The Seven Ages of Man Part 2

And so Mr. Todd becomes engaged; and after a decent interval, he becomes a husband; and after another decent interval he becomes a father--and who more surprised than he! Even as we congratulate him, clinking together the long-handled spoons that come in the ice-cream sodas with which all good fellows now celebrate such an occasion, it is perfectly evident that Harvey Todd has given hardly more thought to the tremendously important and interesting relation of father and son than might reasonably have been expected of little Harvey, Jr. Mind you, I do not attempt to say how he shall conduct himself: that is his business; but as he begins, so is he likely to go on to the end of the chapter, when little Harvey is no longer a roly-poly human plaything but a great big man like himself. And according as he _has_ conducted himself, that great big man will bless him or curse him or regard him with varying degrees of affection or contumely. If he has never thought of it before, it is something for him to think about now, seriously, in the brief respite while his duties are perambulatory, and a mechanical father, cleaned, oiled, and wound up once a day, would do just as well. Fill the gla.s.ses again, O white-coated Dispenser, and make mine chocolate. For this man is a father! He has created new life, or clothed in mortality an immortal spirit (though he doesn't know which), and here he stands,--I said chocolate,--and Solomon, with all his wisdom and all his experience, could not tell him what to do about it.

So we clink our long-handled spoons.

For in sober truth, as one reads the reputed wisdom of Solomon on this topic, fatherhood seems to be in a state of evolution and to have advanced materially since he was a father. "He that spareth his rod,"

said Solomon in the complacent, dogmatic way that seems to have charmed the Queen of Sheba more than it would charm me, "hateth his son: But he that loveth him, chasteneth him betimes." And again, "The rod and the reproof giveth wisdom." We know better nowadays: the rod has become a figure of speech, the occasions that even appear to excuse its use are fewer and fewer, and when they happen, the modern practice may be described quite simply as a laying-on of the hand. Here, however, is something objective for a father to do--an occasion when Mother pulls in the string, and Father, mercifully hanging back on his red wheels, comes up in a hurry, and what has to be done is done. But the procedure, over the centuries, has compelled thought; the idea has ripened slowly in the paternal mind that it is an unwise waste of strength and emotion to attempt at one end what may be better accomplished at the other; and in this revolutionary discovery there must have been pioneers whose success as fathers was measured by the affection and respect of worthy sons.

Hamlet's father, I believe, rarely, if ever, spanked young Hamlet, and never in such mood and manner as to make the little Prince of Denmark smart at the injustice of the high-handed proceeding. Mr. Todd can do no better than follow the elder Hamlet's example; and in so doing he will show himself wiser than Solomon, with his old-fas.h.i.+oned insistence on proverbs and a stout stick. "He that, being often reproved, hardeneth his neck," said Solomon (and here perhaps is the origin of the phrase to "get it in the neck"), "shall suddenly be broken, and that beyond remedy"; which is an att.i.tude of mind that the best thought certainly no longer considers conducive to the best fatherly results. The book for Mr. Todd to read is not Solomon's Book of Proverbs but Theodore Roosevelt's Letters to his Children.

If Solomon had been right, fatherhood would be easy; but the simple fact that even you or I, gentle Reader, being often reproved, will harden our necks, reveals the widespread tendency to ossification that has gradually discredited the didactic and strong-arm system. If I may compose a proverb myself--

The wise man maketh no enemy of his neighbor; And the wise father maketh a friend of his son.

But it is easier to compose a proverb than to apply it, and friends.h.i.+p, which can be built only on a good foundation of common understanding and truthful speech, is here especially difficult. "To speak truth," says Stevenson, "there must be a moral equality or else no respect; and hence between parent and child intercourse is apt to degenerate into a verbal fencing bout, and misapprehensions to become ingrained. And there is another side to this; for the parent begins with an imperfect notion of the child's character, formed in early years or during the equinoctial gales of youth; to this he adheres, noting only the facts that suit with his preconceptions; and wherever a person fancies himself unjustly judged, he at once and finally gives up the effort to speak truth."

Somehow or other our Mr. Todd, if he wishes to make the best of his paternity, must overcome the handicap imposed by his wider mental experience and his acquired moral distinctions between rightness and wrongness; somehow or other he must create in Harvey, Jr., an affectionate regard for his jolly old father that shall make it a line of least resistance for the little fellow to follow and imitate his jolly old father's opinions and wishes. Often, indeed, if he is wise, Mr. Todd will dare to seem foolish. "Foolishness," said Solomon, "is bound up in the heart of the child"--and there he stopped, after adding his usual suggestion about the rod as a remedy. But it is bound up also, O Solomon, in every heart that beats, and is one thing at least that Mr.

Todd and little Harvey have in common to start with.

And so the father plays his unapplauded part--"tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited," as Polonius might enumerate. He wants no applause. He wants no "Father's Day." He wants no statue. He wants no advice. Yet it seems to me that a figure and character has lately been perpetuated in statuary of various kinds that answers all practical purposes, though most of us think of the original as a Great American rather than as a Great Father.

V

ON BEING A LANDLORD

_In an informal, but practical way, a landlord is, and must be, a Justice of the Domestic Peace. If one tenant murders another tenant, the case pa.s.ses beyond his jurisdiction: he has no power of the black cap. But if one tenant annoys another (which may eventually lead to homicide more or less justifiable), the case comes to his court: he is both jury and judge, and can in extremity p.r.o.nounce sentence of eviction. But so many and subtile are the ways in which tenants annoy each other that to be a perfectly just landlord would demand a wisdom greater than Solomon's._--APARTMENTS TO LET.

On my consciousness are impressed the names of fourteen married women and one (so far as I know) unmarried man: Mrs. Murphy, Mrs. Smith, Mrs.

Brown, Mrs. c.a.w.kins, Mrs. Trolley, Mrs. Ka.r.s.en, Mrs. Le Maire, Mrs.

Barber, Mrs. Sibley, Mrs. Carrot, Mrs. Mahoney, Mrs. Hopp, Mrs. Ranee, Mrs. b.u.t.ton, and Charlie Wah Loo. Their husbands I hardly know at all; indeed, if Mrs. Carrot should introduce Mr. Hopp to me by that dear t.i.tle,--as, for example, 'my husband, Mr. Hopp,'--I should hastily readjust my ideas and decide that Mrs. Carrot was really Mrs. Hopp, and Mrs. Hopp really Mrs. Carrot. Charlie Wah Loo _may_ be married; he devotes his days to the washtub and ironing-board, and his nights (I like to think) to what Mr. Sax Rohmer, author of "The Yellow Claw,"

mysteriously mentions as "ancient, unnamable evils." In feudal times, however, I should have known them all better. Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! that brave little company--

b.u.t.tON HOPP CARROT BARBER Ka.r.s.eN c.a.w.kINS SMITH RANEE MAHONEY SIBLEY LE MAIRE TROLLEY BROWN MURPHY

--would have marched st.u.r.dily under my banner, each in his stout leathern jerkin, manfully carrying his trusty pike, halberd, long bow, short bow, or arbalest; and with them Charlie Wah Loo would have trotted along by himself as an interesting human curiosity--or, perhaps, in a cage. Each in his time would have done me fealty, saying, "Know ye this, my lord, that I will be faithful and true unto you, and faith to you will bear for the tenements which I claim to hold of you; and that I will lawfully do to you the customs and services which I ought to do at the terms a.s.signed. So help me G.o.d and his saints."

Those, in retrospect, were pleasant days for the landlord, when rent was paid in loyal service and a few dozen eggs, or what not. But all that now remains of the ancient custom is that they continue, vicariously, through the agency of their beloved helpmates, to pay me rent. In this sense, Charlie Wah Loo, with his washtub and irons, is his own beloved helpmate.

Briefly, I am a landlord. But do not hate me, gentle reader, for I am of that mild, reticent, and reluctant kind to whom even collecting the rent, to say nothing of raising it, is more a pain than a pleasure.

There are such landlords, products of evolution, inheritance, and a civilization necessarily based on barter. Our anxious desire is to exact no more than a "fair rent"; at our weakest, when a tenant gets in arrears and, evidently enough, cannot catch up, our line of least resistance would be to go quietly away and leave that tenement to the tenant, his heirs and a.s.signs forever. It is unpleasant, and becomes more so every time, to remind him that he owes us money. Only the inexorable harshness of our own overlords compels us, hating ourselves the while, to be strict.

I have seen it stated as a scientific deduction that "in the beginning man probably dwelt in trees after the fas.h.i.+on of his ape-like ancestors.

He lived on nuts, fruits, roots, wild honey, and perhaps even bird's eggs, grubs from rotten wood, and insects." And my own experience leads me to feel that there was much to be said for this way of life, though I draw the line at birds' eggs, grubs from rotten wood, and insects, at which items of an earlier menu even the scientific mind seems to baulk.

But it may well have happened that some strong fellow presently got possession of an especially desirable tree, and allowed others to share its branches only if they kept him supplied with provisions. Thus may landlordry have been established.

Millions of years have pa.s.sed since then,--a mere flicker in the great movie of eternity,--and we are still, many of us, living in trees; but the trees have been cut down and made into houses, of which at present there are not enough to go round. We have outgrown our simple arboreal diet, developed and perfected the hen (no small achievement in itself), invented underwear, and in countless other cunning ways have created a complex civilization. Century by century, generation by generation, we have acquired tastes and conventions that prevent us from returning to the simple, happy, uncomplicated life of our ape-like ancestors. And in this civilization that we have made, the figure of the landlord bulks large and overshadowing, and might, indeed, be likened to Rodin's Thinker, thinking, in this instance, about how much more he shall raise the rent. One must a.s.sume, of course, that he is thinking about it just before taking his morning bath.

It is not my purpose to dwell upon those disgraceful landlords who profiteer. I am concerned rather with the character of the Perfect Landlord, a just man, respected, if not loved (within reason), by fourteen married women and a Charlie Wah Loo. But this admirable ideal seems impracticable. I know a landlord who speaks with pleasure of the social aspect of collecting his rents; but his is a selected tenantry, for he lets apartments only to what he calls "nice people," whose society he feels reasonably certain he will enjoy on rent-day, and whose financial status, he also feels reasonably certain, is and will remain such that no painful embarra.s.sment on this sordid but necessary side of their relations will ever cast a gloom over his visit. Yet even so, I gather that there are sometimes breaks in the golden chain, when the nice tenant chats with a too feverish interest about life and things in general, and the sordid aspect cannot be glossed over by a casual "Ah, yes, the rent." Such breaks in the golden chain are the test of landlordry.

I am reminded of a little one-act play which I have just written ent.i.tled

THE RENT

CHARACTERS: MRS. b.u.t.tON, a tenant.

I, a landlord.

SCENE: _A tenement, owned by_ I, _but referred to as_ MRS.

b.u.t.tON'S, _which is perhaps more correct._ MRS. b.u.t.tON _is was.h.i.+ng dishes. The room steams. Slow creaks outside as of a reluctant man coming upstairs._ MRS. b.u.t.tON _smiles enigmatically. A knocking at the door, as in "Macbeth."_

MRS. b.u.t.tON. Come in. (I _enters._)

I _(laughing with affected lightness)._ Ah, _good-_morning, Mrs.

b.u.t.ton. I've come for the rent.

MRS. b.u.t.tON _(weeping)._ It's not me, as ye know, sir, that likes to be behind with th' rint. I'm proud.

I _(touched in spite of himself by the sight of a strong woman in tears)._ I know _that._ But you've been here seven months, Mrs.

b.u.t.ton, without--

MRS. b.u.t.tON _(wiping her eyes)._ Yis, I'm an old tenant, and 't would break me heart to go. An' me goin' to begin payin' reg'lar only nixt week, sir. It's th' only home I've got, an' it's cruel harrd to leave it.

I (_sternly_). Very well. Very well. I shall _expect_ the money next week. Good-day, Mrs. b.u.t.ton.

MRS. b.u.t.tON. Good-day, sir.

I _exits_. MRS. b.u.t.tON _resumes was.h.i.+ng dishes, smiling enigmatically. The room steams, and steps are heard going hastily downstairs, fainter and fainter_.

(CURTAIN)

It is a grave responsibility--this power to dispossess other human beings of their little home--to say nothing of the recurrent task of making them behave themselves in it. Perhaps, on some other and happier plane of being, all landlords will be just and all tenants reasonable of disposition and stable of income. Then, indeed, the landlord need have nothing in common with a well-known walrus, of whom it is told that, in dealing with certain oysters, "with sobs and tears he sorted out those of the largest size." But something might even now be done by compulsory psychopathic--I had nearly said psychopathetic--treatment; for thus the effort to solve the rent problem would go to the soil in which it is rooted, and no complicated laws would be needed. Landlords and tenants, in fact everybody, would have to take the treatment,--including, of course, the psychopathic pract.i.tioners, who would treat each other,--but it would be a fine thing for the world if it worked.

One sees in imagination the profiteering landlord, after looking long and intently at a bright object, say a five-dollar gold-piece, dropping peacefully asleep; one hears the voice of the scientist repeating, firmly and monotonously, "When you wake up you will never want anything more than a just rent--a just rent--a just rent--a just rent."

One sees this profiteering landlord, once more wide awake, busy at his desk with pencil and paper, scowling conscientiously as he endeavors to figure out exactly what a just rent will be. Investment, so much; taxes; insurance; repairs; laths and plaster here, wall-paper there; water, light, putty, paint, janitor, Policeman's Annual Ball, postman at Christmas, wear and tear on landlord's shoes, etc., etc., etc., etc.--now, if ever, there is a tired business man.

Or,--to take another aspect of this great reform,--there is the sad case of Mrs. Murphy, who can no longer endure the children of Mrs. Trolley, who lives in the flat above her. They run and play, run and play; they produce in Mrs. Murphy a conviction that presently the floor will give way, and the children, still running and playing, will come right through on her poor head. Yet it is the nature of children to run and play, run and play: the landlord cannot, try as he may, persuade Mrs.

Trolley to chain her offspring. So away, away to the Public Psychopathic Ward with poor Mrs. Murphy. "Madam, when you awake, the sound of running feet over your poor head will suggest the joys of innocent childhood, and you will be very happy when they run and play, run and play--happy all day--run and play--run and play--happy all day--run and play."

But alas, so far even psychopathic treatment cannot promise to stabilize incomes. There must still be times when the just landlord must say to his tenant, "All is over between us; we must part forever--and at once."

To which, judging by the tenor of some of the laws that have lately been suggested, the tenant may presently answer, "All right, you Old Devil. This is the tenth of the month, and I'll shake the dust of your disgraceful premises off my feet two years and six months from to-morrow."

It's a puzzling time for us landlords. Not long ago I felt compelled to raise the rent of fourteen married women and one (so far as I know) unmarried Chinaman. And then, overcome by conscience, I sat down and figured out a just rent. And when I had finished I came upon a distressing discovery. I had raised the rent of neither Mrs. Murphy, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Brown, Mrs. c.a.w.kins, Mrs. Trolley, Mrs. Ka.r.s.en, Mrs. Le Maire, Mrs. Barber, Mrs. Sibley, Mrs. Carrot, Mrs. Mahoney, Mrs. Hopp, Mrs. Ranee, Mrs. b.u.t.ton, nor Charlie Wah Loo, anything like enough.

VI