The Joyful Heart | Page 5

the moment it comes from the binder. A few
more months will suffice to blur the memory of those irrevocable,
nauseating foundry proofs. If he forbears--instead of being sickened by
the stuff, no gentle reader, I venture to predict, will be more keenly and
delicately intrigued by the volume's vigors and subtleties.
If you have recently made a fortune, be sure, in the course of your
Continental wanderings, to take many a third-class carriage full of
witty peasants, and stop at many an "unpretending" inn "Of the White
Hind," with bowered rose-garden and bowling-green running down to
the trout-filled river, and mine ample hostess herself to make and bring
you the dish for which she is famous over half the countryside. Thus
you will increase by at least one Baedekerian star-power the luster of
the next Grand Hotel Royal de l'Univers which may receive you. And
be sure to alternate pedestrianism with motoring, and the "peanut"
gallery with the stage-box. Omit not to punctuate with stag vacations
long periods of domestic felicity. When Solomon declared that all was
vanity and vexation of spirit I suspect that he had been more than
unusually intemperate in frequenting the hymeneal altar.
Why is it that the young painters, musicians, and playwrights who win
fame and fortune as heroes in the novels of Mr. E. F. Benson enjoy
achievement so hugely? Simply because they are exuberant in mind,
body, and spirit, and, if not averse to brandy and soda, are in other
ways, at least, paragons of moderation. And yet, in his "Book of

Months," Mr. Benson requests God to help those who have attained!
With this fourfold equipment of the three exuberances and moderation,
I defy Solomon himself in all his glory not to enjoy the situation
immensely and settle down in high good humor and content with the
paltry few scores of wives already achieved. I defy him not to enjoy
even his fame.
We have heard much from the gloomily illustrious about the fraudulent
promise of fame. At a distance, they admit, it seems like a banquet
board spread with a most toothsome feast. But step up to the table. All
you find there is dust and ashes, vanity and vexation of spirit and a
desiccated joint that defies the stoutest carver. If a man holds this view,
however, you may be rather sure that he belongs to the bourgeois great.
For it is just as bourgeois to win fame and then not know what on earth
to do with it, as it is to win fortune and then not know what on earth to
do with it. The more cultivated a famous man is, the more he must
enjoy the situation; for along with his dry scrag of fame, the more he
must have of the sauce which alone makes it palatable. The recipe for
this sauce runs as follows: to one amphoraful best physical exuberance
add spice of keen perception, cream of imagination, and fruits of the
spirit. Serve with grain of salt.
That famous person is sauceless who can, without a tingle of joy,
overhear the couple in the next steamer-chairs mentioning his name
casually to each other as an accepted and honored household word. He
has no sauce for his scrag if he, unmoved, can see the face of some
beautiful child in the holiday crowd suddenly illuminated by the
pleasure of recognizing him, from his pictures, as the author of her
favorite story. He is bourgeois if it gives him no joy when the weight of
his name swings the beam toward the good cause; or when the mail
brings luminous gratitude and comprehension from the perfect stranger
in Topeka or Tokyo. No; fame to the truly cultivated should be fully as
enjoyable as traveling hopefully toward fame.
In certain other cases, indeed, attainment is even more delicious than
the hope thereof. Think of the long, cool drink at the New Mexican
pueblo after a day in the incandescent desert, with your tongue

gradually enlarging itself from thirst. How is it with you, O golfer,
when, even up at the eighteenth, you top into the hazard, make a
desperate demonstration with the niblick, and wipe the sand out of your
eyes barely in time to see your ball creep across the distant green and
drop into the hole? Has not the new president's aged father a slightly
better time at the inauguration of his dear boy than he had at any time
during the fifty years of hoping for and predicting that consummation?
Does not the successful altruist enjoy more keenly the certainty of
having made the world a better place to live in, than he had enjoyed the
hope of achieving that desirable end? Can there be any comparison
between the joys of the tempest-driven soul aspiring,