The Joyful Heart

f. Offer the ordinary man a week's vacation all alone, and he

r company. To escape that terrible catastrophe, they will make friends with the most fearful bore or read the most stupid story.... If such people are marooned a few

to be alone with. He is in as desolate a condition as a certain Mr. Pease of Oberlin, who, h

lies t

shelled and

fall through sheer ignorance into a confusion of thought. They suppose that solitude and solitariness are the same thing. To the artist in life-to the wise keeper of the joyful hea

ng the small hours. These hours are truly small because the Auto-Comrade often turns his eyes into the lenses of a moving-picture machine-such an entertaining one that it compresses the hours to seconds. It is through constant, alert use that his eyes have become sharp. They can pierce through the rinds of

d to the point where the ordinary cartoon of commerce or the tiny cachinnation of a machine-made Chesterton paradox will not ring entirely hollow. As for his voice, it can at times be more musical than Melba's or Caruso's. Without being

his hands, they are always alert to give you a lift up the rough places on the mountain-side. He has remarkable presence of body. In any emergency he is usually the best man on the spot. He is at once seer, creator, accompli

uld spend

oon are i

n the way, but all of his own unlimited resources. For every time

shing back to the beloved home-land you are quitting, he marshals your friends and acquaintances into a long line for a word of greeting or a rapid-fire chat, just as though you were some idol of th

ay, these persons no longer seem so contemptible or pernicious or devilish as they once did. At this point your factotum rubs your eye-glasses bright with

musician, because, when you play or sing a duet with him, you can combine with the exciting give-and-take and reciprocal stimulation of the duet, the god-like autocracy of the solo, its opportunity for wide, uninterrupted, uncoerced self-expression. Sometimes, however, in the first flush of

love and good ones of those you hate, until increasing facility impels him to try and model not a Tanagra figurine, fo

Auto-Comrades. Every poem which has ever thrilled this world or another has been written by the Auto-Comrade of some so-called poet. This is one reason why the so-called poets think so much of their great companions. "Allons! after the great companions!" cried old Walt to his fellow poets. If

uld not be so fine, as my Solitude is sublime. Then instead of what I have described, there is a sublimity to welcome me home-The roaring of the wind is my wife and the Stars through the window pane are my Children.... I feel more and more every day, as my imagination strengthens, that I do not live in this world alone but i

fastens wings upon your feet. He conveniently adjusts a microscope to your hat-brim, and hangs about your neck an excellent telescope. He has enough sense, too, to keep his mouth closed. For, like Hazlitt, he "can see no wit in walking and talking." The joy of existence, you find, rarely tastes more c

t sure

ghest bliss o

nts two kindred

and causing to march and countermarch over against them the scarlet and purple pageants of history. Hour by hour, too, he will linger with you in the metropolis, that breeder of the dense

complete that there is not even a fin to break it. But if there are fish, he finds them. He knows how to make the flies float indefinitely forward through yonder narrow opening, and drop, as light as thistledown, in the center of the temptingly inaccessible pool. He

tting-pole immutably between two rocks and, with the alternative of taking a bath, are forced to let go and grab your paddle; and are then hung up on a slightly submerged rock at the head of the chief rapid just in time to see the rest of the party disappear majestically around

r paralyzed opponents, you ought to know that the racket was guided by that superior sportsman; and if you are truly modest, you will admit that

al game that soon loses its zest if there be not some devoted friend or relative sitting by and simul

crowd of unadulterated human porcupines! You know how the philosopher Schopenhauer once likened average humanity to a herd of porcupines on a cold day, who crowd st

psies, shirt-waist operatives, fishermen, masons, trappers, sailors, tramps, and teamsters. If the sour philosopher had only had the pleasure of knowing those teamsters who sent him into paroxysms of rage by cracking their whips in the alley, I am sure that he would never have spoken as harshly of their minds as he did. The fact is that porcupines are not extremely common among t

rouble to rescue them from that ignominious condition-well, the Auto-Comrade is no snob; when all's said, he is a rather democratic sort of chap. But he has to draw the line somewhere, you know, and he really must beg to be excused f

ertains good thoughts?" Personally, I think he is. And I believe that this sort of hospitality does more to make the world worth living in t

oke is really on him; for he is the most forlorn of mankind. The other is never at a loss. He is invulnerable, being one whom "destiny may not surprise nor death dismay." But the porcupine is liable at any moment to be deserted by associates who are bored by his shar

o his living for him. He is a vicarious citizen of the world, holding his franchise only by courtesy of Tom, Dick, and Harry. All the same, it is rather hard to pity him very profoundly while he continues to feel quite as contemptuously superior as he usually does. For

iterary guy suddenly exclaimed: "Ah, leave me, Louis! I would be alone." Even apart from the stilted language in which the orator clothed the thought of the literary guy, there is, to the porc

onsorted with spirits no more malign than Auto-Comrades. "What," asked the porcupines of one another, "can they be doing, all alone there in those solitary huts? What

of his brain, turn and turn about, share and share alike? And what is a man's own soul but a small stream of the infinite, eternal water of life? And what is heaven but a vast harbor where myriad streams of soul flow down, returning at last to their Source in the bliss of perfect reunion?

get the thrill that was mine early one morning after two months of close, uninterrupted communion with one of my best and dearest friends. At the very instant when the turn of the road cut off that fr

at last. What a week of weeks we spent, pacing back and forth on the veranda of our log cabin, where we overlooked the pleasant sinuosities of the Sebois and gazed out together over golden beech and ghostly birch and blood-red maple banners to the far violet mountains of the Aroostook! And how we did take stock of the immediate past, chuckling to find that it had not been a quarter so bad as I had stupidly sup

discuss without any of the rancor or dogmatic insistence or one-eyed stubbornness that usually accompany the clash of mental steel on mental steel from a different mill. And without making any one else lose the thread or grow short-breathed or accuse us passionately of reading ahead, we

y? Because my Auto-Comrade is a rather particular pers

e to him, "let u

he rule of the Auto-Comrades' Union. We are supposed to associate

course, there are in the world not a few invalids and other persons of low physical vitality whose Auto-Comrades happen to have sufficient gasolene to keep them both running, if only on short rations. Most of these cases, however, are pathological. They have hot-boxes at both ends of the machine, and their progr

law; "exercise, perspire, breathe, bathe, sleep out of doors, and sleep enough; rule your liver with a rod of iron, don't take drugs or ne

as bad condition as your body, this physical overplus will transmute some of itself into mental exuberance. This will enable you to have more fun with your mind than an enthusiastic kitten

who has not yet mastered the vigorous and highly complex art of not worrying. Also, he demands of his companion the knack of calm, consecutive thought. This is one reason why so many more Auto-Comrades are to be found in crow's-nests, gypsy-vans, and shirt-waist factories than on upper Fifth Avenue. For, watching the stars

hen putting it down and trying to retrace the argument in memory. Or they have coaxed us to fix on some subject-any subject-for reflection, and then scourge our straying minds back to it at every few steps of the walk to the morning train. And we have found that the mental muscles have responded at once to this treatment. They have hardened under the exercise until being left alone has begun to change f

p. A few weeks of it bring you back with a fresher, keener appreciation of your other friends and of humanity in general than you had befor

experience too rich, for long-continued consumption. Consecutive thought, though it is one of man's greatest pleasures, is at the same time perhaps the mos

one's self, and in youth, at least, if the presence of the complementary part of creation is long denied, there comes a time when this denial surges higher and higher in subconsciou

n, having tasted of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of auto-comradeship, might thereupon be tem

sure to rush back to our kind for the simple reason that we are enjoyi