Beside Still Waters, Arthur Christopher Benson [good books for high schoolers .txt] 📗

the colleges at Cambridge. To wander through their courts, to read the mysterious names inscribed over unknown doors, to think of the long succession of inmates, grave or light-hearted, that lived within, either for a happy space of youth, or through long quiet years; this never ceased to communicate to him a certain thrill of emotion.

The only period of his life that seemed to Hugh to lack this quality of poetry were the years of his official life in London, the years that the locust had eaten. He did not grudge having spent them so, for they had given a sort of solidity and gravity to life; but now that he was free to live as he chose, he determined that he would, if he could, so spend his days, that there should be as little as possible of this dull and ugly quality intermixed with them; the sadness and incompleteness of countless lives seemed to Hugh to arise from the fact that so many men settled down to mechanical toil, which first robbed them of their freshness, and then routine became essential to them. But Hugh determined that neither his work nor his occupation should have this sunless and dismal quality; that he would deliberately eschew the things that brought him dreariness, and the people who took a mean and conventional view; that he would not take up, in a spirit of heavy rectitude, work for which he knew himself to be unfit; and that such mechanical work as he felt bound to undertake should be regarded by him in the light of a tonic, which should enable him to return to his chosen work with a sense of gladness and relief.

This would demand a certain sustained effort, he foresaw. But whatever qualities he possessed, he knew that he could reckon upon a vital impatience of things that were dull and common; moreover it was possible to determine that, whatever happened, he would not do things in a dull way; so much depended upon how they were handled and executed. One of the dullest things in the world was the multiplication of unnecessary business. So many people made the mistake of thinking that by minute organisation the success of a system could be guaranteed. Hugh knew that the real secret was to select the right personalities, and to leave systems elastic and simple, and that thus the best results were achieved; the most depressing thing in the world was a dull person administering faithfully an elaborate system; one of the most inspiring sights was an original man making the best of a bad system.

And so Hugh resolved that he would bring to his task, his leisure, his relations with others, his exits and entrances, his silence and his speech, a freshness and a zest, not directed to surprising or interesting others--that was the most vulgar expedient of all--but with a deliberate design to transmute, as by the touch of the magical stone, the common materials of life into pure gold. He would endeavour to discern the poetical quality in everything and in everyone. In inanimate things this was easy enough, for they were already full of pungent distinctness, of subtle difference; it was all there, waiting merely to be discerned. With people it was different, because there were so many who stared solemnly and impenetrably, who repelled one with remarks about the weather and the events of the day, as a man repels a barge with a pole. With such people it would be necessary to try a number of conversational flies over the surface of the sleeping pool, in the hope that some impulse, some pleasant trait would dart irresistibly to the surface, and be hauled struggling ashore. Hugh had seen, more than once, strange, repressed, mournful things looking out of the guarded eyes of dreary persons; and it would be his business to entice these to the light. He determined, too, to cultivate the art of being alone. There were many people in the world who found themselves the poorest of all company, and Hugh resolved that he would find his own society the most interesting of all; he would not be beaten by life, as so many people appeared to him to be. Of course he knew that there were threatening clouds in the sky, that in a moment might burst and drench the air with driving rain. But Hugh hoped that his attitude of curiosity and wonder could find food for high-hearted reflection even there. The universe teemed with significance, and if God had bestowed such a quality with rich abundance everywhere, there must be a still larger store of it in His own eternal heart. The world was full of surprises; trees drooped their leaves over screening walls, houses had backs as well as fronts; music was heard from shuttered windows, lights burned in upper rooms. There were a thousand pretty secrets in the ways of people to each other. Then, too, there were ideas, as thick as sparrows in an ivied wall. One had but to clap one's hands and cry out, and there was a fluttering of innumerable wings; life was as full of bubbles, forming, rising into amber foam, as a glass of sparkling wine. That cup he would drink, and try its savour. There would be times when he would flag, no doubt, but it should not be from any failure of desire. He would try to be temperate, so as to keep the inner eye unclouded; and he would try to be perfectly simple and sincere, deciding questions on their own merits, and with no conventional judgment. Such an attitude might be labelled by peevish persons, with prejudices rather than preferences, a species of intellectual Epicureanism. But Hugh desired not to limit his gaze by the phenomena of life, but to keep his eyes fixed upon the further horizon; the light might dawn when it was least expected; but the best chance of catching the first faint lights of that other sunrise, was to have learnt expectancy, to have trained observation, and to have kept one's heart unfettered and undimmed.

He saw that the first essential of all was to group his life round a centre of some kind, to have a chosen work, to which he should be vowed as by a species of consecration; it was in choosing their life-work, he thought, that so many people failed. He saw men of high ability, year after year, who continued to put off the decision as to what their work should be, until they suddenly found themselves confronted with the necessity of earning their living, and then their choice had to be made in a hurry; they pushed the nearest door open and went in; and then habit began to forge chains about them; and soon, however uncongenial their life might be, they were incapable of abandoning it. There were some melancholy instances at Cambridge of men of high intellectual power, who had drifted thus into the academical life without any aptitude for it, without educational zeal, without interest in young people. Such men went on tamely year after year, passing from one college office to another, inadequately paid, with no belief in the value of their work, averse to trying experiments, fond of comfort, only anxious to have as little trouble as possible, expending their ingenuity of mind in academical meetings, criticising the verbal expression of reports with extreme subtlety, too fastidious to design original work, too much occupied for patient research, and ending either in a bitter sense of unrecognised merit, or in a frank and unashamed indolence.

Hugh saw that in choosing the work of one's life, one must not be guided by necessity, or even mere rectitude. Work embraced from a sense of duty was like driving a chariot in sea-sand. One must have an enthusiasm for one's task, and a delight in it; for only by enjoyment of the results could one tolerate the mechanical labour inseparable from all intellectual toil. It was true that he had himself drifted into official duties, but here Hugh saw the guidance of a very tender providence, which had provided him with a species of discipline that he could never have spontaneously practised. His great need had been the application of some hardening and hammering process, such as should give him that sort of concentrated alertness which his education had failed to bestow; and none the less tenderly provided, it seemed to Hugh, was the irresistible impulse to arise and go, which had come upon him when the process was completed. And now he was free, with an immense appetite for speculation, for intellectual pleasure, for the criticism of life, for observation. It was the quality, the fine essence of things and thoughts that mattered. To some was given the desire to organise and manage the world, to others the instinct for perception, for analysis, for the development of ideas. It was not that one kind of work was better than the other; both were needed, both were noble; but Hugh had no doubt on which side of the battle he was himself meant to fight. And so he determined that he would devote his life to the work, and that he would not allow any excessive intrusion of extraneous elements. The blessing of the academical life was that it entailed a certain amount of social intercourse; it compelled one to come into contact with a large variety of people. Without this Hugh felt that his outlook would have become narrow and self-centred. He knew of course that there would be times when it would seem to him that his life was an ineffective one, when he would envy the men of affairs, when he would wonder what, after all, his own performance amounted to. But Hugh felt that the great lack of many lives was the failure to perceive the interest of ideas; that many men and women went through existence in a dull and mechanical way, raking together the straws and dust of the street; and he thought that a man might do a great work if he could put a philosophy of life into an accessible shape. The great need was the need of simplification; the world was full of palpitating interests, of beauty, of sweetness, of delight. But many people had no criterion of values; they filled their lives with petty engagements, and smilingly lamented that they had no time to think or read. For such people the sun rose over dewy fields, in the freshness of the countryside, in vain: in vain the sunset glared among the empurpled cloud-banks; in vain the moon rose pale over the hushed garden-walks, while the nightingale, hidden in the dark heart of the bush, broke into passionate song. And even if it were argued that it was possible to be sensible and virtuous without being responsive to the appeal of nature, what did such people make of their social life? they made no excursions into the hearts and minds of others; their religion was a conventional thing; they went to concerts, where the violins thrilled with sweet passion, and the horns complained with a lazy richness, that they might chatter in gangways and nod to their friends. It was all so elaborate, so hollow! and yet in the minds of these buzzing, voluble persons one could generally discern a trickle of unconventional feeling, which could have made glad the sun-scorched pleasaunce.

Hugh determined with all his might that he would try to preach this simple gospel; that he would praise and uphold the doctrine of sincerity, of appreciation, of joy.