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Verbal Adventures

HE other day I re-read that exquisite little classic, Mrs. Meynell's "FellowTravellers with a Bird." Its immediate effect was to make me regret for the thousandth time that I have failed to keep a daily record of the verbal quaintnesses and comicalities of my own small adventurers on the uncharted seas of speech. They are so striking at the time these sayings; one is sure that one will not forget them; they pass into the family vernacular, apparently "for good." But a new idiom is coined, and the latest one is superseded, and so these fresh and inimitable experiments go unrecorded, and eventually are lost.

We grown-ups, I suppose, can realize but dimly, in occasional flashes of insight, what an unconquered, experimental thing language is to a child. A child of four uses his own small vocabulary, for daily purposes, with such ease and assurance that we forget that he is not, like ourselves, using the small change he carries in his pocket, so to speak, but is operating upon his entire capital. He is consciously pattering about on the wet sands at the water-line, aware all the while of the immense, mysterious ocean of adult speech lying out beyond him. He shows this by the promptitude and interest with which he seizes upon and examines every new word that seems to come at all within the range of his possibilities. An alert child hardly ever lets one get by. One day, being, I suppose, in a rather toplofty mood, I added to my customary "You mustn't do that, Jimby," the somewhat ornate "I cannot allow such conduct." Both Jimby and his small sister were instantly on the alert. "What's conduct, mother?" one of them inquired, while the other listened, spellbound. My explanation, however, made less impression upon them than the mere personality, so to speak, of that fascinating new word. A few moments later they were poring over a picture-book together.. "There's one conduct," said the threeyear-old, "and there's another—and there's another." She was pointing to totally dissimilar objects. No matter; the objects

were only symbols, make-believes; the reality was the impact of that neat, effective new sound-the word itself.

She was really doing exactly what the latest literary Post-Impressionists are doing; letting words stand for what they seem to mean at the moment to the user, and not for the particular things usage has agreed they shall mean. A child, however, soon abandons this method, finding it impracticable since language grew out of the very fact that agreement is necessary for practical purposes, and its usefulness, therefore, depends upon such an agreement. And so, doubtless, would the Post-Impressionist, if he were not at liberty to fall back, in the daily conduct of life, upon the unthinking arbitrariness of the vulgar. If he were compelled to deal with a soulful grocer who insisted upon giving him pickles when he asked for cheese, on the ground that cheese sounded green and slender to him instead of yellow and slab-like, they would probably find it necessary to sacrifice the impression of one to that of the other. Or, as a compromise, they might find some neutral-toned substantive which the ear of each could tolerate as the audible symbol of cheese. In which case they would be no longer pure Impressionists.

But the

The same small adventurer who so liked the sound of "conduct" was greatly taken by the possibilities of the abstract noun. Of course she heard one, and unconsciously examined it before she made one. first we knew of it was when one evening, after a funeral in the neighborhood had greatly interested the children, she settled herself in my lap and suggested cosily: "Now let's talk about deadness!" Like Stevenson's little protagonist, she thinks that swinging is "the pleasantest thing ever a child can do," and of course reckless big fathers who swing one very high are quite the pleasantest persons. But there is such a thing as swinging too high when one is only three, and one day she called out to her father: "That's enough highness!" and then added, hastily: "But it's not enough swingness!" Anybody who has a child in the house

can imagine how the family overworked that formula during the succeeding weeks.

She is very fond of referring to certain imaginary sisters of hers, whose number varies with mood and circumstances. One day she startled us by the truly staggering announcement: "I had a million sistersbut they all died 'cept three." When asked the reason for this unprecedented mortality, she replied promptly: "They were killed in the war." (She pronounced it like "star.") Numbers, indeed, seem to assert an early fascination for children. They pass through a harrowing stage when nearly every question must be answered in terms of pounds, gallons, or inches. "How deep is that pond, mother?" "Oh, it's not very deep," you answer comfortably, out of the untroubled depths of your own thoughts. "But how deep is it?" "Oh, about two feet," you answer, hastily arousing yourself. "But how deep is it?" this time with a tweak at your sleeve, and an imperiousness that threatens to require discipline. Then, if you are wise, you will assert unhesitatingly that that pond is three feet five inches deep -and peace will reign.

The six-year-old has observed that millions and thousands are not as common in adult speech as less pretentious numerals; and he evidently has an ambition to use them in the convincing, offhand way that sounds so interesting in the conversation of his elders. "Did sister cry while mother was gone?" he is asked. "Yes, she did, mother." "Did she cry very long?" And then he answers, in his most businesslike masculine voice: "Oh, only about twentyfour hours!"

The mere inaccuracies of children-little tricks and pronunciations due to the fact that they have simply failed to hear or to remember correctly, are inimitably quaint, characteristic, and touching. Perhaps it is their unconsciousness of the linguistic pitfalls into which they step so rashly that makes these little blunders so endearing; at any rate I always have a special desire to kiss the little girl who comes to ask me to tie up her "thinger," and who tells me she is "such in a hurry" because she thinks it is going to bleed. And the little boy who inquires about the "alfahol" stove provokes, coincidently with the irrepressible grown-up smile, the same adoring and protecting impulse.

"The man who doesn't play golf is going to die at sixty, and he might as well"—this idea is supplied by a magazine lying on my table.

For my own part, I'm busy trying to write a plausible regret about the picnic my benevolent friend wants to arrange for next Thursday. It is difficult, and I reflect that the shame with which one refuses to undertake a disagreeable duty is nothing to the confusion which covers the person who attempts to beg off from some bit of amusement.

Recreations prescribed; duties elective: this is the parlous state toward which our school of life seems tending.

The letter I am writing appears suddenly to turn into a declaration of war. Before the whole world and my friends I undertake to protest against the tyranny of required pleasures, and to support my position by the force of unanswerable logic. Leaning back comfortably in my chair I proceed to formulate a manifesto.

The notion that holding a neighbor's baby is a privilege and a joy has long since been exploded in literature, and yet young mothers go on offering this pleasure, and criticising the technique of the performance as if the victims had a real desire to be coached. Even those who flee the baby are prone to hold out their own little pets, demanding that their friends adopt the particular games or holiday occupations or shows that they themselves enjoy. Social workers busily provide recreation for the unemployed. Half the world is ready to tell both the rich and the poor how to spend their leisure moments; and those of us who are neither rich nor poor receive advice from our acquaintances. Toward the diversions of the other person the public assumes altogether too solemn a responsibility.

If recreation is the heart of life, as the social workers maintain, the one essential element in existence, it would seem to be a somewhat personal matter, giving opportu

nity for individual initiative. But the poor are not the only people whose amusements are pitifully restricted to a few fashionable types. When we greet an acquaintance who has spent a week's holiday in New York, do we expect him to tell us of some individual choice of diversion, among the many that might be found there? Hardly. He knows so well what to say that the plays he has seen and the restaurants where he has eaten are listed already among his conversational precautions.

I sympathize with the man who concealed from the compilers of Who's Who his favorite recreations as if they had been the bones of the family skeleton, though in truth they were innocent even beyond gardening and golf. Such monotony as appears among the pastimes registered in that amusing book would indicate the failure of our civilization if it were matched by a similar conventionality in the record of work and achievement.

The sameness of "automobiling," "sailing," "golf," is drearier in print, let us hope, than in real life. My most affectionate feeling for the automobile was induced by an unscheduled spontaneity of a machine belonging to a friend of mine who had included me in one of his carefully arranged pleasure tours. My friend was so much annoyed that I didn't venture to tell him how pleased I felt at the overturn of his too adequate plans. The machine stuck (the word is doubtless untechnical); my friend and I spent our holiday in a country hotel; I, at least, slept through a blissful afternoon and became thus a happier human being. To plan a nap and go off to that country hotel to take it would have been too absurd. The beauty of the afternoon lay in the perfect harmony between my mood and the recreation that offered itself at the moment. Any anticipation would have ruined it.

My friend wanted, above all things, to carry out the scheme that he had made for the day; but he had made that scheme, and there he would have had the advantage of me. He was, after all, asking me to hold his baby.

Any work that a man does may be supposed to contribute to the well or ill being of the world. The world has, therefore, a right within limits to help him plan it. But

recreation is not necessarily a social affair, social workers to the contrary notwithstanding. Nor need it be foreseen, scheduled, even by the conscientious citizen who intends to get, somewhere and at some time, his reasonable share of entertainment.

If Nature had not taken a hand in arranging our recreations the field would be freer for human dictation. But the truth is that we have to play as we can. It was a clever Frenchwoman who said: "Les belles dents rendent gaies." When beautiful teeth determine our manner of saying good-morning to the world, it is foolish for our friends to quarrel with our temperament.

The jack-in-the-box contrivances with which some people force amusement upon their outraged acquaintances represent the reductio ad absurdum of required pleasures. My army of revolt might well be armed with such odious weapons. Every person who tells his neighbor to play golf, or go fishing, should have trained upon him an innocent-looking gun from which would issue a surprising stream of water or an agitating snake.

This picture of the battle amuses me, and I dare say I am smiling when the player of solitaire across the room looks over at me. His eyebrows rise. "If I were you," he remarks, "I would work while I worked and play when I had leisure. Do you call it recreation to sit there doing nothing?"

"Why don't you take up photography?" asks his brother; "that would keep you outdoors a good deal and give you something to show your friends."

"But suppose I prefer a hobby that isn't very presentable?" The two men pause in shocked silence, and I seize the opportunity. "If I never ask the world to admire it I can have all the more fun with it myself." "Is it really so outlandish?"

With only an inward smile at the thought of my gentle little hobby, I sternly continue: "I shall elect my own pleasures and let other people elect theirs. I shall never attempt to arrange a curriculum for my friends. And as for that picnic next Thursday—"

"I wouldn't let anybody browbeat me into going to any picnic”—it is the devotee of solitaire who has spoken.

B

RHEIMS AND LOUVAIN

ETWEEN the Seine and the Rhine lay once a beautiful land wherein more history was made, and recorded in old monuments full of grace and grandeur and fancy, than in almost any other region of the world. The old names were best, for each aroused memory and begot strange dreams: Flanders, Brabant, the Palatinate; Picardy, Valois, Champaigne, Franche-Comté; Artois, Burgundy, and Bar. And the town names ring with the same sonorous melody, evoking the ghosts of a great and indelible past: Bruges, Ghent, Louvain, and Liège, Aix-la-Chapelle, Coblentz, and Treves; Ypres and Lille, Tournay and Fontenay, Arras and Malplaquet, Laon, Nancy, Verdun, and Varennes, Amiens, Soissons, and Rheims. Cæsar, Charlemagne, St. Louis, Napoleon, with proconsuls, paladins, crusaders, and marshals unnumbered; kings, prince bishops, monks, knights, and aureoled saints take form and shape again at the clang of the splendid names.

And in all these places, and by all these men (and elsewhere endlessly, and by hands unnumbered), two thousand years had wrought its visible manifestation in abbey, church, and cathedral, in manor and palace and castle, in trade hall and civic hall, and in library and seminary and school.

Wars, great and small, have swept it from river to river, but much has been free for a century and all of it free for forty years. Under every oppression and every adversity it has thriven and grown rich, not in material things alone, but in those commodities that have actual intrinsic value; and two months ago it was the most prosperous, peaceful, and industrious quarter of Europe. Whatever the war, however violent the opposing agencies, its priceless records of architecture and other arts were piously or craftily spared, except when the madness of the French Revolution swept over its convents and cloisters, leaving Villers, St. Bavon, St. Jean des Vignes, the Abbaye des Lys, dead witnesses of the faith that had built them, and the spared monuments as well.

When the University of Louvain recently passed in the smoke and flame of a murdered

city; when the church of St. Pierre and the cathedral of Malines and the shrine of Our Lady of Rheims were shattered by bombs and swept by devouring fire, there was something in it all other than the grim necessity of a savage war; there was the symbol of a new thing in the world, built on all Louvain, Malines and Rheims denied, and destroying the very outward show of what could not exist on earth side by side with its potent and dominant negation.

Thus far, of the great cities, Liège, Louvain, Malines, and Rheims are gone, with the greater part of their treasured art, while Laon, Soissons, and Namur have been grievously wrecked, Antwerp and Brussels are devastated, and innumerable smaller cities lie in the path of a furious army. Apparently, Amiens, Noyon, Bruges, and Ghent are now safe, but endless opportunities open for destruction and pillage, and we may well be prepared for irreparable loss before the invader is hurled back across his natural river frontier. Let us consider, not what already has been annihilated, but the kind of art it was, so measuring, in a degree, the quality of our loss-and of what we still may lose.

First of all, there are the towns themselves, for all art is not concentrated in hôtel de ville and cathedral; it shows itself sometimes in more appealing guise in the river villages and proud cities, and its testimony to a great past is here equally potent. Malines, Dinant, and Huy, all of which are gone, were treasures that belonged to all the world; Namur and Plombières we could not spare, and as for Bruges and Ghent, even apart from their exquisite architecture and their treasures of painting, the soul shudders at what might happen there were they involved in the retreat of a disorganized army, when one considers what happened to Liège and Louvain in its victorious advance. All Belgium and Luxembourg, all Picardy and Champaigne are, or were, rich with lovely little towns and villages, each a work of art in itself: they are shrivelling like a flower garden under a first frost, and, it may be, in a little while none will remain.

The major architecture of this unhappy