Lifes Enthusiasms | Page 7

weight of years, remained young men to the last. When
Agassiz died, the Harvard students "laid a wreath of laurel on his bier
and their manly voices sang a requiem, for he had been a student all his
life long, and when he died he was younger than any of them."
Jefferson was in the seventies when he turned back to his early
ambition, the foundation of the University of Virginia. The mother of
Stanford University was older than Jefferson before she laid down the
great work of her life as completed. When the heart is full, it shows
itself in action as well as in speech. When the heart is empty, then life
is no longer worth while. The days pass and there is no pleasure in
them. Let us then fill our souls with noble ideals of knowledge, of art,
of action. "Let us lay up a stock of enthusiasms in our youth, lest we
reach the end of our journey with an empty heart, for we lose many of
them by the way."
We hear much in these days of the wickedness of power, of the evil
behavior of men in high places, of men in low places, and men whom
the people have been perforce obliged to trust. This is no new thing,
though the struggle against it, the combination of the forces of reform
and blackmail, of dreamers and highwaymen, is offering some new
phases.
There is a kind of music popular with uncritical audiences and with
people who know no better, which answers to the name of "ragtime." It
is the music of those who do not know good music or who have not the
moral force to demand it. The spirit of ragtime is not confined to music:
graft is the ragtime of business, the spoils system the ragtime of politics,
adulteration the ragtime of manufacture. There is ragtime science,
ragtime literature, ragtime religion. You will know each of these by its
quick returns. The spirit of ragtime determines the six best sellers, the
most popular policeman, the favorite congressman, the wealthiest
corporation, the church which soonest rents its pews.

But it does not, control the man who thinks for himself. It has no lien
on the movements of history, its decrees avail nothing in the fixing of
truth. The movements of the stars pay it no tribute, neither do the
movements of humanity. The power of graft is a transient deception.
Emerson's parable of the illusions gives the clue to our time, to all time,
in its contrast of the things which appear with the things that abide.
"There is no chance and no anarchy in the Universe," says Emerson,
"all is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.
The young mortal enters the hall of the firmament; there he is alone
with them alone, they pronouncing on him benedictions and gifts, and
beckoning him up to their thrones. On the instant and incessantly fall
snow storms of illusions. He fancies himself in a vast crowd which
sways this way and that and whose movements and doings he must
obey. He fancies himself poor, orphaned, insignificant. The mad crowd
drives hither and thither, now furiously commanding this thing to be
done, now that. What is he that he should resist their will and think and
act for himself? Every moment new changes and new showers of
deceptions to baffle and distract him. And when, by and by, for an
instant the air clears and the cloud lifts a little, there are the gods still
sitting around him on their thrones--they alone with him alone."
--
The last paragraphs of this little essay were written within a huge hotel
of steel and stone in the heart of a bustling city, in the most gracious of
lands and under the bluest of skies. A great commercial city it was, a
wondrous city, full of all manner of men--eager, impulsive, loving,
enthusiastic men; men cunning and grasping, given over to all "high,
hard lust and wilful deed;" carefree, joyous men living in the present
and taking their chances for the future; men who have whistled all the
airs that fluttering birds and frolicking children have learned to sing;
workmen of all grades, quiet, courageous and self-respecting, and weak,
disgruntled and incapable; bright-eyed, clear-headed, sagacious men,
such men as build a state; hopeless, broken, disappointed men, who
have made this city of hope their last resort; gamblers, parasites,
bartenders, agitators, self-seekers, haters of men and haters of

organization, impossibles, men uncontrolled and uncontrollable, of
every nation and with every dialect of the civilized world--and of
uncivilized worlds also;--the most cosmopolitan of all American towns,
the one fullest of the joy of living, the one least fearful of future
disaster, "serene, indifferent to fate," thus