The Opinions of a Philosopher | Page 2

have acted very differently. A philosopher of the
grandest type would have reasoned that what was done was done, and
that there was no more use in crying over fallen soot than over spilt
milk. He would calmly have adopted prompt measures to ameliorate
the situation, and after the servants were fairly at work would have
taken his wife apart and pointed out to her, in well-chosen language,
that here was only another instance of his superior wisdom. One of a
more virulent type, but still a philosopher, might have indulged in
mirth--quiet sarcastic mirth. No person of a truly philosophic cast of
mind and with a rooted antipathy to damning would have sworn lustily
as I did.
I remember taking little Fred, my namesake and eldest son, to skate
with me one winter's afternoon on a suburban pond. He did famously
for a tyro, but we both wearied at last of his everlasting strife to
maintain the perpendicular, and I was conscious of a rush of joy when
he became completely absorbed in watching a man who was fishing for
pickerel. Have you ever fished for pickerel through a hole in the ice? If
so you will recall that it is chilly and rather dispiriting work, especially
if the fish are shy. They certainly were shy that afternoon, for the
individual in question had angled long and bagged nothing, as I gleaned
from the answers to the direct interrogatories put by my urchin during
the few minutes I stood paternally by and watched the proceedings.
"Caught anything?"
"Nop."
"Had a bite?"
"Nop."

"How long you been fishing?"
"An hour."
As I glided away light-heartedly on the delicious curves of the outer
edge, I reflected that he was evidently a persevering pot-hunter who
would not be easily discouraged, and that I could count upon his
engrossing the attention of my offspring for a considerable period.
Accordingly, I was surprised some five minutes later to observe the
fisherman (who wore no skates) shambling across the pond toward the
shore. Glancing from him to his late station I perceived a little group of
skaters gathered around my son and heir, who was dabbling with a
stick in the abandoned hole. They appeared to be diverted by something
and one of them, my friend Harry Bolles, who had his handkerchief up
to his mouth, made a bee-line to meet me. From his lips I learned what
had happened, which was this wise: The horny-handed pot-hunter,
having presently pulled a solitary pickerel out upon the ice and freed it
from his hook, turned aside to cut another piece of bait; whereupon my
hopeful picked up the fish and popped it back into its native element
without so much as a syllable of commentary; and thereupon (being act
three in the tragedy) he of the horny hand, having realized the situation
in its terrible entirety, pulled up his line, shovelled back the particles of
ice into the hole and betook himself upon his shambling way without
one word. Not a word, mark you. There was a real philosopher, if you
like, a thorough-going, square-trotting philosopher. The only
alternative was child-murder or silence, and my pot-hunter chose the
simplest form of the dilemma. "I thought the fish would like it," said
little Fred, when interrogated upon the subject.
And yet, despite my occasional inability to practice what I preach,
Josephine is correct in her diagnosis that my cast of mind is becoming
more philosophic as the years roll on. The consciousness that I am the
author of four children (two strapping sons and two tall daughters),
anyone of whom may constitute me a grandfather before I am fifty,
renders me conservative and disposed, metaphorically speaking, to
draw in my horns a little. I am beginning to go to church again, for
instance. You may have taken it for granted that I have been regular in

my attendance at the sanctuary. Certainly I have never been a scoffer;
but, on the other hand, I must confess that somehow it has come to pass
since Josephine and I plighted our troth that our pew has stood empty
on the Lord's day oftener than the orthodox consider fitting. And the
worst of it is I used to attend service about every other Sabbath before I
became a benedict, and Josephine taught a Sunday-school class up to
within six months of our wedding ceremony. She, dear girl, has
harbored ever since the belief that she continues to go to church almost
every Sunday either in the morning or the afternoon, a harmless
delusion which for some time I took no pains to dispel, knowing as I
did that she meant to go every Sunday. Yet I knew also that pitiless,
unemotional statistics would reveal an average attendance on her part
of rather