He is a victim of amor senilis, and right here if Mansfield took one step more his realism would be appalling, but he stops in time and suggests what he dares not express. This tottering, doddering, s...o...b..ring, sniffling old man is in love--he is about to wed a young, beautiful girl. He selects jewels for her--he makes remarks about what would become her beauty, jeers and laughs in cracked falsetto. In the animality of youth there is something pleasing--it is natural--but the vices of an old man, when they have become only mental, are most revolting.
The people about _Ivan_ are in mortal terror of him, for he is still the absolute monarch--he has the power to promote or disgrace, to take their lives or let them go free. They laugh when he laughs, cry when he does, and watch his fleeting moods with thumping hearts.
He is intensely religious and affects the robe and cowl of a priest.
Around his neck hangs the crucifix. His fear is that he will die with no opportunity of confession and absolution. He prays to High Heaven every moment, kisses the cross, and his toothless old mouth interjects prayers to G.o.d and curses on man in the same breath.
If any one is talking to him he looks the other way, slips down until his shoulders occupy the throne, scratches his leg, and keeps up a running comment of insult--"Aye," "Oh," "Of course," "Certainly," "Ugh,"
"Listen to him now!" There is a comedy side to all this which relieves the tragedy and keeps the play from becoming disgusting.
Glimpses of _Ivan"s_ past are given in his jerky confessions--he is the most miserable and unhappy of men, and you behold that he is reaping as he has sown.
All his life he has been preparing for this. Each day has been a preparation for the next. _Ivan_ dies in a fit of wrath, hurling curses on his family and court--dies in a fit of wrath into which he has been purposely taunted by a man who knows that the outburst is certain to kill the weakened monarch.
Where does _Ivan the Terrible_ go when Death closes his eyes?
I know not. But this I believe: No confessional can absolve him--no priest benefit him--no G.o.d forgive him. He has d.a.m.ned himself, and he began the work in youth. He was getting ready all his life for this old age, and this old age was getting ready for the fifth act.
The playwright does not say so, Mansfield does not say so, but this is the lesson: Hate is a poison--wrath is a toxin--sensuality leads to death--clutching selfishness is a lighting of the fires of h.e.l.l. It is all a preparation--cause and effect.
If you are ever absolved, you must absolve yourself, for no one else can. And the sooner you begin, the better.
We often hear of the beauties of old age, but the only old age that is beautiful is the one the man has long been preparing for by living a beautiful life. Every one of us are right now preparing for old age.
There may be a subst.i.tute somewhere in the world for Good Nature, but I do not know where it can be found.
The secret of salvation is this: Keep Sweet.
An Alliance with Nature
My father is a doctor who has practised medicine for sixty-five years, and is still practising.
I am a doctor myself.
I am fifty years old; my father is eighty-five. We live in the same house, and daily we ride horseback together or tramp thru the fields and woods. To-day we did our little jaunt of five miles and back "cross country.
I have never been ill a day--never consulted a physician in a professional way, and in fact, never missed a meal through inability to eat. As for the author of the author of _A Message to Garcia_, he holds, esoterically, to the idea that the hot pedaluvia and small doses of hop tea will cure most ailments that are curable, and so far all of his own ails have been curable--a point he can prove.
The value of the pedaluvia lies in the fact that it tends to equalize circulation, not to mention the little matter of sanitation; and the efficacy of the hops lies largely in the fact that they are bitter and disagreeable to take.
Both of these prescriptions give the patient the soothing thought that something is being done for him, and at the very worst can never do him serious harm.
My father and I are not fully agreed on all of life"s themes, so existence for us never resolves itself into a dull, neutral gray. He is a Baptist and I am a Vegetarian. Occasionally he refers to me as "callow," and we have daily resorts to logic to prove prejudices, and history is searched to bolster the preconceived, but on the following important points we stand together, solid as one man:
First. Ninety-nine people out of a hundred who go to a physician have no organic disease, but are merely suffering from some symptom of their own indiscretion.
Second. Individuals who have diseases, nine times out of ten, are suffering only from the acc.u.mulated evil effects of medication.
Third. Hence we get the proposition: Most diseases are the result of medication which has been prescribed to relieve and take away a beneficent and warning symptom on the part of wise Nature.
Most of the work of doctors in the past has been to prescribe for symptoms; the difference between actual disease and a symptom being something that the average man does not even yet know.
And the curious part is that on these points all physicians, among themselves, are fully agreed. What I say here being merely truism, triteness and commonplace.
Last week, in talking with an eminent surgeon in Buffalo, he said, "I have performed over a thousand operations of laparotomy, and my records show that in every instance, excepting in cases of accident, the individual was given to what you call the "Beecham Habit.""
The people you see waiting in the lobbies of doctors" offices are, in a vast majority of cases, suffering thru poisoning caused by an excess of food. Coupled with this goes the bad results of imperfect breathing, irregular sleep, lack of exercise, and improper use of stimulants, or holding the thought of fear, jealousy and hate. All of these things, or any one of them, will, in very many persons, cause fever, chills, cold feet, congestion and faulty elimination.
To administer drugs to a man suffering from malnutrition caused by a desire to "get even," and a lack of fresh air, is simply to compound his troubles, shuffle his maladies, and get him ripe for the ether-cone and scalpel.
Nature is forever trying to keep people well, and most so-called "disease," which word means merely lack of ease, is self-limiting, and tends to cure itself. If you have appet.i.te, do not eat too much. If you have no appet.i.te, do not eat at all. Be moderate in the use of all things, save fresh air and sunshine.
The one theme of _Ecclesiastes_ is moderation. Buddha wrote it down that the greatest word in any language is Equanimity. William Morris said that the finest blessing of life was systematic, useful work. Saint Paul declared that the greatest thing in the world was love. Moderation, Equanimity, Work and Love--you need no other physician.
In so stating I lay down a proposition agreed to by all physicians; which was expressed by Hippocrates, the father of medicine, and then repeated in better phrase by Epictetus, the slave, to his pupil, the great Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, and which has been known to every thinking man and woman since: Moderation, Equanimity, Work and Love!
The Ex. Question
Words sometimes become tainted and fall into bad repute, and are discarded. Until the day of Elizabeth Fry, on the official records in England appeared the word "mad-house." Then it was wiped out and the word "asylum" subst.i.tuted. Within twenty years" time in several states in America we have discarded the word "asylum" and have subst.i.tuted the word "hospital."
In Jeffersonville, Indiana, there is located a "Reformatory" which some years ago was known as a penitentiary. The word "prison" had a depressing effect, and "penitentiary" throws a theological shadow, and so the words will have to go. As our ideas of the criminal change, we change our vocabulary.
A few years ago we talked about asylums for the deaf and dumb--the word "dumb" has now been stricken from every official doc.u.ment in every state in the Union, because we have discovered, with the a.s.sistance of Gardner G. Hubbard, that deaf people are not dumb, and not being defectives, they certainly do not need an asylum. They need schools, however, and so everywhere we have established schools for the deaf.
Deaf people are just as capable, are just as competent, just as well able to earn an honest living as is the average man who can hear.
The "indeterminate sentence" is one of the wisest expedients ever brought to bear in penology. And it is to this generation alone that the honor of first using it must be given. The offender is sentenced for, say from one to eight years. This means that if the prisoner behaves himself, obeying the rules, showing a desire to be useful, he will be paroled and given his freedom at the end of one year.
If he misbehaves and does not prove his fitness for freedom he will be kept two or three years, and he may possibly have to serve the whole eight years. "How long are you in for?" I asked a convict at Jeffersonville, who was caring for the flowers in front of the walls.
"Me? Oh, I"m in for two years, with the privilege of fourteen," was the man"s answer, given with a grin.
The old plan of "short time," allowing two or three months off from every year for good behavior was a move in the right direction, but the indeterminate sentence will soon be the rule everywhere for first offenders.
The indeterminate sentence throws upon the man himself the responsibility for the length of his confinement and tends to relieve prison life of its horror, by holding out hope. The man has the short time constantly in mind, and usually is very careful not to do anything to imperil it. Insurrection and an attempt to escape may mean that every day of the whole long sentence will have to be served.
So even the dullest of minds and the most calloused realize that it pays to do what is right--the lesson being pressed home upon them in a way it has never been before.
The old-time prejudice of business men against the man who had "done time" was chiefly on account of his incompetence, and not his record.
The prison methods that turned out a hateful, depressed and frightened man who had been suppressed by the silent system and deformed by the lock-step, calloused by brutal treatment and the constant thought held over him that he was a criminal, was a bad thing for the prisoner, for the keeper and for society. Even an upright man would be undone by such treatment, and in a year be transformed into a sly, secretive and morally sick man. The men just out of prison were unable to do anything--they needed constant supervision and attention, and so of course we did not care to hire them.
The Ex. now is a totally different man from the Ex. just out of his striped suit in the seventies, thanks to that much defamed man, Brockway, and a few others.
We may have to restrain men for the good of themselves and the good of society, but we do not punish. The restraint is punishment enough; we believe men are punished by their sins, not for them.
When men are sent to reform schools now, the endeavor and the hope is to give back to society a better man than we took.