Part 72

The person who has a job and who does it is very considerably immunized against the consequences of luxury. First, because he is giving a return for it. Second, because he hasn't much time for it.

On the other hand we see the hobo who won't work ruining himself on the luxury of stable-floors and of free-lunch counters, just as thoroughly as any nobleman who won't work can ever ruin himself on the luxury of castles and game preserves.

It is clearly the habitual enjoyment of either grouse or ham sandwiches, of either eiderdown or straw, WITHOUT SERVICE RENDERED AND WITHOUT FATIGUE ENDURED, that ultimately desiccates the moral character and drains it of all capacity for effort.

Marie was as reasonable a proposition as that two and two make four.

She had given her early, plastic, formative years to acquiring the HABIT of effortless enjoyment, and when the time for making an effort came, the effort just wasn't in her.

Her complete withdrawal from the struggle for existence had at last, in her negative, non-resistive mind atrophied all the instincts of that struggle including finally the instinct for reproduction.

The instinct for reproduction is intricately involved in the struggle for existence. The individual struggles for perpetuation, for perpetuation in person, for perpetuation in posterity. Work, the perpetuation of one's own life in strain and pain; work, the clinging to existence in spite of its blows; work, the inuring of the individual to the penalties of existence, is linked psychologically to the power and desire for continued racial life. The individual, the class, which struggles no more will in the end reproduce itself no more. In not having had to conquer life, it has lost its will to live.

The detailed daily reasons for this ultimate social law stand clear in Marie's life. And remember what sort of woman she was. The woman who is coerced by external, authoritative ideals will bear children even when the wish to bear them is really absent. She will bear them without thinking. She will bear them because she has never thought that anything else was possible. But Marie (and this means millions of women throughout the modern world) was free, wonderfully, unparalleledly free.

She was free, though a leisured woman, from the requirement of an heir for a great family estate. She was free from the dictates of historic Christianity about conjugal duty and unrestricted reproduction. She was free from the old uncomplaining compliance with a husband's will.

Modern life had done all this for her. She was uncoerced by family authority, ecclesiastical authority, or marital authority. She was limitlessly free, limitlessly irresponsible, a creature of infinite opportunities and no duties.

All social coercion toward childbearing having been withdrawn from her, the only guide she had left (and it would have been her best one) was instinct and impulse.

But with the cessation from struggle, with the cessation from effort and from fatigue and from discipline, and from the sorrow of pain that brings the joy of accomplishment, that instinct and impulse had disappeared. With the petrifaction of its soil, it had withered away.

She had been sedulously trained to sterility.

Nevertheless, when it got talked around among her friends that she didn't want children, everybody thought it very surprising, in view of all that had been done for her.

In the January number Mr. Hard will discuss "The Women of To-morrow" in "Civic Service."

***************************************************************** Vol. XXIII December 1910 No. 6

{pages 778-783 are NOT numbered in the printed copy!} THE WATCHMAN

"And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men." Matthew xxviii. 4

BY L. M. MONTGOMERY

My Claudia, it is long since we have met, So kissed, so held each other heart to heart! I thought to greet thee as a conqueror comes, Bearing the trophies of his prowess home. But Jove hath willed it should be otherwise-- Jove, say I? Nay, some mightier, stranger god, Who thus hath laid his heavy hand on me, No victor, Claudia, but a broken man Who seeks to hide his weakness in thy love.

How beautiful thou art! The years have brought An added splendor to thy loveliness, With passion of dark eye and lip rose-red, Struggling between its dimple and its pride. And yet there is somewhat that glooms between Thy love and mine; come, girdle me about With thy true arms, and pillow on thy breast This aching and bewildered head of mine; Here, where the fountain glitters in the sun Among the saffron lilies I will tell-- If so that words will answer my desire-- The shameful fate that hath befallen me.

Down in Jerusalem they slew a man, Or god . . . it may be that he was a god . . . Those mad, wild Jews whom Pontius Pilate rules. Thou knowest Pilate, Claudia--a vain man, Too weak to govern such a howling horde As those same Jews. This man they crucified. I knew naught of him--never heard his name Until the day they dragged him to his death; Then all tongues wagged about him and his deeds; Some said that he had claimed to be their king, Some that he had blasphemed their deity. 'Twas certain he was poor and meanly born, No warrior he, nor hero; and he taught Doctrines that surely would upset the world; And so they killed him to be rid of him. Wise, very wise, if he were only man, Not quite so wise if he were half a god!

I know that strange things happened when he died . . . There was a darkness and an agony, And some were vastly frightened--not so I! What cared I if that mob of reeking Jews Had brought a nameless curse upon their heads? I had no part in that bloodguiltiness. At least he died; and some few friends of his Took him and laid him in a garden tomb. A watch was set about the sepulchre, Lest these, his friends, should hide him and proclaim That he had risen as he had foretold. Laugh not, my Claudia. I laughed when I heard The prophecy; I would I had not laughed!

I Maximus, was chosen for the guard, With all my trusty fellows. Pilate knew I was a man who had no foolish heart Of softness all unworthy of a man! I was a soldier who had slain my foes; My eyes had looked upon a tortured slave As on a beetle crushed beneath my tread; I gloried in the splendid strife of war, Lusting for conquest; I had won the praise Of our stern general on a scarlet field, Red in my veins the warrior passion ran, For I had sprung from heroes, Roman born!

That second night we watched before the tomb; My men were merry; on the velvet turf, Bestarred with early blossoms of the spring, They diced with jest and laughter; all around The moonlight washed us like a silver lake, Save where that silent, sealed sepulchre Was hung with shadow as a purple pall. A faint wind stirred among the olive boughs . . . Methinks I hear the sighing of that wind In all sounds since, it was so dumbly sad; But as the night wore on it died away, And all was deadly stillness; Claudia, That stillness was most awful, as if some Great heart had broken and so ceased to beat! I thought of many things, but found no joy In any thought, even the thought of thee; The moon waned in the west and sickly grew, Her light sucked from her in the breaking dawn . . . Never was dawn so welcome as that pale, Faint glimmer in the cloudless, brooding sky!

Claudia, how may I tell what came to pass? I have been mocked at, when I told the tale, For a crazed dreamer punished by the gods Because he slept on guard; but mock not THOU! I could not bear it if thy lips should mock The vision dread of that Judean morn.

Sudden the pallid east was all aflame With radiance that beat upon our eyes As from the noonday sun; and then we saw Two shapes that were as the immortal gods Standing before the tomb; around me fell My men as dead; but I, though through my veins Ran a cold tremor never known before, Withstood the shock and saw one shining shape Roll back the stone; the whole world seemed ablaze, And through the garden came a rushing wind Thundering a paean as of victory. Then that dead man came forth . . . oh, Claudia, If thou couldst but have seen the face of him! Never was such a conqueror! Yet no pride Was in it . . . naught but love and tenderness, Such as we Romans scoff at, and his eyes Bespake him royal. Oh, my Claudia, Surely he was no Jew but very god!

Then he looked full upon me; I had borne Much staunchly, but that look I could not bear! What man may front a god and live? I fell Prone, as if stricken by a thunderbolt; And though I died not, somewhat of me died That made me man; when my long stupor passed I was no longer Maximus . . . I was A weakling with a piteous woman soul, All strength and pride, joy and ambition gone! My Claudia, dare I tell thee what foul curse Is mine because I looked upon a god?