Daily camera., 1899-02-25
SOUL OF MAN IN BOY.
SEEN BY AN ELDERLY PERSON
OF PENETRA TON.
None In the Plcturesque-Sym mpathy, =
Necessity to Completeness and Life,
Is the sentimentality OF Maturity-A
Change In His Stories. v

| NoccSBlIy TO completeness ana AIcy
Is the sentimentality of Maturity-A
Change In His Stories. v
When he was boy he was like other
boys-hard, physical, full of action
says the New York Commercial Ad-
vertiser He did and played and ex-
perimented. and didn't pause to reflect
or feel about what he did or saw. He
noticed that the butterfly from which
he had torn the wing was crippled and
soon died. He noticed that the mother
bird uttered piercing cries when he
stole away the eggs or the young birds.
But it never occurred to him that there
was any suffering there. Nothing suf-
fered, in his opinion, except OCCASION
ally himself, when his mother spanked
him. He was busy-brain, body, nerves
in learning, in Investigating, in per-
fecting his powers of action.
AS he grew older, as he came to the
age when most boys become senti-
mental; when an element of tender
ness, Of humane philosophy, OF gentle
contemplation, con IS to them, he re-
mained boy as far as his emotions
were concerned. He learned more than
most boys. He was not led away by
the emotion of love or of dissipation
He felt such things as an instinct
merely, and as an instinct they passed
away without pinning him down cruel
ly by an emotional wound. He never
| got bitten. His heart was unassail-
able, for the soul was rot yet born OF
syr nathy
He became a man-active, efficient
clean, well-disciplined practically. He
could do well what there was before
him. His life threw him in with the
| heart of the big city. He learned to be
| unusually effective in knowing what
| there was there and in handling it.
He saw, too, the thousand picturesque
things in the city. in external form,
and the internal structure of charac-
ter. He knew and appreciated the
| characters of the different men and
women he met. When he wrote or
talked he reproduced the vividness of
the eXternals of the citys life-a po-
| litical situation, crowd on Broadway
or the characteristic, pointed traits
of mental and moral life.
Much that moved he saw. When it
! ceased moving he passed on, the boy,
| impatient. He didn't sympathize. he
didn't pause to see the effect, the
pathos in the relations existing in the
crowded city. He retarded his fight
| from surface to surface; that interfered
with the picturesqueness of the world,
for one doesn't see the picturesqueness,
sometimes, for what lies beneath.
"Pshaw! he said, what care l for
the beneath? 1t interferes with my
activity. Besides, these sentimentalists
with their tenderness and their tears
make me sick. Reformers are tire
some, and so are poets"
So he didn't see the pathos Of the
world Nor did he see the humor Of
it, for pathos and humor both lie be-
meath the surface. He often saw, how
ever. the wit of a remark or the alb
surdity of situation, and he had
keen eye for the shortcomings of peo
pie. With a good brain, good body
and a happy and innocent blindness to
the world of motions, this man sue
ceeded. His nerves and his heart were
shielded until he had become mature
man Of 80. One part of his nature, by
subsidence, had allowed the other part
| to become effective. He succeeded in
getting good place in the complicated
| machinery Of metropolitan life. But in
one respect, up to that time, he had
| failed. He had tried to write stories,
! among many other things occupying
| his life He succeeded in writing fairly
| Interesting things-Quick stories, full
| of pictures and movement, strange sit
| uations and admirably vivacious. But
he characters were boys or puppets.
| They had never felt the melancholy
rhythm of life, nor the deep satisfac-
| ton of its humor. There was no soul in
| them, a fact which at the time made
the author rejoice. Perhaps up to that
time. too, he had missed one other
thing desired by most human beings.
He had friends, but no one who needed
him, except in a material way, no one
WlOSc lie WOulu nave uliOu
without him.
But this boy with the powers Of
man is now becoming sentimental.
Now that his full efficiency as prac-
teal man is developed, the emotions
are beginning to take hold of him in
manner that often fills him with
alarm. Perhaps he has reason for
alarm, for things that come late are
apt to come hard. His body has had
a slow growth and his nerves are now
perhaps capable Of more than the aver
age amount of emotional intensity.
With a kind of terror, as at the loss
Of independence, this man, successful,
is noticing that he is becoming de-
pendent on some others for a kind of
sentiment toward him which he feels
toward them And there is one person
"a woman-who will be dependent on
him in the deepest sense if he contin
ues his present line Of development.
Just now he is not writing stories,
but when he resumes them, if his hand
isn't out, they will be more human
and more interesting than his early
attempts. They may have "soul" with