THE MAGICAL CHANCE

THE MAGICAL CHANCE

BY DALLAS LORE SHARP AUTHOR OF “THE LAY OF THE LAND,” “THE HILLS OF HINGHAM,” “EDUCATION IN A DEMOCRACY,” ETC.

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge 1923

COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY DALLAS LORE SHARP ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

CHAPTER I THE MAGICAL CHANCE

“What are you going to say to the college girls?” my pretty niece asked, as we motored down the valley. She was being graduated this spring, and the snowy dogwoods and the purple Judas-trees against the tender hillsides were not so fresh, nor half so full of bloom, as she. But they were gayer far than she.

“Don’t tell them, uncle, how wonderful they are! How the world waits for them! Don’t say it, uncle! I have heard that sort of talk for these four years, and here I am with nobody waiting for me; not fitted for anything; nothing to do; and as wonderful—as thirty cents!”

Poor thing!

A few days before, I had seen an interview with the President of Yale, in which the young[4] writer said he had read in a book that all the great devices had been invented; all the new lands explored; all the great deeds done—all the adventure and romance forever gone from life, and that only bread and butter remain with the odds against a young man’s getting much of the butter.

Poor thing!

Have I been living fifty years—in America? or fifty cycles in Cathay? I cannot still be young at fifty! nor can I be so old either as modern two-and-twenty! Youth is a dry tree, these days; a sad state—particularly youth bent with the burden of an A.B. degree. Out of my fifty-odd years of existence I have taught college youth for three-and-twenty, and never in all that time have they looked like plain bread and butter to me. If they are not adventure and romance, not better stories, sweeter songs, mightier deeds than any yet recorded, then I am no judge of story matter and the stuff of epic song.

But my pretty niece declares that she also knows a shoat when she sees one; and she knows it is just pork. As for the college man of the[5] interview: he was not speaking by the book; out, rather, of the depths of his heart.

It is an evil thing to be born young into an old world!

For the world seems very old. Its face is covered with doubt, its heart is only ashes of burned-out fires. The River of Life which John saw has dwindled into Spoon River; and his Book of Life is now a novel, piddling and prurient. But John also saw the Scarlet Woman—and that was long ago! The world was ever much the same; ever in need of an Apocalypse; and never more in need than now. My pretty niece, and the young man of the interview, are the world, and the college world at that, the more’s the pity. They are its skepticism, its materialism, its conventionalism, its fear and failure. They seem afraid to bid on life, for fear it might be knocked off to them at something above par! They do not dare. They won’t take a chance. They would, of course, if there were chances; they would dare, if only one giant were still left stalking through the land. The giants are gone!

The orator was celebrating the hundredth anniversary[6] of Richard Henry Dana, the author of “Two Years Before the Mast”:

Life offered him a magical human chance and he took it. There was something in him for which the decorous and conventional life of Boston allowed no place in its scheme. “Two Years Before the Mast” belongs to the Literature of Escape.

Life offered him a magical chance—as if he were a special case! So he was. So is every boy. Who was this boy? and what were the circumstances under which Life offered him this magical chance? He was a Bostonian to begin with, and that is bad enough; he was a Harvard undergraduate also, which still further complicates the situation; and, besides, he was a Dana! Here was a complex which should have staggered Life. Who could escape from all of this? Leave that to Life. Up she comes boldly, just as if she expected the boy to take her offer. And he did take it. He fell ill with some affliction of the eyes; and, going down to the Boston wharfs, shipped as a common sailor before the mast in the little brig Pilgrim for a two years’ trip around the Horn. And out of that escape from Boston and Harvard and the Danas, he brought back one of[7] the three greatest sea stories in literature—a book that all of Boston and Harvard and the Danas combined could never have written except for this escape.

The question is: Does Life come along to-day, as then, and offer us, as it offered Dana, such a magical chance? Is there any escape for us?

We are not all Danas, and so we are certainly not worse off than he was; but our circumstances are distinctly different, and rather disquieting. This chance was given Dana far back in 1834, nearly one hundred years ago, when escape was possible, and when Dana was a boy. It was a young world a hundred years ago, and full of adventure. One could escape then because there was some place to escape into; but to round the Horn to-day is to land, not on wild Point Loma, but at San Diego, with the single exception of Monte Carlo, the most decorous and conventional city on the planet.

Perhaps my niece and the college boy of the interview are right.

About the time that Dana was escaping from Boston, a young man by the name of Henry David Thoreau tried to escape from Concord,[8] of the same State. He had no deep-sea wharf, no brig like the Pilgrim, but, as one must seize such things as are at hand in an escape, Thoreau took a rowboat and the near-by river and started off. He rowed and rowed for a week, and came to Concord, New Hampshire. Here he took to his diary and wrote that there were no frontiers this way any longer. “This generation has come into the world fatally late for some enterprises. Go where we will on the surface of things, men have been there before us. We cannot have the pleasure of erecting the last house; that was long ago set up in the suburbs of Astoria City, and our boundaries have literally been run to the South Sea.”

Born in 1817, more than a hundred years ago, and still born fatally late! How late, then, was I born? and you, my son? and you, my pretty niece?

but you and I have missed the early glory that hath passed forever from the morning earth,” she makes reply.

But I would say to her: It was ten years later,[9] ten whole years after Thoreau’s tame adventure on the Merrimac, that gold was discovered in California. Here was a magical chance as late as the year ’Forty-Nine, and Life offered it to a young man of Providence and Brooklyn by the name of Bret Harte. He took it. There was something in him for which the decorous and conventional round of these cities allowed no place in their scheme. He went into the gold-fields and brought out “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” another piece of the Literature of Escape. Then my students answer: “Yes, but there are no more outcasts in Poker Flat, and whom are we to write about?”

Alas, ’tis true, they’re in their graves, that gentle race of gamblers. With the wind-flower and the violet they perished long ago, as literary material. Eighteen-Forty-Nine will be having its hundredth anniversary soon. But, some fifty years later, gold was struck again—this time on the Yukon. Here was another magical chance. And there was a young fellow walking the streets of Boston along with me, literally begging bread with me from editorial door to editorial door, by the name of Jack London.[10] Life came up to us and offered us this magical chance, and Jack took it, bringing out of the Yukon a story called “Building a Fire” which is surely a part of the immortal Literature of Escape.

“Well, what would he write about now?” they ask. “What has happened since?”

“Peary has found the North Pole,” I reply.

“Yes, and Amundsen, or somebody, has found the South Pole!” they cry. “And what’s the use of living in a world of only two poles, and some one finding both of them before we come along!”

There is something in that. It is a bad sort of world that has only two poles. It should be stuck full of poles, one for each of us. But there are only two, and a flag flies from each of them; as a flag flies over every terrestrial spot in between them: over Mount McKinley now; over the River of Doubt now, so that we are stopped from singing, as once we sang,—

There is no more river to cross. Theodore Roosevelt crossed it. There is nothing to cross;[11] no place to go where, on the surface of things, men have not been there before us. Yes, yes, there is Mount Everest. No one has yet stood on that peak; but there is an expedition climbing it, camping to-day at about twenty-five thousand feet up, with only two or three thousand feet more to go. And here we are in Hingham!

It looks bad. My young niece is possibly right, after all. East, west, north, south, where is a frontier? Where shall I go from here and find an escape?

Not overland any longer, for even Thoreau could find no frontier this way; and not by sea now, for here comes John Masefield, poet and sailor, saying the frontier has disappeared from off the sea; that the clipper ship, the ship of dreams, has foundered and gone down; that you can haunt the wharves these piping times of steam,

Listen, now, for this is the message of the poem:

[12]

which makes me thank Heaven for my farm, where the same old romantic hoe remains about what it ever was—the first recorded wedding present.

Mr. Masefield’s observations are dated 1912. Prior to that year real clipper ships rode the deep, and real romance. It was prior to 1839 that there were real frontiers and romance in the land, and a last house (a government lighthouse) still to be set up in the suburbs of Astoria City. Going a little farther back, we find that prior to 1491 (B.C.), about the year 4000 according to the margin of the King James Version, there were giants in the earth, and the stories in the Book of Genesis show that there were romances as well as giants in those days. But, like Thoreau and Masefield, Moses was born fatally late. I feel sorry for Moses and my niece.

Let us pause here for a sad brief moment in order to see just where Moses was when Life sought him out and proffered him a magical chance in the shape of a trip to Egypt. Where was Moses? and what was he doing? To begin[13] with, he was keeping goats, a fairly common occupation in those days, though rather a rare job now. But that was not all: Moses was keeping these goats for Jethro, his father-in-law. Now you begin to get some inkling as to where Moses was. But this is not the worst of it: for Moses was keeping the goats for his father-in-law on “the back side of the desert.” One would certainly say that the front side of any desert would be far enough away, and sterile enough of romance, if one had to keep one’s father-in-law’s goats there; but to keep the goats of your father-in-law on the back side of a desert is to be farther off than Hingham, or any place I know. And here was Moses when Life came upon him offering him an escape into Egypt.

He was born fatally late, Moses was, just like Thoreau and my niece. He might have been one of my own college men, so like a college man’s was his answer!

“No, no!” he complained, “I don’t want to go down to Egypt. There is nothing doing down in Egypt. I’m slow of speech; without imagination; and it’s a hard job, anyway. Let me stay here and be goatherd to Jethro, my father-in-law,[14] and dream of the good old days of the giants, when men began to multiply upon the face of the earth, when the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair. Ah!—there was something doing in those days!”

From Moses to Masefield the times have been fatally late. And so mine are, with the clipper ships, the frontiers, the giants, and the daughters of men that are fair, all gone! But I seem to see them fair. I suppose I ought not, having been born so fatally late. And I wonder if I might not find a giant, too, if I should hunt? and a clipper ship? and a frontier? and even an escape from Hingham!

Lumber is still brought in boats to one of Hingham’s old wharves, but the rest of her wharves are deserted. Her citizens, who used to do business in great waters, stop now in Hingham Harbor to catch smelts. Change and some decay one can see all about Hingham, but little chance of escape.

Down at the foot of Mullein Hill, on which my house stands, there runs a long, long trail awinding into that land of my dreams; but I ask: Where does it cross the frontier? I have[15] traveled it, going south, in my Ford (if you are out for frontiers, take a Ford. We have a saying here in Hingham that a Ford will take a man anywhere—except into good society!)—I say I have gone south over this road which runs at the foot of Mullein Hill as far as Philadelphia, and no frontier!—the next stop was Chester. I have gone east over the same road until I came to within ten miles of Skowhegan, Maine, where I ran into a steam-roller on the road. When you meet a steam-roller on a road in Maine, you are very near the frontier. If there is any adventure for you on the trip, it will be on the détour around that steam-roller. But under the roller ran the road and on into Skowhegan, and on out of Skowhegan into Aroostook County, the richest county in the United States, where they raise “spuds” enough to feed, not only Boston, but the rest of dear old Ireland with her; and all

the way from Hingham to Aroostook, except at the steam-roller, there was no chance to get off.

And this road, taking a turn among these glorious potato-fields of Maine, starts over the mountains of New Hampshire, crosses the corn and cattle belt in the central portion of the[16] country, and, running on and on, dips into the Imperial Valley in far-off California, the hottest cultivated spot on earth. And all the way from Hingham, roundabout by Maine, to the Imperial Valley, you may not stop, unless you run out of “gas.” And the oil companies do not intend this magical chance to attend you, for they have planted gasoline tanks under every second telegraph pole all the way.

This road, starting from Mullein Hill, Hingham, and running to Aroostook, Maine, and to the Imperial Valley in California, takes a new turn among the melon-fields there, works its way back along the Gulf States, binding their ragged edge like a selvage, and, bending into Florida, threads its way among the Everglades and out, heading off across the cotton-fields, on across the corn and cattle belt again, climbs Pike’s Peak and down, climbs Mount Hood and down, and, faring on into the State of Washington, climbs the fruited slopes of old Tacoma, “The Mountain that was God.” And all the way from Hingham some one has been there before us, and laid an oiled road for us, and left us no frontier.

[17]Surely we are born late; and my pretty niece fatally late. The frontier is gone. The buffaloes are gone. I saw their ancient trails out of the car windows as my train roared over the Canadian prairie, wavering parallel paths in the virgin sod, a vivider green than the rest of the grass, narrow meandering lines vanishing short of the far-off horizon where hung a cloud not larger than a man’s hand, like the dust of the last disappearing herd.

“Hank” Monk is gone. This king of overland stage-drivers sleeps in Carson City; and beside sleeps his Concord coach of split hickory. Concord has ceased to make such coaches.

From Hell Gate now to Golden Gate there are only miles, and any machine makes a mere holiday of the trip.

A young acquaintance of mine has just made the coast-to-coast run, driving her own car. She said to me on arriving here that “it was an awful monotonous journey.” Didn’t anything happen? I asked with considerable surprise. No, nothing happened. Didn’t she see anything[18] of interest? Wasn’t there any excitement? Didn’t she have any adventures? No, she didn’t see anything; she didn’t get a bit of excitement out of it; there wasn’t any adventure; just one blinkety-blank mile after another!

“Incredible!” I cried.

“Oh, yes,” she said, her eyes brightening, something like a thrill in her voice, “I did have three punctures!”

All the way from Golden Gate to Hell Gate with three punctures to break the cushioned tenor of her way. This is what life has come to.

Then she said: “There were two things on the trip that did greatly interest me. But I don’t exactly know why; and I am afraid to tell you about them for fear you will think me such a big fool.”

“No,” I answered, “I won’t think you any bigger fool than I do now, so what were the two interesting things?”

“Well,” she began (and I wish the reader would note the strictly American touch in this description), “one of them was Luther Burbank’s spineless cactus.” (Notice, I say, the spineless quality of this cactus.)

[19]The girl read my face and exclaimed, much hurt: “There! I knew you would poke fun at me.”

“But tell what the other thing was,” I begged. “Let’s get the sordid story over as fast as we can.”

“I don’t know even yet what it all meant,” she went on, “but, as I was crossing the Arizona desert, I saw a long petition being circulated by the native Arizonians, praying the National Congress to preserve for them and for posterity a portion of their original desert.”

My poor niece! Moses saw the giants pass away; Thoreau saw the frontier pass away; Masefield sees the clipper ship pass away; but it remains for my niece and her day to see the Great American Desert wiped out by the irrigation ditch, and the gila monster with the desert, and the need of a shovel on the trip across the sands! Have we eaten the cassaba melon and gone mad? Is it all of life to make the desert blossom as the rose? To bring forth cassaba melons, and alligator pears, and spineless cacti for cow feed?

Ploughing the desert; turning the giant cactus[20] into ensilage, as if to live were a silo—for fear of this the native Arizonians are asking Congress that a portion of their original desert and of Life’s adventure and romance be saved to them and to their children.

It is sad. But this is not the worst of it: for they have laid an oiled road across that desert, as if it were the whole of life to get through to San Diego on time.

There is no hope for a man who gets through to San Diego on time. He will strike Los Angeles on time, come to San Francisco on time. Portland on time, Winnipeg, Chicago, Boston, and Hingham on time; where he will die on time, be buried on time, rise on time, and keep going on time, with never a chance to get off. But where is the adventure in that? It is not the whole of life to get through to San Diego on time. I had rather leave my bones to bleach beneath a bush than travel on and on by schedule, always making life’s connections, and so missing always life’s magical chances. Don’t you remember your Mother Goose, wise old dear?

And he was the only little duffer in the whole school to get a poem written to him. The other children came on time and passed into oblivion; this boy (he certainly was a boy) came late and has become immortal.