrangement? Be ye reconciled to God, said Paul the peacemaker to the church at Corinth, for he knew that the church's ministry of reconciliation would stand stiltified and useless so long as the church herself was out of touch with her Lord. In the Part 1 Chapter 6 Part 1 Chapter 7 of Faces in the Fire and Other Fancies This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by April, 6-0-9-0, California, United States of America. Faces in the Fire and Other Fancies by Frank W. Borum Part 1 Chapter 7 Nothing Nature, they say, abhors a vacuum. For the life of me I do not know why. But then, for the matter of that, I do not know why I myself love many of the things that I love, and loathe many of the things that I abhore. Nature, however, is not emotionally capricious. Some deep policy generally prompts for strange behavior. I must go into this matter a little more carefully. First of all, what is a vacuum? What is nothing? I was at a prize distribution not long ago, and as I came out into the street, I came upon a little chap crying as though his heart would break. He was quite alone. His parents had not thought it worth their while to accompany him to the function, and thus show their interest in his school life. Perhaps it was owing to the same lack of sympathy on their part that he was among the few boys who were bearing home no prize. Hello, sonny! I exclaimed, what's the matter? Oh, nothing! he replied between his sobs. Then what on earth are you crying for? Oh, nothing! he repeated. I respected his delicacy and probed no farther into the cause of this discomforture, but I had collected further evidence of my contention that there is more in nothing than you would suppose, nor had I gone far before still further corroboration greeted me. For at the top of the street I came upon a group of lads in the center, of which was a boy with a very handsome prize. I paused and admired it. And what was this for? I asked. Oh, nothing! he answered with a blush. But, my dear fellow, you must have done something to deserve it. Oh, it was nothing! he reiterated, and it was from his companions that I obtained the information that I sought. But here again it was made clear to me that there is a good deal in nothing. Nothing is worth thinking about. It is a huge mistake to take things at their face value. Nothing may sometimes represent a modest contrivance for hiding everything, and we must not allow ourselves to be deceived. In old tradition assures us that, on the sudden death of one of Frederick the Great's chaplains, a certain candidate showed himself most eager for the vacant post. The king told him to proceed to the royal chapel and to preach an impromptu sermon on a text that he would find in the pulpit on arrival. When the critical moment arrived, the preacher opened the sealed packet and found it blank. Not a word or penmark appeared. With a calm smile the clergyman cast his eyes over the congregation and then said, Brethren, here is nothing. Blessed is he whom nothing can annoy, whom nothing can make afraid or swerve from his duty. We read that God from nothing made all things, and yet look at the stupendous majesty of his infinite creation, and does not Job tell us that nothing is the foundation of everything? He hangeth the word upon nothing, the patriarch declares. The candidate then proceeded to elaborate the wonder and majesty of that creation that emanated from nothing, and depended on nothing. I need scarcely add that Frederick bestowed upon so ingenious a preacher the vacant chaplaincy, and in the years that followed he became one of the monarch's most intimate friends and most trusted advisors. We must not, however, fly to the opposite extreme and make too much of nothing. For the odd thing is that, twice at least in her strange and checkered history, the church has fallen in love with members of the nothing family, and after the fashion of lovers has completely lost her head over them. On the first occasion she became deeply enamored of doing nothing, and on the second occasion she went crazy over having nothing. I must tell of these amorous exploits one at a time. The adoration of doing nothing had a great vogue at one stage of the church's history. Who, that has once read the thirty-seventh chapter of Gibbons's Decline and Fall, the chapter on the origin, progress, and effects of the monastic life, lever ceased to be haunted by the weird, fantastic spectacle therein presented. Men suddenly took it into their heads that the only way of serving God was by doing nothing. They swarmed out into the deserts and lived solitary lives. They took vows of perpetual silence and ceased to speak. They ate only the most disgusting food they lived the lives of wild beasts. Even sleep, the last refuge of the unhappy, was rigorously measured. The vacant hours rolled heavily on, without business and without pleasure. And before the close of each day, the tedious progress of the sun was repeatedly accursed. Here was an amazing phenomenon. It was, of course, only a passing fancy, the mirrored piece of coquetry, on the church's part. It is unthinkable that she thought seriously of doing nothing and of settling down with him for the rest of her natural life. The glamour of this casual flirtation soon wore off. The church discovered, to her mortification, that there was nothing in nothing. Saint Anthony of Alexandria, who felt that the life of the city was too full of incitement, too frivolity, and pleasure, fled to the desert to escape from these temptations. He became a hermit. But he gave it up and returned to Alexandria. The abominable imaginations that haunted his mind, in the solitude, were far more loathsome and degrading than anything he had experienced in the busy city. Bra, Angelico, who also fell in love with doing nothing, says that he heard the flapping of the wings of unclean things about his lonely cell. And Francis Xavier told us of the seven terrible days that he spent in the tomb of Thomas at Milbar. All around me, he says, malignant devils prowled incessantly, and wrestled with me with invisible but obscene hands. It is the old story. There is nothing in nothing. And he who falls in love with any member of that family will live to regret the adventure. I remember being greatly impressed by a sentence or two in Nansen's Farthest North. He is describing the maddening monotony of the interminable, Arctic Knight. Ah, he exclaims suddenly, life's peace is said to be found by holy men in the desert. Here indeed is desert enough. But peace! Of that I know nothing. I suppose it is the holiness that is lacking. The explorer was simply discovering that there is nothing in nothing but what you yourself take into it. One would have supposed that, after this heartbreaking affair with doing nothing, the church would have been on her guard against all members of the nothing family. But no, she was deceived a second time, in this instance by the wiles of having nothing. I allude, of course, to the story of the medicant orders. We all know how Francis de Cici fell in love with poverty. One day to the consternation of his friends, they received a letter from the gay young soldier, telling them of his intention to lead an entirely new life. I'm thinking of taking a wife more beautiful, more rich, more pure than you could ever imagine. The wife was the lady poverty, and Giato, in a fresco at a Cici, has represented Francis placing the ring on the finger of his bride. The feminine figure is crowned with roses, but she is arrayed in rags, and her feet are bruised with stones and torn with briars. Francis borrowed the tattered and filthy garments of a beggar, and sought alms at the street corners that he might enter into the secret of poverty. And then he and Dominic founded those orders of medicant monks, which became one of the most potent missionary forces of the Middle Ages. But once again the church found out that her affections were being played with. There is no more virtue in having nothing than in doing nothing. They are both good for nothing. It may be that some of us would be better men if we had less money, but then others of us would be better men if we had more. It may be that, here and there, you may find a Silas Marner who has been saved by sudden poverty from miserly greed and hardening self-absorption. But for one such case it would be easy to point to hundreds of men who have been driven by poverty from the ways of honor, and to hundreds of women who have been forced by poverty from the paths of virtue. It all comes back to this. There is nothing in nothing. Doing nothing and having nothing are deceivers, the pair of them. And the church must not be beguiled by their blandishments. Work and money are both good things. Even William Law saw that. His serious call has often almost made a monk of me. But a sudden flash of common sense always breaks from the page just in time. There are two things, he says in his fine chapter on the wise and pious use of an estate. There are two things which, of all others, most want to be under a strict rule, and which are the greatest blessings both to ourselves and others, when they are rightly used. These two things are our time and our money. These talents are the continual means and opportunities of doing good. Beware, that is, to say, of doing nothing, of having nothing, and of the whole family of nothings. It is not for nothing that nature abhors them. And now it suddenly comes home to me that I am playing on the very verge of a tremendous truth. There is nothing in nothing. Let me remember that when next I am at death's grips with temptation. Cupid is said to have complained to Jupiter that he could never seize the muses because he could never find them idle. And I suppose that our everyday remark that Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do has its origin in the same idea. John Locke, the great philosopher, used to say that in the hour of temptation he preferred any company rather than his own. If possible, he sought the companionship of children, anything rather than nothing. It reminds us of Hannibal, the great Carthaginian led his troops up the alpine passes, but he found that the heights were strongly held by the Romans. Attack was out of the question. Hannibal watched closely one night, however, and discovered that, under cover of darkness, the enemy withdrew for the night to the warmer valley on the opposite slope. Next night, therefore, Hannibal led his troops to the heights. And when the Roman general approached in the morning, he found that the tables had been churned upon him. There is always peril in vacancy. The uncultivated garden brings forth weeds. The unoccupied mind becomes the devil's playground. The vacant soul is a lost soul. There is nothing in nothing. But for the greatest illustration of my present theme I must be take me to Mark Breutherford. The incident occurred at the most sunless and joyless stage of Mark's career. From all his wretchedness he sought relief in nothing. He kept his own company, wandered about the fields, abandoned himself to moods, and lost himself in vague and insoluble problems. But one day strange thing happened. I was walking along under the south side of a hill, which was a great place for butterflies when I saw a man, apparently about fifty years old, coming along with a butterfly net. They soon chummed up. He told me that he had come seven miles that morning to that spot, because he knew that it was haunted by one particular species of butterfly. And, as it was a still bright day, he hoped to find a specimen. At first Mark and Breutherford felt a kind of contempt for a man who could give himself up to so childish a pastime. But later on he heard his story. Years before he had married a delicate girl, of whom he was devotedly fond. She died in childbirth, leaving him completely broken. And by some inscrutable mystery of fate the child grew up to be a cripple, horribly deformed, inexpressibly hideous, as ugly as an ape, as lustful as a satyr, and as ferocious as a tiger. The son, after many years, died in a madhouse, and the horror of it all nearly consigned his poor father to a similar asylum. During those dark days, he told Mark Breutherford, I went on gazing gloomily into dark emptiness, till all life became nothing for me. Gazing into emptiness, Mark you. Then there swept across this aching void of nothingness a beautiful butterfly. It caught his fancy, interested him, filled the gap, and saved his reason from uttermost collapse. He began collecting butterflies. He was no longer gazing into emptiness, and the moral of the incident is stated in a single sentence. Men should not be too curious in analyzing and condemning any means which nature devises, to save them from themselves, whether it be coins, old books, curiosities, fossils, or butterflies. Any means which nature devises, we are back to nature again. Nature abhors a vacuum. It was at that point that we set out. I see now that nature is right, after all. I can never be saved by nothing. The abstract will never satisfy me. I want something, I, more. I want some one. And until I find him, my restless soul calls down all the echoing corridors of nothingness. Oh, that I knew where I might find him. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Larry Wilson. Faces in the Fire and Other Fancies, by Frank W. Warren, Part 1, Chapter 8. The Angel and the Iron Gate It is of no use arguing against an iron gate. There it stands, chained and padlocked, barred and bolted right across your path, and you can neither coax nor cow it into yielding. So was it with Peter on the night of his miraculous escape from prison. Herod, we are told, killed James with the sword, and because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to take Peter also. There he lay, sleeping between two soldiers, bound with chains, whilst the keepers before the door kept the prison. He expected that his next visitor would be the headsman, and whilst he waited for the executioner, there came an angel. This sort of thing happens fairly often. They are sitting round the fire, and the lady in the armchair is talking of her sailor's son. Ah, she says. I haven't heard of him for over a year now, and I begin to think that I shall never hear again. There's a sharp ring at the bell. She starts. Something tells me, she continues, that this is a message to say that the ship is lost, and that I shall never see my boy again. Even whilst she speaks, the door is opened, and her last syllable is scarcely uttered before she is folded in the sailor's arms. The principal holds true to the very end. It is a sick room, and the pale, wan face of the patient looks very weary. Oh, how I dread to death, she says. I cannot bear to think that I must die. An hour later the door of the unseen opens to her, and there stands on the threshold, not death, but life everlasting. Peter very, very often waits for the executioner, and welcomes an angel. During the next few moments Peter scarcely knew whether he was in the body or out of the body. Was he alive, or was he dead? Was he waking, or was he dreaming? He wist not that it was true which was done by the angel, but thought he saw a vision. He walked like a man with his head in the clouds. Doors were opening, chains were falling. He seemed to be living in a land of enchantment, a world of magic. But the Iron Gate put an end to all illusion. They came to the Iron Gate, and as I said a moment ago, an Iron Gate is a very difficult thing to argue with. The Iron Gate represents the return to reality. After our most radiant spiritual experiences, we come abruptly to the humdrum and the common place. It was Mary Sunday evening out. Mary, you must know, is a housemate in a big boarding establishment, and her life is by no means an easy one. But Mary is also a member of the church. On Sunday she was in her favorite seat. Perhaps it was that she was especially hungry for some uplifting word, or perhaps it was that the message was peculiarly suitable to her condition. But be that as it may, the service that night seemed to carry poor Mary to the very gate of heaven. The communion service that followed completed her ecstasy, and Mary seemed scarcely to touch the pavement with her feet as she hurried home. She fell asleep, crooning to herself the hymn, with which the service closed. Oh, love, that will not let me go. I rest my weary soul in thee. I give thee back the life I owe, that in thine ocean depths its flow may richer fuller be. She knew nothing more until in the chilly dark of the morning the alarm clock screamed at her to jump up, clean the cold front steps, dust the great silent rooms, and light the copper fire. And she came to the Iron Gate. There come points in life at which poetry merges into the severest prose. Romance yields to reality. The miracle of the open prison is succeeded by the menace of the Iron Gate. As long as Peter had an Iron Gate before him, he had an angel beside him. It was not until the Iron Gate had been safely negotiated that forthwith the angel departed from him. Mary made a mistake when she fancied that she had left all the glory behind her. The angel is with us more often than we think. A devout Jew in bidding you farewell will always use a plural pronoun, and if you ask for whom beside yourself his blessing is intended, he will reply that it is for you and for the angel over your shoulder. We are too fond of fancing that the angels only with us when the chains are miraculously falling from off our feet, and when the doors are miraculously opening before our faces. We are too slow to believe that the angel is still by our side when we emerge into the night and come to the Iron Gate. It is a very ancient heathen superstition. There came a man of God and spake unto the king of Israel and said, thus saith the Lord, because the Syrians have said, the Lord is God of the hills, but he is not God of the valleys. Therefore will I deliver all this great multitude into thine hand, and ye shall know that I am the Lord. We are always assuming that he is the God of the mountaintops and that he leaves us to thread the darksome valleys alone, and our assumption is a cruel and unjust one. As long as Peter had an Iron Gate before him, he had an angel beside him. The converse, however, is equally true. As long as Peter had an angel beside him, he had an Iron Gate ahead of him. Angels do not walk by our sides for fun. Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation? If there is an angel by my side, depend upon it. There is work that only an angel can do in front of me. Mary's radiant experience that Sunday evening was directly and intimately related to the brazen yell of the alarm clock on Monday morning. It was not intended as a mere temporary elevation of the Spirit, but as an assurance of a gracious presence, a presence that should never be withdrawn as long as a need existed. It is part of the infinite pathos of life that we misinterpret our visions. Jacob beheld his staircase leading from earth to heaven, with angels ascending and descending upon it, and straightway, as he prepared to leave, he began to say goodbye to the angels. Surely, he exclaimed, the Lord is in this place. How dreadful is this place. This is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. And he called the name of that place Bethel. And thus he missed the whole meaning of the beatific vision. The vision was to warn him of the perils that awaited him, and to assure him that behold, I am with thee in all places wither thou goest. All places, said the vision. This place, this place, this place, said Jacob. And so he journeyed on towards his iron gate, pitifully ignorant of the meaning of the golden dream. Life's ecstasies are warnings, premonitions, danger signals. Even in the experience of the holiest, the open heavens and the voice from the excellent glory immediately preceded the grim struggle with the tempter in the wilderness. Paul had his vision. He saw the man of Macedonia, and he followed the gleam to bonds, stripes, and imprisonment. Bunion knew what he was doing when he placed the palace beautiful with all its sweet hospitalities and delightful ministries immediately before the dark valley of humiliation in which Christian struggled with Apollyon. When we hear angels' voices speaking, when we find our fetters falling, when we see our jail doors opening, be very sure that outside, outside there is a dark night and an iron gate. But there is always this about it. Although the radiant vision is a premonition of the coming struggle, it is also an augury concerning that struggle. Opening doors are an earnest of opening gates. It is inconceivable that I shall be miraculously delivered from my dungeon with its guards in its chains and then be balked by an iron gate out there in the blackness of the night. It is inconceivable that here, at the communion service, God should draw so near to the spirit of this young housemaid and then leave her to face alone the drudgery of Monday morning. If Mary is half as wise as I take her to be, she will answer the scream of the clock with a song. She went to bed singing. Why not get up-sing? She crooned to herself on retiring, the hymn that had followed her from the communion table. Let her sing in the morning quite another tune. His love in times past forbids me to think he'll leave me at last in trouble to sink. Each sweet Ebenezer I have in review confirms his good pleasure to help me quite through. The voice of the angel, the falling of fetters, and the opening of doors are all designed to braces for the dark night and the iron gate. The iron gate opened to them. Of course it did. Who could suppose that the prison doors had been opened by angels' hands only that the prisoner might be caught like a rat in a trap outside? The iron gate opened to them, of its own accord. It did look like it. During my twelve years at Moschiel, I often went through the Great Wollin Factory. The machines were marvelous, simply marvelous. As you watched the needle slip in and out or stood beside the loom and saw the pattern grow, it really looked as though the things were bewitched. They seemed to be doing it all of their own accord. But one day the manager said, Would you care to see the powerhouse? And he took me away from the busy rooms to another building altogether. And there I saw the huge engines that drove everything, neither looms nor needles really work of their own accord. Nor do iron gates. A few minutes after the gates had opened and the angel had vanished, Peter came to the house of Mary, the mother of Mark, where many were gathered together praying. And then Peter understood by what power the iron gates had opened, just as I understood when I saw the engine room how the great looms worked. The prayer meeting may not be artistic. For the matter of that I saw very little in the power room of the factory that appealed to the sense of the aesthetic within me. But when angels visit prisons, an iron gate swing open of their own accord, there must be a driving force at work somewhere. And Peter only discovered it when he suddenly broke in upon a midnight prayer meeting. End of part one, chapter eight.